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Man + Shed = Happiness
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Man + Shed = Happiness

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

Recently British television rebroadcast a series of programs called Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home (#ManMadeHome), featuring the well-known designer, writer, and presenter.

Since the late 90s, McCloud has presented the Grand Designs series where every program focuses on the efforts of people (usually a couple) to design and build their own house. Over the years I’ve watched these grand designs take shape, many wonderful, beautiful, awe-inspiring homes have been built, some subterranean, some located in far-away forests with no sewer services, and some created from converting old buildings, like windmills, water tanks and concrete bunkers.

As with other reality TV shows, the design and construction techniques aren’t the main source of entertainment. This comes from witnessing the blood, sweat, and tears of people like you and me, as their plans drift, structural problems emerge, and budgets run out. Thankfully most Grand Designs couples emerge from their building projects triumphant, elated, and proud (and also relieved, substantially poorer, and with more wrinkles and grey hairs!)

The Man Made Home series is slightly different in that it’s about McCloud’s own attempts to build a shed in woodland in the southwest of England. It may not be the same in other countries, but in the UK there is a long running joke about the importance to a man of owning a shed of his own, a shed he can call “home.” Apparently it’s what every grown male wants. The shed represents a refuge from the stress of work, from noisy, demanding kids, from the responsibilities of adult life. It’s a place where a man can be happy with his own company, alone with his power tools.

In this series the main challenge is that the cabin should be sustainable and eco-friendly, so all the materials have to be recycled, or as McCloud puts it, “repurposed,” stuff originally built for one specific function but now used for another. Oh, and he has to do all the work himself.  This project is about making and doing, rather than buying and consuming.

Man Made Home meets PERMA

So what has all this got to do with positive psychology you might be wondering? Well, very early on McCloud talks about happiness: we seem to be working harder and consuming more than ever, he comments, but for all the stuff that comes with 21st century living, we don’t seem to be much happier. An estimated 6 million Brits feel anxious and depressed.

“So, can living a simpler life make us happier?” he asks.  Of course he hopes this “shed of his imagination” will be a bolt-hole, a retreat from the stress and madness of the modern world. As one of his friends put it, “It’ll be a place to play in and a place to enjoy.” But very quickly it becomes much, much more than that. It isn’t just the outcome (the cabin itself) that’s important, it’s the process of making it. As the project unfolds through the spring and summer of 2012, and the foundations of the cabin are laid, the walls go up, and roof goes on, we see Seligman’s PERMA model of well-being in action:

P – Positive Emotions

The great thing about watching this series is that it’s jam-packed with positivity, optimism, hope, and good humor. It’s not that everything always works out as planned, far from it. But even when things go wrong, there’s an enduring sense that whatever happens, we’ll learn from it and move on. On top of that, there’s

  • the sheer excitement of using explosives to split tree trunks for the initial cabin structure (a technique borrowed from the USA apparently)
  • the fun of making (and drinking!) home-made beer for the Topping Out ceremony
  • luxuriating in an outdoor hot tub made from the housing of an old 737 jet engine
  • appreciating the beauty of glass handmade from sand, the luxury of a hand-woven alpaca wool bath robe, and a reclining chair lovingly crafted from a rusting tractor chassis, scrap metal dredged from the bottom of the canal, and a deer hide that otherwise would have been composted
  • inspiration from observing and experiencing the strengths and expertise of other people, along with the joy of working with them and learning from them.

Woodland E – Engagement

The experience of flow (complete absorption in the task) is evident on many levels in creating the Man Made Home, more often than not in learning a new skill from other people or experimenting with them, for example in

  • making and laying the cabin’s cheese and mud floor  (a medieval recipe!)
  • making superglue from rabbit skins and human urine
  • learning to shear an alpaca (the wool is later woven into a bathrobe)
  • tanning the deer skin to produce soft leather for the veranda’s reclining chair

What’s interesting is that flow seems to arise quite readily from pushing yourself to try new experiences and learn new things, stepping outside your comfort zone. There’s no need to draw up life lists or plan big adventures in order to be happy. As McCloud says, “We can all have small adventures every weekend.”

R – Relationships

McCloud realizes very quickly that he needs the support and expertise of other people in order to complete the cabin of his dreams. These include:

  • Kev-the-Pipe, a specialist in off-grid heating and plumbing who helps create a wood-burning stove from an old jewelry safe and plumbs in the outdoor hot tub
  • Sidney Alford, the septuagenarian who splits the 10 ton oak trunks with explosives when hand-tools can’t do the job
  • Will, McCloud’s Man Friday, who can build any tool for any purpose and turn his hand to anything
  • The like-minded friends of friends, who turn up to finish cutting the 2500 timber tiles needed for the roof just when McCloud’s enthusiasm and energy are waning.

As McCloud himself says, “It’s impossible to do everything in the world by yourself. You need help, you need support, and then you need friends with whom to enjoy the fruits of your labors!”

M – Meaning

In a very short space of time the overall project and the many steps along the way take on a significance of their own for the people involved. Making stuff yourself, turning scrap or waste materials into useful objects with your own hands isn’t just enjoyable and efficient, “It has more story, more meaning,” than anything you can buy in a shops. In the Man Made Home, meaning also comes from making a connection with the world outside, for example, making the cabin from oak trees felled 50 yards away and making glass for the windows from sand, working with nature rather than against her.

A – Achievement

This is probably the most obvious PERMA attribute, because the outcome of the year-long project is something tangible, a unique, beautiful, hand-crafted wooden cabin, entirely sustainable and eco-friendly, something to be enjoyed, savored, and appreciated for many years to come, both alone and in the company of friends.

Five lessons from the Man Made Home

Personally I think this series makes a great teaching tool for students of positive psychology; there are so many different insights into what happiness is, where it comes from, how to apply PERMA and so on. For me the main learning points are as follows:

  • The five pathways outlined in PERMA are actually all around us.
     
  • In the song Beautiful Boy, John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” So we need to notice these pathways, appreciating the opportunities there are in everyday life to follow them.
     
  • Finding ways to connect with nature and the world around you is an essential part of the picture.
     
  • Making things is a vastly undervalued happiness-inducing activity, and so much more valuable to us, on so many different levels, than consuming.
     
  • Enduring happiness may be best thought of as something you create, like a story. It’s formed over time and with effort, from what you do, who you do it with, and how you do it, rather than something you purchase off the shelf.

At the end, when his hand-built cabin in the woods is finished, does Kevin McCloud look happy? You bet! “I’ve discovered a secret truth,” he confides, “that out of making spring relationships  – with materials, place, a building, and people – which can make us all a bit happier.”

So, what are you making at the moment?
 

 
References

Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home on Channel 4: UK link, Australia link, Elsewhere in the world, available on YouTube. Here’s a Youtube link for the first episode. Hashtag: #ManMadeHome.

Scrapbooks from Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home series

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing

Images
Kevin McCloud courtesy of bortescristian
Woodland courtesy of Timothy Crawshaw
Weaving courtesy of John Thorp

May 3, 2013 4 comments
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Savoring the Festive Spirit
AllGratitudeHappiness ExercisesHome and FamilyHumorPathway 1 "Pleasure"Positive EmotionPositive FeelingsRelationshipsSavoring / In-the-MomentStressTaking Action_1 Positive Experiences

Savoring the Festive Spirit

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

“The aim of life is appreciation.” ~ G. K. Chesterton

The holiday season and the New Year period can be a pretty stressful time. We’re inclined to think that everything must be perfect, and that includes the gifts we give, the food we prepare, the warmth of our welcome to guests, what we wear to the office party and so on. Often we also take on the responsibility for ensuring that everyone around us, our children, family, and friends, all have a good time – and that can be extremely hard work! So what’s the antidote to festive stress? Well, I think this time of year provides us with some ideal opportunities for savoring: noticing, appreciating, and enhancing the things which are already positive in our lives – and you’d be hard pressed to find anything easier to do. The rules of savoring are simple to follow, and you don’t need any special skills or equipment. In fact anyone, young or old, rich or poor, can learn how to savor and reap the benefits.

What is savoring?

Savoring is about slowing down and paying conscious attention to all your senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell). You stretch out the experience, and concentrate on noticing what it is that you really enjoy, whether it’s sipping a glass of chilled vintage champagne at the New Year’s Eve party, looking forward to seeing your children’s faces as they open their Christmas presents, or recollecting the time you played one of the three wise men in the school nativity play. By learning to savor, you can increase your capacity to notice what is good about your life and thus appreciate it more fully. In doing so, you can maximize your positive emotions and overcome the built-in survival mechanism called the negativity bias.

The flavors of savoring

The great thing about savoring is that it’s such a flexible technique, coming in so many different flavors. For example, think of all the different things that you might luxuriate or bask in, relish, treasure, or cherish. You can choose something tangible (like a warm bubble bath) or something intangible (like a lifelong friendship) to notice, appreciate, and enhance. You can use some or all of your senses when savoring, and you can savor across time dimensions, focusing on things in the past, present, or future. This gives you enormous scope when looking for opportunities to savor in your everyday life.

How to savor in 5 easy steps:

The ‘rules’ of savoring are very straightforward and easy to remember:

  1. Slow down.
  2. Pay attention.
  3. Use all your senses – touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing.
  4. S-t-r-e-t-c-h out the experience for as long as you can.
  5. Reflect on your enjoyment.

It’s important to remember that savoring is a process not an outcome – in other words it’s something we do, not something we get.

Over the next 12 days, try some of the following savoring suggestions:

Savoring the future

  • Anticipate the excitement and delight on your children’s faces as they open their presents on Christmas morning.
  • Look forward to welcoming friends into your home.
  • Anticipate the strong community bonds created by attending local carol services or neighborhood parties.
  • Look forward to a fresh start in 2012, the chance to set new goals, and the green shoots of Spring.

Savoring the present

  • Relish that box of dark chocolate pralines that you received from Auntie Joyce.
  • Drink in the aroma of cloves, tangerines, and cinnamon of the mulled wine as it simmers on the stove.
  • Luxuriate in a warm bath scented with the fragrance of neroli oil, jasmine, and rose petals.
  • Turn off your mobile phone so that you can snuggle up with your kids on the sofa and laugh at the latest Disney movie.

Savoring the past

  • Reminisce, with others if you can, about remarkable holidays in the past, such as the time when you built a mammoth snowman on the front lawn, volunteered at a downtown soup kitchen, or glimpsed reindeer in Lapland.
  • Ring a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while and talk about the good old days.
  • Get out the photo album, and spend 15 minutes remembering all those special occasions.
  • Pick a prominent accomplishment from 2011 – an exam passed, a promotion gained, or weight lost – and savor your memories of the achievement.

Remember to take your time, to imagine the small details of the positive experience using all your senses if you can, and to share it with others.

How not to savor!

It’s worth bearing in mind that there are several things which can completely spoil your experience of savoring, or fail to get it off the ground. These include:

  • Killjoy thinking about how the experience might be improved
  • Analyzing in the moment why an experience is positive
  • Rushing

And finally….What will you savor?

There are so many different ways to savor that there will be at least one which suits you. But why not use every spare ten minutes this festive season to try them all, and let us hear about your experiences?

Happy Savoring!

 

 
References

Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007) Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Quoidbach, J., Berry, E. V., Hansenne, M. & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Positive emotion regulation and well-being: Comparing the impact of eight savoring and dampening strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(5), 368-373. From the abstract:

“The present study examines the relative impact of the main positive emotion regulation strategies on two components of well-being: positive affect (PA) and life satisfaction (LS). A total of 282 participants completed measures of PA, LS, overall happiness, and the savoring and dampening strategies they typically used. Results show that when experiencing positive events, focusing attention on the present moment and engaging in positive rumination promoted PA, whereas telling others promoted LS. In contrast, being distracted diminished PA, while focusing on negative details and engaging in negative rumination reduced LS. … our results further show that … typically using various strategies rather than a few specific ones … was beneficial to overall happiness. Our findings suggest that there are several independent ways to make the best (or the worst) out of our positive emotions, and that the cultivation of multiple savoring strategies might be required to achieve lasting happiness.”

Images

Christmas Lights by Sirenz Lorraine: 
Bubbles by ion-bogdan dumitrescu
Winter Frost by tlindenbaum

December 23, 2011 10 comments
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Who is Forgiveness For?
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Who is Forgiveness For?

written by Prakriti Tandon

The Story

Some 21 months ago, my mother was the victim of an armed robbery. Barely a month into our MAPP year, two unassuming gunmen posed as University students looking for housing and manipulated their way into the office that my parents have presided over for nearly 4 decades. They pulled out guns and blunt-force objects from beneath their jackets, bound my mother’s hands and feet with duct tape, and demanded to know “where the money was.”

My parents had for years kept a reserve of cash in the office for contractors who generally lived hand-to-mouth and needed advances not just to start jobs, but immediate cash payments upon completion of a task. My trusting parents used something of an honor code in their place of work, leaving these funds in each worker’s folder for them to access when they came to the office. There had been petty thefts and burglaries over the years, but the system worked better than not, and despite my mother’s wariness and occasional protests, my father’s compassion for his workers won out, and the system continued.

Bound hands

Alas, a day would come when their trust would be abused in the most grotesque way. As the first armed assailant, the shorter and stockier of the two, ripped more duct tape from the roll to wrap around my mother’s head and mouth, she inquired in her mild and steady voice, “Why are you doing this, son? What do you want?” The perpetrator responded to her maternal sobriquet with an epithet. “Shut up bitch!” he shouted, and struck my gentle mother in the face with the long blunt weapon he wielded.

The FBI agent handling the case still smiles when he hears how my mother called the lead perpetrator “son,” as only a mild and compassionate mother could. By now, after several phone conversations and face-to-face meetings with my mother, countless hours spent studying the details of the case, and years of face-to-face encounters with the most unsavory specimens of our humanity, he has a finely tuned radar for good and evil. His smile, a delicate Duchenne fusion of admiration and bewildered awe, conveys his recognition of my mother as the very best of humanity in the face of the very worst.

What the Story Teaches

Hold in the light

Revisiting this experience tempts me to tears every time, not just because it is my beloved mother I must envision in this distressing scenario, but also because of the utter perversity of one human being responding so violently to the diametrically opposed compassion of another.

For my mother, revisiting this trauma reminds her (in her words) “to hold them in the light.” Translation: forgive their transgressions and seek not their demise, but their upliftment. From whence does this transcendence come? How is my mother able not just to allay her anger and to practice forgiveness, but actually to desire the elevation of her aggressors?

My mother came upon one piece of writing in particular in the aftermath of her trauma that she reverted to time and again to help her navigate the path of healing. Let it be known, she should have earned an honorary MAPP degree for her unquenchable thirst for all of our reading materials. She drank up every book I brought home, and still desired more. My one-time college professor mother and self-professed literary fiend just couldn’t get enough (while I perhaps had more than I could chew), and it was while poring over one of her favorites, Sonia Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness, that she came upon an excerpt on forgiveness.

Learning to Forgive

In this section, entitled “Learning to Forgive,” Lyubomirsky emphasizes that forgiveness is “something that you do for yourself and not for the person that has wronged you.” I marvel at the counter-intuitive nature of this statement; don’t we generally think of forgiveness as an altruistic act?

It was in watching my mother navigate this ordeal that I understood that the true benefit of forgiveness lies in the more selfish act of allowing it into our lives. During these difficult months, my mother faced a potential punishment that was even weightier than any the perpetrators might receive. She risked life imprisonment from her own anger, her own “unforgiveness,” as Worthington and Scherer label the stress reaction that most victims of an interpersonal transgression experience immediately following the transgression.

Nelson Mandela

Lyubomirsky relays a story to underscore this point: former President Bill Clinton asked Nelson Mandela how he was able to bring himself to forgive his jailers, and Mandela responded, “When I walked out of the gate I knew that if I continued to hate these people I was still in prison.” Forgiveness seems to be a necessity, not a choice, if one is to move forward in life free, weightless, resilient. Indeed, Worthington and Scherer find that “Forgiveness can be used as an emotion-focused coping strategy to reduce a stressful reaction to a transgression.”

Other studies indicate the same, a positive correlation between forgiveness and resilience. Doctoral researcher Broyles finds a statistically significant, though low, correlation between forgiveness and resilience.

A Resilient Tree

So what might we do to bolster the relationship between forgiveness and resilience? How might we maximize the utility of forgiveness as a tool toward springing back to flourishing after an adverse event?

Stephen Post talks at length about reaching out to help others as a solid avenue toward flourishing, and I can just imagine the benefits to victims who seek to forgive not just to enhance their own flourishing, but also to embrace the elevation of their own aggressors. But that’s a study for another day (readers: please feel free to be inspired and conduct a study on this! Study participants 1 and 2: My mother and Nelson Mandela).

As the trial date approaches and my mother prepares to face her aggressors once more, she is a paragon of forgiveness and the consequent resilience. No doubt she’ll have a copy of The How of Happiness on-hand to steady her course should she feel her anger rise up or her resolve weaken.

Editor’s Note: Paki’s article appears in the chapter on Forgiveness in the book, Character Strengths Matter.

 

 

References

Broyles, L.C. (2005). Resilience: Its relationship to forgiveness in older adults. Doctoral Dissertation. Retrieved from gradworks.umi.com. (3177245).

Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Books.

Post, S. and Neimark, J. (2007). Why Good Things Happen to Good People: How to Live a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life by the Simple Act of Giving. New York: Broadway Books.

Worthington, E. and Scherer, M. (2004). Forgiveness is an emotion-focused coping strategy that can reduce health risks and promote health resilience: Theory, review, and hypotheses. Psychology & Health, 19, 385-405.

Images
Bound and Gagged courtesy of Meredith Farmer
Hold in the light courtesy of Cayusa
Nelson Mandela courtesy of World Economic Forum
Resilient Juniper Tree courtesy of Stefan

July 21, 2011 7 comments
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When Valuing Happiness Backfires
AllGoalsGratitudeHappiness ExercisesMindfulnessOptimismPathway 1 "Pleasure"Pathway 2 "Engagement / Flow"Pathway 3 "Meaning"Positive EmotionPositive FeelingsRelationshipsResilienceStressTaking Action_1 Positive Experiences

When Valuing Happiness Backfires

written by Bridget Grenville-Cleave

Questions Questions

Questions Questions
Courtesy of Helga Weber

My friend Lauren (not her real name) once told me the story of how, in the middle of her depression a few years ago, she often stopped in the middle of a very positive experience to ask herself “…but  am I really happy?” The effect, she said, was like bursting a balloon. Even though she might have been feeling pretty upbeat to start with, posing the question caused her to immediately crash back down into depression.
 

I was reminded of Lauren’s story when I came across new research by psychologists Iris Mauss, Maya Tamir, Craig Anderson, and Nicole Savino, which suggests that valuing happiness itself could be self-defeating and actually lead to disappointment.  

How Can That Be? The Argument

The first point goes like this. What you value determines your goals, and most people work towards their goals in order to achieve what they value. For example if you value academic excellence you’ll study harder, and all things being equal, you’ll get better grades. Applying the same logic to happiness means that if you value happiness highly, you’ll work harder to achieve it, and all things being equal, you’ll experience greater happiness.

So far so good?

The second point, which makes it a bit more complicated, is that what you value also determines the standards you use to measure your achievements. So if you value academic excellence you’ll  study harder and if you fall short of your standards then you’ll be disappointed.   I recall one of my UEL MAPP classmates, an exceptionally gifted student, who was virtually distraught at receiving 91% for an assignment because it was below her standard. And yes, we did find it difficult to empathize!

Paradox

In terms of valuing happiness and having it as your goal, you can probably see the looming paradox. If you fall short of your happiness standard, the ensuing feeling of disappointment is incompatible with your goal of feeling happy.  Iris Mauss and her collaborators hypothesize that people who value happiness highly set happiness standards that are difficult to obtain, which leads them to feel disappointed when they don’t achieve them. Paradoxically, the more they want happiness, it’s suggested, the more happiness decreases.  I don’t know if valuing something highly always means you set higher standards, but let’s assume that this is the case.
 

The third important point is context – for example if you value academic achievement you’re more likely to feel disappointed if you fail an easy exam than a hard one. The researchers suggest that the same logic applies to happiness, and that you’re more likely to be disappointed that you aren’t happy when you have every reason to be (such as at your own birthday party).

What the Studies Tell Us

The first study Iris Mauss and her colleagues conducted was a correlation study, using a range of measures of well-being and life stress over the past 18 months to test whether the degree to which people value happiness is associated with happiness and well-being. Valuing happiness was associated with lower hedonic balance, lower psychological well-being, less satisfaction with life, and higher depressive symptoms. At lower (but not higher) life stress, the more participants valued happiness, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction and the higher their symptoms of depression.   The study suggests that under conditions of low (but not high) life stress, the more people valued happiness, the worse they felt.

Happy Feet

Jumping for Joy?

The second study examined causal effects by manipulating the extent to which people value happiness using a fake newspaper article praising the importance of happiness, and assessing their emotional state after watching a pre-tested happy or sad film clip. The results suggest that people who’d read the newspaper article were in a less positive emotional state than those in the control condition after watching the happy film clip, but not after the sad film clip.

The researchers conclude that valuing happiness can lead people to feel less happy precisely in those situations which should actually make them feel happy.  I wonder if this was at the bottom of Lauren’s predicament. In positive situations, expectations for happiness are high. As Iris Mauss and colleagues point out, it’s difficult to attribute any failure to be happy to outside circumstances.

There are several unusual or limiting features to this research: all participants were female, the sample size was small (Study 1 = 59, study 2 = 69) and a large proportion were European American (81% and 57.7% respectively).  That said, I think the researchers should be given extra bonus points for using ordinary members of the public in Study 1. They urge caution in their interpretations: for example  there may be other things apart from disappointment which mediate the effects of valuing happiness, and valuing happiness may not be self-defeating in all cases.  Valuing happiness could lead to greater happiness if you have the right tools (perhaps practicing some of the evidence-based  positive psychology interventions?). Or it may help if you define happiness more broadly than just an emotional state, for example, as the models of flourishing by Felicia Huppert and Martin Seligman suggest.

Suggestions to Avoid Backfires

So if you’re a bit like Lauren, questioning whether you really are happy, here are some suggestions

  • Aim low! Reduce your standard of happiness – expecting to experience a state of constant bliss or ecstasy is unrealistic. Far better to aim for the less exciting but much more attainable state of contentment.
     
  • Broaden your view of happiness. Don’t just focus on pleasure. As various positive psychology models suggest, there’s a lot more to happiness than just feeling good. Seligman’s PERMA model starts with positive emotions but also includes engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment. Felicia Huppert’s flourishing model includes engagement, meaning, self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality, self-determination and relationships alongside positive emotions.
     
  • Practice mindfulness. Or as Steven Hayes, originator of acceptance and commitment therapy would say, “Get out of your mind and into your life.”
     
  • And at the risk of getting harassed by those pesky Goal Police, can I also suggest not having happiness as your goal??

Let me know what you think.

 

 

References:

Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people happy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 1-9. Abstract.

Hayes, S.C. & Smith, S.X. (2005). Get Out of Your Mind & Into Your Life: The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. USA: New Harbinger Publications.

Huppert, F. & So, T. (2009). What percentage of people in Europe are flourishing and what characterises them? Prepared for the OECD/ISQOLS meeting “Measuring subjective well-being: an opportunity for NSOs?” Florence – July 23/24, 2009

Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. New York: Free Press.

Images

Questions courtesy of  Helga Weber

Paradox courtesy of Anders Sandberg

Happy Feet courtesy of LULZ Photography

May 25, 2011 27 comments
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Resilience (Book Review)
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Resilience (Book Review)

written by Fiona Parashar

Editor’s Note: We recently reissued the first book in the Positive Psychology News series, Resilience: How to navigate life’s curves, with an added chapter that pulls together all the points made in the original 16 chapters.

Companion Dog

   Companion Dog

Never in our generation have we needed resilience so much en masse, as we find ourselves in times of austerity, budget cuts, unprecedented job losses, divorce numbers, mental illness escalating and on it goes… Resilience: How to navigate life’s curves, edited by Senia Maymin and Kathryn Britton, is a collection of some of the finest articles on the subject selected from Positive Psychology News Daily. The cream book, of 130 pages, is a good size to drop into a briefcase for an uplifting read on the train or to gently rest on a side table as an encouraging reminder that advice is near should life start to get bumpy.

   Cover image: Compass for Navigation

The book is divided into four parts: resilience in advance, resilience in the moment, resilience over time, and resilience in action. Already reading the contents page you feel a lightening of the mental load, a sense that help is at hand. A few guiding thoughts exist in these headings, for example, the very thought that we can plan resilience in advance is resilience-enhancing in itself.
 

This is an uplifting book offering inspiring and healing concepts such as the qualities leading to resilience being so commonplace that they have been coined “ordinary magic.” The introduction sets the scene well with a reminder that positive psychology is not positive thinking; it is about how to flourish in the bad times as well as the good.

We need to be able to understand and activate resilience. Positive psychology is like many of the human sciences, it ought to be riveting. After all, it is describing us as humans in all our glory. But somehow, often it falls short of the mark. Often the jargon is enough to create an immediate switch-off for people outside academia. This book shows us, through a well-constructed series of articles, how to build resilience in our life – in layman’s talk.

Belly Laugh

The layout is inviting, a dip in, dip out sort of a book. The mix of style and approaches means we’re able to access the research on resilience from many different angles. So often with self-help books, you retain only 1 or 2 key points. With 17 chapters in this tome, each one suggesting resilience in different contexts, sharing models, tips, ideas and research, there is an opportunity to take away 1 or 2 nuggets from each chapter, such is the diversity of writers and the richness of stories, borrowed, shared or re-told. In these stories are hidden tips and techniques and a light touch about the science that supports it.
 

Each chapter ends with a “discussion”. The inclusion of comments in response to each article as it was published online creates a lively format, similar to the feeling of connection you get at the Q&A section after listening to a great keynote speaker. This part, an opportunity to genuinely connect with the speaker, is often more accessible and down to earth. Similarly in this book the “discussion” helps to bring to life the manner in which we can apply some of the ideas to our own lives.

  APE as a Resilience Mnemonic

These discussions really bring the book to life and differentiate it from a self-help book. So often, when reading self-help you’re left with that feeling of… yes I know what I should do to… lose weight, get happier, manage my time better etc …but and it is a big BUT … how do I motivate myself to do it?

First Steps

The fight back from the baffled reader is reflected through the voice of Jeff. I found his ripostes, queries, and clarifying questions particularly rewarding. I laughed out loud with recognition as the discussions voiced what I, as a business coach sharing positive psychology, often get faced with. It’s when the theory hits the real world, like the rubber hits the track, with a squeal and lots of spinning until some traction takes place. The discussion points are the traction that make the theory come to life… and helps us readers (I include myself here, even though I have a masters degree in positive psychology) to “GET IT”.
 

I suspect this book would be rather a good gift for a teacher, nurse, coach, therapist, trauma worker or anyone who would like to be up to date with resilience and wanting ideas of models, tips, exercises or stories to use with or share with their clients, patients or pupils. Or for anyone who might simply want help on how to navigate one of life’s curves.

 

 

Resilience has a companion book: Gratitude: How to Appreciate Life’s Gifts. Here’s a link to the review by Aaron Jarden. In 2015, we added a third book to the series, Character Strengths Matter: How to Life a Full Life.

Cover image courtesy of art_es_anna
All other images are reproductions of illustrations from the book, drawn by artist Kevin Gillespie. Check out his Web site for other illustrations of this book and the book on gratitude.

May 9, 2011 0 comment
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