This is the third question in the series provided by Robert Biswar-Diener. Have you been writing out answers to each of the questions?
3. With
whom do you share responsibility for your own happiness?
It is easy to get lulled into
a sense that happiness is an individual pursuit. Nothing could be further from
the truth. You are connected to other people in a complicated web of loyalty,
obligation, generosity, protection, and mutual support. Your own happiness is
not simply a product of your mind, but of your decisions concerning other
people. You can ask support from others to boost your happiness; you can
sacrifice some personal happiness in favor of helping others. Who are the
primary stakeholders in your happiness and how do they affect your moods? What
does this tell you about your own pursuit of happiness?
By simply asking these new
questions you will redirect your attention and take stock of your own happiness
in a different way. We hope that the very act of questioning wakes you up to an
invigorated sense of pursuit of happiness. We recommend taking five (5) full
minutes aside and actually thinking or writing answers to these questions in
detail. We would love to hear from you about how asking these questions affects
you. Please drop us a line or post to our Facebook site.
To learn more about the authors of these questions and their
work:
And Dr. Biswar-Diener’s most current training for coaches
starting October 29, 2012 Hope you enjoyed these questions. Thank you trying to improve your life satisfaction, Andrea T. Goeglein, PhD www.ServingSuccess.com
2.How much
unhappiness should I have? Feelings of sadness, guilt, and anger act like radar, scanning
and providing information about the quality of our lives. Negative feelings can
signal that problems are occurring and that action must be taken to change
courses. It wouldn't be sensible to try to eliminate negative feelings
entirely. How frequently do you experience negative feelings, and how
frequently do you think you ideally would like to? To learn more about the authors of these questions and their
work:
In a continuing effort to support the high integrity of
Positive Psychology, my next three posts will be republished questions from the
renowned author, researcher and scholar Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener.Look below for information about his newest
class starting on October 29.
Have you ever questioned happiness?
Twice a year I meet with Project Plus, an international team
of happiness experts that includes Mathieu Ricard, John Helliwell, and others.
Currently, we are drafting the introduction to the Bhutanese Gross National
Happiness paper, which will be used by the United Nations as a kick starter for
setting happiness policy around the world. In our discussions last week in New
Orleans the members of Project Plus talked about the possibility that
individuals who are trying to achieve more personal happiness may be asking the
wrong sorts of questions. Here, for your benefit, are alternatives that you
might find provocative and useful in your own quest for happiness:
1.How much happiness should I have?
People often simply think they should be happier than they
currently are without giving due consideration to whether or not this is true.
Take stock of your current happiness. Where in your life are you satisfied and
where is there room for growth? How happy would you ideally like to be? What is
it you are shooting for, emotionally speaking? When have there been periods of
your life when you have achieved, or been close to, this ideal?
Dr. Success Challenge:Answer the questions!
For those interesting in building a coaching practice, this
is a great place to learn:
This is the last week to register for class!
Our Practice Building Accelerator course is fast
approaching! In this six week course taught by Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener,
students will explore the fundamentals of starting and growing a coaching
practice, including marketing and client acquisition. Class starts October
29th. To learn more about our program please visit us at PositiveAcorn.com.
By Brock Bastian, University of Queensland
Western culture places an extraordinary emphasis on happiness – and continuous happiness – as the goal each of us should strive for in our lives. But we’re increasingly realising this goal may actually be making us unhappy.
Television advertising shows people becoming happier with every new acquisition, alongside national campaigns promoting a take-no-prisoner’s approach to encouraging happiness. Barbara Ehrenreich captures this fixation well in her recent book simply titled “Smile or Die”.
Of course, feeling happy is a good thing. But happiness is only one aspect of the full range of human emotions. People also regularly feel gloomy, anxious and stressed. Despite the commonality of these negative emotional states, they are generally regarded in a quite a different light to happiness.
Normal levels of sadness, depression and anxiety are commonly pathologised and medicalised: viewed as deviating from the desired norm. Even common malaise is often diagnosed as an illness. Such negative emotions are treated with a wide array drugs and interventions designed to quickly and efficiently return us to “normality”.
Meanwhile, the many benefits of negative emotions – such as their creative potential, importance for interpersonal relations and role in achieving a rich and meaningful life – are rarely appreciated or talked about. Negative emotions are inevitable – and stigmatising them can be harmful. Joe Penna/Flickr.
So what impact does a cultural obsession with happiness, and a relative devaluation of sadness, have on people when they inevitably do feel sad?
Social norms which place a singular focus on happiness as desirable and sadness as undesirable may increase perceived social pressures not to feel sad, with detrimental consequences for emotional functioning. This possibility was supported by research my colleagues and I recently published in Emotion, the journal of the American Psychological Association.
We found that perceived “social expectancies” not to feel sad were associated with increased negative emotions, depression and reduced well-being. When people think society generally doesn’t accept sadness or that other people expect them not to experience or express their sadness, they have more negative emotions on a weekly basis. They’re also more likely to report symptoms of depression and lower satisfaction with their lives.
In this research we also explored whether the effects of social expectancies may be more apparent in Western culture, where a higher premium is placed on happiness, compared with Eastern cultures, where emotional balance is considered more important.
What we found was that although the effects of social expectancies were evident in both cultures, they were more pronounced in Australia than in Japan. Not only did Australians perceive greater social pressure not to feel sad, they also evaluated themselves more negatively when they did feel sad, and in turn experienced a greater intensity of negative emotion on a daily basis.
We also found that social messages that reinforce these social expectancies serve to increase negative emotional responses when people recall past negative emotional events.
Don’t force yourself
Social pressures to feel happy make people feel like they’ve failed when they do feel sad, which in turn this makes them feel worse. Such negative reactions to our own negative emotions have been termed “secondary disturbances” within clinical psychology. Trying to force happiness when we feel sad can make us feel worse. shawncampbell/Flickr.
A “new-wave” within psychotherapy has begun to focus on the concept of “acceptance”. Accepting unpleasant emotional states is demonstrated as an important pathway towards reducing secondary disturbances and improving emotional and psychological functioning. Sadly, increased acceptance of a variety of emotional states is not readily supported by salient social norms.
On top of that, when people are collectively focused on feeling happy it creates social pressures that produce more sadness. A collective focus on the goal of feeling happy may lead to a kind of “pressure-cooker” effect where the mass pursuit of happiness serves the mass production of sadness. People subsequently feel that they have failed to meet both their goals and the standards set by society.
So what should we do? Wear hessian cloths and devote our lives to the pursuit of misery and gloom? Clearly, this is not good advice!
What we can do, however, is to aim a little more for that “golden mean” noted by Aristotle in all his wisdom. The good life is found between the extremes of deficiency and excess, and is therefore best served by a mixture of both pleasure and pain. Brock Bastian receives funding from the ARC.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
Read the original article.
Today is a “weather perfect day” in Las Vegas.This day followed a record breaking
rainfall for any day since records have been kept for Las Vegas.As I began my 7 a.m. walk, the air was crisp,
the birds were singing, and the leaves on the trees gave enough cover to feel a
bit cool.
Then it happened.The
moment-by-moment beauty of the day was haltingly disrupted as a greeted a
follow female walker, “This is a glorious reward for all that rain yesterday,”
I cheerfully espoused.Her response?“Huh? Oh, yeah. But it’s not going to last.”
Lucky for me, I walk very fast and was able to escape the
pending doom radiating from this woman.I
was smiling from ear-to-ear knowing that I had just experienced a real time
example of how the mind – when untrained and unmonitored – can destroy the
present moment’s glory by anticipating the natural evolution of life.
Do things change?Heck, yes!Does knowing that mean
you should not appreciate the good times.Heck, no! Beautiful flowers can grow through rocks.
Dr. Success Challenge:How would you act (or what decision would you make today) if you
believed good was going to last…at least for the moment?
Optimism and pessimism start in the mind. Success and happiness start and end in the mind. Period. You choose.
The simplest of actions. The greatest of impacts. What more could you ask? Right behind my dislike for the word Pollyanna when someone is attempting to rebuff the impact of Positive Psychology, is the apparent need mock the impact smiling can have on mood elevation.
Again, I will be as loving as I can when I write this -- mock on, and accept you are wrong! Whether it is the book The How of Happiness, or Gary Russo following his dream of singing by starting with creating smiles, smiling works.
Dr. Success Challenge: Rate your mood on a scale of 1-10 (1 low - 10 high) right now. Now read the HBR article The Science Behind the Smile. When you are done reading the article, again rate your mood on a scale of 1-10. Share your results with me by writing to me at DrSuccess@ServingSuccess.com
Although I have not been writing often since the launch of my newest book, I have written a bit about making lists and using this time of year when we 'make lists and check them twice' to also makes lists that will aid in your personal growth. Today I am writing about another kind of list. This list should be entitled: Doors I Should Close List.
A personal development adage about doors goes like this, "When one door closes, another (or a window) opens." This adage feels a bit powerless to me. It feels as though, yet again, I was the victim of something negative happening 'to me'. I am suggesting you be a bit proactive in your development today. I am suggesting you make a list of 'doors' you have walked through enough and it is time that you take an action and close the door.
To often we wait for a door to close when we should have locked the door a long time ago. The door -- the relationship -- be it a business, love, community or even spiritual -- had served it's purpose in our lives and our lives in theirs. The 'reason and season' had come and gone, yet we held on. We waited for them to close the door.
Dr. Success Challenge: Make a list of doors (relationships) you should respectfully close. If you need to take an action to close the relationship, take that action. A respectful closing might look like a letter thanking the person for being in your life and stating you will not be in communication going forward. Maybe it is a job you need to leave. Of course, find a new one or find the financial support needed to end that relationship prior to taking action, but take action.
Here is the interesting thing about actively closing a door in your relationship life -- you can also choose to re-open it at some point. When you choose to respectfully end a relationship you can choose to respectfully approach that door -- I mean relationship -- again if something changes in the future. That is usually not the case when you wait so long that the door is slammed shut on you and you are sent scrambling to find an open window out of which to crawl.
Now that the new Don't Die book is complete and on the market, its time to get back to the great teachings and teachers of Positive Psychology. The following is a blog post by Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener. To learn more about Dr. Biswas-Diener's work and the learning opportunities he offers, go to:
There's more to this pleasant
feeling than you think! A few years ago a friend and
colleague of mine-- Sonja Lyubomirsky-- wrote a book about the science of
well-being called "The How of Happiness." In this book Sonja reviewed
much of the empirical evidence for various ways that a person might achieve
happiness: cultivate a habit of gratitude, plug in spiritually, let go of sour
feelings through forgiveness. The How of Happiness was timely and important in
that it addressed what is, for many folks, the single most pressing question
about happiness, "How can I get some more of it?"
What many people fail to
realize, where their own emotional good life is concerned, is that there is an
equally crucial question: when is happiness? Many of us simply assume that
happiness is an emotion we experience in the present and it therefore makes
sense to find pleasant and rewarding tasks in which to engage. There is,
however, more to the story..... there is a psychological "happiness
timeline" during which happiness is constructed, much in the same way your
story of your wedding day or trip to Paris is constructed.
In a book published the same
year as Lyubomirsky's, my father-- Ed Diener-- and I introduced readers to the
"AIM" model of happiness. In Happiness: Unlocking the mysteries of
psychological wealth, we separate into three distinct components: attention,
interpretation, and memory.
A- Attention:It turns out that what you pay attention to
in the first place is what your mind becomes filled with! This is why a daily
habit of gratitude can be helpful; it shifts your focus to the ways in which
the world is good and in which you are fortunate. This is not a matter of
naively overlooking the bad, of course. Rather, it is a matter of NOT
overlooking the small good daily events.
I- Interpretation: This is
classic cognitive psychology. Are you the type of person who feels appreciative
when your boyfriend brings you flowers or are you the type to immediately
suspect him of wrongdoing? We all have thinking habits and interpreting the
events of daily life is one of these. To improve your happiness try consciously
considering alternative explanations before jumping to an emotional conclusion.
M- Memory: Happiness does not
just exist in the present but also can be drawn from past events. Try savoring
past successes, enjoyable experiences and other golden memories by making a
habit out of looking at memorabilia or trading stories with a spouse or
friends. You will be surprised to find that you can draw actual happiness--
right now-- from events that have taken place long ago. Rather than looking for
increased happiness in a better future you can mine your past experiences to
pay out happiness dividends! This week, set a challenge
for yourself to undertake at least one of these three approaches to happiness.
Dr. Success Challenge: Notice what messages you have received in the first few hours of the day. These messages can be written, spoken, texted, in a commerical or a song you heard. What thoughts came to mind?
The message I received today during my meditiation was to FOCUS. My main task is to formalize and finalize the details for the July 15 & 16 Don't Die with Your Book Inside You workshop in Las Vegas. The next message I got from a reading: "There is no script that we must follow in life. We get to write the story, and if we don't like the one we wrote, we get to rewrite it as many times as we choose. That is how we find out who we are, what we really want from life, and how we really want to live." Rev. Ron Fox p. 50 SoM
I have a favorite line in my first Don’t Die™ Book.
“Change is not the promise that there will be no challenges, but the hope that with each challenge you learn to grow with greater trust. What I can promise is that all this hope, change, and trust take time.”
I had made a 30 day commitment to write on the topic of awareness and perspective. Up until now, I have not met my commitment 100%, yet the messages that I get from my daily readings keep pulling me back to that focus whether I have time or not!
I started the day with three…yes 3 again…messages that keep lining up:
From TUT, I was reminded that challenges actually give life it’s richness. Mike Dooley posed this question: Now what if, painful as they may temporarily be, you could choose a life during which challenges might arise whenever your thinking needed expansion, on the sole condition that every one of them could be overcome no matter how daunting they may at first seem?
From Fr. Richard Rohr, “After the Madonna and child image (the essential Incarnation icon), the Annunciation is the most painted Christian scene. Did you ever notice that Mary does not say here that she is “not worthy”? She just asks for clarification. She only asks “How” because that might ask something more of her. She never asks if, whether, or why!”
And from the top of the journal page I wrote on this morning: “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” Vaclav Havel
Dr. Success Challenge: Answer this question for yourself: If you received these messages, what message would you actually be receiving?
There is a lot of folklore about things coming in threes. Today I received three messages about taking responsibility. Each message came in a wonderful way.
The first was in the daily message from TUT.
The next came in the way of a quote printed in my journal which stated you don't achieve what you think about, you achieve what you take responsibility for.
The third came as part of the message delivered by a lay deacon at a Catholic Mass. His message was that we must take responsibility for what we think because what we think is actually our real 'judgement day'.
What I think is taking responsibility is the most freeing action I can take. What do you think?
Oh, it’s that old awareness and perspective thing coming back to haunt us all again.
So you want to have kids, yah? Parents beware for what you wish! Harvard researcher, Dr. Daniel Gilbert’s research shows that ‘people with young children living with them are the least happy of all.’ How is that for a Monday morning wakeup call?
Gilbert’s research goes on to show, however – and this is a big however – that it is critical that parents believe children will make them happy. That belief, no matter how unsubstantiated by evidence, allows parents to continually put forth the effort, energy, time and money needed to rear a child to adulthood.
Now here is the perspective changing part directly from the author: “As a result of that sacrifice, we love them all the more. We don’t value our children in spite of how difficult they are, we value our children because of how difficult they are.”
My Mom always said you appreciate the things you work hard to accomplish. Once again, Mom was right and she did not need any research to prove her intuition.
I received an email today from my first teacher in the behavioral sciences, Pamela Cole. At the end there was this quote,
“Let us be grateful for the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” Marcel Proust
Seeds, gardening, planting and transformation have been a part of my daily conversation for several months now. Last week my daughter Dana planted seeds in her grandparents’ garden. Both Dana and my parents discussed the process. This last weekend in the Stillpoint ISDS class I was talking about snakes (which have a transformative meaning in Jungian dream work) and I said of my lack of gardening skill, “I don’t touch dirt.”
Yet planting the seeds of growth is what personal development and self-help means to me. Moment by moment we are all planting seeds in our life garden. The impact of what we plant is not the results we get. The impact of our life garden is how well we remember to count the flowers and not the weeds.
The work of transformation is not about the world getting more peaceful.
The work of transformation is about YOU becoming more peaceful regardless of what happens in the world.
Then there is the peace of knowing we are all human. This is what that sounds like:
Andrea:You have to describe that story without using shame, blame or rationalization in order to have more peace in your life. Client:You can’t take those away from me. I won’t be able to explain anything in my life!
Bryon Katie: Gratitude is who we are without our stories.
Thank you,
I once bought a book entitled Living Without Goals just because the title ticked me off so much. The thought of living without goals is so counter intuitive and so alien to me I actually bought the book just to prove the author was wrong. I bought that book 20 years ago.
Today I write living without goals still does not resonate with me, yet I now understand what the author was attempting to convey. Having goals, writing goals, thinking about our goals is not the problem. How we attach to our goals is!
Dr. Success™ Challenge*: Think about your goals. Is it the goal that turns you on and ignites your flame for life or is it the potential outcome?
Consider your goals from a place of “high attention, low attachment”. And remember: where you put your energy, you create your results.
I ended my last post with the sentence… Her guidance during that time did not give me any comfort. I did not grasp that a situation could be terrible but I was still suppose to be doing it.
Here is what I should have written: Her guidance during that time did not give me any comfort. I did not grasp that a situation could be terrible AND I was still suppose to be doing it.
It took several years before the first glimpse of why Richard was called to “build it anyway”. We were in the Las Vegas airport going who knows where and I was visiting the bookshop as I always do before a flight. I eye caught the words that had haunted me for over five years,
I froze in place and then regained my composure enough to buy the book. I had the book finished before I landed. It fit the category of books I really enjoy and after which I have designed my own book writing life: A small book with big impact. The book, of course, was Anyway by Kent Keith.
The following week Richard and I were driving to Cottonwood, Arizona to work at our little hotel. I read the book to him as he drove. Tears welded up in Richard eyes from the Keith’s account of how the book came to be, the disappointments he endured and the strength he gained from the experiences. It was as though someone finally understood what Richard had gone through.
The myth of “do the right thing and everything with turn out okay and you will be rewarded” was being dismantled with every line in I read. A belief was being dismantled and a new reality was being born.
You do not do good things to be rewarded. You do go things because doing good is all you are suppose to do. The reward is in the doing, not in the receiving some reward.
I may have written about this research before, yet I find it comes into my daily conversations. I wanted to reiterate an important message in self-help, positive psychology, personal development -- or whatever you choose to call the process of life transformation -- and that message is this:
No one, no process, no program can promise you that life will be eternally happy and without pain and sorrow. Bad things happen and we humans seem to remember those things more than we remember the good. There is a physiological reason for that -- get over it! It is a fact.
One of my favorite researchers has done it again. Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener renowned author of many books in the field of positive psychology published some great research on giving to charity and increased personal happiness.
The link to the actual study can be found at: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/11-038.pdf
The research compared people in a rich and a poor country (Canada and Uganda). Participants were asked to think about the last time they spent the equivalent of 20 dollars on either themselves or on another person. Whether rich or poor, participants reported more happiness when they remembered spending money on others. Dr. Biswas-Diener and his colleagues surmised that humans are hard-wired for generosity.
This suggests that the happiness we feel when we lend support or donate money is part of the natural psychological reward system for looking after others.
One of the observational cliques that goes around psychology is that the condition of your physical home -- how orderly things are, how well maintained and clear the environment is, if there are photos of friends and family, etc. represents the condition of your personal psyche. One of my favorite Positive Psychology researchers and authors is Robert Biswas-Diener has again written a blog that I want to share with you. Again, he made this contribution on the way to another incredible location -- last time he was in Hawaii, this time he is off to South Africa.
Before you read his contribution, look around your own home. What is the condition? Is it showing the way you are feeling? As I write this I have begun the process of updating and renovating our master bath and bedroom. We have not done any work on our home since 2007. I remember how that shook things up. I look forward with great anticipation what this upcoming work will shift in our lives.
Do you live in a retreat center or a circus tent? By Robert Biswas-Diener, PhD
I recently posted photos of my house on Facebook because, I realized, I love my house so much that I wanted to share it with others, if even in a small way. I don't live in a mansion and there is nothing all that remarkable about my two car garage or wooden deck. My house is not necessarily the cause for any bragging rights. My home does have a unique feature, however; a small river running through the lush, fern filled yard that feeds the massive cedar trees that rise up like towers. The natural setting in which my house is nestled has led-on more than one occasion-to guests comparing it to the quiet and serenity of a retreat center. I have come to understand that the physical environment in which I live-the color of the walls in my home, the furnishings, the lighting, the plants, and other features-play a subtle but powerful role in my well-being.
There are many research studies pointing to the conclusion that having a view of a natural setting can be rejuvenating. Nothing new there. That's exactly why people are willing to pay extra for ocean facing hotel rooms when they go on holiday. What is fresh, however, is a new publication by Richard Florida, an intellectual with an interest in place. Florida argues that where you live matters. Living in areas where schools are good and crime is low obviously leads to a better quality of life. Less obvious is the fact that people living in different areas derive happiness from different sources! Using Gallup survey data Florida and his research team discovered that city folk get a kick out of meeting new people, suburban dwellers emphasize safety and education, and people in the country place importance on tight social relationships. Florida suggests that there are four basic qualities to a person's sense of place: basic needs, community, stimulation and freedom.
1. Basic Needs
2. Community
3. Stimulation
4. Freedom
Florida is referring to whole areas-cities and societies. I thought it would be interesting to shrink his theory and apply it on a less grand scale: to my own home. It can be useful to think about the very place you live-your house or apartment-in reference to Florida's four place qualities. Ask yourself how well your basic needs are met? For instance, is the home warm or cool enough? Do you complain about the light? Is there typically food on hand? What about your sense of community within your home? How do your friends, family members, neighbors or housemates contribute to or detract from your well-being? What about stimulation? Is your home full of opportunities to engage your mind in ways you value, or do you find yourself ducking out to get your kicks? Finally, how much freedom do you experience? Do you have a room that is a reflection of you and which you are free to decorate? Chances are, intervening in any one of these areas will translate to more satisfaction and happiness for you. I admit, I ran away with Florida's theory and applied in on a micro scale, but I have found it to be an effective way to understand my own home and how it affects me. I suggest you take the time and try it on for yourself.
One way of getting a more objective gauge of how happy a place your home is would be to take stock of the types of compliments you get when visitors arrive. If you take my house as an example, people are quick to point out the beautiful landscape. Calling my home a "retreat center" suggests that it scores high points on the basic needs dimension, but that it might not be the most stimulating place in the world. This is true, in fact. You won't find TVs blaring or music blasting or people playing video games at our residence. You'll find a group of people reading quietly. Which means, where the happiness of the Biswas-Dieners is concerned, it would be important for us to acquire games, puzzles, toys or other tools for boosting the stimulus value of our otherwise calm household. What are people saying about the place you live, and how can this point you to making small improvements in one of these four areas?
Posts
: Gratitude is who we are without our stories.
