Decision-Making

This is the second part of an interview of Henry Edwards about his book, The Daily Better. Today we dig a little deeper. We talk about better ways of making decisions than being driven by fear. We also discuss the impact he has had on the world views of his high school students and explore his plans for a future book targeted for them and their age peers.

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.

I confess I have not always been a fan of saving the best for last. I certainly would have failed the famous marshmallow test. With time, I have come to recognize and value this conventional wisdom in practice. In sports, in business, or in our relationships, the winners are declared only at the end.

What should you write in an email if you want a response within minutes?

Why is it a good strategy to get your negotiation counterpart to say “No”?

“Always pursue the best in everything!”

You have surely heard this advice from a friend or from a motivational speaker. You may have even found it logical advice that deserves observance.

Yet is it really sound advice? Is it beneficial as a persistent life style?

When Open-Mindedness is used well, people can be extraordinarily adept at problem solving and able to make critical decisions clearly and with solid reasoning. They can be excellent leaders who bring objectivity to situations that might otherwise be ambiguous or highly slanted. But this strength can also be underused, leading to snap judgments, or overused, leading to decision paralysis. How do we use it to just the right degree?

I want to add to Lisa’s review of the book Focus by discussing prevention and promotion focus. Both kinds of focus can sometimes work together. For example, with the goal to exercise more, promotion-focus gives people enthusiasm for the gain of better fitness, and prevention-focus keeps them vigilant in the long term to avoid losing the fitness they built up.

From Paul Dolan’s talk about his new book, Happiness by Design, I gained 3 important insights to shape my thinking about happiness in the new year.

In Mastering the Art of Quitting, Peg Streep and Alan Bernstein unpack systematically and skillfully what it means to quit from public myth to personal consequence. Nobody wants to be known as a quitter, yet we live in an unpredictable world where the capacity to move on with agility and minimal regret can be a huge advantage.?

What do you say when your dissertation advisor suggests it’s time to open a hot dog stand?

Positive Psychology focuses on many constructs that are related to the idea of freedom. Sonja Lyubomirsky found that about 40% of the variation in happiness across a population is attributable to intentional activities rather than genetic or environmental factors. Isn’t she talking about making free decisions?

If freedom is that important, how can we reconcile Positive Psychology with studies that appear to undermine free will?

Don’t sit there too long waiting for happiness to appear, or wondering whether now is the right time to do something. Why not take a different approach? Why not act now and reflect afterwards on whether it worked? If it wasn’t quite right, you can change it, and in the meantime you will have learned something about yourself. This way, you can act your way into a new way of being happy.

I wish I had the room in this article to share all of the many insights I gained from this book. It has helped me to understand myself a bit better, and stand a bit taller in my general prevention-focused mindset. Though I still do have promotion envy, I also see where I can and do embrace a bigger picture. Beyond myself, this book has helped me to understand other important people in my life, including my family, my friends, my co-workers, and my clients.

In a nutshell, Yes. This book is a fun example of what happens when smart writers are able to synthesize a swath of multi-disciplinary research and weave it into a practical framework that facilitates behavior change. The framework and its lessons provide me with a big picture strategy for being more thoughtful and intentional in my daily decision-making.

Adam Grant’s new book, Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, dispels the myth that nice guys are underachievers. Grant examines three styles of social interaction: Giving, Taking and Matching. He provides the research to support the positive impact and benefits of giving. Despite our instinct to take or match in competitive atmospheres, the data show that givers rise to the top.

An attentional bias is a predisposition of our attention to process certain types of information before others. Attentional biases in anxiety disorders are characterized by their intrinsic negativity, in particular, their consistency in selecting threatening stimuli instead of neutral or positive stimuli. Positive psychology can help with interventions such as working on people’s emotional maps, gratitude journals, character strengths, and mindfulness interventions.

There’s a saying that only a family will plant an oak avenue because it takes so long for it to grow, one has to be able to think of one’s grandchildren enjoying it. Prudence is taking that long view. It involves creating, assessing, and harmonizing multiple goals. It may involve making hard choices.

Last Friday I started to explore Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by looking at some of the sections I had underlined. Today I conclude with the final set of quotations. I hope you can see just how much there is to learn from this book.

Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, is so dense with interesting ideas, descriptions of research, stories, and wise commentary that I’ve almost despaired of writing about it. An earlier draft made me think of a 90-second Hamlet. But my goal is to entice you to read the book, not to boil it down. So let me completely give up on completeness and just share eight of the statements that I underlined and why they are important to me.

Yesterday I wrote about secrets of goal setting. A survey conducted a few years ago by consultancy FranklinCovey found that 35% of respondents break their resolutions by the end of January. Actually, I was surprised the figure wasn’t higher. So goal commitment is also an important area to examine more closely in positive psychology coaching for self or others.