“It was inevitable: the burnt scent of over-warmed coffee always reminded him of the fate of unrequited devotion.” Paraphrase of the first line of Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

The Disengagement Trap

A Shadow at Work

Florentino is not alone. According to polls by the Gallup organization, 55% of the U.S. workforce is disengaged in their jobs, and 16% are actively disengaged, for a total of 71%. In addition to this picture of mass individual drudgery, Gallup estimates that having 16% of the workforce actively disengaged costs American businesses roughly $350 billion each year. A country with a GDP this size would rank as the 28th largest economy in the world, ahead of the nations of South Africa, Finland, and the UAE.

As the economy softened, and opportunities to find jobs became more limited, Florentino felt more trapped. He began to worry that his disillusionment would be noticed in a time of downsizing. While he did not like his job, he needed it. Florentino began to feel desperate.

Gratitude as a Way Out of the Trap

Gratitude Log

Most readers of this site are probably familiar with gratitude logs, also called the three blessings or three good things exercise. At a set time each day, you write down several things that went well, or for which you are otherwise grateful. It is preferred that each day you write something new. Also, some people write what contributed to the good event, why it occurred, or what made the item particularly special. Studies show that keeping a gratitude log has long-lasting positive effects on people’s life satisfaction and well-being.

Entries in his Gratitude Log
Florentino kept his log at work, and focused exclusively on things related to his job. The first items were easy and obvious: “I am grateful that I have a job that allows me to support my family,” and “I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to take sick leave.”
But after a few days, it got a little harder. He started becoming aware of things that had previously slipped beneath notice. “People will change direction on projects based on my input,” and “Dave stopped me in the parking lot and told me that one of the clients spoke really highly of me”.

Life Taking off Again

Within a week-and-a-half, he was seeking out new projects and looking for ways that he could contribute. While he still did not love his job, he began to recognize how he could affect others in positive ways every single day, and the work began to give him greater levels of satisfaction.

As Nathaniel Lambert and colleagues at Florida State University found in their recently published study, by reframing the events of our lives in positive ways and including a glimmer of gratitude, we also increase our sense of coherence with the world. When things makes sense, we feel more grounded and more at peace.

Four Months Later
Florentino no longer writes in the log every day. Now he adds an entry about once a week. However this March, four months after he started his gratitude log, Florentino received a promotion. The new job was a better fit than the one he lost, and gives him the chance to do exactly those things that first drew him to the job.

When asked about his new job and his feelings for his company, “And how long do you think you can keep up this coming and going?” Florentino had his answer ready. “Forever,” he said.

Author’s Note: The title, first line and last paragraph of this article paraphrase the title, beginning and ending of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, Love in the Time of Cholera. Further, the name of the individual referenced in the case study has been changed to that of the Garcia Marquez character who, in the novel, lived the “fate of unrequited love.”

References

Garcia Marquez, G. (1985). Love in the Time of Cholera. New York: Vintage.

Coffman, C. (2002). The high cost of disengaged employees: There are “cave dwellers” in your ranks, and they’re hurting your company. Gallup Management Journal..

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

Lambert, N., Graham, S., Fincham, F. & Stillman, T. (2009). A changed perspective: How gratitude can affect sense of coherence through positive reframing. Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 461-470.

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

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

Positive Motivation book

Sometimes these goals and choices are natural and fulfilling. Other times they are not. We can’t always seem to stick to that diet or finish that novel we’d started. There are still other times that we find the stamina and courage to buckle down and meet our goals – only to discover that meeting them failed to bring the satisfaction that we had hoped.

By clearly stepping us through motivation theory and providing interactive and reflective exercises, Sheldon squarely addresses what is behind our choices of how to spend our time, energy and attention. Positive Motivation also offers the tools that enable us to reevaluate and assess our goals so that they might be both more achievable and more fulfilling.

Sheldon explains motivation theory through a Whether, What, Why, and How framework:

• “Whether” a person is motivated in a particular domain;
• “What” is the object of that motivation;
• “Why” a person decides to participate in a particular activity, or pursue a particular goal; and
• “How” to go about achieving the goal.

Kennon Sheldon

Sheldon’s examples are simple and clear. In each of the six chapters, Sheldon includes activities that make the material practical and personal. The reader is asked to identify his or her goals, analyze which ones worked best in the past, and examine the extent to which current goals are intrinsic and pursued for autonomous reasons. The reader is even guided to consider whether his or her goals can re-conceptualized so that they become more positive and fulfilling. This intimate approach not only engages the reader and aids in absorption of the material, but it also gives a real-time demonstration of positive motivational theory in action.

The Positive Motivation workbook is an excellent tool either for self-study, or as a practical supplement in a longer course on motivational theory, social psychology, or positive psychology.

Editor’s Note:
Other reviews of this series by PPND authors include:

• Entire series reviewed by Dana Arakawa
• Positively Happy by Sonja Lyubomirsky, reviewed by Derrick Carpenter
• Invitation to Positive Psychology by Robert Biswas-Diener reviewed by Aren Cohen.

 

The following note was posted on the sales page for the workbooks:
“For the remainder of the month of January Positive Psychology Services will donate its profits from sales of these workbooks to the Mercy Corps relief mission in Haiti.”

If you move fast, perhaps you can buy the book AND contribute to helping people in Haiti!

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

Lycopene Love Song

The Peak-End Theory When Teaching a Class

However, in the waning months of the class I found myself in a bit of a dilemma. The students gave so much of themselves. I really wanted them to have a good memory of the class. Most readers of this site are likely familiar with the peak-end-theory. The general idea is that we tend to remember events based upon their peaks (highs and lows) and how they end. If something ends well, we often have a great memory of it. If it ends poorly, that is what we recall, even if the majority of the experience was pleasant.  Here are some past articles on peak-end theory when shopping, when giving feedback, and when being disciplined.

How do most classes end? With a final exam (and often stress and pressure). Just thinking back to my past exams causes my neck to stiffen. Yet I needed to measure their understanding of the material. So what to do?

Using Appreciative Inquiry to Create a Peak-End Final Exam

What I did was let the students design their own final using a modified appreciative inquiry process.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is a process whereby organizations identify moments in which they perform at their best, imagine what the organization would look like if they could cultivate these moments, and then implement a strategy to make that vision a reality.  (Past articles are here and a conference summary is here.)

A key to the AI process is posing the question to be explored. If my question were something like “What do you want to do for the ‘final’ ?” blah, blah, blah . . . all the solutions would likely be limited to previous exam experience (multiple choice, short answer, etc.) This might have been ok. But I wanted to see if the students could design an assessment process that was meaningful to them. So in the end, we did not have a final. Rather, I told them that they would have “an opportunity to joyously demonstrate their mastery of positive psychology.”

Competitive Sparring

1. DISCOVERY. The first step in the AI process is discovery: what worked in the past? Every person in the room had been tested multiple times, in multiple settings. Not just school. One student was a martial artist and had had to demonstrate her mastery of the art through competitive sparring. I said that is what I want for our class: the positive psychology equivalent of hand-to-hand combat. So in small groups, and then as a class, we talked about times that the students had been both in a state of flow and in the process of demonstrating mastery.

 



Blue Sky Ideas

2. DREAM.  The second step is the dream: The class looked back on what worked in the past and together began to envision what would work well in the future — that is, in this class with this material.

 

3. DESIGN.  The third step is actually designing their final. The students planned and prioritized. What would work well with our class?  There were distance education students, the scientific and reading-intensive subject matter, the need for the “exam” to be comprehensive, and so on.  What the students ultimately created were two options: An oral presentation or a paper. Each student was to pick an event from real life – for example, a personal experience, something from the newspaper, a situation at work. Then the student was to demonstrate how positive psychology could be applied in that setting. Students also had to support their cases with the readings and to address multiple substantive areas from the class.

 

4. DESTINY.  The final stage of the AI process is destiny. Each student joyfully demonstrated their mastery of the subject matter. The papers and presentations were powerful. Some were very personal. Others stretched the concepts of positive psychology to show applications in other realms. One student did his presentation on the “Positive Psychology of Pain.” Another talked about what could be used from positive psychology to address the conflict in Afghanistan. In the end, everyone who watched the presentations experienced a sense of elevation. For days afterwards, I continued to receive calls and emails from students and another professor who all said the same thing: “Wow.”

The process worked because the students were given the freedom to design their own expression. Each took the subject and was able to think about it, and present it in a way that was personally meaningful. In the end, it was both a great measure of how well the students had absorbed the material, as well as a high point ending to a great year. It was simultaneously a peak and an end.

*******

Author’s Note: I would like to publicly thank all of the PPND authors for their help this semester. I directed my students to the site, and they peppered the authors with questions. The authors were kind and prolific and thoughtful in their responses, and my students were thrilled and positively influenced by the dialogue. Thank you, thank you, thank you for a great year!     ~ Sean

References:

Cooperrider, D. and Whitney, D. (2004) Appreciative Inquiry: A Positive Revolution in Change. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Other positive psychology university-level courses can be found here.

Images
Lycopene Love Song courtesy of The Gifted Photographer
Competitive Sparring –Emma (blue) courtesy of Hauggen
Endlich himmelblau courtesy of extranoise

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

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living.

To which philosopher Iris Murdoch replied, “Lighten up, Socrates!” Well, I am paraphrasing a little. What Murdock really said was that people can lead moral lives without conscious self-reflection. So too, with happiness.

Without a “Why”

Yes, there are all sorts of positive outcomes that result from an exploration and examination of one’s life. We know that most of us will benefit from reflecting upon those things for which we are grateful, by deliberately taking steps to become more mindful, and restructuring our lives to engage our strengths. I fully embrace all of these, and have seen their benefits in my own life. But in the words of Zorba, “Why does everybody always need a ‘Why’?”

We lose something important if life becomes all examination and self-discipline. There is a need for spontaneity and excess, for allowing oneself to play and for just enjoying the beauty that is all around us in every moment. In his poem “Happiness,” Carl Sandburg wrote:

Dancing Accordionist

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

In Sandburg, we see a few of the different expressions of a life well-lived. The keg of beer reminds us that pleasure is one of the elements of the full life. The executives, despite their fame and wealth, think that “happiness” is elusive. Meanwhile under the trees, the friendly crowd demonstrates one of the most persistent mantras in all of positive psychology: the collective hive and group.

Neanderthal

Music Before Food?

Dance Like No One is Watching

Did Neanderthal man and these bird-bone flutists reflect upon their lives? I suspect not.

And yet, archaeologist April Nowell points out that “When you see the first ceramics were in fact these figurines and not vessels for grain and you have this complex musical tradition starting right a the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, you begin to understand that these people lived socially rich and complex lives.”

So tonight, go out with your friends and sing and dance and play, without any need for a why.

Images:
Accordion (Dancing Accordionist) courtesy of tata_aka_T
Neandrethal (Neandrethal man replication 2) courtesy of JacobEnos
Dancing couple (Dance like no one’s watching…) courtesy of antkris

References:

Adler, D.S., “Archaeology: The earliest musical tradition” in 1 Nature 460, 695-696 (6 August 2009); Published online 5 August 2009

Kazantzakis, N. (1952). Zorba the Greek. New York: Simon and Schuster. Trans., Carl Wildman

Langer, E. (2002) Well-Being: Mindfulness vs. Positive Evaluation. In Snyder, C.R., & Lopez, S.J. (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp.277-287). New York: Oxford University Press.

McGroarty, P. “Prehistoric Bird-Bone Flute Unearthed” Associated Press June 24, 2009

Mithen, S. (2006). The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind, and Body. Harvard University Press.

Murdock, I. (1970). The Sovereignty of Good (Routledge Classics). London. Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd.

Peterson, C., (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Plato (Trans., 1966). Plato in Twelve Volumes, The Apology. translated by Harold North Fowler; Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. (The opening Socrates line is from here).

Sandburg, C. (1916). Chicago Poems (Dover Thrift Editions).

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

Wright, R. (2000). Nonzero: The logic of human destiny. New York: Vintage Press.

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

What is Your Wish?

With the New Year upon us, I am going to break with the standard protocol of this site and ask you a question. If you had one wish for the world, your family or yourself, what would it be?

Go ahead and pause for a moment and think how you would answer.

Really.

Stop for a minute and ask yourself – If you had one wish for the world, your family or yourself, what would it be?

Now, write it down.

Wishes touch on so many aspects of positive psychology. They play a role in appreciative inquiry, hope, resilience, savoring, purpose and goal setting just to name a few. That is because wishes tell us something about what it means to be human. They frame for us our vision of what is important – both those things that are “big I” Important that give us meaning and purpose, as well as the little pleasures and comforts that ease and aide us in our enjoyment of life. Wishes help us define a vision of what is possible and show us what life could be.

While they are not the same thing as hope, our wishes have a hand in the motivation, passion and clear goals that make our hopes possible. When times are hard, sometimes wishes offer the comfort we need.

Of course, we are not always good at guessing what we want, or what will make us happy. As a result, sometimes we wish for the “wrong” things. But this too says something about who we are, and what it means to be human as we go about stammering and stumbling through life. Ultimately our wishes connect us to one another. No matter where you are from, or where you are going, when we hear the wishes of others, so often we realize that we are not alone in our dreams.

When documentary artist Liisa Ogburn asked 63 first graders this question, they told us they wanted people to brave all the time. They wish people were nice and always shared. The first graders tell us that they do not want people to lie or use bad words, and that they wish we would love one another. They want everyone to have a home and to be healthy. In the video, my daughter Ally, wishes that we would all give to the poor people. You can watch what they have to say here.

University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes about the elevation and awe we feel from observing others in acts of moral beauty. We are educated, sophisticated people. We study psychological journals, know what is meant by Fredrickson and Losada when they talk about “chaotic attractors”, and we even read PPND! Yet when I hear that the wish of a six year old child is that we all do our best, or that people would never give up, I feel inspired and elevated.

My wish is that each of us look for and notice the goodness and beauty that is all around us in every moment, and that we vigorously celebrate that treasure with one another.

So . . . what do you wish for the world, your family or yourself?

Jeff Sherrer of Sherrer & Sherrer Attorneys has generously donated the cost of professionally printing a first edition of this poster. Please contact Liisa Ogburn if you would like to get a copy by donating to the school’s PTA cultural arts program.

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

By day, I am a technology lawyer. I deal with cutting-edge communication systems, information processes and the movement of data. The nature of the craft also requires me to work with others to negotiate conflicts and disputes. Through those two functions I have become profoundly interested in what technology does to the way people relate to one another.

I am by no means a Luddite. Through the wonders of technology I was able to go back to the University of Pennsylvania to earn my masters, while still working at home in North Carolina. From my laptop I am also able to keep close contact with friends in India and Israel and Norway who would otherwise be inaccessible to me.

But something significant is lost when we no longer have to look one another in the eye. I have seen my teenager receive both insults and apologies electronically from someone he thought was his friend, when they could have spoken face-to-face that same day.

The same technology that so wonderfully places the world right at our feet, tends to push aside other aspects of human interactions – the facial expressions, the tone of voice, a well-timed touch on the shoulder. Strengths of humanity such as kindness, generosity and compassion require a certain orientation of empathy between the self and the other. Likewise, our strengths of fairness, citizenship and loyalty, all depend upon the social bonds we form to groups and to the broader community.

How can our children develop these sort of empathic bonds with others if their interactions are with a screen rather than real-life, flesh-and-blood people? At an age when my son needs to be learning how to connect with others and how to navigate the difficult moments that do occur in human relations, technology adds still more hurdles.

Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand had an idea. While stranded in Mali in the 1980’s, Arthus-Bertrand spent an evening listening to another man’s life story. It was during a drought and the poverty was severe. But the fears, dreams and memories offered were not a complaint. They were not a request for anything. Rather, what was shared was a connection between two small people, next to a fire, from vastly different places, but with worlds in common.

Since then, Arthus-Bertrand has recorded interviews with 6000 people from 65 countries, many of which can be found on the website 6 Billion Others. Each person tells his or her earliest memories, dreams, and what they believe happens after they die. They talk about the last time they cried, and what they learned from their parents. The aim, according to the website, is to create a “sensitive and human portrait of the earth’s inhabitants.”

Of course, when visiting the site, the communication is only one way, and your interaction is with a screen. Yet, there is an honesty and an intimacy there that connects and elevates. The interviews also offer a chance for increased understanding and empathy. Peterson and Seligman (2004) point out that empathy is biased toward those who are similar to the self. At first blush, many of the people interviewed do not appear to be like me. Kole, an Ethiopian herdsman, speaks with pride and joy about his goats. My children giggled when they first saw Maremba, from Papua New Guinea with his bone through his nose. Yet what is communicated so honestly are the ways in which we all are the same. Kole taught me about gratitude and the ability to rejoice in simple things. When Maremba spoke about his father, I found that I too had to fight off tears.

The 6 Billion Others exhibition will be on display at the Grand Palais in Paris from January 10, 2009 until Feburary 12, 2009. Until then, enjoy . . .

References:

Peterson, C. and Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook of classification. New York: Oxford University Press.

Images are drawn from the 6 Billion Others site.

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

The Roof Leaks

Sometimes I feel like I have this life-thing all figured out. The roof leaks: no problem. The dog pees on the Christmas presents: primo-fodder for our holiday letter! But then there are other days … I catch a glimpse of cockroaches scurrying away as I crack open the cabinet doors, and it DOES bother me. I stress about them all day. I research whether it would hurt my dog if I sprayed poison on the baseboards. (Answer: Yes).  I fret over how expensive an exterminator would be and fear what the neighbors might think if a car with a gigantic water-bug on the roof stopped in my driveway. (Can’t they at least park down the block? Maybe in front of that one neighbor who scowls at the kids?)

So what is going on? The little critters were there last week. How come they did not bug me then?

Happiness Is Hard Work?

A key take away from positive psychology is that happiness can be hard work.   Sometimes we DO have things figured out: an undesirable event happens, and we roll with it.  But life has a way of presenting us with challenges of all shapes and sizes, at unplanned hours, with any number of legs, and whether we are ready or not.  The challenges can come one at a time, or piled on top of one another: as my 401k disappears like a cockroach behind a cereal box, a real creepy-crawly insect tiptoeing around my kitchen tips me over the edge.   Life is not a single task to be solved and checked off like each of the twelve labors of Hercules.

Skin Nemean lion: Check.
Capture Cretan Bull: Check.
Achieve mastery of life: Whoa! Hold on a minute!

Rerouting a couple of rivers to clean the Augean stables might have actually been easier. Hercules only had to do that once. But we must keep living our lives moment by moment. And truthfully, in some moments, we are better than in others.

So what to do?

Resilience over Obstacles

Reivich and Shatte tell us that resilience helps us overcome past obstacles, steer through everyday adversities and bounce back from monumental crises.  It even enables us to reach out and “find renewed meaning and purpose in life.”  The authors give us several strategies to help build resilience.  While space does not permit a detailed overview of each of these techniques, they generally fall into two categories: know-thyself skills, and change skills.

The “know thyself skills” are designed to help us identify the thinking patterns that can undermine our effectiveness and happiness. It might be recognizing a belief we hold about an event (e.g. Only bad people have bugs) or the discordance between what we believe and our reality (e.g. Insects only live outside). It could even be discovering overreaction to the event (e.g. This pack of pests proves my deeply irreversible character flaw that will be passed on to my grandchildren through my genes!).

In addition to recognizing these beliefs, the authors offer certain “change skills” to help amend those thinking styles so that we can recognize valid, alternative interpretations of the world. (e.g. Blattaria like houses too! In fact, the “water-bug car” WAS in front of the scowling neighbor’s house!)

However it is difficult to apply these strategies, identify beliefs and their sources, and generate alternative scenarios while you are in the heat and stress of the moment. As such, a key element of building resilience is in learning how to contend with the crisis as it occurs. The authors give various ideas to help someone reclaim his or her center while in the middle of the stressful event. One of my favorites is “Real-Time Resilience.”

What a Joy to Test Your Soul!

Toward the end of the novel Zorba the Greek, everything Zorba and the narrator had worked for comes crashing down around them. As all their hopes and labors lay in ruin at their feet, the narrator proclaims:

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy it is to test your soul to see if it has endurance and courage!”

What a joy it is.  In the midst of adversity, the narrator did not plunge into despair, or even content himself with coping.  Rather, he immediately looked for an opportunity to strengthen himself and grow. He actually finds in the dilemma cause for celebration. Recalling this line from Zorba reminds me that I too have the freedom to completely reshape my response to adversity. That kind of real-time resilience is exciting and empowering.

By Kevin Gillespie

Oh, and about those cockroaches, they really are remarkably resilient little guys . . .

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Editor’s Note: A version of this article appears in the first book in the PPND series, Resilience: How to Navigate Life’s Curves.

Reivich, K, & Shattẻ, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York: Broadway Books.

Kazantzakis, N. (1952). Zorba the Greek. (C. Wildman, Trans.). New York: Simon and Schuster.

Chapter 13 in the PPND book, Resilience: How to Navigate Life’s Curves, is based on this article.

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

When, at 39, I was trying to decide whether to pursue training in positive psychology , I made for myself all the “practical” objections. I was already a successful lawyer, had a wife, kids, mortgage and typical routine. My wife, however, knew that deep down it was something I really wanted to do. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: “I’d like to, but it is so expensive.”
Her: “Just do it.”
Me: “And I am not really sure what I would ‘do’ with it.”
Her: “Just do it.”
Me: “And it will put a lot of strain on you and the kids if I go back.”
Her: “Look. If for your midlife crisis you want to get another degree, I’d rather that
then you getting a sports car or a younger woman. Just do it!”

(She is so much smarter than me) And so I did.

Many people go though a certain reevaluation, readjustment, self-discovery and rebalancing somewhere around aged 40. Dante Alighieri, was 35 when he awoke in the middle of a dark wood having lost his way. Walt Whitman was 37 when he wrote his great celebration of life, the Song of Myself. Some early Jewish denominations did not allow a man to study Kabbalah until they were 40. Siddhārtha Gautama achieved Buddahood at 35. The list goes on and on.

Certainly, during this reevaluation phase, people can become lost. However, what we go through at midlife does not really a have to be “crisis.” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant found that one of the keys to Aging Well is how well we master the various developmental tasks we face as we transverse the aging process. (Vaillant, 2002). Through the Study of Adult Development at Harvard, Vaillant was able to track people as they changed over time from adolescence into great-grandparenthood. In general, the people who mastered adulthood’s life tasks – Identity, Intimacy, Career Consolidation, Generativity, Keeper of the Meaning and Integrity – lived longer, were more fulfilled, had more friends, and were happier.

Whether mid-life becomes a crisis, or a point of opportunity and empowerment depends in part on how we approach these life tasks.

One can try to ignore our life changes, fail to master our developmental tasks, and risk looking like (and feeling like) T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock:

Trousers Rolled

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me

Trying to hold on to his younger days and the younger fashions, Prufrock did not accept or grow into who he was becoming.

As an alternative, one can approach the inevitable changes in life with a renewed purpose and meaning, as does David T. Manning.

After 44 years as a research chemist, Dave retired and became a full time poet. Dave teaches, nurtures and serves others (Generativity) through his work with younger poets and with the North Carolina Poetry Society
Through the life and hope and humor contained in his poetry (books found here, and here, and here)
David passes on the traditions and stories and wisdom of the past to the next generation (Keeper of Meaning).

So my going back to graduate school to study how people find greater purpose and meaning in their lives was not the result of a crisis. Rather it was my immensely rewarding, and affirming entry into a new life stage.

Image
Trousers Rolled courtesy of madmolecule

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

I have always been drawn to the quote by Friedrich Nietzsche that “Freedom is to struggle with no hope for reward.” There a great deal of courage in that line. There is comfort in the notion that something can us keep us going, even when the circumstances seem insurmountable. As I have maneuvered the various bumps and tight spots that invariably arise in life, I have often recalled that mantra to fuel the sort of “real time resilience” described by Reivich and Shatte (2002). But is Nietzsche really describing what is going on when we act with courageous persistence? Or is the line’s existential heroism just poetic hyperbole?

I have done many things in my career as a lawyer. By far the most rewarding has been when I assisted people fleeing torture in their homeland. Hope is certainly central to each case. For example, I may hope to convince the asylum officer that my client was tortured because of his ethnicity, and not just to extract money from him. If I can, I can assure that he will not be sent back to the people trying to kill him. However, while these victories ARE victories, at times I feel like a wide-eyed tourist quietly pressing coins into the palm of a starving child. The relief is singular and temporal. But when I lift my gaze from that child’s eyes I find that I am at the center of a mob of hungry children: each one desperate; each one in need. And despite my struggling for one person here or there, I become conscious of a human suffering that washes out in every direction beyond a comprehensible horizon. What can one person do? Can we sustain the “struggle with no hope for reward”? Maybe, for a little while. But most of us need something to keep us going.

Nietzsche’s line offers a heroic vision. However, as much as I am drawn to it, it distracts from the true fount of sustainable effort. Individuals experience hope when they have an expectation that a desired goal can be achieved (Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2002). It requires 1) goals we wish to attain, 2) beliefs about how to attain those goals (“pathway thoughts”) and 3) a belief in our ability to successfully follow the chosen pathway (“agency thoughts”) (Snyder, Rand, & Sigmon, 2002).

It is easy to feel a paralyzing hopelessness in the shadow of epic traumas: A nation torturing its citizens; child mortality; global hunger. There is little that one person can do. So when faced with seemingly insurmountable conditions, the key to sustained action (and greater well-being) is to locate the opportunities for hope within those conditions. While not denying the magnitude of what one is facing, having the mindfulness to ask “what can I hope for”?

Sick Child

In this way, hope is dynamic. The “reward” that we hope for is going to be different for each person, and in each circumstance. So while I cannot stop a nation from torturing its people, I can help one person flee to safety. I can help him reunite with his family in a secure place. He can help inform others about the crisis in his country, and attract attention and aid. As we discuss together the things that we can hope for and can affect, our energy increases and our action is sustained.

So freedom is not to struggle without hope for reward. Freedom is to find what you can hope for, and what you can control, despite an appearance of hopelessness.

Feudtner, C. (2005) Hope and the prospects of healing at the end of life. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 11: 1, pp. S23 – S30.

Reivich, K, & Shattẻ, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York: Broadway Books.

Snyder, C.R., Rand, K.L., and Sigmon, D. R. (2002) Hope theory: A member of the positive psychology family. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.). Handbook of Positive Psychology. 257-267. New York: Oxford University Press.

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J. Bond Francisco 1890s courtesy of freeparking

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

A poet and lawyer, Sean Doyle, MAPP ‘07, JD, offers strengths-based consulting for organizations. He also acts as an adviser and confidant to people about their personal sources of joy, how they want to live their lives, and finding meaning in life and work. Sean can be reached by email.

Sean writes on the 30th of each month, and his past articles are here.

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