Change

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) is a strong tool for exploring the past, enhancing mindfulness in the present, and imagining the future.

How might we create a deeper understanding of the elements that drive well-being? How do we capture meaning, ensure learning, and build collaboration so that people engage in the issues that strengthen their well-being? What about using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® to help people think with their fingers and eyes as well as their minds.

Early in my career I had learned that if you want your product or service to be successful, all you have to do is (ask and) listen and act on what you hear, or don’t hear. We asked. You all spoke. We acted on your suggestions, bringing you Positive Psychology Toolkit 2.0. We also added a community forum so that all of our toolkit users could request new tools and interact with each other.

Positive Psychology News has a tradition of pulling together thoughts for the New Year, remembering that many people are taking stock and making resolutions. As you look ahead, perhaps the ideas below will help you find ways to make your life more happy and healthy. We also recommend that you follow Alicia’s lead and look back at 2016. What worked especially well then? What do you want to make sure you do more of in 2017?

The Positive Psychology Toolkit is a science-based, online platform containing 120+ exercises, activities, interventions, questionnaires, assessments and scales in PDF-format. 1.000+ practitioners are now working with this toolkit in their coaching practice, teaching, therapy trajectories and corporate wellness programs. There are only a few more days to subscribe at the current price.

What do we want in the near-term?

In the long term?

What are our goals in our work, recreational, relational, and personal lives?

There is good news on the horizon for parents! The top-down trend characteristic of decades of parent education programs and educational institutions is showing signs of shifting. Experts are exploring the value of involving parents and children in co-creating curricula to meet their academic and household needs.

The 5i Change (?) Agent Model characterizes recurring themes in the ways that people use positive psychology in their livelihoods. While they may be teachers or coaches or therapists or doctors or dancers, what they actually do with positive psychology can be described by 5 verbs. Knowing which of these verbs characterize your own approach helps you take steps to augment your impact on the world.

What resources are available to design an organizational well-being strategy? To become informed you could read every article here on PPND and find the threads that to weave into your strategy. Or you could refer to the strategies that others have implemented. To get the ball rolling, here are some Australian examples of reusable strategies.

We can leverage the power of routines by personalizing them to meet our needs and to match our goals. Using a design thinking mindset, three elements to consider when crafting a routine are habits, practices, and rituals.

A new year is here! With the turn of the calendar page comes a fresh start and a new hope for achieving our dreams. Yet each year only about eight percent of us successfully follow through with our New Year’s resolutions. With the odds apparently stacked against us, why not change it up? This year, instead of a resolution, try a New Year’s routine.

For several years, we’ve ended one year or started the next year by inviting our authors to make a suggestion to people looking forward to the year ahead. This year’s suggestions come in two parts. Come back on New Year’s Eve for the second installment.

The Positive Psychology Program has created a Positive Psychology Practitioner’s Toolkit, an online database that grants our members access to all kinds of positive psychology exercises, assessments, scales, questionnaires, and worksheets allowing any therapist, coach, or researcher to apply positive psychology tools effectively in practice.

Infatuation with speed is a characteristic of our times. We live in the fastest phase of human history. That can lead to what Larry Dossey in 1982 termed time-sickness, as we become fearful of missing out. The ability to stay with the discomfort of life’s paradoxes and our own ignorance and to remain patient and still while questions and answers grow in never-ending cycles, requires a certain mental toughness that seems to be on its way out in a world in a hurry.

If someone told you that the question about whether happiness could be measured was settled and the issue at hand is how to use happiness data, would you believe it? Most would say no, but a growing number of psychologists, economists, community activists, and policy makers are proving that happiness is quantifiable and that the data is useful.

The science of setting and reaching goals tells us that the best goals go beyond SMART. I’m using the acronym SMARTEST goals to add more of what science says helps us reach our goals.

It took three weeks of focused effort in between my coaching clients to retrieve my basement and garage from the eyesore category. I admit it was not all play. There was back-bending, muscle-aching grunt work involved. But in my humbly proud mind, the journey’s end was titled “Positivity Parked Here!”

How about you? What paths do you choose to clear? Here’s to work/play lighting your way to flourishing.

Savoring what we’ve accomplished helps us experience gratitude for the good things in our lives, which puts us in a better frame of mind than just grinding it out. Then we can invest in the six areas that we know have value for us in the long run. These areas fuel us with the sustenance we need to make life worth living. When we do that, we change our to-do’s into ta-da’s.

Throughout the World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association, a dazzling array of new scientific breakthroughs and research set off fireworks to rival those of the Magic Kingdom. Martin Seligman challenged his own earlier research on learned helplessness. Tal Ben-Shahar invited us to focus on the growing tip as we work on positive change. Tom Rath reminded us of often neglected qualities that help us be fully charged.

I first encountered Fredrike Bannink when she was leading a conference. workshop on techniques for positive supervision. I was impressed by her gentleness, her realism, her practicality, and her humor. She had seen and handled all the problems that people raised. I thought, “I would love to learn from this woman. She knows how to stimulate outstanding performance.”

Now I have the chance with this wonderful resource.