Resilience

Are you always the same person?  In some situations, you may feel stressed but strong, moving forward knowing that an adversity is at least partly within your control. In other…

In these economic times, we’ve heard you ask about how to deal with our stress and bolster up our resilience.  We hear this in the discussion sections: “I see doom…

The voices in our heads can be real buzz-kills. “I’m not whatever enough.” I should be (doing) X, I should be (doing) Y, I should be (doing) Z. Some call this voice “the gremlin” or saboteur. Whatever you call it, these voices have harmful effects. Our own, self-deprecating mind chatter can become our reality.

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.)

“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

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.

If you met Denni Chipollini before one of his speaking engagements, you’d see his communicative smile and feel his positive attitude. But you’d never guess what the story behind his energy is.

How do you want to feel in your life? In your work? Doug Newburg interviewed hundreds of world-class performers, including athletes, business leaders, artists, and surgeons, to find out what made them tick. A consistent pattern emerged from their stories.

There has been a widespread discussion on whether or not positive psychology is effective from a business perspective. There are strong links between positive psychology and organizational performance, many captured in work in the field of Positive Organizational Behavior (POB). Here I summarize a longer, recently published paper.

For individuals going through divorce, a main concern is how to effectively deal with stress. Their transitional states of life often leave them feeling powerless, scared, and depressed. … Mindfulness is an important part of the work I do with clients. Specifically, I help train them to adopt a mindful approach to life circumstances that are largely outside of their control. Within this framework, I introduce changing one’s thoughts in order to change the resulting feeling or behavior. …

Meditation practice may still be viewed by some as a relic of 1960’s counter-culture or a sequestered religious practice to attain “enlightenment.” But scientists now seriously study mindfulness practices, and report a wide range of interesting findings. How does meditation work, and how best can coaches bring this research to our clients?

In a recent study, I found that a child’s gifts may actually be at odds with the way he is expected to learn: the very gifts that will help him in life, hurt him in school. The conflict between teens’ gifts and school demands is a good reason to question whether our approach to education is best for teens. Yet there is an even more fundamental reason to re-think this myth.

The character strength, Love and be Loved does not appear frequently in books about organizational behavior. However I did find a concept that may be a good proxy for it: Trust. Michael Pratt and Kurt Davis describe a commitment-based model of trust with three parts: positive elements, negative elements, and the bonds between positive and negative elements.

What about when change is imposed on us? What does positive psychology say? Several of my close friends have lost their jobs recently, or are in consultation with their employers about being made redundant.

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.

Law schools are beginning to take seriously the challenge to produce lawyers both capable of good lawyering and good relationships, skilled advocacy, and without the fuel of anger, contempt, derision, scorn, and humiliation. Further, we are finding that many practicing lawyers both want to change and can change.

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.