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Tag: thriving

Is belonging the cornerstone of thriving & flourishing?

Trials more difficult than ours

I don’t know this soldier. I don’t know the details of his story.  I also don’t want to ‘use’ his story in ways that he doesn’t approve.  He used a phrase, though, that struck a cord with me. He said that even though he was injured, he was still part of a team.

Belonging is so important to our well being

For a long while, I’ve believed that belonging is one of the most important factors in well being, in productivity, in thriving and indeed any form of flourishing.

When we belong, we at least are saved from worrying about not belonging.

This soldier shows that belonging is more. When we belong, we are concerned for the wellbeing of others and we trust them to take care of ours.

Am I over-interpreting his story? Is he a fool to want to belong? Is it too hard to create belonging?

Or is the promotion of belonging our first task. To help us belong ~ so that we can thrive and flourish?

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5 questions to find the best place to be during a prolonged recession

Where is this recession going?

I’ve spent some time following economic information about the recession and I think there is a fair chance that it will be L shaped.  I think the financial shock has been so bad that it is not good enough to wait.  I think the correct analogy is that we have had an earthquake, the house has cracked, and we would be smart to attend to the foundations.  In fact, why not take advantage to ‘build a better’ house were we have a more comfortable, more sociable and more exciting life.

I think that is the project politicians should be attending to, and I think we should too.  The sooner we identify the kind of “house” we want to live in, the sooner they can get on with organizing it!

Where do we find exciting opportunities during a prolonged recession?

As a psychologist, I listen out for the way people describe things. I look to the structure of their statements to identify what really excites them, what is going somewhere and where there is room for other people.

#1  Does the person describe action?

Do I know who is doing what, when, where and how?

#2  Is this a project that other people can join?

Do I know when and where other people can join the party?  Is the description an invitation to me and others?

#3  Is the person responsive when other people chip in?

Is the person looking for responses and did they allow time to reply to people?  Did they expect people to want to join them?

#4  Is the person curious about other people?

Does the person respond to inquiries and suggestions with requests for more information or elaboration?  Do they believe that other people can add value to their project?

#5  Through the entire conversation, does the person keep their eye on their goal?

While the person is responding to inquiries and following up, do they maintain their momentum and movement toward their goal?

Here’s my little acronym: AIRINGOAL

Action

Invitation

Responsive

Involvement

Goal

5 questions to tell whether a businesses is going somewhere

These are the 5 questions I ask to tell the difference between a business that may look thriving, and may go the same way as banks and newspapers, from business that will thrive despite the profession.

Once we have found a business that is vital and exciting, then we can ask more detailed questions about our role within it.  More on that tomorrow!

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If you care enough, you can build it, and they will come

I am amazed by what I wrote months and months ago.  You really should keep a blog and write and write.  At the time, your posts may be rough, but they will clarify and when you reread them months late, you will be surprised by your insights.

It seems that some months ago, I jotted down some of my thoughts on using Twitter in classrooms.  In the course of the post, I jotted down three critical features of developing flourishing communities like thriving classrooms.

#1 Conversations

Talk to someone.  Work with someone.  If there is no one else, feel the ground under your feet.  Listen to the birds.  Pay attention!  As we pay attention to the world, we ourselves come alive and the world pays attention to us.

Managers & designers:  Start the conversation. Provide tools and opportunities for people to talk to each other. Watch the range of conversations and help people join in.  Also watch the content of conversations and help people extend their conversations – to more people in and outside the organization.

#2 Community

Be positive. I don’t mean gushy and airy-fairy.  I mean talk to the facts, including your own negative emotions, but don’t exclude other stories.  We should own our negative experience but not think they are the whole story.  Keep a gratitude diary because if you don’t, with the best will in the world, when shit-happens, and it does, you might find you cannot see the good with the bad.

Managers & designers: Set up “positive” procedures – which are procedures that allow us to recognize negative events, which ensure that we never disrespect anyone by ignoring how events impact on them, yet which acknowledge what is good and true and that we want to do more of.  Abandoning the negative art of “gap management” takes thought and disciplined work.  Falling out of love with our own tempers takes practice and like-minded friends.  But unless and until we can achieve positivity : negativity ratios of 5:1 when things are going badly, we will not predictably sustain communities where we will flourish.  The key to flourishing communities begins with us and our loyalty to our members.

#3  Meta-cognition (talking about)

As people settle in, watch out for discussion of the “rules of engagement” and the purpose of our existence.  Everyone will have an idea and they need to be heard. We need to listen to others to allow them to hear themselves and to help them relax sufficiently to hear others.  We need to be patient because this takes time and some people aren’t good at it.  Once advocacy is balanced with curiosity, the group might begin to thrive as a group.  Blogging, of course, as a form of talking-about – of putting our experiences into words and making sense of them.

Managers & designers: Help the group move through the five stages of group formation (forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning) and move as fast or as slow as they do extending the conversations appropriately but listening to the relevant concerns that people have at each stage though, quite rightly, these concerns are very different from yours.  People move on faster when they are allowed to complete each stage to their satisfaction.

Leading takes work. No doubt about that!  It is not as glamorous as it looks.

If you have read this far, you’ll have noticed that I am making little distinction between classrooms, businesses and for that matter, my own life.  I don’t.  I think the three points

  • talk to others
  • keep faith with others (even when it taxes your patience)
  • and put into words what we are thinking and experience

these three simple points are guides to building any community that you care enough to build.


 

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3 essential steps to become a positive psychologist

So, I am a psychologist, but how can I become a positive psychologist?

I have found three essential competencies that I need to master in addition to my conventional training.  Can you think of any more?

New maths

1.  I need to be able to think in terms of fractals.   To be more concrete, I need to think of phenomena at three levels.

  • A clutch of relevant dimensions that are interdependent (a recursive model, that is).  So I am happy when the world is good to me and the world is good to me when I am happy.
  • Phenomena that are phase states.  So I am thriving when I am happy about good things and sad about bad things and move appropriately between the emotive states.   I am sort of coping when my state varies but it is limited.  I am definitely not flourishing when my mood is consistently positive or negative no matter what happens around me.
  • The benefits of the phase states are phrased at a different level of analysis, such as prosperity and longevity, and are expressed as mean differences rather than a direct linear effect.

Narratives

2.  Out goes the lab report, though I need it for some things, and in comes the story.  Can I tell a story about who does what, to what, and why?  Can I recount stories that reflect my vulnerability?  Can I create situations which respect the voice of others?

After a life time of “science” I find myself learning the art of story telling.  We have great role models in TED and fortunately great coaches such as Cliff Atkinson are stepping up on the business front.

Personal experience

3.  Have I applied positive techniques to my own life and do I approach situations appreciatively as reflexively as I looked for objectivity in my conventional training?

Am I able to take part in the mutual environment of action research or do I have to hide behind a facade of objectivity?

Any more?  I think positive psychology is going to take us on an interesting journey of professional transformation.

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What does positive psychology “do”?

Psychologists are very proud of being scientist-practitioners, and so we should be.  But if truth be told, we don’t write too many exams on the practice bit, and once we get to the practice bit, we get nervous if it doesn’t look like the science bit.

For people new to the practice of positive psychology, the part we have clients, this may help.  I wrote it when explaining my rather specialised blog, flourishing with 2.0.

“Positive psychology focuses us on the need to reach out, to engage with the world, and to pursue what we love and enjoy vigorously.”

Mmm, would you move that “vigorously” into the sentence?

 

UPDATE: As my contribution to keeping the internet free of debris, I shut down blogs that I have not being updating regularly.  Flourishing with 2.0 is one of those.

Here is the About page from that blog!

Why flourishing and 2.0?

I’m a serial migrant and I have become good at starting again in new places with new faces.

Fortunately for me, I am both a psychologist and media savvy. The task we migrants have, is to rebuild our psychological and social spaces at a lightening pace. We want and we need to become connected again in meaningful ways. We want and need to hear our voices again. And we want and we need to be heard again.

This site is not just for us though. We are not alone in this task of rebuilding our lives. Anyone going through a large transition faces the same task – students going to university, students leaving university, women whose children have left home, breadwinners who have been made redundant. We are all reconnecting and revisioning, rebuilding and regenerating, the way we live and who we are.

Though our changes are hard, we are also quite lucky to be making them now. Since the turn of the millenium, since 2000, both the internet and positive psychology have exploded. The read/write web, or web2.0 has brought a wider and better range of content generated by ordinary people. We can join in and speed up our connections to people around us.

Positive psychology focuses us on the need to reach out, to engage with the world, and to pursue what we love and enjoy vigorously.

Welcome. I am looking forward to this site and to your comments and feedback.

Yours,

Scotchcart

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