Gratitude

The “Positive Psychology Pyramid” is an approach to organizing positive psychology research to help those seeking “better” to move forward. What’s your metaphor or organizing image? (For those who like an organic theme, see the end of the post.)

Remember the game “hot potato” that you played as a kid? Blame is like that. No one wants to be left holding it, since you might get burned. …All of us have times when we are clueless, and we, too, pass the blame to keep from feeling shame or embarrassment. Do you find yourself using the passive voice, saying, “Well, yes, mistakes were made.” But by whom?

“… but just to be on the safe side, we’ll need to operate.” Those are words many of us will have to deal with at some point in our lives…

Love is … . From that sentence stub, poets, philosophers, and psychologists have taken flight. Now, Barbara Fredrickson gives us a new angle on love in her book Positivity. She also discusses the 10 positive emotions that her research subjects have recounted as most common. Love, while most common, is listed last — and it has to be.

We all want the best for our kids. So when we urge a teen to be the best possible student, it’s often because we know this will get him into the “best” colleges—and we assume this will lead to the best life. On the flip side, we assume that if you’re not a top student, you won’t have a wonderful life. We assume wrong.

On the back of a holiday photo I received recently was a troubling note that belied the lovely smiling faces of the melded family on the other side. In the…

You cultivate three things in the process of building a Gratitude Chain™: awareness of what and for whom you are grateful, curiosity about what makes something you value possible, and memory of what is good. And when you link together your Gratitude Chains™, you experience a powerful appreciation of the important people and things in your life.

Wishes touch on so many aspects of positive psychology. 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.

It’s that time of year again. If you are anything like me – Type A, and goal-oriented – your annual list of New Year’s resolutions is beginning to take shape. In prior years, I would construct my new resolutions on the shaky foundation of last year’s failures. …This year, I am determined to change it up and see what happens when I focus on what has worked rather than what has not.

A few weeks back, I overheard a friend bemoan the lack of pure altruism in the world. Pure altruism is the act of doing something good to increase another person’s well-being for which the giver receives no benefit. As many of us prepare for holiday season highlighted by traditions of giving, I felt it might be a good time to give the old philosophical search for pure altruism a closer look. The lack of pure altruism among humans is a truly beautiful thing.

Editor’s Note:  What holiday gifts will you be giving in a few days?  Here are some of our favorite gifts related to positive psychology concepts.  Please post additional gift thoughts…

Recently married, I have had cause to write numerous thank you notes lately. And with the holidays coming up, we will all have reasons to thank people for gifts. We know that Miss Manners insists that we write thank you notes, but aside from common courtesy, what are the benefits of thank you notes?

What helps in times of adversity? First, we can build better personal strategies for dealing with trouble if we understand how to calm our bodies. Second, we can keep our minds from being totally filled with thoughts of the adversity. Third, we be aware of our ordinary assets.

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? 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. […]

Let’s make this December a creative challenge: an opportunity to invent new rituals for being with family and friends.   In the throes of this recession, many of us are…

Happy Thanksgiving from PPND!

And with big thanks to you: the reader and the commenter, the positive psychology researcher and practitioner, the questioner and the question-answerer. Thank you!

~ Us

(Collected GRATITUDE TIPS inside)

Gratitude is a bridge to your positive future:  It is your passageway to success. Think about a bridge crossing a river.  It must have strong supporting foundations on both banks. …

Fear and panic are not great external forces; they are powerful internal ones, generated deep in the brain. George Valliant notes, “negative emotions are often crucial for survival—but only in time present. The positive emotions are more expansive and help us to broaden and build.”

I have been privileged this week to speak to the Affordable Housing Conference of the Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State. They invited me to lead a workshop on managing energy, helping people avoid burnout for themselves and for their staffs.

“…but it can get you a better class of enemy” (Spike Milligan, 1918-2002). On Monday, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported that Professor Richard Layard, Labour peer and eminent economist turned Happiness Tsar, got his wake-up call when he realized that over a certain point (quoted as being $20,000 per year), money does not make you very much happier. Of course we now know that the argument is a bit more complicated than that.