executive coaching

Positive Psychology

The squeaky wheel gets the oil – why does bad triumphs over good most times?

Our brain gravitates to looking at glass half empty, it helped us cope, service.  We look at what went wrong, rather than what we did well. We focus on what did not go well. Here comes the role of Positive Psychology. What we need to realize is that, what we don’t want is not equal to what we do want?

Imagine your life as a garden, can you think of something that you need to pull to make your life more positive. Did what you once remember as a negative turn out to be a positive? Do you remember the pleasure of doing something for others over what we did for ourselves?

How do we live well? What is human flourishing? How do we ensure healthy mindedness? Maslow spoke about our desire to self-actualize.

Foundations of Positive Psychology

Martin Seligman shared his coming across ‘learned helplessness’, in 1967 wherein while working with dogs, Pavlov conditioning responded over time, and in new situations how the dogs responded.

Nothing I do matters! When it’s inescapable we do nothing. And learned helplessness is the result.

How does one escape shock. How much control do we have over ‘bad events’ in our lives. Can we control external forces? It all depends on escapable ‘bad’ or inescapable bad.  What makes some people immune from helplessness? It all depends on early or first experience of escapable or inescapable experiences.

Seligman then started to look at personality. Do you think?

1.     It’s (the issue) about you or the other? Is it temporary or permanent?

2.     Is it localized or all pervading? Bad at this or on everything?

3.     Do you believe that bad events are controllable – optimism index

How does optimist responds to situations: they do better. From here he developed the theory of Learned Optimism.

How many of these nine symptoms of depression do you exhibit? (5 in a fortnight is valid)

• ·      Sad mood
• ·      Loss of interest
• ·      Weight loss
• ·      Sleep disturbance
• ·      Psychomotor slowness
• ·      Fatigue
• ·      Low self esteem
• ·      Indecisive
• ·      Suicide / thoughts of death

Only optimism can help one reduce risks to depression.  Studies of children followed on optimism index. Can you teach someone optimism?

In 1997, while weeding his garden, he noticed his daughter playfully engaging with the weeds. And he remonstrated with her. She pointed out that he had a stuck past, and that if he worked with that he could turn out positive! This got him to think about the psychology not of eliminating ‘negatives’ but one of focus on well-being.

DEFINING WELL BEING

What does well being mean? He introduced the acronym PERMA – the five routes to well being.

P – positive emotion (what are you energized about)

E  - engagement and flow (when time stops for you, total immersion)

R  - relationships (we are selected for group selection, where love exists)

M - meaning & purpose (to serve something bigger).

A  - achievement & mastery (control, self discipline and grit)

Is any one of this more important than the other four? Human well-being depends on all of these. How do you leverage what matters most for you? IQ and Talent give way to discipline and grit. 

Thank you for reading so far. So what can you do to make a start?

The role of gratitude

Reflecting on the three blessings ‘what three things went well today and why?’ each day is an exercise that demonstrates it can create very positive changes, and is positively addictive.

Try it!