The Great Wall of China

International Conference on Positive Psychology

The China International Conference on Positive Psychology took place August 7-10, 2010 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

A quest for wealth is “fast outpacing mental health and well-being in China.” According to psychologist Kaiping Peng, founder of the Berkeley-Tsinghua Program for Advanced Study in Psychology, “We want to switch the focus in China from the gross domestic product to happiness, from the culture of competition to the common good. We are seeking to correct that imbalance by spreading the science of happiness in China.” The timing was relevant in the wake of China’s Foxconn plant worker suicides, rising crime rates, and headlines about knife attacks on preschoolers.

Tsinghua mottos:
Self-Discipline and Social Commitment
Actions Speak Louder than Words

Census Poster

Timothy So made major contributions to the conference as president of the Global Chinese Positive Psychology Association. Yukun Zhao played many roles, including Positive Education program committee member, organizer, interpreter, and liaison to international presenters. There will be an article spotlighting the dynamic duo later in the month.

Conference on Positive Psychology and Education

The International Conference on Positive Psychology and Education took place Aug 13-15, 2010 at Beijing Normal University in Beijing, China.

A goal of this conference was to encourage positive education nationwide and worldwide by assembling mental health professionals, specialists, academicians, scholars, positive psychologists and positive education practitioners to share knowledge. This valuable forum featured world-class presenters, as well as lively, informative exchanges among regional and international positive education practitioners.

With a focus on flourishing in education, four main conference topic themes were explored:

• Character Strengths and Nurturing Moral Excellence and Positive Traits of Youth
• Well-Being Education Theories and Methodology
• Positive Practices: Practical Results and the Experience of Positive Education
• Resilience and Optimism

The conference theme was one of “paying more attention to student’s good character and beautiful souls, and on positive cognitive processing, positive emotional experiences, and positive social behaviors, so that students can become positive, healthy people.” Another theme was character education for teachers and teacher effectiveness. Researcher Ren Jun stated teachers can be seen as “engineers of the human soul,” so there is a great need for understanding and applying Positive Education practices.

Positive Education Keynotes

Poster on Learning

Stage 1. Honor the value of optimism
Stage 2. Identify your main strength
Stage 3. Discover meaning in your life
Stage 4. Pursue (SMART) goals
Stage 5. Reinforce Positive Activities

Dr. Felicia Huppert from Cambridge University presented important research that she is conducting with Timothy So at the Well-Being Institute. They are surveying 23 countries in the European Union on Flourishing and Well-Being. Professor Huppert eloquently discussed the 5 key outcome messages, summarized in Timothy So’s earlier article, 5 Daily Actions for Your Well-Being.

According to Martin Seligman, “Flourishing individuals are physically healthier, they are more productive at work, and they are more peaceful citizens of the world.” Seligman discussed his 2051 goal for having 51% of the world population flourishing and how important China is for reaching that goal.

Yukun Zhao & Dr. Nansook Park

EXCELLENCE =
Talent (ability) + Interest (Passion) + Character Strengths + Ethics + Opportunity

In addition to citing exemplars like Gandhi and Mandela, Park spoke of Alexandra Scott who contracted cancer at age 1. Wanting “to help doctors find a cure for childhood cancer,” Alex, with the help of her parents, sold lemonade, raising money and awareness. She died in 2004 at age 8, contributing more than 1 million dollars and a legacy that continues to inspire. Another young hero emerged during the massive earthquake in China. Lin Hao saved 2 of his classmates. Risking injury during the rescues, when asked his thoughts, he replied, “I was the hall monitor and my job was to look after my classmates. I was only doing my job!” Park described “ordinary people who did extraordinary things with a caring heart,” and believes “We should take moral excellence very seriously.”

Yukun Zhao translating for Chris Peterson

Zhao describe the Positive Education “Action Plan” that he is now helping to develop in China based on the success of the conference. This plan will be launched in the next 3 to 5 years and includes the following actions for primary and middle schools:

• Surveying the character strengths of youth
• Training teachers in positive education and positive psychology
• Testing positive education in some selected schools, improve it constantly, expand it as it becomes better
• Teaching positive psychology to mental health workers in schools

A Vision For the Future
Dr. Park reminded the audience of the words by Stephen Meek, school principal, as he spoke about the positive education effort in Geelong Grammar School, “Kids don’t want to leave school at the end of the day!” Park urged, “Why can’t we all create a school like that!”

Author’s Note: Graduates from the University of Pennsylvania MAPP program were well represented at the conference, including Sulynn Choong from Malaysia; Vanessa King from the UK, Kaori Uno from Japan, Elaine O’Brien, Pakrita Tandon, and Emily van Sonnenburg from USA.

Queena Hwang (volunteer), Vanessa King, Elaine O'Brien,
Felicia Huppert, and Sulynn Choong

Images
The image of Yukun Zhao and Chris Peterson is used courtesy of Vanessa King.
All other images are used courtesy of Elaine O’Brien.

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

The 6th Biennial Meaning conference took place August 5-8 in Vancouver Canada. The theme was Creating a Psychologically Healthy Workplace, and sessions also touched on a deeper theme — the importance of meaning to the quality of our lives.

Many of the sessions were recorded and recordings are available for purchase, if this brief summary makes you wish you had been there. My own presentation on articulating a shared and valued purpose at work is available in the collection.

Here are some highlights from the conference. For quotations from the Saturday night banquet speaker, Alexander Batthyany, see my earlier article inspired by the conference, Finding Meaning in a Shrinking World.

Paul Wong workshop

Short-term Meaning Therapy

Paul Wong described several therapeutic approaches anchored in discovering personal meaning. Among those is the PURE model of meaning:

• Purpose: goals, directions, a sense of pursuing what matters. Includes grit. Consistent with values and beliefs
• Understanding: a sense of coherence and clarity about self and others. Does your life make sense to you? Does your suffering, your job, your marriage make sense?
• Responsible Action: choosing the right thing to do, assuming responsibility for consequences
• Enjoying meaningful live OR Evaluating life anew. If you feel good, fine. But negative feelings are an important part of a self-repairing system. There is something amiss that needs adjustment.

Emotional Impact: What Can We Learn From Filmmakers..& Social Psychologists?

Jeffrey Zeig from the Milton Erickson Foundation talked about the grammar of art and  art’s impact on people. To illustrate differences in impact, Zeig had the audience practice two different ways of observing a neighbor appreciatively — first by just looking at the person for 5 seconds, then using   a sequence that included setup (looking at the floor and slowly letting gaze come up), intervention (making an appreciative sound), follow-through (making an appreciative gesture).

He also called for more cross-fertilization between research fields, and is working with director Alexander Vesely (grandson of Victor Frankl) on a documentary about the science of impact. It will be out in 2012.

Alex Pattakos with Zorba music

Rediscovering the Soul of Business: The Meaning Difference

Alexander Pattakos talked about the need for businesses to incorporate meaning into leadership, workplace culture, and outcomes.  Meaning underlies engagement, performance, and innovation. He called Zorba the Greek a business movie: it illustrates the principle that people have the freedom to choose their attitudes, no matter how desperate circumstances may appear. People at work can commit authentically to meaningful values and goals that only they can actualize.

Diana Whitney: Which Wolf Do You Feed?

The Power of Appreciative Leadership

Diana Whitney gave a keynote on Appreciative Leadership, followed by a workshop on Appreciative Inquiry in practice. Appreciative Inquiry is a philosophy, a process, and a set of practices. Often it involves turning questions around. Alan Marlatt, an earlier speaker, had discussed different ways to deal with college-age drinking. Diana Whitney suggested that the question could be turned from “how can we help college students who abuse alcohol?” to “what can we learn from college students who drink responsibly?” She described great leadership as a relational capacity involving 5 I’s:

• Inquiry: Asking questions that create ripples of meaning. The internal social dialog of an organization
  involves what people remember and think about, how they feel, and what they talk about.
• Inclusion: Involving all sorts of constituents and using the power of improbable pairs – getting people to talk to people they wouldn’t normally meet
• Illumination: Developing the ability to appreciate, becoming a strengths spotter, cultivating an appreciative vocabulary.
• Inspiration: Unleashing the creative spirit, generating the large amounts of positive emotions, energy, and enthusiasm needed for change.
• Integrity: Making choices for the good of the whole.

Three Lessons about a Meaningful Life

Todd Kashdan

Todd Kashdan discussed his search for more dynamic ways to study the messiness of life. That means studying people in context of their own lives rather than labs, collecting data from them multiple times, and finding more open-ended information sources than the usual standard questionnaires. He concluded with three lessons relevant to living a meaningful life (based on three presented studies):

• Emotion regulation can be problematic as the central organizing principle of life. He based this statement on discoveries from a study of 47 Vietnam war veterans, 21 with PTSD. Participants provided lists of the things they strive for daily, as well as information about well-being and self-esteem. Content analysis identified strivings with emotion regulation (e.g., trying to be happy), approach, and avoidance themes. According to the abstract of the paper, “The presence of PTSD and a high rate of emotion regulation strivings led to the lowest global well-being and daily self-esteem during a 14-day assessment period.”

• The influence of emotion includes how we make sense of emotions and describe them, extending well beyond both intensity and valence (positive or negative). He cited two studies in which college students were asked many times a day over a three week period about the emotions they experienced. Researchers also collected information about alcohol consumption in one study, and aggression in another. He found that intensity of negative emotions did not predict greater alcohol consumption, but the degree to which people could clearly describe their emotions correlated with lower consumption.

• A commitment to purpose in life provides a stable architecture for a life well lived. He cited a not-yet published study on cultivating purpose in life as an intervention for people with social anxiety disorder in the context of Acceptance Commitment Therapy.

Robert Biswas Diener

Tell Your Own Strengths Story

In his keynote, Robert Biswas-Diener brought together the ideas of stories, strengths, and purpose. The stories we tell about our work have power. A cubicle worker described work as being shut out from the sun. After a heart attack and recovery, he returned to work with the sense that he was the star of his story. Same work, different story. Robert told a masterful story about his own strengths, a dramatic narrative of his first job in Kenya studying the Maasai – it’s a tale of bravery, but I won’t say more in case you have a chance to hear it. He urged the audience to form their own strength stories, and then tell them over and over, leaving out the non-essentials, augmenting the powerful parts, adjusting to audiences. He attributed the power of his story to practice, estimating that he has told it 30 to 40 times.

Paul Wong and Michael Novak

Building a Good Corporation is a Noble Calling

Michael Novak closed the conference with a talk on Finding Meaning at Work. He said that corporations have the potential to be the strategic central organizations of social justice. They create new wealth, they spread new inventions, and workers depend on them for development, friendships, and future wealth.

He said moral scandals involving corporations are terribly evil. In addition to the harm done by the offending corporations themselves, scandals affect other corporations, making it easier to do ill and harder to do good. Finally they give ammunition to the enemies of a free economy.

He then discussed the need to rebuild moral ecology after 100 years of neglect.  He described the 4 cardinal virtues on which a free society turns:

• Cultural humility: Awareness of one’s own limitations and the blindspots of one’s own culture. There is no nation that does not need to borrow from others.
• Respect for truth: Submitting opposing judgments to the light of evidence, awareness that we need the help of others to perceive truth fully. This means respect for adversaries, but not cultural relativism.
• Dignity of the Individual: Persons are not means but ends
• Human solidarity: Devotion to the common good, which is not just the sum of all individual goods.

References

Kashdan, T.B., Ferssizidis, P., Collins, R.L., & Muraven, M. (in press). Emotion differentiation as resilience against excessive alcohol use: An ecological momentary assessment in underage social drinkers. Psychological Science

Kashdan, T.B., Breen, W.E., & Julian, T. (2010). Everyday strivings in combat veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder: Problems arise when avoidance and emotion regulation dominate. Behavior Therapy, 41, 350-363.

Linley, P. A., Willars, J. & Biswas-Diener, R. (2010). The Strengths Book: Be Confident, Be Successful, and Enjoy Better Relationships by Realising the Best of You.

Pattakos, A. (2010). Prisoners of Our Thoughts: Viktor Frankl’s Principles for Discovering Meaning in Life and Work, 2nd edition. San Francisco: Berrett Kohler.

Whitney, D. K. (2010). Appreciative Leadership: Focus on What Works to Drive Winning Performance and Build a Thriving Organization. New York: McGraw Hill.

Wong, P. T. & Fry, P. S. (Eds.) (1998). The Human Quest for Meaning: A Handbook of Psychological Research and Clinical Applications (Personality and Clinical Psychology). Routledge.

Zeig, J. K. & Gilligan, S. G. (Eds.) (1990). Brief Therapy: Myths, Methods, And Metaphors. Brunner/Mazel, Inc.

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

When I stumbled upon research about the effects of the economic crisis on well-being, I was primed to be curious because I had just read Louisa Jewell’s critique of Bright-Sided and the numerous comments it inspired (29 at the last count).

One of the key findings from Positive Psychology studies is the so-called adaptation effect, which basically means that you get used to both increased prosperity and increased adversity and return to your natural levels of happiness. If you’ve ever had a promotion at work, you’ll no doubt know that the novelty wears off all too soon. 

Carol Graham

The research aims of Professor Carol Graham, Soumya Chattopadhyay, and Mario Picon (all from  the University of Maryland) were to better understand the effects of the US economic crisis on well-being and to determine if individuals adapt both to the bad news of the crisis and then to the good news of potential recovery.

The economic data used in the study came from a variety of sources including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Survey of US Consumer Sentiment by the University of Michigan, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ.

The researchers also created a news time line of 42 economically important events (both positive and negative) such as the SEC ban on short-selling, Wells Fargo’s record Q1 profits and GM’s bankruptcy.

As well as demographic, geographic and socio-economic data, well-being data was taken from the Gallup Daily Poll on well-being from January 01 2008 to June 30 2009, using the following questions:

1. Your rating of your life on an 11-point scale from the worst possible life to the best
2. Your satisfaction with your standard of living
3. Whether you feel that your standard of living is getting better or worse
4. Economic conditions in the country today
5. Whether you feel that economic conditions are getting better or worse

Of course, the Gallup Daily Poll is a collation of cross-section surveys, in other words it covers a different representative set of people each day, rather than following the same people over time.

Basic Correlates of Happiness

In terms of how particular traits and behaviors affected overall well-being during the crisis, the findings were consistent with other studies, for example:

• There is a U-shaped relationship between happiness and age, the low point being around 47.
• Married people are happier than unmarried people.
• People with higher incomes are happier than those on lower incomes.
• They also found that those who live in counties dominated by Republican voters are happier than those living in counties dominated by Democrats.

Dow Jones Sinks

Looking across time during the crisis, happiness levels decreased markedly at the start of the crisis, reaching their lowest levels early in 2009, and then following an equally marked upward trend after April 2009. During the downward trend, happiness levels lag the stock market spikes, which makes intuitive sense. But the most striking result is that happiness levels lead the stock market on the upward trend. What’s more, by July 2009 happiness levels were above those at the start of the crisis, even though the Dow Jones was only just starting to recover, having hit rock bottom.

The Influence of the Media on our Happiness

Of course, within the overall happiness trends, there are daily movements linked to the 42 economically important events mentioned above. It’s interesting that the events don’t necessarily influence happiness in the way we might expect. Even events which might be expected to have a positive effect on well-being, such as Obama’s inauguration and Tim Geithner’s financial stability plan, had a negative correlation during a downward trend. But once the happiness trend turned the corner, public reactions remained positive, even to negative events such as GM’s bankruptcy.

Carol Graham and her team were also interested in whether some people weather the storm better than others so they split the sample in various ways: age groups; those who had friends/ those who did not; those who had religious faith/ those who did not; Democrats/ Republicans; income groups.  Some of the many findings are presented below:

• Age: the oldest group (55 up) reacted least to negative events and responded much more to positive ones. The youngest group (19-35) was the least reactive to all events, barely responding to positive events at all. The middle aged had the strongest and most consistent reactions to both negative and positive events.

• Religion: nonreligious people were more reactive to negative events than religious people. Both groups reacted about the same way to positive events.

• Friendship: those with friends and relatives they could rely on were more affected by events, whilst those who said they didn’t have friends reacted much later to the crisis and then to fewer events.

• Income: those people with income above the mean seemed to react more quickly and more strongly to the onset of the crisis. Those with incomes below the mean barely reacted at all to early events.

• Political affiliation: this study found that income is more important to the reported happiness of Republicans than Democrats, yet they were also slightly less likely to be worried about finances than those in Democrat-dominated counties. It’s not surprising that the two groups responded differently to the same event e.g. the Democrats had a strong negative reaction to the bank bailout plan in February 2009 while the Republicans had no significant response, and the Democrats reacted positively to the signs of recovery well before the Republicans did.

• Health: health trends changed during the crisis, for example the number of people with high blood pressure and high cholesterol increased and did not decrease when happiness levels improved. Interestingly, depression and obesity followed a different pattern – both remained fairly flat. Reported incidences of depression increased slightly at the lowest point in the happiness curve and then when back to average levels. Mean BMI (Body Mass Index) actually fell slightly.

Upside-down Rainbow Smile

The researchers suggest that it is uncertainty itself which is bad for well-being rather than negative events per se, because individuals seem better at adapting to unpleasant certainty than they are at dealing with uncertainty. In other words, better the devil you know.  Once the Dow Jones reached rock bottom we knew where we stood, even if we didn’t like it.

And even when happiness levels started improving, people remained pessimistic in their assessments of their own standard of living and the country’s economic situation, which could be explained in terms of downward adaptation. People adjust to lower standards of living and assess them as such, even while their happiness levels seem to adapt and recover.

References

Graham, C, Chattopadhyay, S. & Picon, M. (2010). Adapting to adversity: happiness and the 2009 economic crisis in the United States.: An article from: Social Research. Social Research, 77(2), 715-748.

Graham, C. (2010). Happiness Measures as a Guide to Development Policy? Promise and Potential Pitfalls. Paper prepared for the Bank-Fund ABCDE Conference
Panel on Measuring Welfare (GDP)/Happiness, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2010

Graham, Carol, Soumya Chattopadhyay, and Mario Picon (2010). “The Easterlin Paradox Re-visited: Why Both Sides of the Debate May be Correct.” In Ed Diener, John Helliwell, and Daniel Kahneman, eds., International Differences in Well-Being. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Images

Professor Carol Graham from her website at the University of Maryland

Dow Jones Sinks by Scorpions and Centaurs: 

Half Empty Half Full by the|G|™

Upside-down rainbow smile by harold.lloyd:

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

In July 2009, I described the The Positive Neuroscience Project of the University of Pennsylvania and the John Templeton Foundation, including a new research initiative inviting proposals for Positive Neuroscience Research Awards. The recipients of the 2010 Templeton Positive Neuroscience Awards have now been announced. $2.9 million has been given to 15 new research projects at the intersection of neuroscience and positive psychology.

The winning projects explore a range of topics including how the brain enables humans to flourish, the biological bases of altruism, and the effects of positive interventions on the brain.

“Research has shown that positive emotions and interventions can bolster health, achievement and resilience and can buffer against depression and anxiety,” said Martin E. P. Seligman, director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center. “And while considerable research in neuroscience has focused on disease, dysfunction and the harmful effects of stress and trauma, very little is known about the neural mechanisms of human flourishing. Creating this network of positive neuroscience researchers will change that.”

The 15 winning proposals were selected from 190 submissions. They represent 24 researchers from 15 universities both within and outside the United States. For more information on each Award listed below, including project abstracts and researcher biographies, please visit the award announcement.

Awardees include:

• Adam Anderson from the University of Toronto will receive $200,000 to study the neural and genetic bases of positivity and resilience. Anderson will examine how specific genes influence dopamine-related brain functions and behaviors and how that supports positive emotion, creative problem solving and recovery.

• Abigail Marsh, assistant professor of psychology at Georgetown University, will receive $180,000 to study neural functioning of heroically altruistic people, such as those who donate a kidney to save the life of a stranger. Marsh has shown that sensitivity to others’ fearful facial expressions predicts altruism better than gender, mood, self-reported empathy or general sensitivity.

• James K. Rilling, associate professor of anthropology, psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory, and Richmond R. Thompson, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Bowdoin College, will receive $200,000 to study why some fathers are better parents than others. Children with nurturing and playful fathers are more likely to be popular with peers and teachers, be fair and generous and have higher IQs than kids with absent fathers.

• Kateri McRae and Iris Mauss, assistant professors of psychology at the University of Denver, will receive $180,000 to study the neural bases of resilience. Extreme stress cripples some people, while others bounce back and some even thrive due to post traumatic growth. Research shows that positive emotions and flexible thinking are hallmarks of resilience and can be developed through training and therapy.

• Elena Antonova from King’s College London has received $180,000 to study how meditation affects sensory processing in the brain. We wouldn’t be able to notice anything if we noticed everything, so our brains help us quickly habituate to repeated sensory signals, filtering most information under the radar of attention. Experienced meditators do not habituate to stimuli like most of us, nor do people with schizophrenia. What is protective about mindfulness meditation?

• Alon Chen and Elad Schneidman from Weizmann Institute of Science will receive $200,000 to study the warm glow of companionship at the molecular level. Positive social interactions make us happier and healthier and even buffer us against ailments including heart disease and depression.

• Britta Hölzel and Mohammed Milad from Harvard Medical School will use $200,000 to find out if meditation helps people conquer their fears. Mindfulness meditation impacts the structure and function of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala, brain regions that are also part of the neural circuits critical for deactivating conditioned fears.

• Psyche Loui from Harvard Medical School was awarded $180,000 to study how the brain enables artistic genius. Loui will study neural connectivity in musicians with absolute pitch and people with synesthesia to better understand supernormal perception.

• Jason Mitchell and Jamil Zaki from Harvard will study the relationship between doing good and feeling good and how both can be amplified within and between people. Sharing happiness may double your pleasure.

• India Morrison from the University of Gothenburg will study how pleasurable touch affects the way we understand and relate to others. Touch is more than skin deep because skin is a social and emotional organ. Touch carries affective meaning, enhances social bonding and shapes our beliefs about what it feels like to be in another person’s skin. Morrison will focus on a recently discovered type of nerve fiber that transmits the pleasure of gentle touch, and she will examine a people with a rare genetic mutation resulting in a severe reduction of those nerve fibers.

• Stephanie D. Preston from the University of Michigan and Tony W. Buchanan from St. Louis University will study the neural differences between sensing that someone is in pain or danger and taking action to help them. Empathy is bodily response. Research shows that, when people feel another’s pain psychologically, they also resonate physically in heart rate, facial muscles, skin response, neural activity and pupil dilation. Even so, people frequently fail to help those in need and sometimes even cause their distress.

• Laurie Santos from Yale University will investigate how altruism evolved in the brain. Positive Psychology research has shown that good deeds lead to great pleasure. Altruistic actions can increase happiness even more than beneficial but selfish actions. Santos will work with two primate species, rhesus macaques and capuchin monkeys, to find out if they also experience prosocial actions as inherently rewarding.

• William Cunningham from Ohio State University and Alexander Todorov from Princeton University will study how people’s social goals influence how their brain processes important social stimuli.

• Tor Wager and Sona Dimidjian from the University of Colorado will study how compassionate thinking impacts brain function and leads to more caring behavior. The researchers will conduct a four-week compassion meditation training and identify neural processes that support positive thoughts and affiliation with others.

• Thalia Wheatley from Dartmouth College will study how different brain regions process emotion and support social intelligence. People see emotion in movement and hear emotion in music. She will study how different neural regions work together to process complex but universally understood emotion and how that relates to empathy and social skill.

Click here for additional information about the Positive Neuroscience Project and Templeton Positive Neuroscience Awards.

Image
Brain courtesy of dierk schaefer

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

A friend of mine suggested that I read Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America, because it is always good to be knowledgeable about the criticism in your field. So I read the book hoping to find an intelligent challenge that would spark intellectual debate with my colleagues in the field of positive psychology. Instead, I found Ehrenreich’s book to be a poorly-researched angry rant, attacking everything positive, with little scientific evidence and a great deal of cynicism.

Book Origins

Ehrenreich’s impetus for writing the book came from her experience as a breast cancer patient when everyone told her to just “think positive thoughts” and “smile your way through cancer.” Many told her a positive attitude would actually improve her chances of survival, which angered her given her knowledge of cell biology (she wrote her thesis on the topic 42 years ago). But what truly enraged Ehrenreich were those breast cancer survivors who wrote about positive benefits from having breast cancer. According to Ehrenreich, online chat rooms were filled with comments that were “upbeat and even eagerly acquisitive.” To suggest that women are actually happy to have breast cancer because they have experienced some positive benefits is taking this notion too far in my opinion. Women can’t control if they get breast cancer, but they can control how they deal with it. To quote a breast cancer survivor, “Make no mistake, cancer totally sucks. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are a few things about being touched by the disease that have markedly made my life better.” This is now commonly referred to as post-traumatic growth, when someone emerges from a difficult or traumatic experience stronger as a result. Apparently, when some women feel post-traumatic growth and tell others, Ehrenreich gets angry and writes a book.

BOOK REVIEW: Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America New York: Metropolitan Books.

Positive Thoughts and Health? No for Survival, Yes for Longevity and Morbidity

Ehrenreich, for the most part, disagrees with the notion that happiness is associated with good health and she offers one or two research studies to defend her position. She makes a weak attempt at poking holes in research studies that support the association between happiness and good health, not by tapping into expert opinion, but rather with an obvious misunderstanding that she herself admits of how to interpret psychological and statistical research findings.

Health

Does thinking positively in fact improve your health? Edward Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener offer an excellent summary of the links between happiness and good health in their book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. They explore three types of health: Morbidity (whether or not an individual develops or contracts a specific illness), Survival (what happens to someone once they have already developed a serious illness), and Longevity (measured by your age at death). On morbidity, Diener and Biswas-Diener highlight several research studies that show that happiness can help “fend off infectious diseases, guard against lifestyle related illnesses, and protect against heart disease… (p.33)” For example, cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of death in the United States and “depressed people are several times more likely than nondepressed folks to have heart attacks and hypertension (p.39).”

On survivability, the exact opposite is true. “Reviews of studies linking health and emotions show that survival rates for those people who have serious diseases might be an exception to the health benefits of happiness…survival is the one area where happiness is sometimes actually detrimental (p.34).” In this case, Ehrenreich does a respectable job at explaining how our immune systems work but her arguments lack credibility because she does not support her explanations with extensive research. She does, however, make an important point to all those battling things like cancer; do not expect your positive thoughts to save your life.

On longevity I can relate to Ehrenreich’s skepticism about the famous “nun study” that is quoted by so many positive psychologists, but there are other studies that show a link between happiness and longevity even controlling for pre-existing medical conditions. And yet George Vaillant, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development in his seminal book Aging Well, states: “I only wish to instill reasonable doubt that it is depression, per se, that is the cause of poor health in old age. Rather it is the heavy smoking and the poor self-care that accompanies depression that are major culprits.” Thus living longer may have more to do with healthy habits that are associated with happiness than just happiness itself. The nun study would tend to contradict this finding since nuns typically have similar lifestyles. Ehrenreich, however, argues a moot point. If it is happiness or the fact that happiness leads to healthier habits, which ultimately leads to improved longevity, then isn’t this good news to share? While the scientific evidence is not extensive at this point in time, the research findings that happiness does in fact contribute to improved morbidity and longevity is compelling enough to reliably act on.

Positive Thinking and the Economic Collapse of America?

The Economic Collapse

As for Ehrenreich’s claim that positive thinking caused the economic collapse of America, I turned to former VP of a large Canadian bank, Raynor Burke, who alerted his higher-ups about the impending crash, only to be let go for his pessimistic outlook. Even though he was silenced, he states other reasons for the economic crash: “…outlook, thought process and groupthink really had much less to do with the recent crash than a deliberate shakedown by central bankers. Lowering interest rates and allowing anyone with a pulse to acquire unreasonable debt loads is what caused this crisis. The deliberate dismantling of the western world’s manufacturing sector (and exporting thereof to Asia) in the 90’s was another key element. Any other explanation is, in my mind, little more than window dressing, covering the deliberate actions of the banking establishment to seize control of assets which would otherwise belong to the people.” (For Raynor’s full response, see the first comment below.)

Book Takes on Positive Psychology and Misses Key Research Areas

The extent of Ehrenreich’s research in positive psychology appears to be Martin Seligman’s book, Authentic Happiness, which, along with Seligman himself, is the focus of her attacks on positive psychology. In the chapter titled Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness, her attacks turn to blatant misrepresentation of Seligman’s work. Most notably, Seligman refers to more than 250 psychological scientific studies in his book, more than one study per page of text, and yet she states: “Like most lay books on positive thinking, it’s a jumble of anecdotes…references to philosophers and religious texts, and tests you can take to assess your progress toward a happier and healthier mind-set.” (p.153) When she interviewed Seligman for the book she took cheap shots at his research. For example, she remarked that several questions in Seligman’s Authentic Happiness Inventory were a bit arbitrary. When Seligman suggests that it was a failure on her part to understand test development and that questions were chosen for their predictive value, her response was “Well, no. First you come up with a test that seems to measure happiness as generally defined, and then you can look for things that happiness seems to correlate with….” Ehrenreich continues to offer a defense that is not scientifically based but rather based on opinion with no proposal on how a good test should be developed. She loses complete credibility when she tries to understand “beta weights” by “googling it,” implying she knows more about it than Seligman who has been studying psychology for decades. Finally, to imply Seligman is a layperson on the topic of positive psychology is like calling Bill Gates a layperson on the topic of computing. Seligman’s 40-plus years of research in psychology and his ability to mobilize thousands of researchers from very prominent universities around the world make him deservedly the leading international authority on the topic of positive psychology.

What I found most noteworthy was the fact that she stayed away from Barbara Fredrickson’s work on positive emotions. This is mainly due to the fact that Ehrenreich makes no distinction between positive thinking, positive emotion, and positive psychology, erroneously using the terms interchangeably. In fact, she spends so much time attacking everything from capitalism and optimism to the American way that she pays little attention to the importance of positive emotions in her entire book. As for implications for positive psychology practitioners, Ehrenreich’s book is not an attack on positive psychology per se but rather an attack on American optimism and the teachings of The Secret that espouse to “if you envision a million dollars, it will appear” kind of thinking. She just mistakenly throws positive psychology into this mix without exploring (or possibly not understanding) how the approaches differ.

Ehrenreich attacks the use of optimism in general because she thinks there is only one kind: blind optimism and fake cheeriness. On the point of “blind optimism,” I think positive psychologists would agree. Seligman advises that if you are analyzing risky situations, like whether to de-ice the wings of a plane before take-off, that in fact pessimism may be the way to go. It is about understanding when to use optimism and when not to use it. It is clear she does not understand Seligman’s definition of optimism, which is based on healthy ways of explaining bad events in our lives, primarily known as explanatory style. It is a well-known fact that depression is linked to unhealthy ways of thinking which is why cognitive behavioral therapy is such an effective tool in fighting depression. Instead, with her lack of appreciation for the middle ground on optimism, she throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Summary

What is sad to see is this book is written at a time when depression rates are fast reaching epidemic levels in America. There is no mention in the book of how interventions in positive psychology have been shown in several longitudinal studies to prevent depressive symptoms. I do not read every day about people who are blissfully happy and optimistic and how this happiness is ruining their lives. Instead, I do read about teenage suicide, adolescent depression, rising levels of anxiety and psychological illness as the number one reason for absence in the workplace. For this reason her book is irresponsible. It is easy to write a book criticizing everything and to have readers roll around in the mud with you, but I prefer to be collaborating with the brilliant scholars I have met in the positive psychology community who strive to offer solutions and can at least back up their arguments with credible scientific evidence. Even to the end, the book leaves you feeling completely hopeless with no clear direction of what we should be moving toward. As a reader, one is left wondering, what is the purpose of such a book?

Images:

Healthy girl courtesy of Pink Sherbet Photography
Wall St. courtesy of David Paul Ohmer

References:
Chaplin, T.M., Gillham, J.E., Reivich, K., Elkon, A.G.L., Samuels, B., Freres, D.R., Winder, B., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2006). Depression prevention for early adolescent girls: A pilot study of all-girls verses co-ed groups. Journal of Early Adolescence, 26, 110-126.

Danner D, Snowdon D, Friesen W. (2001). Positive emotions in early life and longevity: findings from the Nun Study Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 80(5), 804-813.

Diener, E. & Biswas-Diener, R. (2008). Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Wiley-Blackwell.

Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Fredrickson, B. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive. New York: Crown.

Ipsos Reid, Public Release Date: Monday, November 19, 2007. Mental Health in the Workplace: Largest Study Ever Conducted of Canadian Workplace Mental Health and Depression.

Seligman, Martin (2004), Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. New York: Free Press.

Vaillant, G. (2003). Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development. New York: Little Brown.

Zonderman, A. B., Costa, P. T. & McCrae, R. R. (1989). Depression as a risk for cancer morbidity and mortality in a nationally representative sample. JAMA. 262, 1191-1195.

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

Getting Older

This week, I’m visiting an 87-year-old friend who lives in an excellent supported living facility. We have been sharing communal meals with other residents. Yesterday we visited with a woman who was brought to the table in a wheel chair and told us she is 97 years old. Like many others around the table, she ate slowly and laboriously. She struggled to cut her sliced peaches into bite-size pieces.

During meals, the room seems full of staff. Nurses circulate with medications. Student nurses chat with people and help them eat. Attendants bring juice and coffee without even being asked, tie on bibs, move walkers out of the way, take orders from the pink printed menus on every table, and joke with the residents. The room buzzes with activity.

For the Staff: A Shared and Valued Purpose

After breakfast, I talked to Linda, the nurse who seems to have the closest eye on my friend. I was about to attend the 6th Biennial Conference on Personal Meaning, and asked what she thought motivated the staff.

She agreed that the staff has a shared sense of valued purpose. During the day there are hundreds of things they do to contribute to the quality of life of the residents, helping them dress, bathe safely, move around, get to activities, and making sure they eat and take their medications. The workplace culture is tolerant and friendly, even in response to unrealistic complaints and demands. They understand how frustrating it is for their residents, who spent a lifetime taking care of themselves, to rely on and wait for others to help them with the simplest of tasks. This morning I witnessed an exchange between a 92-year-old resident and the attendant who was bringing her juice that ended with the resident saying, “You know I love you,” and the attendant saying “That’s why I like working here.”

Linda and the staff have a clear sense of meaning. What about the residents?

For the Residents: How to find Meaning in a Shrinking World

My friend has had a long and busy life. When she retired at 65, she took on several volunteer jobs working for the symphony, the library, an environmental concern, a museum. She was selected to serve on the Public Disclosure Commission. She went on 24 trips outside the United States — none of them to Europe. She shopped for herself, cooked for herself, managed her own apartment, and went out for walks twice a day. Now, 22 years later, she no longer has the energy to volunteer. She can’t walk very far, and she relies on elevators because of her walker. She can no longer manage purchasing and preparing food. She reads newspaper and magazine articles instead of books. Her world is shrinking.

I can tell from talking to my friend that it is harder to feel a strong sense that life has meaning when you can no longer do things for yourself and others.

She frequently says that there is no point in her being alive.

Being served

Tips for Finding Meaning

These questions were on my mind throughout the Meaning Conference. What gives meaning to life when someone feels they are no longer able to serve others or contribute to lifetime passions or a larger purpose?

Here are some ideas from the Meaning Conference that I will share with my friend:

• Other people find meaning in life by serving you, so your needs enhance their lives.

• Younger people — your children, grandchildren, others who serve you – also learn by watching you. If you accept your shrinking world cheerfully, you may be making it easier for them to do so when their time comes.

• There is a time in life for doing and giving, and another time for receiving. Without someone to receive, nobody can give.

• Think about what would not have been if you had not existed. The existence of those things gives witness to your existence.

• Meaning doesn’t have to come from what you do. Meaning can come from the way you are. The time for doing is past. The time for being is now. One speaker, Z. Bellin, studied how people express meaning, and whether it is more dependent on doing or being. He said our understanding of meaning tends to be over-focused on accomplishment. There are many ways to experience meaning — by coping with difficulties and through interactions with others. Meaningful experiences remind us of our aliveness in relation to the world.

Alexander Batthyany, from the University of Vienna, was a keynote speaker. He said, “Up to the last moment we can choose what will be our harvest and what will remain of us.” He suggests we ask not only “Am I getting what I want? Am I feeling good?” but shift toward asking “Am I taking part in existence?” He stated that each of us is irreplaceable and unique. What really counts for psychological and existential well-being is having something to live for, which requires being open and flexible to the ever-changing meaning of the moment.

Now to find out which of these ideas will resonate with my friend …

Author’s note: Later this month, I will post a summary of the 6th Biennial Meaning Conference and other things I learned there.

Dr. Alexander Batthyany is inspired by his work at the Victor Frankl Institute in Vienna. Dr. Paul Wong gave a workshop about short-term meaning therapy, where this topic came under discussion. Right now I don’t have the details for Z. Bellin’s dissertation on experiencing meaning through being as well as doing, but I will add it later.

Images
Sweet old kiss (Getting older) courtesy of Jonel Hanopol
Being served courtesy of Josh Ward

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

I know that it’s time for a cool change
Now that my life is so prearranged
I know that it’s hard for a cool
Cool, cool change
~ Little River Band

Have you ever observed how people try to change their behavior and become increasingly frustrated while they keep on doing the same thing over and over – like Ground Hog Day?

Stages of Change

Spirals of change

It’s no easy task to change an individual’s behavior. James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente, pioneer researchers in the area of health behavior change, have illustrated the complexity of undertaking change through their Transtheoretical Model of Change.

Based on decades of research on certain health behaviors, Prochaska and DiClemente claim that people go through predictable stages in the change process: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance and termination. The model has a great number of helpful implications. Consider, for example, the frustration we often feel when an individual seems to lack motivation for change, or when that person’s progress is slow. Prochaska and DiClemente’s model assures us that people may have actually begun to change, even when there is no outward sign of change.  We’ve studied this model previously in PPND articles about mental health and change, exercise and change, social support during change, and on focus.  The model:

• Pre-contemplation – not even thinking about making a change
• Contemplation – thinking about making a change
• Preparation – an intention to make a change
• Action – making the change over a period of six months
• Maintenance – ensuring that the new behavior continues – being attentive to relapses
• Termination – extinguishing the old behavior

Processes of Change

Spirals of time in change

Prochaska and DiClemente prepare us for the story of change –that it can be a spiral and that there are specific processes that support an individual in moving through each stage.

Usually, there are certain experiential events including consciousness-raising experiences, dramatic relief, and emotional arousal that nudge someone to the next level.  Take, for example, the life of the resident “keeper of the nightmare” – a term coined by Terrence Deal. This person is continually pessimistic and is in the pre-contemplation stage – “I am as happy as I want to be.” There is no compelling reason to change.

However, when the pre-contemplator is provided with a consciousness raising experience, such as a diagnosed health concern or a major shift in a significant relationship, he or she may be more inclined to see the world differently. (Be aware that there are a variety of other factors that may impede change in the person – i.e. clinical diagnosis).  When the person has found something that makes sense and inspires belief, he or she is in the contemplation stage. He or she is thinking about making a change. However, some people become chronic contemplators, paralyzed and ambivalent to moving beyond contemplation.

Moving from the pre-contemplation to the preparation phase, the processes is more behavioral in nature – commitment, stimulus control and helping relationships.  When a person enters the preparation stage, he or she focuses on a plan that eventually leads to taking action. Action is where people exhibit the change – usually for six months, until they are ready to go into the maintenance stage and eventually extinguish the old behavior in the termination phase.

We all have different psychological accounting systems that nudge us in the direction of making changes. Sometimes there are lapses, re-lapses, and collapses in the quest of change, and this is all part of the spiral of change.  Then one moves again from pre-contemplation up the food chain of change.

Change through Deliberate Practice?

Spiral of pencils, signifying specific steps to make change

Sometimes, it’s also helpful to have techniques to move through the change.  People who have developed their character strengths can call on a foundation of well-formed habits in aspiring to move through the stages of change–especially from preparation through maintenance. People can continually stretch their abilities through deliberate practice–focused and effortful rehearsal. Deliberate practice requires a good degree of patience and perseverance. More often than not, the initial process of improvement, guided by practice, requires that people be willing to make choices different from what they feel like doing in the moment.

People who are committed to making change learn that one of the most significant sources of both difficulty and joy comes from the ability to rise to the challenge–they don’t back down from momentary lapses in motivation. The ability to stretch beyond one’s perceived ability or desire and to continue is contingent on asking, “What is the right action–what needs to be done at this time to make change.” And with this effort also comes the joy and satisfaction of the process. Amy Baltzell, a sport psychologist and faculty member in the counseling department at Boston University’s School of Education, claims: “When the body and mind adapt to higher demands, the adaptation leads, inevitably, to a heightened sense of engagement and enjoyment, a ‘dog-with-a-bone’ type of satisfaction.”

Decisional Balance

When people realize that the benefits outweigh the liabilities (or vice-versa) of certain behaviors, there tends to be a shift in behavior. Like water over a stone, the stages and processes of change are good benchmarks in helping people transform themselves.

References

Prochaska JO, Norcross JC, DiClemente CC. (1994). Changing for good: the revolutionary program that explains the six stages of change and teaches you how to free yourself from bad habits. New York: W. Morrow.

Images
Spiral in nature courtesy of brewbooks
Spiral in time courtesy of Robbert van der Steeg
Spiral of pencils courtesy of procsilas

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

We often think of forgiveness as something that we do on behalf of others. That’s called interpersonal forgiveness. Unlike gratitude, however, which makes the giver and receiver feel good, forgiveness is more of a one-way street.  Forgiveness makes the forgiver feel better—oftentimes much better—but the receiver can be unaware of having been pardoned.  It is often better that way, too. Imagine offending someone unknowingly only to have them tell you how you have been absolved of your transgression! You might find the forgiver at best magnanimous, at worst arrogant. So what happens when you are unable to forgive yourself for a transgression, especially one that harms only you?

Self-Blame

"What do I do with a new sibling?"

Self-forgiveness is a tricky business. After her new baby brother was born, not quite-three-year-old Greta accused her mother, “If you really loved me, you would not have had that baby!” With great authority she commanded, “Take that baby back to the hospital where you got him from and leave him there!” In the coming weeks, Greta began to bang her head on the kitchen floor and pulled handfuls of hair from her scalp. You could say she was jealous, or angry, or that she was experiencing extreme sibling rivalry. As she felt less and less powerful to revert to her life before her brother arrived, Greta’s behavior became more and more extreme.

Her parents spoke to the pediatrician who told them to spend more time with Greta and to include her in all of the new baby’s care. Surely Greta was old enough to help, and this would make her feel included. Unfortunately, things did not get better at home. Greta’s parents took her to a psychologist who had a very different approach.

Dr. Bill recognized that Greta was trying to take on responsibility, alright. She was trying to get her parents to take the baby back to the hospital. It was her hoped-for goal in every waking day. “What must I have done that led to this?” she thought.  When she was ineffective, Greta blamed herself for “that baby” and her behaviors were evidence that she needed to be “beaten up” for her lack of success, something that her parents were not doing. What Greta needed was to be able to forgive herself for causing the baby to arrive in the first place (seems funny to an adult but very real to a child) as well as to feel worthy of her parents’ love and affection. Notice that Greta did not blame her parents for having “that baby.” It was all her fault!

Failure to Self-Forgive

I'll say I did it.

Children are often victims of their own failure to self-forgive. The classic example for preschoolers is the new baby one, above. “I must not be good enough. My parents don’t love me enough. I have been replaced.” For school-aged children, it is lies about schoolwork. Brandon’s lies were directed first to his parents, “Yes, I did my homework. Now can I play?” and then to teachers, “I did the work but left it in the bus,” and then to himself: “I don’t have any more work.” For school-aged children, lies about homework soon become habits. It becomes nearly impossible to complete the growing collection of missing work and the ongoing work, and before long, lying can escalate to hiding a book or backpack, or blaming a classmate or even the teacher for unfinished work.  Even though the child is his own victim, he is often unable to see past the fear of retribution on the part of an angry parent and instead perpetuates the lies.

Researched Benefits of Self-Forgiveness

Julie Hall (University of Rochester Medical Center) and Frank Fincham (Florida State University) have found that self-forgiveness is associated with positive self-esteem, and higher life satisfaction. Lack of self-forgiveness, though, is associated with higher neuroticism, depression, anxiety, and hostility. Unlike interpersonal forgiveness where guilt might lead to empathic concern for another and conciliatory behavior, self-forgiveness seeks to remedy feelings of shame: not measuring up, self-destructive behaviors, avoidance, and attributing blame for one’s own behaviors to someone else. Seligman’s explanatory style triad—the problems are personal, permanent, and pervasive– would likely be present. Hall and Fincham suggest that self-forgiveness can lead to restoring one’s self-respect by moving through four phases.

1. The uncovering phase consists of recognizing denial, guilt, and shame.
2. The decision phase includes having a change of heart and wanting more positive feelings.
3. During the work phase, the person develops new self-awareness and self-compassion.
4. Finally during the outcome phase, the person is able to stop activating painful thoughts about the offense and can choose new constructive behaviors.

Even the most virtuous of us commit transgressions. At the beginning of this article I said that self-forgiveness is tricky and it is, since it’s very easy to forgive yourself through self-deception or rationalizing, ex-post-facto thoughts. Whether you harbor shame or guilt for something that you have done or not done (not completing an assignment and lying about it) or something that you think was your fault (causing someone such disappointment that they replaced you), self-forgiveness can be more difficult to remedy than interpersonal forgiveness.

A good resolution...

Practicing letting oneself be forgiven, however, has measurable benefits. Unlike interpersonal forgiveness, where the perpetrator is forgiven by the victim, in self-forgiveness, the self gives up guilt and blame and exchanges them for self-compassion and steps toward constructive, rather than destructive, behavior. Sometimes kids take on too much responsibility, as in the case of Greta, who believed the baby brother was her fault. Other times they appear to take on no responsibility, as in the case of Brandon. The link is that they are blaming themselves for something that does not seem to be getting them more of what they really want.

Greta eventually decided, with her parents’ help, that it hurt to bang her head. She learned to verbalize her fear that she had caused the baby brother and discovered that (gasp!) she had not had anything to do with it. Brandon confessed to his parents and teachers that he had been lying for a long time. He asked for help to be held to a standard of honesty.

Are you “guilting” yourself? Especially in cases where there is no victim, you owe yourself an honest self-appraisal, self-forgiveness, and some steps toward behaviors that will lead to higher self-esteem and life-satisfaction.

For more on this topic, see John Yeager’s  Promoting Self-Forgiveness in Youth.

Note: Greta and Brandon are not the children’s real names.

References

Hall, J.H. & Fincham, F.D. (2008). The Temporal Course of Self-Forgiveness. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 27(2), 174-202.

Hall, J.H. & Fincham, F.D. (2005). Self-Forgiveness: The Stepchild of Forgiveness Research. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24(5), 621-637.

Seligman, M.E.P.( 1998). Learned Optimism: How to change your mind and your life.  Pocket Books.

Images

Girl sewing courtesy of crimfants
Boy sleeping on the homework is courtesy of Microsoft public images
Siblings hugging courtesy of Weird Beard

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

Editor’s note: This is the second of two articles (first article is here) about the Exercise is Medicine™ World Congress that took place in Baltimore, Maryland, June 1-5, 2010. The first article focused on the keynote speaker, Dr. Regina Benjamin. This article discusses the congress as a whole.

Live in rooms full of light
Avoid heavy food
Be moderate in the drinking of wine
Take massage, baths, exercise, and gymnastics
Fight insomnia with gentle rocking or the sound of running water
Change surroundings and take long journeys
Strictly avoid frightening ideas
Indulge in cheerful conversation and amusements
Listen to music. ~A. Cornelius Celsus, (ca 25 BCE—ca 50)

Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well. ~Marcus Valerius Martialis (40 AD – ca. 103)

Prescription Sign

An idea sparked by the 2007 Health and Fitness Summit, Exercise is Medicine™ (EIM) is a “scientific merging of the Health Care and Fitness industry.” A new collaboration created by the American Medical Association (AMA) and American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), EIM has been designed to:

• Promote public health
• Build public and social responsibility
• Help people live happier, healthier lives
• Foster public policy that gets people moving more and well
• Build healthier communities

Playing skip rope

According to Michael O. Leavitt, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (2005-2009), “We know that sedentary behavior contributes to a host of chronic diseases, and regular physical activity is an important component of an overall healthy lifestyle. There is strong evidence that physically active people have better health-related physical fitness and are at lower risk of developing many disabling medical conditions than inactive people.”

Physical Activity Assessment
Sallis recommended a physical activity assessment (PAA) as a paradigm for all patients.
Exercise is Medicine proposes a model where fitness professionals, working together with the medical community, would proffer “activity prescriptions” to people. Working in concert with physicians, evaluations including:

• Health & exercise history
• Anthropomorphic measurements
• Weight/fat analysis with bioelectrical impedance and BMI calculations
• Postural and balance evaluation
• Range-of-motion evaluation
• Exercise experience
• Aerobic capacity (submaximal testing, including vo2 maximum uptake)
• Muscle strength
• Muscular endurance
• Balance testing

After an evaluation, the client will receive an exercise program designed to include both cardiovascular and resistance training, as well as monitor the client’s progress and provide progress reports and follow-up information to the client and physician.

The Influence of Dr. Blair
Dr. Sallis credits Dr. Steve Blair for his influence and determination in promoting Physical Activity and Public Health. An Epidemiologist, Exercise Science icon and fitness devotee, Blair is a former president of ACSM. Blair believes we should “add exercise to the list of medical treatments, just as we apply cognitive behavioral therapy or drugs.” He passionately believes that, “There is not one, single medication that benefits as many things as exercise. “

Blair talked about the many benefits of exercise and how they have a profoundly positive effect on the quality of our lives. He added, “Exercise has an effect on reducing depression.” He spoke about the benefits of prescribing physical activity/exercise in combination with drug therapy and other therapies.”

Travel by bike

In a compelling keynote, Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan spoke about Physical Activity, Health, Health Care Reform and Lifestyle Reform Revisited. Koplan discussed many ways our society and communities put up barriers to prevent us from moving more saying, “Public policy can design better systems and prevent disease.” He embraces a public policy of flourishing and thriving, that:

• Builds healthy communities
• Cultivates green spaces
• Is pedestrian friendly
• Offers user-friendly bike paths, sidewalks, open attractive stairways
• Is about safety, and where schools encourage students to cycle
• Using schools after hours for recreation, sports and play
• Offers work place encouragement to move more
• Encourages Public transportation

Dr. Koplan discussed U.S. Health Care policy – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act HR 3590. Though ungainly, this plan could have a bearing on disease prevention and health promotion. He recommends line clarification and a dose of positive behavioral economics, which “could set in motion coverage of preventative health services.” He is concerned because, “It remains to be seen how Physical Activity will be incorporated as an exercise prescription. Effective programming is key if there is going to be a serious attempt to improve the gap in health care.”

Changing Social Norms: Making Exercise Cool

Make It Cool to Move

A Positive Call to Action

Each day has 1440 minutes. Adding daily exercise, especially enjoyable physical activities, for a minimum of 30 minutes every day is “beneficial and necessary,” in the words of Dr. Tait McKenzie, who served as the first director of Physical Education at the University of Pennsylvania back in 1909.

Positive emotions via motion is a concept that fosters greater well-being and positive engagement, while promoting autonomy, meaning, and a better quality of life. We as individuals and communities can benefit from the power of moving our bodies well. That’s a prescription we can all live with.

References

The Exercise Time Finder from the American College of Sports Medicine

See PPND articles by Marie-Josée Salvas Shaar for ideas about exercise:

• How Physical Activity Enhances Productivity
• Why Couch Potatoes are Tired
• Personal Hygience, Einstein, and Your Like-o-meter
• Top 10 Stimuli to Exercise Your Body
  

Csiksentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.. New York: Harper Perennial.

Elkind, D. (2007). The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally. Da Capo Press.

McGill, J. S. (1980). The joy of effort: A biography of R. Tait McKenzie. Clay Publishing Company.

Mutrie, N. & Faulkner, G. (2004). Physical activity: Positive psychology in motion. In In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.). Positive Psychology in Practice. pp. 146-164. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (1999). Physical activity promotion
and school physical education. Physical Activity and Fitness Research Digest.

Ratey, J. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (2002). From social structure to biology: Integrative science in pursuit of human health and well-being. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology. (pp. 541-555). New York: Oxford University Press.

Shusterman, R. (2006). Thinking through the body, educating for the humanities: A plea for somaesthetics. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 40, 1-21.

Images
RX Sign courtesy of anolobb
Kids play skiprope on Morro Strand State Beach courtesy of mikebaird
Playing in the waves courtesy of Bengt Nyman
Travel by bike courtesy of Kathryn Britton
Sisters (Make it cool to move) courtesy of wraggy

This article first appeared on Positive Psychology News. To see the original article, click here. To comment on this article, click here.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles (second article is here) about the Exercise is Medicine™ World Congress that took place in Baltimore, Maryland, June 1-5, 2010. This article focuses on the keynote speaker, Dr. Regina Benjamin. The second article discusses the congress as a whole.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin gave a keynote speech at the Exercise is Medicine™ World Conference, starting out by reciting the proverb of the Starfish Flinger:

Starfish on the beach

The Starfish Flinger
As the old man walked along the beach at dawn, he noticed a young man ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into to the sea.
Finally catching up with the youth, he asked why he was doing this.
The answer was that stranded, the starfish would die if left in the morning sun.
“But the beach goes on for miles and there are millions of starfish,” countered the other. “How can your effort make any difference?“
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the waves.
“It makes a difference to this one,” he said.

Dr. Pam Peeke, Elaine O'Brien,
and Surgeon General Regina Benjamin

In charge of 6500 uniformed health officers, Dr. Benjamin is an advocate for prevention in health care, and told the audience “People need our help!”

Founder of health clinics serving those who need it most, Dr. Benjamin leads with passion and compassion. Converting her Alabama medical office into a small rural clinic dedicated to serving the large indigent population in her community, the clinic was destroyed by Hurricane George, and later by Hurricane Katrina. She reconstructed it both times. She founded another clinic in Louisiana, also destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt it, and then it was destroyed by a fire, and then she rebuilt again! In 1995, she became the first African-American woman, and first person under 40, to be elected to the AMA Board of Trustees.

Fitness, Not Surgery

Baltimore Harbor

She believes, “A healthy and fit nation engages families and communities, as well as private sectors.” She said, “We spend so much money on lots of diet things that don’t work.” We need to start “talking to people in a positive way…play Double Dutch, play outside, disco dance all night.” She believes exercise should be “FUN and a part of our everyday life.”

Walk and Talk

Dr. Benjamin led a short fitness community walk around Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 89°F heat. With the group chanting, “Exercise is Medicine!” Dr. Benjamin and the walkers created a lot of positive attention for Harbor visitors of all ages, shapes, and sizes to witness.

Harbor walkers

1. Stay as Active as Possible.
2. Eat Fruits and Vegetables Daily.
3. Get the Whole Family Involved.
4. Be Creative and have more FUN

We need to give people hope for now and for the future. Actions speak louder than words.

Mini-Interview

Elaine O’Brien: What is your prescription for exercise and for getting more physical activity in our lives?

Stepping Out with the Surgeon General

Get outside and go for a walk, enjoy nature. Feel good and get some positive energy, develop your stamina, be more joyful.

People are full of stress, so try to add more joy to your life. These are tough times, but try to keep in mind the positive things that are around us. Smile at others. This gives out positive energy and then you will get more positive energy.

Tie in to the environment. We need to develop positive communities and more green/outdoor exercise options. As a personal responsibility, we need to eat more nutritionally and exercise every day.
Now in 90+ countries in the world, Exercise is the new medicine and part of global health and well-being. We need to develop a more positive leadership approach in our vision around physical activity. ”

Elaine: What is the most important health problem that you see today?

Dr. Benjamin: The major public health problem of our time is physical inactivity! Make exercise fun and a part of our everyday life!

Elaine: I see that you put a positive focus on prevention and wellness in your approach to health and greater well-being. Can you please talk a little more about that?

Dr. Benjamin: A healthy and fit nation engages families and communities, as well as private sectors. We need safe places to encourage people to be more active, such as playgrounds and parks. Workplaces and schools need to follow suit. Vending machines in schools should be filled with healthy things. It’s also important to eat more nutritionally and exercise every day. Individuals are likely to change their behavior if they have a meaningful reward-something they can feel and embrace-like optimal health.

Elaine: As a multi-national, multi-organizational initiative, Exercise is Medicine™ strives to work with medical doctors, practitioners, and the public. As “America’s doctor” what are your thoughts?

Dr. Benjamin: Exercise is THE new medicine and part of global health and well-being. We need policies to help make positive changes, as well as develop a more positive approach in our vision and our leadership. We have an opportunity to make a difference.

Thank you, Dr. Benjamin!

References

The Exercise Time Finder from the American College of Sports Medicine

See PPND articles by Marie-Josée Salvas Shaar for ideas about exercise:

• How Physical Activity Enhances Productivity
• Why Couch Potatoes are Tired
• Personal Hygience, Einstein, and Your Like-o-meter
• Top 10 Stimuli to Exercise Your Body
  

Csiksentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.. New York: Harper Perennial.

Elkind, D. (2007). The Power of Play: Learning What Comes Naturally. Da Capo Press.

McGill, J. S. (1980). The joy of effort: A biography of R. Tait McKenzie. Clay Publishing Company.

Mutrie, N. & Faulkner, G. (2004). Physical activity: Positive psychology in motion. In In P. A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.). Positive Psychology in Practice. pp. 146-164. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports (1999). Physical activity promotion
and school physical education. Physical Activity and Fitness Research Digest.

Ratey, J. (2008). Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. New York: Little, Brown and Company.

Ryff, C. D., & Singer, B. (2002). From social structure to biology: Integrative science in pursuit of human health and well-being. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology. (pp. 541-555). New York: Oxford University Press.

Images
Caribbean Starfish courtesy of Topyti
Fells Point (view of the Baltimore Harbor) courtesy of Daquella manera
Baltimore harbor walkers courtesy of bjornmeansbear
Both pictures including Dr. Regina Benjamin courtesy of Elaine O’Brien and her cell-phone camera.

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