Love

When my parents responded to a drunk, despondent and aggravated old woman with compassion and respect, they did not know that this kindness would reach the child quietly listening in the next room, plant seeds in his soul, and continue to grow outward for forty years. Whether we are seeking peace in middle school or the Middle East, in most circumstances, the most effective strategy is the one that increases the amount of humanity between people.

According to several news reports, what Inamori did to re-engage employees and lead Japanese Airlines back into the black was to insist on compulsory philosophy sessions for all staff, washed down with free beer. I was so intrigued by this story that I wanted to delve a bit deeper. I hoped Kazuo Inamori’s business philosophy might yield some positive psychology gems like the ones I recently found with Honda.

Some new research from René Proyer and colleagues at the University of Zurich suggests that not all strengths are equal and that strengths-based interventions should focus on those strengths which are correlated highly with life satisfaction. But fortunately for those who do not have curiosity, zest, gratitude, hope and/or love in their signature strengths, all is not lost!

In Malaysia, we are celebrating 15 days of the lunar new year beginning January 23, with much ado. The expressway has been packed with tens of thousands of vehicles moving North and South depending on where Home is. I thought about the reasons for going home in that crazy traffic. Most return home for filial reasons, some with great joy and expectation, while others go home obligatorily. From these thoughts and from reading Hollis’s book about the second half of life, I came up with 5 lessons about life in families.

Under the broad umbrella of Positive Psychology, Leary and Guadagno have related research and theories of the hypo-egoic state, a “psychological state characterized by relatively little involvement of the self,” to the achievement of optimal functioning. That’s not something you would typically find in a basic book on Positive Psychology or happiness.

At a recent leadership conference, a speaker discussed new research on high performance workplaces in Australia. He showed that some positive emotions are highly correlated with performance. However feeling loved rated as low, at almost equivalent levels in the high and low performance organizations. In the discussion, nobody mentioned the word, love. A no-go area? Contrast this to Geoff Aigner’s work on Leadership and Love, where he makes the case that leadership and leading is about growth, “…and things grow with love.”

In her keynote speech at this summer’s IPPA Congress, Barbara Fredrickson invited the audience to suspend their ideas about love for 45 minutes in order to absorb her definition, and then see what resulted when they put her definition together with what they already knew.

For twenty years my dear friend Ann and I have been watching the Oprah Winfrey show, so it seemed appropriate that we watch Oprah’s last show together. Through the power of storytelling and television, Oprah brought to life many lessons taught by positive psychologists around the world. She used her final show to share her greatest lessons from 25 years of the Oprah show. Here they are…

What should we expect when we lose someone who is important to us? Is there an evolutionary purpose for sadness? What does it mean that people also laugh at funerals? What distinguishes resilient mourning?