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Tag: happiness

Singing hearts 2009

It begins

Earlier today, I asked a professional services provider why I was unable to book for Monday.   She inquired of her superiors and that is how she found out that she had been made redundant.

Shortfly afterwards,  I completed a planned trip to Woolworth’s, and stocked up on stationery in their closing down sale.  It really felt rotten paying.  I got brilliant service by-the-way.  If you are looking for good talented  people in the Milton Keynes area, pop into the Newton Pagnell branch.

We stutter

@Pistachio, who is an astonishingly interesting tweeter given to pithy phrases, asked today:  what is the one thing you would change if you could?

This is what I would change: the lack of a coordinated collective, community response to redundanciesPeople should not be left on their own.

But do we fall?

Yesterday, I started persuading my village to join Twitter.  If we are all on Twitter, traders will be able to communicate with us more easily, and we will benefit.   For example, yesterday the Coop had carrots at 50p.  Had you known that before you left home, you would have arrived with ideas on how to make carrot-based dishes.

When I heard my provider had been made redundant, I undertook to find out rents and to investigate whether we cannot hire her independently.

And what help would I value  from you?

I do appreciate people who pop by this blog and make a comment.  I am very appreciative of people who’ve helped me settle well in the UK.

I want you to answer @Pistachio‘s question, but slightly differently.  I want you to think what you want for 2009.  Not what you commit to do as a type of New Year’s Resolution, but what you want.  I want to know what would make your heart sing and your spirits soar?

And then, flick Ian Jeanes a message.  Ian is organizing people with like dreams, and I will help him.

What is your dream for 2009?

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Another appreciative inquiry mini-case study

Be careful of citing companies who do well by doing good!

Death and taxes are certain in this world.  So is the likelihood that any company you quote as doing good will make the headlines in the morning.  I’ve taught for years, and this rule never fails me!

Wal-Mart at its best

So taking my reputation in my hands, I am delighted to pass on another little appreciative inquiry nugget that I spotted in the Management Education briefing circulated by The Economist.

Wal-Mart, the big shop that people love to hate (I’ve never been in one, have you?) did respond well after Hurricane Katrina.  They suprised themselves, as well as their detractors,  and supposedly sparked an ephiphany moment for CEO, Lee Scott.

“What would it take for Wal-Mart to be that company, at our best, all the time?”

Wal-Mart as an example of appreciative inquiry

This simple sentence is typical of appreciative inquiry.  We identify the high point and work out the processes that led us there.  Frequently, we find solutions to a range of problems that we previously thought intractable.

Appreciative inquiry & me

And I ask myself: what will it take for me to be that person, at my best, all the time?

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Doldrums to OK to fantastic classrooms

Positive communities are important in learning

I’ve taught in colleges and universities for 25 years.  One thing I am reasonably certain about teaching is that a good class has a strong sense of community.  It is common sense that a good social atmosphere will be more attractive than a cold, totally clinical atmosphere.  There is also a clutch of professional ideas explaining the impact of group norms, collective efficacy, belonging, system boundaries, and so on.

Why, though, do we so much prefer a 500 person auditorium to a pod cast?

What I’ve not been able to put my finger on, until today, is a tight model explaining why communities are so important – why for example we prefer to listen to a lecture in an anonymous 500 person auditorium than on a podcast.

Today my Google Alert flashed up this article on Twittering in Education.  A US College Professor set up a class channel on Twitter.  Twittering lead to more discussion between students and ultimately to writing a book “online” with completely voluntary help from students as far afield as China.

The post also describes the mechanism.

Meta-cognition & meaning

Conversations lead to community (And v.v.  We know it is important to seed a social media channel with conversations.)  The conversations lead to ‘meta-cognition’ – talking about the course.  And talking about the course helps us understand why and how the course and the material fits into our lives.  Greater clarity and shared understandings leads to more community, and more community to better conversations.

Do we get phase states?

Though the article does not say, I suspect that at some stage, the energy moving between conversations, community and meta-cognition (talking about) reaches a tipping point and we see greater levels of learning and action.  So we move from the struggling, to the satisfactory, to the spectacular.

I rather suspect that this is a fractal model, such as we see with Happiness.  The three characteristics of the class – conversations, community and ‘talking about’ – interplay.  When this interplay is healthy, it moves through the broad swathe of emotional space.  When we have done well, we celebrate, for example, ultimately ending with someone suggesting we get back to work.  When things do not go well, we grieve, ultimately ending with someone suggesting it is time to start living again.

My thoughts on this glittering sunny day in autumn in rural England are to ask:

  • are these the three critical variables: conversations, community, and meta-cognition?
  • do they interplay with each other in a self-correcting manner going from positive to negative and back again as the need dictates?
  • is it right to use a phase state model where we look for the tipping points which take this energy system from the doldrums to OK and then to fantastic?
  • do the three variables co-affect each other through a set of Lorenz equations, and if not, how do they inter-relate?
  • how can we explore these variables in a field study?

Enough for now.  The sun calls.  I would love to hear from anyone interested in building communities with or without social media like Twitter.

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Psychology, chaos theory, complexity theory, happiness and Batman?

Michael Keaton as Batman in Batman (1989)Image via Wikipedia

Any of these topics – psychology, chaos theory and complexity theory – is heavy reading on its own.  All three together?

David Pinctus’ new blog explains chaos and complexity theory in psychology and is tucked away at the end of the Self-Help blogs on Psychology Today.  David’s blog is probably far too heavy reading for the typical self-help audience.  It is important reading for anyone interested in positive psychology and where this new field is going.

  • Psychology has traditionally looked for linear models.  We look for phenomena that grow bigger or smaller in direct proportion to something else.  Happiness is likely to be a non-linear phenomenon.  A small thing can make us very happy; a large event can wash over us.
  • Psychology assumes that my behavior is essentially unconnected from yours.  Our models require all our observations to be independent of each other – do you remember that distantly?  Though much of the positive psychology empirical research is still conducted in the ‘old school of research’, it is our interconnections with others that are more interesting.
  • Psychology has difficulty with time.  We are taught simply to use time as sparingly as possible in our models.  As a consequence we have little idea “what will happen next” or how long anything takes.  If tomorrow is a result of today, how do we describe that trajectory?

David Pinctus explains “non-linear dynamical systems“.  Though he hasn’t talked directly about positive psychology as yet, listing him under “Self-Help”, tells it all.

He also devoted three posts to a series on Batman.  Ordinarily, you would have had to drag me along kicking-and-screaming to a batman movie.  I hated it too!  But his review gave the movie depth I wouldn’t have fathomed on my own and a useful way of thinking about the deep, festering conflicts in many organizations.

I am glad to have a blog written by an academic who has deep mastery of the methodology in this field and who writes well. I am subscribed, watching, reading and learning!

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What is your Vision of the Future?

Street fortune teller consults with client in Taichung, Taiwan

Image via Wikipedia

What do you expect from a futurologist?

I was disappointed by the Microsoft Visions of the Future event in London, though to be honest, we left before it was finished. We had heard, or partially heard three long rambling speeches. The visuals were on domestic-sized screens that only a handful of people could see, and the audience had started talking amongst themselves.

What I heard wasn’t very new either. I have been treated to at talk by a futurologist elsewhere and I was stunned then that there was little, if anything, new in the speech. Puzzled by this happening again, I shot off a question on LinkedIn: what do you expect from a talk by a futurologist?

The first few replies thought I meant “fortune teller” and some others thought “a waste of my time”. James Stuart replied more seriously. He suggested two features:

a) pointing to inter-relationships between events that aren’t immediately obvious

and

b) helping the audience understand that the future is made through their choices.

What do psychologists and futurologists have in common?

I thought that what James suggested resonated with a brilliant description of the practice of psychology that I found years ago. I am sorry I don’t have the reference still. If you recognize it, please do let me know.

All psychologists, whether we are clinical, educational or work/occupational, do three things:

a) We have models and ideas that we can put at our clients’ disposal.

b) We have experience of other people solving similar problems.

c) We stick with our client while they think through their predicament and experiment with a solution.

First, on the basis of published ideas, we know what questions to ask. Then we have some idea, from observing other people, what it is like to be faced with the dilemma facing our client. And importantly, we are loyal to our client while they are struggling with a problem that is intimidating.

  • It is important that we can observe patterns that are not obvious to other people.
  • And we understand the object of the exercise is action.

When I listen to a futurologist, I want to hear them point to interactions between emerging events that require data and models far deeper than I have available from public media.  And the information must help me see what action I must take. I must experience an “aha!’ and intense relief that I now know what to do. I still have to do it, but I need some clarity about what I want to do next.

Of course futurologists are probably talking about the macro-environment: politics, economics, social change and technological change.  Models of psychology are usually about ways individuals make sense of the world: hope, intimacy, vocation, & schooling.

My understanding of the future

In psychology, I find the 21st century so exciting that I find it hard to think ahead.

As a vision of the future, it is worth flicking through Jane McGonigle’s presentation at SXSW 2008.  Jane believes that eventually we will all be in the business of happiness.  And she can outline the psychological principles to engineer happiness.

Curriculum Illusione is a Dutch site that gives you an interactive time line to map the future, and, how you intend to interact with it.  It is quite challenging.
I would be interested in your opinion of both.

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5 important features of happiness

Happy people live longer

Image by M@rg via Flickr

Critical thinking must be rigorous. Otherwise it is just negative

I set up a comprehensive Google alert for happiness and I saw two reports today saying that thinking about happiness makes us miserable.

I don’t think these reports meant to be ironical.  I think they meant to be critical, in a rigorous way.  But frankly unless you are rigorous, then being critical is just proving the point – being negative for the sake of being negative.

5 points about happiness

I think it is helpful to repeat five points about happiness.

Emotion is highly contagious

Yes, emotion is highly contagious.  It spreads from one person to another like wildfire.  We carry it with us from one situation to another.

Negative emotions are more virulent than positive emotions.  When something goes wrong, as it will from moment to moment, we do have to make a special effort not to project our dismay to the next situation, which, after all, might not have bothered us had the last five minutes been fun!

Some people are highly emotional intelligent

Some people are more ’emotionally intelligent’ than others.  Of course they are.  Why wouldn’t we vary in our capacity to read emotions?  Why wouldn’t we vary in our ability to distinguish between what we were feeling about the problem five minutes ago, from what we are feeling about the situation we are confronted with now?  Why wouldn’t we vary in our confidence and experience of emotional situations?

Emotional literacy is learned

Emotional literacy can be learned.  Of course it can.   We have trained our children from time immemorial to understand and display emotion.  It is called good manners, character, backbone and all sorts of other things as well.

I was taught emotional literacy in school as well as at home.  After all from 5 to 17. we spend a good part of our time in school.  In sixth form, the time previously allowed for denominational instruction was given over exclusively to psychology classes.

Psychology is no longer about sick people only

What is new is that psychologists (a relatively new profession after all) no longer study negative events exclusively.

Positive psychology regards happiness and virtues, such as gratitude and hope, as normal,  and we study them as positive emotional and mental experiences in their own right.

This is the exact opposite of the therapeutic culture which assumes we are finding living a little overwhelming.  It is also the exact opposite of a view that we should be “hard”, “uncouth”, “non PC” or any of these varieties!  As these two views think they are opposites, let’s move on!

The models we use to study these phenomenon allow us to think differently

Psychologists are using new models to explore phenomena such as happiness, zest, justice, etc.  Psychologists are using ratios and recursive models.  For people who still remember their “Methods & Stats” classes, I bet you hardly every used a ratio and I bet you never ever used a recursive model.  That’s if you studied psychology.  It you studied economics or geography this doesn’t apply to you.   I also exclude from this bet people trained at graduate school in the States in the last five years.

We are happy when life is more positive than negative.  Ideally, we want to hit a ratio around 5:1.  At 11:1, or around there, we are delirious or “over the moon”.  At 3:1,  we are beginning to struggle.  We are going to start to find life threatening.  Life gets tough and hard and we develop tunnel vision.  We focus on our problems and loose the capacity for joy, warmth, celebration, etc.

We are happy when our behavior shows requisite diversity – when we smile at what is charming, when we laugh at what is funny, when we grieve for what is lost, when we celebrate what is won.

Good manners isn’t suppressing these emotions.  Good manners is expressing these emotions in a way that includes people around us.  I don’t cry at a funeral to make others sad.  I cry with others to share our grief.

Happiness isn’t silly optimism in the face of difficulties. Nor is it collapsing in a quivering heap.  Happiness is responding to challenge and threat meaningfully.  It is living – joyously when joy is warranted – courageously when courage is called for.

Hope this is of some use to somebody!

PS Happy people live longer – a lot longer.  And they are nice to be around!

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Happy Britain, but not at work?

Making cheese and cucumber sandwiches
Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, The Independent published its counter to the Rich List: the Happy List.

Did I miss the happy workplaces?  Are work and happiness antithetical?

I am dreaming of a sandwich where the filling appreciates the bread and the bread celebrates the filling.

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Distance lends enchantment to the view

Burning out?

Advice from an ‘old hand’ to a ‘new teacher’ whose class got the better of him: in Goodbye Mr Chips, which I watched over the weekend.

“You have some hours before prep starts. Go out. Out there under the sky. Look around. What is the saying? Distance lends enchantment to the view. Go out. Come back refreshed.”

Paulo Coelho offers the same advice. Don’t spend the day looking down. Look to the horizon.

David Whyte has the same advice. Sometimes the answer depends upon a walk around the lake.

Then go out, look out, reach out

Whenever life is bad, look to the horizon. Close your eyes and listen to the furthest sounds that you can hear.

And if you can, do it when you first awake in the morning.  Do it in short 1 minute break at work.  Do it commuting on the way home.

Is that why you pay so much for a house or office with a view?

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Law of attraction, positive thinking . . . how old is it?

A long back story

I took out Goodbye Mr Chips from my local library thinking it would be nice to relax for a couple of hours with this gentle, slightly sentimental, very inspirational movie. For non-Brits, this is a classic pygmalion, teacher story with romance thrown in. Think To Sir With Love, History Boys and Freedom Writers. I think when Yanks write pygmalion stories they are typically about basketball coaches. Britain has teacher stories.

Goodbye Mr Chips is a double-pygmalion story. Mr Chipping is an awkward “Latin master” in a “public school”.  If you are non-Brit, read exclusive private school (or prep school in Americanese – a prep school here preps you to go to public school which takes you to the army academy or university).

Mr Chipping has two mentors. A charming relaxed fellow teacher and his wife. They are the catalysts in allowing Mr Chipping, or Chips as he comes to be called, to incorporate the softer side of his nature in his teaching style, reform the rugged-masculine-bullying culture of the school, and to encourage boy-after-boy, and their sons after them, to blend the feminine sides of their nature with the masculine demands of their school and obligations to country.

I thought I was borrowing the musical version with Peter O’Toole from the library.   When I got home, I discovered I a new version with Martin Clunes, the star of the TV show, Doc Martin. He makes a marvellous Mr Chips with the mixture of clumsiness and kindness that we also see in Doc Martin. (He doesn’t sing btw, and nor do we hear the boys singing which we did in the earlier version).

The story seems slightly different too – but so be it. After this long back story, this is the quote I wanted to give you.

“I found that when I stopped judging myself harshly, the world became kinder to me. Remember I told you once, go out, and look around the world. Do that now. Only this time, let the world look at you. And the difference, I assure you, the world will like what it sees.”

Positive psychology is more than positive thinking

This is the concept which takes positive psychology far beyond positive thinking. It has echoes of the pygmalion effect, popularized in the musical My Fair Lady in which a flower girl becomes a lady. It includes the Galatea effect, ably researched by Dov Eden, who also researches the pygmalion effect in work settings. Basically, the Pygmalion effect is the effect of other people’s expectations on us. So a teacher creates clever pupils by expecting more of them. A teacher creates dull pupils by expecting failure and subtly communicating doubts and restricting the resources and time we need to learn. The Galatea effect works the other way around. It is the effect of our own self-perception.  It is not that seeing is believing. But that, believing is seeing.

Is this new?

George Bernard Shaw wrote Pygmalion 100 years ago. 150 years ago Goethe wrote:

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Goethe

The idea that we shape the future is so new to us in the west. The idea that the universe comes to us sounds a little new age.

Of course, we cannot do anything. We don’t want to do anything.

But there are some things, we want to do. And if we can imagine those things, if we believe in them deeply without effort, if they make sense, if they seem right in themselves, if we believe in them enough to take the first hesitant step,

if we believe in them enough to take the first hesitant step,

then the universe conspires to help us.

Skeptical?

This is tautological, of course. It will work because it is right and it is right because it works.

Ask only whether what you want is right, and why you would want anything that doesn’t work!

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“Go get your things. Dreams mean work”

I discovered Paulo Coelho this year. I am amazed I spent this long on this earth without finding his books.

His stories have mystical settings. By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept is about a woman and her childhood sweetheart who meet up again in their twenties to make a hard decision: should they get together or should he follow his vocation into a Catholic seminary and a life as charismatic and healer?

All Coelho’s books (I think) have a happy ending, but not a silly ending.   After many trials, the protagonists resolve to take the high road: living in solidarity with this world. These may be mystical stories, but they are neither fantasies nor escapist.

And the trials faced by the characters are never gratuitous. Each in itself offers a perspective on relating to the world and, I think, the tension between commitment and uncertainty.

They are a remarkably “open” read too. He has a light style that draws you into the story. And then releases you from time to time to ponder what he or one of his characters has just said.

Wikipedia describes the book as “a week in the life of someone ordinary to whom something extraordinary happens”. Read it at the end of a long week to ponder extraordinary people who live ordinary lives.

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