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Category: POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, WELLBEING & POETRY

I don’t believe in charity – I believe in solidarity

Published November 8, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Rock Shoes (Good Shoes) by Tatjana Ruegsegger via Flickr

Timely advice as we advance into the eye of the financial crisis

“Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that, one magical day, good luck will suddenly rain down on them – will rain down in buckets.

But good luck doesn’t rain down, yesterday, today, tomorrow or ever.

Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day on their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no-ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way. Who are not, but could be.

Who don’t speak languages, but dialects. Who don’t have religions, but superstitions. Who don’t create art, but handicrafts. Who don’t have culture, but folklore. Who are not human beings, but human resources. Who do not have faces, but arms. Who do not have names, but numbers. Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the crime reports of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.”

Eduardo Hughes Galeano, The Nobodies

“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”

Clay Shirky

“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person. I have a lot to learn from other people.”

Eduardo Hughes Galeano

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Water your dreams with optimism

Published November 6, 2010 by Jo Jordan

    “Be careful what you water your dreams with.Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream.

    Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success.

    Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success.

    Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream”

    by Lao Tzu (old master)

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What is the smallest thing you can do to improve your life?

Published November 4, 2010 by Jo Jordan

“What is the smallest thing you can to do improve your life?” asked  engineer turned social media technologist cum psychologist, Benjamin Ellis, today on Twitter.

An impossible question!

We can never answer that question and this is why.

When “life is going well”, we don’t ask.

– Not because life is going well, but because we have no issue with getting on with life. The next step emerges, then the next, then the next.  We generate ideas as fast as we need them.

When “life is going badly”, we can’t answer.

–  Not because life is going badly, but because we can’t imagine the next step.  And because we can’t imagine the next step, we feel the way is lost.   And when the way is lost, we worry that life is lost.   And then we worry about improving our life.

“Life is going badly” means we can’t tell you spontaneously the small thing that we will be doing next!

The positive psychology answer

The positive psychology answer is to restore the feeling of well-being – not by another cup of coffee, though I am guilty of that.

And not by artificial crutches of well-being like positive chanting.

1 Actively savor

But by taking a small step “in the life in which we find ourselves”.  Poet David Whyte says that “sometimes truth depends upon a walk around the lake.”  Bringing forward one’s daily exercise and getting out into the fresh air and nature might restore our composure.

Rule of thumb: Bring forward a task that is important that we can do with enthusiasm and appreciation.

2 Meaningfully appreciate

Failing that, we simply need to pay attention to the task in front of us and do it mindfully.  Feel the keys beneath our fingers.  Feel the solid floor beneath our feet.

And if we do make some coffee, do it with care and appreciation.

Rule of thumb: Become engaged again with life through the things immediately to hand.

3 Ask for help

Mentors are important not just for their practical advice and or for the bolstering of our self-esteem.   Mentors are useful for the simple questions they ask.

A good mentor takes us out of the mental space of panic and helps us pinpoint what’s next.   They find it easy to ask the question that leads us to answer “What is the smallest thing we can do to improve our life?”  When they are skillful and not inclined to take over our burdens, they ask the small obvious question that leads to a small obvious answer.    @jackiecameron1 in Edinburgh, Scotland played that role for me yesterday quite publicly on Twitter.

She really does have the touch of the simple question that is so hard to ask.

Rule of thumb: Describe our conundrum to someone we trust.  They will often ask a simple question that might make us feel foolish but it will point us to what we crave – what to do next.

What do positive psychologists do?

So that’s what positive psychologists do.

They return us to the positive ecology of doing small things that matter quite spontaneously and help us stay there if we are there already.

Not knowing what to do is the bad life, and the bad life is not knowing what to do. One does not lead to the other.   They are the same thing.  The bad life and being out of actionable ideas are the same thing.

But the first step of getting out of the bad life is very hard to take – by definition.  If we knew, we would be doing it and we wouldn’t feel life is bad.

So that is what positive psychologists do.   We suggest you just carry on but acting the good life because the good life is the action you crave and action is the good life.

We won’t necessarily like the advice because at the minute we’ve persuaded ourselves that we are not in the good life.  But it is here.   It is present.  It is with us always.

Act out the good life right now in the life that you find yourself and you will forget the question of “What is the smallest thing we can do to improve our life?”

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Phenomenal Woman

Published November 2, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Phenomenal Woman

(Here is Oprah performing Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Women : Choose the Denzil Washington video)

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Maya Angelou

And here is the link to Maya Angelou‘s website and booklist

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Event managers: 3 things we don’t want

Published October 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Puzzled by event managers

I am not an event manager.  In truth, frivolity and religion both seem to be beyond my neural circuitry.   I accepted that a long time ago.

But I am puzzled by an event that I have been invited to.  No, invite is the wrong word.  An event I feel pressured to attend.

3 things we don’t want from our event manager

1. A complicated decision

It’s years since I have worked with my hosts but the event managers seem to have got my address from an old list and I have become a valued associate.  The first message told me so and promised a light supper at a London venue with a surprise speaker!

Now if I lived in London, I would trash that message. I would want to go home after work.  And I am adult.  I want to get my information up front, make a decision, answer yes or no, and put it in my diary.  The golden rule of management:  keep tasks down to 30 seconds

But I don’t live in London and sometimes I will go down to the capital for 3 or 4 meetings on one day where I wouldn’t go for one of them only.  So I noted the event and thought I would decide later.

2.  Promises of the Easter Bunny

Then I got another reminder and then another.

Finally, the surprise was revealed and it was a surprise, but entirely of the wrong kind.  So my choice came down to “I wonder how good the supper will be?”

3.  Not knowing the company we will keep

Of course, if the organizers had arranged this event through Meetup or Amiando, I would know who else was going and the other attendees might be a reason for going.

I am a simpler soul (but not a marketer, I know)

Gee, if the event manager had written to me and said, “We want to launch ourselves on the London scene.  Would you come to an event?” – I’d be motivated to help.  I’m just that way.

I don’t want to be beaten or bribed.  Just tell me the score.  I’ll help when I can. I’ll join in when it suits me.  And I’ll retweet and pass on your request even when I can’t take part.

Let your event speak for itself

I know packaging matters.  We can be put off a good product that has bad packaging.  But we also sick of excessive packaging.

We don’t have to be cajoled, bribed, and threatened to take part in an event.  A simple, courteous invitation will do.  Honestly.

Just ask if we would like to join you

If you want my help just ask.  If you can give me supper, that would be cool as I will be driving home afterward.  If you let me know who is coming, I’ll adjust my expectations so they have just as good time as I intend to have.

Seriously, some of us are easy to get along with.  Just ask!

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4 practical career tips from a new politician

Published October 17, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Peter Parker (Spiderman) by Thomas Dhuchnicki via FlickrJobs, jobs, jobs and naive politicians

Headline news today:  1 in 8 households have one adult out of work.  Is that all?  Of course, some households have 2 or more adults out of work.

I am tired of naïve politicians who think people will find work if only they would look hard enough.  I  am depressed by naïve politicians who think the economy is going to “bounce back” just because they say so.   The banking crisis was not a misstep.  It was the collapse of a misshapen economy.  It was the UK and others “getting found out”.

The good times are not coming back until we rejig our economy and focus on today’s opportunities.

Jobs, jobs, jobs and not so naive politicians

I am not a party political animal and hold no brief for any particular set of politicians but I was pleased today to read the blog of one of the new MP’s –  James Morris.  Halesowen and Rowley Regis, just west of Birmingham seemed to have chosen well.  Small business owner, Cranfield MBA and social activist – that does seem like a good combination for keeping your feet on the ground and your eye on the horizon.

“Our national interest needs to be defined by the realities of Britain’s economic interests in this world where economic power is shifting from west to east. We need to ensure that we develop deep and reciprocal relationships with countries which are emerging as the key players in the future. Both economic and political ties must be strengthened with countries like Brazil, Nigeria, China and India and others.

Our view of the world needs to be characterised less by a conception of it as a hierarchy of nations with the U.S. at the apex; but more as network of peer relationships where Britain negotiates and influences at many different levels simultaneously. This will allow us to use our strengths, capabilities and influence to maximise our relationships in a world which will look very different from that which was the case even a decade ago.”

Jobs, jobs, jobs and savvy individuals

What works for an economy works for each of us too.

Define our economic interest

Identify emerging key players of the future

Aim to develop “deep and reciprocal” relationships with those you judge to be emerging key players

Don’t think who is best or worst – this is a network not a pyramid.   Think of  peer network which we are each shaping with our strengths, capabilities and influence to create a set of relationships that go with us into the future.

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What do we learn about occupational identity from Amartya Sen?

Published October 14, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Sail Boat by Lee Cannon via FlickrPlural identities

I’ve just finished reading Amartya Sen’s Identity and Violence.  He ends:

“As an eleven year-old boy I could not do much more for Kader Mia as he lay bleeding with his head on my lap.  But I imagine another universe, not beyond our reach, in which he and I can jointly affirm our many common identities (even as the warring singularities howl at the gate.”  We have to make sure, above all, that our mind is not halved by a horizon.”  (pp. 185-186)

Identities as a concept in organizational psychology

I picked up Identity and Violence partly because of the author’s fame but also because identities are a hot topic in contemporary organizational psychology.  We encourage people to develop personal identities that are stronger than the identities of the companies with whom they work.  Instead of being a small boat bobbing about on the choppy waters of a stormy ocean, rather be the ocean and let the company bob about on you.

It’s a fine aspiration and possibly the only way to stay sane.  But I wanted to be able to think about this core idea critically and what better way that to pick up a highly readable book by a Nobel prize winner with command of philosophy and world history and an inclusive outlook.

What are the dangers of encouraging strong personal identities?

I think Sen would not regard our exhortations as entirely foolish.  Sen counsels developing our commitment and appreciation of multiple stories and identities as parents, as children, as professionals, as members of churches, as patriots and as members of organizations that cut across international boundaries.  We are all of these at the same time.

“To halve our horizon” by narrowing our world to one identity and then too, to narrow that world to a formulaic lifestyle laid down by others – that’s what he counsels against.  That’s what he believes is used easily to manipulate us into actions we might in other times and other places (my words) find unacceptable.

Thoughtful multiple identities are strong occupational identities?

A strong occupational narrative might narrow our world.  I suspect though, that narrow occupational narratives turn us into the small boat on choppy seas.  When we see ourselves as part of an ocean able to accommodate many small boats of identities, we feel more comfortable.

That’s my humble reading, anyway.

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Thoreau on the interconnectedness and meaning of life

Published October 7, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Umbrellas in the rain by Ed Yourdon via FlickrHow can severe disappointment provide meaning?

Sometimes when life disappoints us severely, it is hard to imagine what Viktor Frankl means when he says that people who survived the concentration camps expected it all to make sense in the end.

“How?”  we wail.  “How could that ever make sense?”

I suspect what we are crying is that “No, I won’t let it make sense.  Because to make it make sense is to say it is OK and I cannot say it OK that you killed my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my grandmother, my grandfather, my uncle, my aunt, my cousin.”

Possibly to have faith in the universe feels disloyalty and we prefer lack of faith to lack of loyalty.

Loyalty is a good thing and loyalty should be honored and celebrated.

Life is often unfair

But life does disappoint, in big ways and small.  Often we feel very profoundly that life is unfair.

I am not saying we should do nothing about unfairness.   Not me.

But the writers like Thoreau point us to another way forward.

First, look at the interconnections of the world.  See the whole picture. Loyalty is part of that picture.  Put it in.

Then, decide what you think.

Thoreau’s dilemma of a rain day

This is Thoreau writing about a rainy day at Walden when he elected to be a subsistence farmer so that he would have time to read and write.

His beans are important to him.   He became a farmer to have time, and the weather is throwing out his plans, challenging the very raison d’etre of his project.

He needs his beans too.  Otherwise he will starve.

But nonetheless he brings first the outlook of a contemporary quantum physicist.  Everything is connected. A rainy day may be disruptive; but it is not an insult thrown at us by the universe.

It is a invitation by the universe to bring ourselves into a more connected relationship with everything around us.

Thoreau on a rainy day

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness.

While enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.

The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too.

Though it prevents me hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing.

If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the lowlands, it will be good for the grass of the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.

Sometimes, when I compare myself to other men, it seems as if I were more favoured by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of – as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded.  I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me.

(p. 114 of the 1927 edition of Walden)

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Procrastination, Thoreau, and modern psychologists

Published October 6, 2010 by Jo Jordan

I'm not working by quinn.anya via FlickrFeeble attempts to dispel procrastination

I am tired.  I am procrastinating.  I have  a messy confused project on my desk so I switched on the Conservative party conference under the pretext that Hague makes sense and I should listen to the Prime Minister.  I have no idea who was speaking but that time-filling gambit didn’t last long. British politicians SHOUT.  Anything on my desk seems preferable to the assault on my ears.

Procrastination doesn’t work

I thought briefly I had found the fail safe solution to procrastination.  Switch on a party political broadcast.

But within moments, my thoughts had drifted to a book in the other room:  Walden, Henry Thoreau’s classic account of his experiment living frugally in the woods while he studied.

Henry Thoreau and Walden

Thoreau was a principled man, it seems.  In the same breath that he talks of  hoeing beans, he talks of sheltering runaway slaves.  He mentions just as dispassionately about being jailed for not paying his taxes because he refused to pay tax to a government that condoned slavery.

Thoreau and procrastination

Thoreau would have thought less of me for doing work that leads to procrastination.  He believes his experiment for living on almost nothing (rather than steeling himself to live on almost nothing) demonstrates:

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the licence of a higher order of things.

In proportion, as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitde, nor poverty povery, nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost: that is where they should be.  Now put foundations under them.”  (p. 280 of the 1927 edition).

Thoreau and self-regulation

I wonder what Thoreau would have thought of modern psychology.  I think he would have despised it.  Yet some of it is helpful.

Peter Gollwitzer’s work on “wish to intent” and “crossing the Rubicon” highlights the phenomenon that Thoreau describes.  When we are “in full flight”, when we are in flow (Cziksentmihalyi), everything suddently becomes very easy.

Roy Baumeister indirectly also confirms Thoreau’s view.  Baumeister shows experimentally that when we have to make a difficult choice, like eating chocolate instead of something less pleasant like radishes, we show less ability to control ourselves on the next task.  This is why, in David Whyte’s words it is important “to leave all other world’s behind us”.  Or the “the antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness”.

When we are tired we need to move toward “the channel in which our life flows”.

A solution to my procrastination

So I am tired.  Allowing myself respite, will help.  Compromising on the quality of that report will not.  Compromise will make me tireder.

Yup, I least I am not fighting distaste.  I have a challenge now; not an annoyance.

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What is the job of management scholars and consultants in the participation economy ushered in by social media?

Published September 27, 2010 by Jo Jordan

Alaska 2010 by keithusc via FlickrBen Cameron said at TED:

“everyone . .  . resonates to the words of  Adrienne Rich in Dream of  A Common Language wrote: We are out in a country that has no language, no laws.  Whatever we do together is pure intervention.  The maps they gave us is out of date by years.

Ben Cameron is a Canadian Arts Administrator.   At TED, he described the market for the arts in clear concrete detail.  Old markets are in ‘trouble’, or not, depending on how much you welcome the replacement of the  consumption model of business with the participative model ushered in by social media.

The  collaborative economy has arrived

I subscribe to Ben Cameron’s view.  We are long past the point that old models can be made to work in the old order.

Management scholars and practitioners in the participation economy

I am not in the Arts. I am just a management consultant and scholar.  My role on this earth is simply to describe how we organize ourselves in collective ventures and to provide advice.

That means it is my job to tell you that old methods of selection and training, employee contracts and management styles, salaries and promotions can not work, do not work.

The time has come to create new ways to bring people together, meld working teams  and keep ourselves fresh and relevant.

The vision of the participation economy

I endorse Ben Cameron’s view  that our common aim is to develop a “healthy vibrant society, to ameliorate suffering, to promote a more thoughtful substantive empathic society”.

The challenge for work and organizational psychologists in 2010 is to start writing down and sharing

  1. How people come together to discuss business and how their discussions lead to better ideas of what we can and will do together
  2. How our relationships change from wish to intent to habit and how we can promote relationships that promote the success of the enterprises we envisioned when we set off together
  3. How we remain fresh, thinking up news ways to meet challenges and if necessary disbanding to go onto  new ventures, all the better for having worked together.

That is our mission of management scholars and consultants in a

a country that has no language, no laws.  Whatever we do together is pure intervention.  The maps they gave us is out of date by years.

It is time to get started writing down who knows what and making it available for everyone who want to know.

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