In sports and other major league efforts, positive psychology can help all of us deal with an inescapable reality: Bad situations happen. Those that can rise above bad situations are able to perform not by getting rid of bad feelings, but by doing what they do in the presence of negative thoughts and feelings without letting them get in the way.
Grit
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AllChangeCourageGritTaking Actionwebinars_2 Positive Traits
You are Invited: Registration Form included for First PPND Webinar on Nov. 29
We are so excited to have the esteemed author Louisa Jewell as our guest for the first ever PPND webinar. Join us for a three part program: A brief interview, followed by a highpoint from her brand new book, and live questions from the audience.
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It is a great pleasure for me to interview Emilia Lahti, a researcher whose work revolves around understanding how individuals, groups, and organizations grow from challenges and come out of hardships with a newly discovered sense of strength, purpose, and adaptability. Nowadays, Emilia is working on a Ph.D. on the age-old Finnish construct of sisu.
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Sisu is a 500-year old Finnish construct, which appeals to the spirit and strength that enable people to persevere through difficulties despite feeling they have reached the end of their physical or mental capacities.
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“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!
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Going Wild for Positive Psychology
Nature can be an easy, free, and effective toolkit for supercharging positive psychology practice, supporting positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Ultimately nature gives life to everything that supports flourishing. If we learn to nurture our relationship with the natural world, perhaps we’ll find it supports us in ways we never thought possible.
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Time to take another look at the IPPA Third World Congress. How wide was the coverage? Then how deep did positive psychology go when it was embodied by the Chilean miners during their long ordeal? This was one of the stories I heard when I was at the conference.
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AllGoalsGritHabitsMotivationParenting & SchoolsTaking Action_2 Positive Traits
What a College Dropout Has to Say about Success
“What can we as a country do to significantly improve the life chances of millions of poor children?” This is the question that reporter Paul Tough asks us to tackle with him in How Children Succeed. This book is passionately written and soundly researched. If Paul Tough is right, and I hope that he is, medical professionals, social workers, educators, and parents can join one another to build communities that help all of our children succeed.
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… Thus began my history of quitting. From piano to soccer to art class… I tried new things and at the slightest hint of adversity, I quit. The desire to outshine my brother and hurl objects in the face of defeat dissipated, yet my treacherous habit of quitting remained steady. Then I met Mrs. Johnson. If I had one outrageous wish, it would be for all children to have Mrs. Johnson by their sides. Since I haven’t figured out how to clone her (yet!), I try to pass these skills on myself.
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“Thank God I grew up with one advantage—that I had to work for everything I got.” This is only one of the endlessly inspiring quotations and findings from a yearlong research project we recently completed. We asked, “Do seasoned, successful entrepreneurs exhibit a unique blend of signature character strengths and persistence compared to the general population? If so, does it matter?”
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The Good Life According to J. K. Rowling
by Amanda Horneby Amanda HorneTwo weeks ago a very good friend wrote to me, “This is wonderful – perhaps some grist for your newsletter?” She included a link to J. K. Rowling’s June 2008 Commencement Address. Rowling said she had two key themes: the benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination in finding empathy. But I found much, much more.
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(Film Review) UP: The Power of Now for New & Old Adventures
by Louis Alloroby Louis AlloroLast week I saw (from the first row, and in 3-D) Disney Pixar’s Up , an animated film about life, adventure, and friendship. The film certainly pulled on my heart strings in a very “other-people-matter” positive-psychology way. The film also speaks to this month’s theme of fun and play. […]
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My colleague John Buckley used to think of resilience as a suit of armour. Within the armour you feel invincible, safe in the knowledge that nothing can penetrate your defense system. It may be that resilience isn’t an extraordinary quality at all — that we all have the capacity to bounce back.
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Guitar Hero or High School? One Family’s Choice
It was not an easy decision for his parents to let Blake leave high school and it continues to be a hard choice. They are attacked by critics —most of whom they’ve never met. If the Peebles had taken the expected path and insisted that their son stay in school, no one would be giving them flack – even if their son was bored, depressed or learning less. Many would tell them they were doing the right thing.
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On a superficial level, it is easy to cast grit and mindfulness as polar opposites. One can mistakenly conclude that perseverance is an antonym for Kabat-Zinn’s concept of non-doing. To some, hooked on the adrenalin of achievement, of triumphing over one impossible goal and then another, the practice of mindfulness might seem like a colossal waste of valuable time better spent achieving something.
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Faith, Fear, and Motivation – The Back Story of The Stockdale Paradox
by John Yeagerby John Yeager“You must retain faith that you can prevail to greatness in the end, while retaining the discipline to confront the brutal facts of your current reality.” The Stockdale Paradox – Jim Collins
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Turns out it’s not enough to be pretty and witty–we now have to be gritty. Grit is getting some hot press at the moment, suggesting that if we want to be truly successful in life, we ain’t gonna achieve it without grit.
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How to See More Motivated Teens
When did we start calling kids “self-motivated” if they responded to someone or something outside themselves? Doesn’t the word “self” mean that it comes from the individual himself? Is someone truly self-motivated if they are doing something to get a reward from someone else? Teens who are not top students may appear to be unmotivated when we look only at their school performance.
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As we start the second quarter of 2009, our optional theme for April is Motivation and Grit. How can people help other people maintain high levels of motivation? What kinds of motivation exist, and how do they relate to achievement? What is grit, and how does it affect well-being and achievement?
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There’s one line that keeps me from dwelling on the negative when difficult things happen in my life. It’s the moral of a story my dad told me when I…