By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.

H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)

Readers of my previous articles in Positive Psychology News Daily may remember that one of my fascinations with positive psychology is the existence of its many paradoxes. Some of these have acquired official labels, such as

My Yacht!

• Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice

• The Easterlin Paradox

• Wegner’s Paradox

• The Strength of Weak Ties (from the field of sociology rather than psychology, but I think it fits well in discussions of the importance of social relationships).

Other paradoxes are discussed in positive psychology circles, although not all have research evidence to support them, such as

• The inherent weakness in overdoing your character strengths

• Changes which lead to personal growth and higher eudaimonic well-being are not necessarily accompanied by higher positive emotion

• We continue to think that the acquisition of tangible, material possessions will increase our happiness, although research suggests that it’s the intangible, ephemeral nature of our experiences which does.

So as soon as I came across this new research report “Money Giveth, Money Taketh Away: the Dual Effect of Wealth on Happiness” by Jordi Quoidbach, Elizabeth Dunn and colleagues, my eyes lit up. The researchers were interested in finding out whether there’s any evidence to support the widely-held belief that experiencing the best things in life (their examples are surfing Oahu’s famous North Shore or dining at Manhattan’s 4-star restaurant Daniel, but you can substitute any that you hanker after) undermines your ability to enjoy life’s little pleasures, things like sunny days, cold beers, and chocolate.

Beer on ice

Often people explain their desire for more money in terms of providing the opportunity to buy and enjoy more possessions or experiences, in other words, it’s not the money per se that they want but what the money gives them access to. We already know that the ability to savor is central to our well-being – it’s one of the empirically-tested interventions. Jordi Quoidbach and colleagues go further – perhaps even thinking about money might lead people to believe that luxury possessions or experiences are obtainable, which might in turn undermine their ability to savor and lead them to take the everyday pleasures for granted.

Study One: How does priming with thoughts about money affect savoring?

The paper outlines two studies carried out with European and Canadian university staff and students. The first study was designed to test whether thinking about money has a causal impact on savoring. Study participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions:

1. Experimental condition to prime with money: participants completed a questionnaire that displayed a photo of a large pile of Euro bills
2. Control condition: participants completed the same questionnaire with the same photo, but the photo was blurred beyond recognition

Participants completed the following questionnaires:

ii) the  Savoring Positive Emotion Scale, which includes 6 detailed descriptions of situations which give rise to the positive emotions of contentment, joy, awe, excitement, pride and gratitude. After reading the scenario, participants were asked to chose the response(s) which best characterized their typical behaviour. Each scenario was followed by 8 possible reactions including 4 savoring strategies (displaying positive emotions non-verbally, staying present in the moment, thinking about the event before and afterwards, and telling other people about the experience).

ii)  the Subjective Happiness Scale

iii) two open ended questions about their ideal income and how much money they would need to live a life of their dreams

Participants were also asked

iv)  to report their life savings in a scale ranging from 1 (under 1000 Euros) to 7 (over 75,000 Euros).

Tiffany's - Where to Shop

Current wealth, savoring and happiness: In line with previous research, Study 1 showed that savoring ability positively predicted happiness, that there was a modest but reliable relationship between wealth and happiness, and that savoring ability suppressed the relationship between wealth and happiness.

In summary, the study suggests that wealth may not actually deliver the happiness you’d expect, because it undermines savoring.

Study two: Experiencing Chocolate

In the second study, participants completed a questionnaire about their attitudes to chocolate. The questionnaire was presented in a binder, in which an adjacent page showed materials from an ‘unrelated study’ including a picture of money or a neutral photo. The participants were then asked to eat a piece of chocolate and to complete a follow-up questionnaire.

Savoring a picnic

Implications
Returning to the opening point about paradoxes, it seems that wealthier individuals report lower savoring ability, and even being reminded of wealth produces the same negative impact on savoring as actual wealth. The researchers suggest that you needn’t actually visit the pyramids of Egypt or spend a week at the legendary Banff spas in Canada for your savoring ability to be impaired – simply knowing that these peak experiences are readily available may increase your tendency to take life’s small pleasures for granted (p4).

So now that you know that wealth and being reminded of wealth undermines your ability to savor, will you look at your wealth, your desire for money, or those luxury items or experiences that you hanker after in a different light? Will you consciously spend more time looking out for and savoring life’s smaller pleasures, rather than strive for the money to acquire the larger ones?

References:

Bryant, F.B. (1989). A four-factor model of perceived control: Avoiding, coping, obtaining and savoring. Journal of personality, 57, 773-797.

Bryant, F.B., Smart, C.M., & King, S.P. (2005). Using the past to enhance the present: Boosting happiness through positive reminiscence. Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 227–260. Available for purchase here.

Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007) Savoring: A new model of positive experience.. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Quoidbach, J., Dunn, E.W., Petrides, K.V. & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Money giveth, money taketh away: The dual effect if wealth on happiness. Psychological Science 21 (6), 759-763. Available for purchase here.

Images:

My yacht! courtesy of antiguan_life

Cold beer courtesy of niel schubert

Tiffany’s courtesy of Sabarella

Labor Day in the park courtesy of craig1black

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

The following article presents further highlights from the 5th European Conference on Positive Psychology in Copenhagen, Denmark for Saturday, June 26, 2010.

Keynote 1:  Why  are the Danes happier than the Dutch?

Ruut Veenhoven

Denmark and the Netherlands have many similarities – both are rich, relatively equal, modern societies with similar political regimes, approaches to economic development, social security, and welfare.  Data on country levels of happiness suggests not only that Denmark is a happier nation than the Netherlands, but that its happiness level has been gradually increasing since 1973 (when the data commences), whereas that in the Netherlands has not.

What might account for this difference? How has Denmark managed not only to stay at the top of the world’s happiness league table* with a score of 8.3 out of 10 compared to the Netherlands’ 7.6, but to increase this level steadily over the last 37 years?

The answer to this question is important since it may shed light on how individual nations can change social policies in order to increase the well-being of their citizens.

Veenhoven’s research suggests that there are many things which influence the difference in country level happiness as shown below. Note that the first 6 explain 75% of world-wide variance, while the last two tend to differentiate among rich Western nations.

State welfare and income inequality explain less of the difference than generally expected. More important are social conditions such as how tolerant society is and the effective rule of law. In rich western nations, it also matters how much of the health budget is spent on mental health care, and how many psychologists work in the mental health field.

In considering what contributes to the difference between Denmark and the Netherlands, we can rule out conditions such as climate, genes, international position of the nation, economic development, political regime, or social security. How can we explain the difference? Veenhoven suggests the following factors:

I want to ride my bike

1. Demography: Denmark has less immigration (9% of population) than the Netherlands (11%), although this is complicated. Migrants themselves are less happy than native inhabitants, but there is also evidence that over the longer term countries which attract migrants tend to be happier.
2. Politics and Economy: Comparing Denmark to The Netherlands, government effectiveness (as measured by the World Bank) is greater, government size is bigger, and there is greater entrepreneurial freedom and less red-tape. Veenhoven suggests that there might be a better public-private mix in Denmark which contributes to its higher happiness level.
3. Education: Denmark invests more in its education system, and Danish children spend more years in the education system than their Dutch counterparts. Although school performance is no better, Veenhoven suggests that Danish children acquire better social skills.
4. Mental Health Care. Denmark employs fewer psychiatrists and more psychologists per capita than  the Netherlands, which perhaps indicates a greater emphasis on prevention.
5. Cultural homogeneity. Lower immigration and less religious diversity in Denmark may contribute to less social conflict.

Further research is required to explain the relative importance of some of these social conditions.

Keynote 2: The Future of Positive Psychology: Promises and Perils

Alex Linley

Five years later, how does he envisage the future of positive psychology? The current status is that positive psychology is flourishing and expanding, with many institutions such as ECPP and IPPA firmly established, a growing evidence base, and increasing influence. “We are past the stage where positive psychology could go down a different track” Linley said. As for future directions, Linley put forward three different possibilities with associated perils: Positive psychology could win the battle of ideas or give up the fight. It could change the paradigm or find no evidence to serve as a base for change. It could renew society and strengthen the world or make no difference.

When it comes to the battle of ideas, we shouldn’t be surprised that some people are resistant to positive psychology. The negativity bias is powerful, public policy is mostly problem-focused, and the health sector follows a deficit model. But there are no signs of positive psychology giving up.

There are lots of ways to help change the paradigm: practitioners do what we do every day, philosophers ask big questions, policymakers set positive policy frameworks, and researchers provide evidence.

As an example of renewing society, Linley talked about CAPP’s Realise-2 model of 60 individual strengths. Linley reminded us of the many benefits of using our strengths every day. In closing he urged us to play to our strengths, and in the words of Gandhi, become the change we want to see.

Closing Speech: What it means to be a good person, a good worker, and a good citizen

Good deed for the day

Gardner and his colleagues asked professional people, “To whom or what do you feel responsible in your work?” The three ‘E’s of good work are Engagement, Excellence, and Ethics; good workers display all of these. Of course, it is easy to do good work when people all want the same thing. It’s when there are multiple stakeholders with different or competing interests that doing good work becomes more challenging.

Good deeds and kindness

The ingredients of good work and good citizenship are:

• Mission – What are the goals and values in your profession, or in your society?
• Model – Who are your role models?
• Mirror test for yourself (Am I a good worker? Am I a good citizen?) and for your workplace or profession as a whole, or for your nation.

References

For further information on national happiness levels see Work in progress by Ruut Veenhoven.

For more information about the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology and Realise-2, see www.cappeu.com

Linley, P.A., Joseph, S., Harrington, S. & Wood, A.M. (2006). Positive psychology: Past, present and (possible) future. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1 (1), 3-16.

Ten books on the Good Work project have been published since 1994; a new one is due out this summer. You will be able to download a PDF version free from the Good Work website later this year.

Images

Speakers photos: speakers’ own websites

I want to ride my bicycle: courtesy of Daniel Y. Go
Good deed for the day: courtesy of Lens Envy
Good Deeds & Kindness courtesy of Search Engine People Blog

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

The following article presents further highlights from the 5^th European Conference on Positive Psychology in Copenhagen, Denmark for Friday, June 25, 2010.

Wilmar Schaufeli

Keynote 1:  Occupational Health Psychology: A European Perspective

Wilmar Schaufeli, Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, described the deficit model as it currently plays out in the occupational health psychology field. Many times more journal articles are published that focus on the negative than those that focus on the positive. It’s time to change that, said Schaufeli, and create something called Positive Occupational Health Psychology. We need scientific research to answer the question, “Are the factors that allow individuals to thrive the same ones that allow organizations to thrive?”

In organizations, it is simply not enough to have employees who are OK; they need to be able and willing to go that extra mile — they need to be fully engaged. But what does employee engagement mean in practice? Is it really the case that highly-engaged employees are good for the organization? Schaufeli’s definition of employee engagement is “a positive motivational state characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption.”

• Vigor: high levels of energy and resilience, willingness to invest effort, persistence, not being easily fatigued
• Dedication: strong involvement characterized by  feelings of enthusiasm and significance and a sense of pride and inspiration
• Absorption: a pleasant state of total immersion in one’s job characterized by time passing quickly and being unable to detach oneself from the job

Engaged workers are motivated, present, and pay off

How does engagement differ from workaholism? Engaged workers actually like their jobs (approach motivation), whereas workaholics work to avoid the stress and feelings of guilt and uselessness which accompany not working (avoidance motivation).

Engagement is good for the organization, producing the following good business outcomes:

• Greater discretionary effort – engaged workers do more than their job requires
• Less sickness
• Lower staff turnover
• Increased profitability
• Increased productivity
• Increased sales
• Greater customer loyalty

Engagement is contagious. The level of engagement of the existing workforce can affect that of new employees, and teachers’ engagement can affect their pupils’ engagement (for better or worse).

Individual strategies to increase engagement in the workplace include
          

1. Self-assessment and regular monitoring, enabling employees to get regular feedback on engagement levels, for example through completing online questionnaires

            

2. Goal-setting and motivation e.g. coaching them to pursue challenging SMART goals which are also Inspiring, Exclusive, and Self-concordant (aka SMARTIES!)

          

3. Increasing positive emotions through acts of kindness, showing gratitude, sharing good news, savoring and so on.

Organizational strategies to increase engagement in the workplace include
              

 
1. Job redesign: creating challenging jobs which use skills effectively

           

2. Leadership e.g. developing trust, confidence and fairness, and fostering transformational leadership

            

3. Training: developing self-efficacy, and creating value fit

           

4. Career development: keeping the job challenging

Hans Henrik
Knoop

Keynote 2: Organizing for meaningful engagement: an open and skeptical view on Denmark

Hans Henrik Knoop, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Denmark, examined engagement at work from the wider context of organization and society, focusing on themes such as complexity and the need to balance competing external forces and internal drives within a systemic perspective. Living organisms are spontaneously self-organizing systems. Challenges from the external environment can either irritate or engage us, but we can choose our response. Thus well-being is linked to our ability to respond effectively when faced with unfavorable or threatening conditions.

While psychology generally may encourage us to focus on individual well-being, we operate within a wider system of society. Systems operate more efficiently if they are aligned. How does this idea play out if we take Denmark and the Danes as the example? The Danes are a very fortunate people in that they have very high levels of material wealth and access to information, and they live in a country which has a low level of corruption, a high level of social trust, a high level of economic equality, and a high level of happiness. Of course, this has not been achieved without a great deal of hard work from all Danish citizens, to say nothing of 55% income tax. According to Knoop, we need to ask ourselves how to use our knowledge of positive psychology and systems theory to find the right balance between freedom and equality such that we can continue to generate high, sustainable well-being for all.

There is a significant emphasis within Danish society on ensuring that every student, whatever age, has equal access to education. Teachers readily assume the responsibility of finding out what motivates each individual intrinsically, and encouraging the desire to learn throughout their lives. This is a very successful strategy – it is obvious when you talk to Danish citizens; children or adults exude confidence and self-efficacy. Danes are willing to go on learning, like a container which expands the more you put into it.

Danish education is not done for education’s sake. It is founded on the belief that the whole of society benefits if every individual member is motivated to learn, since in learning they will acquire the knowledge, skills, and experience to be able to meet external challenges. Knoop’s call to action is to use our knowledge of positive psychology to ensure that everyone is intrinsically motivated and meaningfully engaged at a level beyond the immediate self. The society-level benefits of doing this, such as high social trust and high well-being so evident in Denmark, can thus be created to benefit the citizens of other societies across the globe.  

Willibald Ruch

Invited Speech: The Seriousness and Fun about Humor

Willibald Ruch, Professor of Psychology at University of Zurich, Switzerland, researches the psychology of humor including comedy, amusement, laughter, nonsense, wit, and smiling. He presented a comprehensive history of the development of humor from its original meanings of ‘fluid’ and ‘temperament’ to more recent definitions of defense mechanism and personality trait, to the positive psychology-influenced definition of humor as a strength.

We know that humor as character strength is highly correlated with life satisfaction. The questions to consider are whether it is possible to increase one’s humor, for example through training, and if so, will it increase one’s life satisfaction? A study carried out by Ruch with colleagues Sandra Rusch and Heidi Stolz (in press) suggests that people can learn humor and that humor increases life satisfaction, rather than vice versa.

Writing a Humor Diary

In a double-blind placebo controlled internet study of 680 people (unpublished), one of the conditions was to write a humor diary modeled on the gratitude diary intervention. People were asked to write down the three funniest things which happened to them that day. This intervention increased life satisfaction and decreased depression and still had an effect three months later.

Part 3 will discuss talks by Professor Ruut Veenhoven  (The Netherlands) on Why the Danes are Happier than the Dutch, and by Professor Alex Linley (UK) on The Future of Positive Psychology: Promises and Perils.

References

Further information on employee engagement including a 49-page list of further literature on work engagement and links to Schaufeli’s research (at the latest count, 333 articles).

Website of Humor Research

Dr. Willibald Ruch’s Research site

Images

All speakers’ photos from their websites

Smarties: Heart Mapping courtesy of gadl
I am Here for the Learning Revolution courtesy of Wesley Fryer:

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

The 5^th European Positive Psychology Conference took place this week in Copenhagen, Denmark on June 23-26 2010. This article covers June 23 and June 24.

Hans Henrik Knoop

Knoop also asked us to reflect on the ambivalence inherent in the idea of happiness: that it is a simple notion, yet at the same time a complex one and not easy to pin down. Simplicity appeals to our rational side, yet it may not always be good for us. He used a photo of the beautiful harbor waterfront as an illustration – it’s complex, no two buildings look the same, yet it fits together and appeals to our emotional side. People prefer to live and work in houses like these, rather than in soulless modern apartments or hotels. 

Antonella Delle Fave

• Different cultural definitions of well-being, in particular the differences between East and West. According to Delle Fave, the majority of us working in the field of Positive Psychology interpret happiness and well-being from the Western perspective yet this isn’t the only way. Recent research from Delle Fave and colleagues suggests that happiness is interpreted  by many as inner harmony and balance, yet these concepts don’t feature strongly in popular Western definitions of well-being.
• Similarly, we cannot just rely on quantitative measurements. For example our experience of flow depends in part on cultural values. Italians experience most flow during leisure activities, whereas Ugandans and Nepalese experience flow most often during study. So to properly understand well-being in all its forms, we need to further explore the meaning and value that people attach to different activities and life conditions through open-ended questions.

Lars Qvortrup

Island in the River

Thursday 24^th June

Corey Keyes

Corey Keyes, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology at Emory University, USA, stated that treating mental illness using medication and psychology as usual has its role, but it’s not sufficient on its own to halt the extraordinary increase in mental disorders reported in the Western world or to enable people to flourish. Summing up the position using the words of Insel and Scolnick, “All current treatments for mental illness are palliative.” According to Keyes, our approach to ‘curing’ mental illness is itself a definition of madness: doing more of the same thing and expecting a different result. What we need is a completely different approach.

Using the health-disease continuum, Keyes made a very convincing argument that the absence of mental illness is not the same thing as the presence of mental health. We don’t even know what mental health means, he argued, and frequently we use the term mental health when we mean mental illness and vice versa.

Even if we accept that flourishing is more than the absence of languishing, it’s not that simple to agree how it can be achieved. Both the way we feel and the way we function contribute to flourishing, yet there is a paradox. Changes which lead to personal growth and higher eudaimonic well-being do not necessarily lead to more positive emotions. Personal growth takes effort, so higher functioning might in reality be accompanied by lower feeling. How do we reconcile these two opposing ideas in one model of well-being or one model of mental health? Many studies confirm that mental health is more than the absence of illness.  Keyes argued that twin studies provide evidence that there is a genetic   basis for this “dual continuum” approach. Important implications include that the presence of mental health or flourishing reduces the risk factors for mental illness.

Keynote 2: How Positive Emotions Work, and Why

Barbara Fredrickson

1. Positivity opens us, changing our perceptual horizons. Recent brain imaging research shows that the perception of people in a neutral or negative state is focused in on one area, whereas people in a positive state have a broadened focus. The implications of this are as follows:
   1. We can see many possibilities.
   2. We’re more creative.
   3. We’re more resilient.
   4. We perform better.
   5. Medics make better decisions.
   6. There is more “oneness” i.e. racial and cultural differences disappear.
   7. Trust increases.
   8. We make more ‘win/wiin’ negotiations.

Fredrickson argued that we need positive emotions to solve the global problems that we are currently experiencing.

1. Positive emotions transform us for the better – they’re a source of nourishment for growth, like 5-a-day fruit and vegetables. Loving kindness meditation can increase positive emotions and build additional cognitive and social resources, as well as making us more resilient. Additionally meditation increases our Vagal Tone. The vagal nerve connects the brain to the heart and by increasing the  level of resting Vagal Tone, we are better able to regulate our emotions, attention, and behavior, all of which are essential to our experience of high well-being.
2. Positivity transforms our relationships: research from Sarah Algoe and colleagues suggests that expressing high quality appreciation to our partner can boost the relationship, whereas low quality appreciation makes no difference.

Moving from Description to Prescription:

• We need the 3:1 ratio of positive to negative emotions, but attention to negative emotions is still necessary.
• Don’t just try to be positive, but instead create a mindset of positivity, which Fredrickson described as being open to the present moment, appreciative, curious, kind, and real.

References

Insel, T.R. & Scolnick, E.M. Cure therapeutics and strategic prevention: Raising the bar mental for health research. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/publications/cure-therapeutics-and-strategic-prevention-raising-the-bar-for-mental-health-research.shtml

Linley, P.A., Joseph, S., Harrington, A., and Wood, A.M. (2006). Positive Psychology: past, present and (possible) future. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(1), 3-16

Image
Second crossing courtesy of StewBl@ck

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

This is the second article about the 5^th Annual Bristol Happiness Lecture that took place at St George’s Hall,  Bristol, UK on 18^th May 2010. The lecture addressed the topic of Positive Psychology Responses to Depression. The first article described the keynote speech by Miriam Akhtar about the PE Kit. This article reports on the rest of the meeting, especially the keynote by Dr Chris Johnstone, an National Health Service addictions specialist and author of Find your Power: A Toolkit for Resilience and Positive Change.

The master of ceremonies for the evening was Dr Phil Hammond who has an unusual dual career: he practices medicine when he is not a stand-up comedian. Hammond was of course a past master at weaving the themes of the evening together into a creative blend of risqué jokes, black humor, and serious messages about how individuals can use techniques from Positive Psychology to overcome depression. I’ve never laughed so loudly or for so long about such an unfunny subject.

Dr. Christopher Johnstone

Chris invited us to reflect on our beliefs about resilient people. For example do you have a belief that some people are born with resilience in their DNA and that you were not? Thinking “I am the way I am, and I cannot change so I might as well get used to it,” is static thinking, what Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset. Chris stressed that even if we’ve been dealt a duff hand in life, we still do have choices about how we play those cards.

Looking Down the Crevass

One powerful technique is to imagine your journey from depression to well-being as your own adventure story, starting with Chapter 1 (your personal “Escape from the Pit”), and proceeding through Chapters 2, 3, 4 and so on as you try different self-help strategies and reach your ultimate goal, whatever that might be. The beauty of this narrative technique is that you are the hero of the story. It puts you in charge of your life and gives you a sense of always moving forwards. Since you can add as many chapters to your story as you like, you might want to try different strategies, to be curious, and to see what works. Plus you can carry on telling and re-telling your resilience story until it works for you the way you want it to.

Medication-Free SSRIs

On the edge of the crevass

• S –Strategies: What did we do to overcome the difficulty? Activities might include problem solving, challenging your own static thinking, seeking help from others, or exercising.

• S – Strengths: What character strengths helped us overcome the difficulty? These might include courage, determination, creativity, patience, sensitivity, and so on.

• R – Resources: What other resources did we draw on? These might include family and friends, helping agencies, restorative environments, supportive communities or self-help books.

• I – Insights: What did we learn from this experience and from our response to it? This could be something like “Resilience is learnable,” that accepting support from others can be helpful, or that depression is caused by a complex combination of different risk factors rather than the fault of one person or one event.

Depression and the 4Ps

Talking about the different risk factors for depression, Chris said in his experience as a medical practitioner, people frequently look for causes and often blame themselves. Thoughts like “I’m rubbish,” “If only I were more like so-and-so,” or “If only I could do XYZ,” are commonly assumed to be at the root of depression, when in fact they are more likely symptoms. According to Chris, depression is a complex issue with multiple causes, and helping people understand what factors in their lives contribute to it is a useful exercise. Often clinicians use the 3Ps model to explain depression risk factors.

Knowing that we are not to blame for depression can help us stop the vicious downward spiral in which self-blame makes us feel bad, and feeling bad then makes us blame ourselves more.   Taking a Positive Psychology approach we can add a 4^th P: Protective Processes i.e. those individual Self-Help SSRIs which shift focus from what’s wrong to what’s strong.

Open Boat through Rapids

Lecture Summary
The 5^th Bristol Happiness Lecture 2010: Positive Psychology Responses to Depression was a tremendous occasion, a vote in favor of our readiness to be open about mental ill-health, to engage with the debate, to share experiences and most of all to look for practical ways to overcome it and to flourish. Miriam Akhtar and Dr Chris Johnstone were a formidable double act – both expert in their respective fields and accomplished speakers, yet both with an ability to engage, entertain, and connect with a diverse audience. And the event was a sell-out, every one of the 500 seats in St George’s Hall in Bristol was taken, the audience appreciative throughout and judging from the final applause, keen to learn about Positive Psychology, to take it and apply it to improve their own lives.

References:

Johnstone, C. (2010). Find Your Power: Boost Your Inner Strengths, Break Through Blocks and Achieve Inspired Action. Permanent Publications.

Chris Johnstone courtesy of Chris Johnstone
Looking down a crevass courtesy of AppleSister
edge of a crevass courtesy of chadmagiera
sam chopping down some rapids courtesy of slopjop

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

The 5^th Annual Bristol Happiness Lectures took place at St George’s Hall, Bristol, on the 18^th May 2010. The primary topic was Positive Psychology Responses to Depression.. This is the first of two articles on the event, focusing on the keynote given by Miriam Akhtar. The second article will appear on Sunday and cover other aspects of the Bristol Happiness Lecture, especially the work by Dr Chris Johnstone, an addictions specialist.

Keynote speaker, Miriam Akhtar, described the Positive Emotion Kit (PE Kit) for countering depression. Miriam is a graduate of the University of East London MAPP program and a author and speaker on positive psychology topics. She based her keynote on personal experience of wet weather in the soul as well as Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build theory of positive emotions. The main driver of transformation from ill-being to well-being, is the 3:1 Positivity Ratio (sometimes referred to as the ‘Losada Line’), a tipping point where people enter an upward spiral of development.

To boost mood naturally and experience more positive than negative emotion, people can form personal PE kits by selecting interventions from five essential evidence-based categories:

1. Savor the Positive
2. Practice Gratitude
3. Develop Strengths
4. Cultivate Connections
5. Take Care of Body and Soul

Getting the Full Flavor of Savoring

Fragrance to savor

Practicing Gratitude

There’s a long list of benefits associated with practicing gratitude, from increased life satisfaction, optimism, and enthusiasm to decreased depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Miriam outlined several simple techniques for practicing gratitude such as the Three Good Things exercise, regular journaling, and writing a gratitude letter. We were invited to spend a minute sharing three good things for the day with the person next to us. It took a few seconds for people to turn attention to positive things that had happened, but soon the hall was filled with energy as they enthusiastically described special people, things, or moments that brightened their days. Perhaps some people had truly significant events to describe, but my guess is that the majority were appreciating the ordinary things in life such a friendly smile from a stranger, a colleague’s joke, or a neighbor’s helping hand.

Playing to your Strengths

Miriam gave a simple anecdote to illustrate the value of identifying and playing to strengths. Her MAPP research during 2008-2009 was conducted with a group of adolescents with substance-abuse problems, some of whom were also young offenders. A 16-year old girl with a vague idea about becoming a youth worker was a heavy cannabis user. Her two older brothers were in prison, and the message she got from her friends was “Don’t bother, you’re going to end up in prison like your brothers.” Using the VIA-IS classification of character strengths, she identified hers as kindness, emotional intelligence and the capacity to love and be loved. This discovery inspired her. She became more motivated, started attending college more often, and got some work experience. She also gave up drugs because she realized they were getting in the way of her goals. This transformation happened as a result of identifying and playing to her strengths. As a strategy to shift from ill-being to well-being, nothing beats using strengths.

Cultivating Connections

A human connection

Taking Care of Body and Soul

The final item in Miriam’s PE Kit was to value the connection between mind, body, and spirit. Having talked about mental well-being, we turned to the question of spirituality, not in the sense of a particular religion but simply the importance of connecting to something beyond ourselves. Research suggests that people who practice some form of spirituality tend to be happier and less vulnerable to depression. Perhaps that is because faith often provides a sense of meaning, or perhaps it is because belonging to a like-minded community meets the fundamental psychological need of relatedness. Research also shows that daily practice of mindful meditation can grow the seat of positive emotions in the brain in the left, pre-frontal cortex. Thus it increases our capacity to experience positive emotions.

An active body

Summing Up the PE Kit
One great strength of Miriam’s PE kit is that it is individual. The specific interventions that you choose to put in your PE Kit are the ones that suit you and work for you. They may be very different from the ones I put in my PE kit.

References:

Babyak, M. A., Blumenthal, J. A., Herman, S., Khatri, P., Doraiswamy, P. M., Moore, K. A., Craighead, W. E., Baldewicz, T. T., & Krishnan, K. R. (2000). Exercise treatment for major depression: Maintenance of therapeutic benefit at 10 months. Psychosomatic Medicine, Vol. 62. pp. 633-638.

Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007) Savoring: A new model of positive experience.. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Emmons, R.A., & Shelton, C.M. (2002). Gratitude and the science of positive psychology. In C.R. Snyder, & S.J. Lopez, (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 459-471). New York: Oxford University Press.

Emmons, R. (2007) Thanks!: How the new science of gratitude can make you happier. Boston: Houghton Mifflan Company.

Fredrickson, B. (). Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life. Three Rivers Press.

Fredrickson, B.L., (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist, 56, 218-226.

Fredrickson, B. & Losada, M. (2005), Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing, American Psychologist Vol. 60, No. 7, 678-686.

Gable, S.L., Impett, E.A., Reis, H.T., & Asher, E.R. (2004). What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 228-245.

Seligman, M.E. P.; Steen, T.A., Park, N. & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of Interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410-421.

Images

Miriam Akhtar: Miriam Akhtar
Magnolia blossom courtesy of Edward Britton
Superhero Stamp courtesy of Thomas Duchnicki
Golden baby courtesy of Alyssa L. Miller
Keep Fit Be Happy courtesy of kevindooley
Hopscotch courtesy of TimWilson

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

In yesterday’s article, I described how clinical psychologists could expand the “what’s wrong?” model to include “what’s strong?”  Today, I give the specific ten strategies recommended by Tayyab Rashid of the University of Pennsylvania and Robert F. Ostermann of Farleigh Dickinson University in their paper, “Strength-based Assessment in Clinical Practice.”

10 Strategies for Incorporating Strengths into Clinical Assessments

Rashid and Ostermann give us ten very clear and simple ways to adopt a strength-based approach in the process of clinical assessment:

1. Positive assessment scales. Use a positive assessment scale to measure specific positive constructs such as hope, love and forgiveness e.g. PANAS, Hope Scale, SWL, Life-Orientation Test-Revised. These and other measures can be found in Positive Psychological Assessment: a Handbook of Models and Measures, and the Oxford Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology.
2. Strengths survey. Ask your client to complete the VIA-IS (strengths survey) online and use the resulting report for further discussion.
3. Strengths-based questions during informal interviews. These need not be complex! Asking your client “What gives your life a sense of meaning?,” Let’s pause here and talk about what you’re good at,” “What strength would it be useful to have right now?” and “What are you doing when you are at your best?” are simple, but incredibly powerful, questions for a client to consider.
4. Icons of particular strengths.  Use icons from history, films, or literature to depict strengths and use these as discussion points. Rashid and Ostermann suggest icons such as Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King but you could easily suggest other more contemporary examples. You could also include relevant good news stories or books which clients identify with.
5. 360-feedback session. Complete a 360-feedback on the client’s strengths by seeking information (with permission of course) from the client’s family, friends and colleagues.

   

   Spring Blossoms

6. Strengths during challenges. Use formal and informal measure of strengths displayed during challenges i.e. measure client’s resilience e.g. “What have you done to overcome a serious difficulty?” or “Tell me about a setback from which you learned a lot about yourself?” and so on.
7. Assessment of flourishing. Assess the criteria for flourishing e.g. using the following measure:

A. The individual must not have had episodes of major depression in the past year.

B. The individual must possess well-being defined by:

i. High emotional well-being (measured by positive/negative affect and life satisfaction);

ii. High psychology well-being (measured by self-acceptance, personal growth, purpose in life, environmental mastery, autonomy, positive relations with others); and

iii. High social well-being (measured by social acceptance, actualization, contribution,  coherence and integration).

8. Using strengths. Having identified their strengths, Rashid and Ostermann suggest you encourage your clients to utilize them as a way to experience flow, which counteracts the boredom, listlessness, brooding and rumination which often accompany mental disorder. Empirical research suggests that using your strengths in new ways provides a long-term boost to your well-being.

9. If you’re a clinician who prefers not to use formal strengths measures, you can use a narrative strategy, such as the Positive Introduction – i.e. get clients to introduce themselves using a real-life story of about 300 words which shows them at their best or a peak moment in life. If they have trouble doing this, have them ask a friend or family member to help them.

10. Real-life issues. Encourage clients to apply their strengths to real-life issues e.g. “Let’s discuss the strengths that you displayed in your Positive Introduction – what role might they play in your current challenging situation?”

The Rashid and Ostermann paper concludes which a case study of Riba, a 38-year-old with a major depressive disorder. Identifying her strengths using the VIA strengths survey, completing a Personal Introduction (which she was initially reluctant to do), finding out where to focus on using her strengths to shift the focus from deficit and helplessness, and noticing the genuinely good aspects of her life were central to enabling her to recover from depression and return to work. Over about 20 sessions, her scores on the depression scale reduced significantly and she no longer met the criterion for major depressive disorder.

Rashid and Ostermann’s closing advice to clinicians is to “adopt a flexible approach of strengths assessment, incorporating both qualitative strategies and objective measures and integrating strengths with weaknesses.”

References:

Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K.D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323–370.

Lopez, S.J. & Snyder, C.R. (Eds). (2006). Positive psychological assessment: a handbook of models and measures. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Ong, A.D. & Van Dulmen, M.H.M. (2007). Oxford handbook of methods in positive psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rashid, T. & Ostermann, R.F. (2009). Strengths-based assessment in clinical practice. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 488—498.

Images:

Spring Blossoms courtesy of Noël Zia Lee

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

Introductory classes in positive psychology often differentiate it from “psychology as usual” by arguing that the latter operates in the disease or deficit model whereas positive psychology operates in the health model. In other words, positive psychologists say that traditional psychology, especially clinical psychology, is concerned by and large with diagnosing mental disorders such as anxiety and depression, and is primarily focused on finding out what’s wrong with people in order to come up with a solution. Positive psychology, on the other hand, focuses on optimal functioning, in other words, what’s right with us, what enables us to live fulfilling, happy lives, bounce back from adversity and perform well whether at home, school or work.  Whether or not it’s that clear-cut, it’s helpful to explore what positive psychology can bring to the traditional psychology table.

It’s with this in mind that Tayyab Rashid of the University of Pennsylvania and Robert F. Ostermann of Farleigh Dickinson University put positive psychology, and in particular strengths-based approaches, into a clinical context, providing a compelling argument for clinicians to consider using strengths in their assessment of clients. In their paper, “Strength-based Assessment in Clinical Practice,” they outline:

• The benefits as well as shortcomings of the “deficit–oriented approach”
• A strength-oriented assessment and what it might look like, and finally
• 10 ways to incorporate strengths into clinical practice

Negatives are Fascinating, Persuasive, and Potent

First and foremost, the so-called “negativity bias” is compelling and adaptive. We humans wouldn’t have survived as a species if we hadn’t had the predisposition to focus on what could go wrong. Stone-age man wouldn’t have lived long if he hadn’t had the ability to weigh the risk of single-handedly wrestling a sabre-tooth tiger to the ground, and to settle for quietly catching limpets in rock-pools instead. But our fascination with the Dark Side is still very evident; 21st media is far more focused on the negatives – reading about death, destruction and failure still sells more copy than Happy Ever After stories.  As Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and colleagues pointed out so succinctly, bad is stronger than good.

With this in mind, clinicians and therapists as well as their clients have become used to an assessment process whereby setback, negative emotions, and failures are examined and discussed in detail for clues to the current state of mind and opportunities to “correct” them and move on. As Rashid and Ostermann point out, so entrenched are we in belief that symptoms are authentic, central ingredients to be assessed that ‘the diagnostic statistical manual (DSM-IV) labels affiliation, anticipation, altruism and humor as “defense mechanisms.”’  In other words, it is as if such positive behaviors as altruism are considered to be mere coping mechanisms which counteract underlying guilt rather than traits to be explored, understood, and encouraged in their own right.

The authors argue that the traditional deficit model of clinical assessment reinforces our existing negativity bias. They quote empirical research in which participants playing the role of the clinician were asked what information they would like to know about a client. When the client was initially presented in a negative light (e.g. just been released from a psychiatric facility) they asked for significantly more negative information (such as “is the client cruel?” rather than “is the client intelligent?”) than when the client was initially presented in a positive light (e.g.  just completed undergraduate studies).

They suggest that the deficit approach encourages clients to label themselves and reduces the holistic view of themselves, resulting in clients presenting themselves with a ready-made negative diagnosis for depression, anxiety, or whatever (often courtesy of symptom-searching on Google).

The deficit approach may also create a power differential in favor of the clinician – since the clinician is the one with the expertise to diagnose the problem and recommend treatment. This results in the client being more likely to passively comply with the clinician’s negative assumptions, and work towards managing or overcoming symptoms. It also means that if the client doesn’t actually share the clinician’s perspective of the issue, diagnosis and resolution, the client might be labeled by the clinician as resisting, or being in denial.

Thus Rashid and Ostermann make their case for a more balanced approach to clinical assessment which focuses as much on strength as it does on weakness.

What Is a Strength-Based Assessment?

SWOT Analysis

“Exploring what’s strong to supplement traditional digging for what’s wrong”

A strength-based assessment is not just about exploring the client’s strengths alongside their weaknesses.  However, it’s about creating an integrated understanding of the client so that “strengths can be marshalled to undo troubles.” One definition of a strength-based assessment is as follows:

“The measurement of those emotional and behavioral skills, competencies and characteristics that create a sense of personal accomplishment; contribute to satisfying relationships with family members, peers, and adults; enhance one’s ability to deal with adversity and stress; and promote one’s personal, social, and academic development”

Thus a strengths-based assessment focuses on identifying

• strengths and assets the person brings to the issue
• deficiencies and undermining personal characteristics
• resources and opportunities for facilitating positive human functioning, and
• deficits and destructive factors in the client’s environment contributing to the issue

I was struck by how much this approach resembles the corporate SWOT (Strengths/ Weaknesses/ Opportunities/ Threats) Analysis, taught in MBA and business studies, which pays equal attention to the upsides and downsides. In clinical assessment, to focus entirely on the traditional deficit model would be the equivalent of looking only at the right-hand side of the model, the client’s weaknesses and environmental threats. But Rashid and Ostermann’s suggestion is not that we abandon the deficit approach entirely but that we balance it out by exploring the client’s individual and personal strengths and the environmental opportunities too.

The Benefits of Strengths

To those clinicians who might think this is a light-hearted way to treat serious mental disorders, Rashid and Ostermann stress that the goal is not to create a Pollyannish caricature of the client to inflate egos or to mask negative events such as abuse neglect or suffering. But we know from various empirical studies that focusing on strengths brings a variety of benefits, both physical and psychological, such as:

• Encouraging insight and perspective
• Generating optimism
• Providing a sense of direction
• Developing confidence
• Generating energy
• Buffering against physical illness
• Building resilience

In tomorrow’s article, I will summarize the ten strategies Rashid and Ostermann suggest for incorporating strengths into clinical assessments.

References:

Baumeister, R.F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K.D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323–370.

Lopez, S.J. & Snyder, C.R. (Eds). (2006). Positive psychological assessment: a handbook of models and measures. Washington D.C.: American Psychological Association.

Ong, A.D. & Van Dulmen, M.H.M. (2007). Oxford handbook of methods in positive psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rashid, T. & Ostermann, R.F. (2009). Strengths-based assessment in clinical practice. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(5), 488—498.

Images:

1. Bad and good courtesy of Doing
2. Chart courtesy of Bridget Grenville-Cleave
3. swot_img courtesy of jean-louis Zimmerman

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

Kindness of Strangers

 

Help! I need somebody,
Help! Not just anybody,
Help! You know I need someone,
Help!
Help!
Help!
The Beatles

 

Random Acts of Kindness
Every good positive psychologist knows that Random Acts of Kindness are linked to well-being. Recently I was looking for Positive Psychology research linking well-being and helping generally. One of the most frequently quoted empirical studies by Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues tells us that doing a variety of  Random Acts of Kindness, which might be simple things such as holding the door open for a stranger, or helping someone carry groceries to the car, can increase well-being, particularly if you do them in concentrated bursts (research participants did 5 Random Acts of Kindness a day once a week for 6 weeks). The intervention was thought to impact well-being by increasing self-regard, creating positive social interactions, and increasing charitable feelings towards others. In other words, helping by performing Random Acts of Kindness improves the quality of people’s relationships.

A Pseudo-Experiment
During my MAPP studies at the University of East London, a small group in my class decided to do our own pseudo-experiment with Random Acts of Kindness. One Saturday evening we set about distributing bottles of Budweiser which were left over from our faculty summer party to other students – some that we passed on the way back to our residence hall, some waiting at the campus bus-stop for a ride into town, some diligently doing their washing in the campus launderette. Of course we couldn’t measure the effect scientifically, but we definitely felt good giving our stuff away, and judging by the smiles, amusement, and gratitude, the people given bottles of Budweiser for free also felt good. For some it looked like the very first time they’d been given something for nothing. We had to assure them it wasn’t a trick and they weren’t on Candid Camera.

Recent Research on Helping and Motivation
Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan at the University of Rochester have recently published research on the impact of doing things for others. Ryan’s name is most frequently linked with Self-Determination Theory (SDT) that links intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. There’s a clue here to the nature of their experiments and their ultimate conclusions.

Their research looked at the link between well-being and autonomous help on the one hand versus controlled help on the other hand. With autonomous help, we freely give because we want to help. With controlled help, we’re coerced into giving, perhaps because we feel guilty, because we’re told to help, or because we get some reward for helping.

Four different studies were carried out, including a daily diary study of helping behaviors and well-being and experiments in which people were randomly given the opportunity to help their study partner complete a test and win a prize which they themselves were precluded from winning.

What is perhaps surprising is that helping others, per se, did not generally relate to well-being as measured by subjective well-being, vitality, or self-esteem. People who engaged in more helpful behaviors across the 2 weeks were not better off, nor were people better off on days when they helped someone compared to days when they did not. Yet autonomous help had a consistent and substantial impact on well-being.

These studies suggest that it may not be the helping act itself that is responsible for increasing the well-being of the helper, but rather the specific motivational quality of the act. This is an important clarification of the general message that helping is good for your well-being.

What about the Well-being of People who Received Help?

Hugo with dandelions

It’s worth pointing out that in the study, the people who received help weren’t told their helper’s motivation. Weinstein and Ryan suggest that therefore their responses were generated entirely as a result of the quality of the interpersonal experience, that receiving autonomous help makes you feel more valued, compared to receiving help that the helper feels compelled to give. I’m not so sure about this explanation. Personally I think it’s quite likely that at least some of the people could instinctively detect the motivation of the helper.

Nevertheless, this research does raise some interesting questions about the impact of your helping on the well-being of other people, particularly when having no choice as to whether you help or not seems to result in their well-being being lower than if you didn’t help them in the first place. So perhaps we all need to think twice before we do things for others halfheartedly or begrudgingly. What Weinstein and Ryan’s research seems to suggest is either to help wholeheartedly, or not at all.

References:

Lyubomirsky, S., Tkach, C., & Sheldon, K.M. (2004). [Pursuing sustained happiness through random acts of kindness and counting one’s blessings: Tests of two six-week interventions]. Unpublished raw data. Results presented in: Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9, 111–131.

Weinstein, N & Ryan, R. (2010). When helping helps: Autonomous motivation for pro-social behavior and its influence on well-being for the helper and recipient. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98 (2), 222–244.

Images:

Kindness of Strangers courtesy of Ed Yourdon
Help! courtesy of D3 San Francisco
Hugo with dandelions courtesy of Bridget Grenville-Cleave

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

By Bridget Grenville-Cleave -

Looking for Inspiration

Inspiration, or more precisely the lack of it, strikes fear into the hearts of many students faced with an assignment or test, a blank sheet of paper and a ticking clock. I can remember countless times, sitting nervously  in an exam hall, trying hard not to be distracted by others frantically scribbling as if their lives depended on it, whilst I was casting around for  something, anything worth saying. Usually under the right pressure the penny drops, and ideas suddenly flow. As I prepare to write my Positive Psychology News Daily (PPND) articles, the same frequently applies.

By pure chance I stumbled across a new piece of research by Todd Thrash and colleagues at the College of William and Mary, exploring the link between inspiration and well-being. This is definitely worth a look I thought, bearing in mind my impending mental and emotional tussles with The Muse.

Regular readers of PPND will be familiar with the 50/40/10 equation of Sonja Lyubomirsky’s “Happiness Pie” which is frequently used to explain the origins of happiness to non-scientists. In other words our happiness is derived from an unequal combination of genetic inheritance, intentional activity and life circumstances. The message from positive psychology is that even if we’re unlucky enough to be born under a black cloud, we needn’t stay that way because there are certain things we can do differently which will increase our well-being. In other words, agency is key.

The Intriguing Link between Inspiration and Well-Being

So far so good. But Todd Thrash’s research takes a more left-field approach to well-being, starting with the suggestion that by focusing on agency, and what we can do to intentionally increase our well-being, we might be obscuring other important influences. Now that sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? As I start reading, it occurs to me that this is another example of the paradox of happiness: inspiration may very well be a source of well-being, but you can’t make yourself feel inspired just at the drop of a hat, can you?

So what is this research telling us about the origins or development of greater well-being which is new and useful?

Michael Jordan

Through a series of four linked experiments, Todd Thrash and colleagues showed that

• When people feel inspired, they are in a better mood [inspiration (in this case, inspiration induced by watching between 1 and 2 minutes of the awesome Michael Jordan in action) increased positive affect]
• If you have inspiration as part of your personality, this predicts that three months later, your well-being increases [trait inspiration uniquely and positively predicted an increase in hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (as measured by life satisfaction, positive affect, vitality and self-actualization) over a 3 month period, even when the Big 5 traits, initial levels of well-being and social desirability biases were controlled].
• It appears that inspiration leads to well-being rather than the other way around [inspiration predicted an increase in well-being across a 3 month period, but importantly well-being did not predict a change in inspiration, so it is causal].
• Why does inspiration lead to increased well-being?  It appear that inspiration makes us feel more grateful and to have a higher sense of purpose, and then gratitude and purpose make us feel greater well-being  [both gratitude and sense of purpose mediate the relationship between inspiration and well-being, in other words, inspiration leads to gratitude and sense of purpose, which then lead to well-being].

Once More with Feeling?

Thank you

The key to these research findings is intentionality, and as such they are crucial to our understanding and application of positive psychology in the field. For example, many regular PPND readers will already be familiar with the idea that gratitude leads to greater well-being: simple suggestions include expressing your gratitude in some form, such as counting your blessings, and writing a gratitude journal or a Thank You card or letter to someone who has helped you in the past. Similarly, we know than life purpose is central to our well-being: Seligman’s authentic happiness model is based on a meaningful life, as well as a good life and a pleasant life. But as Todd Thrash and colleagues point out, you cannot just adopt a sense of purpose in the same way that you can adopt a goal. “Rather a sense of purpose tends to be furnished (italics in original), at least in part, by inspiration which is itself difficult to bring under volitional control.” Similarly, whilst it is easy to say thank you, doing it in way that makes a difference to the giver and receiver is another matter: “The fact that individuals tend to deny responsibility for their inspiration and feel grateful to its source speaks to the limits if personal volition. One cannot awaken oneself – one must be awoken – to something that is more worthy of concern than one’s current concerns.” Could it be that those activities aimed at expressing gratitude or seeking purpose in life to increase well-being might be made even more effective for more people by focusing first and foremost on finding a source of inspiration? Giving thanks, or eliciting values or purpose could come afterwards.

So perhaps Frank Tibolt (1897-1989) was only half-right when he said that “we should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.”

I’m off to find some Michael Jordan videos on Youtube.

References:

Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. New York: Penguin Press.

Thrash, T.M., Elliot, A.J., Maruskin, L.A. & Cassidy, S.E. (2010). Inspiration and the promotion of well-being: Tests of causality and mediation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3). 488-506.

Images:

1. Looking for Inspiration courtesy of Danilo Prates

2. Michael Jordan courtesy of PVBroadz

3. Thank you! courtesy of TheAlienessGiselaGiardino23

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