Motivation

How Using Our Talents in Service of Others May Help Keep Obsessive Passion in Check

Participants are not likely to want to listen to a workshop again. But when it is a game, participants want to play it again. It means we have another opportunity to help them internalize the idea of a growth mindset.

Getting Grit is like getting a coach between book covers. It is a clear, application-oriented book full of reflection questions, activities, and exercises for people who want to build authentic grit that will make a difference not just for themselves, but also for the communities around them.

Andy Molinsky lays out a comprehensive system of problems and corresponding solutions clearly and smoothly. Many people will find in his book the means to make the hard climb into a better, wider world.

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.

In the end, money matters.

Wisdom and people matter most.

Like any business leader, I wanted to be informed of what my employees were up to, so I requested that all of us write status reports. But status reports can become boring and sometimes feel pointless. What does science tell us about making them both a joy to write and a joy to read?

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.

As I ponder the ways I’ve managed my own procrastination, I keep remembering something I observed in college: I have a procrastination hierarchy, and I can manipulate it to make myself get moving on a particular task.

On Sunday morning at the IPPA World Congress, I heard Barbara Fredrickson give a keynote address about a fundamental challenge of our time, helping people build healthy habits. She suggested that finding enjoyment in healthy behaviors can create an upward spiral. Liking leads to wanting. Wanting affects the spontaneous thoughts that pop up in peoples’ minds. Those thoughts lead to small choices that affect health. Imagine my amazement when I saw her positivity spiral in action in the airport food court just a few hours later.

As a mother, I knew what was best for him, I told myself. I could not trust his teenage judgment. But something deeper prompted me to question my reasoning. Did I fear knowing his goals in case they were different from mine? Was I running away from the possibility that his ideals of success would not measure up to societal standards? Would I be able to face it if they didn’t? I slowly began to see myself hiding behind the guise of motherhood.

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.

Living authentically comes naturally to those with the signature strength of Integrity, Honesty, and Authenticity. For others, more thought and action may be required to ramp up authenticity levels. Here are three evidence-driven approaches to consider, along with three ways authenticity benefit us in addition to increasing well-being.

Victor Strecher summarizes it well. “What’s the point of high energy and living a long time if we think life sucks? When we have purpose, we want to be at our best so we can better serve that purpose. Purpose is akin to the root system of a tree, grounding and feeding the whole organism so it can flourish and thrive, no matter what the exterior conditions are.”

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?

“Yet!” is a one-word positive intervention. Let’s say you’ve tried something and the results are disappointing. When you say, “I can’t do it!” good friends will chime in “Yet!” to remind you that skills are not fixed and inborn. They grow with practice and effort. So what if you can’t do it yet!

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.