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Tag: positive psychology

Belonging: what was your take on the inauguration?

Published January 21, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Yesterday, January 20 2009, was an exciting day, an astounding day.  I watched almost the entire inauguration, from about 11.30 EST, on Sky’s brilliant HD service, thanks to the tipoff from @stewbagz.  At about 10 o’clock American time, I rang up BT to connect my local deli, the famed MuchADo, owned by Brooklyn-lite, Matt, and with a long phone call, they successfully connected us to WiFi.  So if you are driving up (or down) the M1, plan to exit on J14 near Milton Keynes and drop in for brunch, lunch or tea!   The best deli between London and Edinburgh!

Up-and-running, I apologized to other coffee drinkers and offered to turn down the sound, but they elected to watch too!  I later reconnected at home to Sky’s brilliant HD service and watched through to the end of transmission at midnight British time.

For me, I watched the crowd, which was enormous, and seemingly ‘relieved’ and in a gentle mood.   I watched the organization which leaves me gob-smacked in its size, intricacy and well-oiled machinery.  I listed out for the poetry, and of course, for the speech.

When it was all over, I asked myself what did I really feel under this tidal wave of emotion.  What was the key image?

For me, the key image was undoubtedly the dignitaries coming down to the podium, mostly two-by-two and interspersed nicely to give the commentators a chance to do their thing.

Like so many people, for the first time, I felt that the corridors of power were mine, that I was represented there, and that I could be there just as easily as people I was watching.

For the first time, I feel that if I have a complaint, I can do something about it.  Just do something about it.  Not wait and not beg permission.  Simply raise it to the attention of people who need to know and organize a solution.

For the first time, I feel that if I have a plan, I should just lay it out, discuss it with people who care, and do something about it.

And of course, now the corridors of power are ours, the future is entirely what we make of it.

As a non-American, of course, the corridors of power that I saw are not mine in a  literal sense.  But what America achieved today was a sense that democracy belongs to us.  Thank you.

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A day of awe

Published January 20, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Do you remember this day?

Inauguration Day

Isn’t it quite astonishing that we welcome a politician with such excitement and anticipation?  I would so love to see pictures and videos of what you are are doing as you watch Obama take the oath of office and make his first speech as President.

Today, I chatted online with another “non-American” who added the usual “touch wood” caveat that I mentioned yesterday.  None of us want to be too excited “just in case”.  And to work through our anxieties seems  ill-timed.

Good leadership is about us

The level of our excitement teaches us an important lesson about leadership.  Good leadership is not about the man or woman walking in the leader’s shoes.  It is about us.  It is about our expectations of ourselves and of the people around us.

Do Americans trust themselves?

How much do we believe in Americans, and how much do they believe in us?   How much do Americans believe in each other, and how much are they willing to reach out to each other to show that commitment?

A day of belonging for many

Today is the day of those who have worked long and hard for this moment, and who lived their lives believing that this day would never come.  Today is the first day they believe they fully belong.  This day is theirs to celebrate and to cherish.

A day of reflected joy and marvel for us

Today is the day we get to bask in their reflected joy and to marvel at their resilience, determination, loyalty and generosity.  There are not many moments like this in a lifetime when we stand in awe of people who have accomplished so much.  It is a day of gratitude when we are happy for no reason than the world has taken us gently by surprise.

A day when we quietly wonder whether we are much better than we though we were

It is a moment in which we ask  – are we not a little better than we thought?

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Complicated is horrible. Complexity is beautiful.

Published January 15, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Oh, I am so irritated.  I’ve been doing tax returns all day.  They have to be one of the most irritating things in life, and not because someone is taking money off us.  They are irritating because they are convoluted, fiddly, and complicated.

There are plenty of other complicated things in life too.  Airports with signs that send you anywhere except where you want to go.  Bosses who change their minds quicker than change their socks.  And road signs!  Zemanta, the Firefox Addon which searches the web while you write your blog, found this humbdinger of signage from Toronto, dubbed ‘The Audacity of Nope‘.

The opposite of complicated is complex

Instead of the stop-start sensation we get when details are allowed to disrupt the flow of the whole, complexity is when the parts come together to make something bigger themselves – like the mexican wave in a home crowd.

Is eliminating complicatedness and creating complexity the essence of professional life?

Do architects create buildings where we flow, never having to stop and scratch our heads, or to backtrack?

Do brilliant writers grab attention our attention in the first line and take us with them into a world where we follow the story without distraction from out of place detail?

Do leaders describe our group accomplishment, and draw us into a collective adventure, to play our part without constant prodding and cajoling?

How do you create complexity in your work?

In what ways do you help us experience the whole where parts fit in without discord?

  • What is the ‘whole’ thing that you make?  If you can’t name it, can you visualize it, or hear it?
  • What are the essential parts of the whole, and the linkages between the parts that are essential to form the whole?
  • What are the signs that you look out for that the whole is ‘forming’, or ‘not forming’, as it should?
  • What are the extra bits of help that from time-to-time you add for the whole to come to fruition?

I’m interested in the complexity you manage, and the beautiful and satisfying experiences you add to the world.

Come with me

Share your experiences with us?

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Positive psychology for losing weight

Published January 11, 2009 by Jo Jordan

Those extra pounds

Have you ever tried to change your diet, and ended up making it worse?  Have you ever resolved to eat more fruit, and then discovered that you are eating to much sugar?  Have you tried to cut down on snacks, then got so hungry that you raided the automatic vending machine and bought a chocolate bar?

The NY Times, this weekend describes a community weight-loss programme, that doctors believe will be no more successful than our solo attempts to lose weight.  Despite its laudable goals, and ideas like taxes on carbonated drinks, doctors believe, it will ‘bounce back’ just as our personal attempts to diet come back to haunt us.

Why is it so hard to change our behaviour and achieve important results?

Dieting is hard, partly because we go about it the wrong way.

What I want to do today is to show you what the relatively young field of positive psychology offers, to help us with the age old problem of  ‘too much of a good thing.

What is positive psychology?

First, I need to tell you what positive psychology is, and somewhat ironically, it is easier to say what is not.

Positive psychology is not positive thinking.  I don’t say to myself it is OK to be overweight, or that everything will be alright.

Positive psychology is not the setting of high but isolated goals such as “I will get more exercise”.

Positive psychology is not the righting of wrongs such as “I will eat fewer calories” or “I will eat less junk food”.

Our behaviors exist in a network of behaviors, and changing one thing requires changing others.  We may badly want to do more exercise, for example, but we may have such long commutes that we have no time.  We might be able to park our car further from the train and walk, but that also might take us past junk food outlets when are tired and hungry.  Often our ‘bad habits’ are locked in to a system.  To ask ourselves to change behaviours, flys in the face of reality.

Positive psychology and losing those pounds

Positive psychology advocates setting positive goals, living life sociably and in context, and doing more, of what we already do well.

Here are five positive approaches that will work for you.

Stage One. Write down all your good eating habits and the ways you take exercise, underline the ones you really enjoy, and do more of them.

Stage Two.  At the end of each day, or at a suitable time like on the commuter train, jot down what you have eaten and what exercise you took, and ask yourself “Why did I do so well?”  Disregard the parts you bombed out.  Concentrate on why you did so well during the last 24 hours.  The strong systems will become apparent and you can do more of them.

Stage Three. Savor your food.  I know we were told to eat more slowly as kids.  That’s important, I believe.  I mean enjoy what you are eating.  Eat what you enjoy and really savor it.  Celebrate each mouthful.  Enjoy the taste, the texture, the smell, the colour, the combinations.

Stage Four. Say grace if you are religious.  If you aren’t, look down and count up the things on your plate that you really love.

Stage Five.  Eat with others, if you can, and make a meal into a social occasion.  Cook together.  Thank the cooks.  Cook what others enjoy.  Wash up together.

I am almost certain that never, ever, in all the times that you have dieted, have you tried Stage One – writing down your good habits and doing more of them.

Come with me

Shall we do it together?

And compare notes at the end of the week?

Shall we see if  life becomes more enjoyable and more stylish, and if we are feeling a little more comfortable, and a little less stuffed with the excesses of Christmas?

Are you up for it?

P.S. If you are unwell, or already under the supervision of a doctor, nutritionist or other health professional, you can join us in writing down your good habits, but please don’t change anything until you have consulted your medical advisers.  And if you are unwell, do that soon, you hear?

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Relaxing into my New Year’s Resolutions!

Published December 30, 2008 by Jo Jordan

Tomorrow is the last day of 2008 and most people will spend a little time day dreaming about what they would like to see happen in 2009.

The Press will remind us, it is a standard story (!), that most of us will not keep our resolutions.

Do you keep yours? I keep mine.  This is how I do it.

I set targets for the end of the year and write them down in a place that I am likely to stumble over in the second half.

For example,

By the end of 2009, I will take pleasure in exercise.

ONE

This gives me time to achieve the goal and allows for the stops, starts and false turns that are inevitable.

TWO

I am focusing on what I enjoy.

If I go out to play tennis, or take the stairs instead of the lift, then I tend to think about the part that was fun.  After a while, I associate the activities with fun and look forward to doing them.

THREE

And I write down the goal in a place, I don’t look every day but that i will find by accident months from now.

I usually write my resolution on the front inside cover of my diary.  At some time, I will probably use the calendar to plan something, or I will open the diary when I am hunting for my driver’s license number, or something like that.

The double surprise of finding my resolution and discovering that I have done something about it,  is enjoyable.   I begin to think of myself as someone who gets things done (eventually), and as someone who truly likes exericse (in this case).  It’s a good feeling.

And if you don’t have the energy to be willful, pop back here tomorrow and I’ll summarize a positive psychology approach to your new year review that is altogether more fun than this!

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Mindfully in the recession

Published December 24, 2008 by Jo Jordan

Exploration as holiday

Two days before Christmas, all the younger generation in our family are away, exploring new parts of the world, as we often do in early adulthood.  The “grand tour”, or what Kiwis call “OE”, is a venerated tradition to see the world and to cope with unfamiliarity and surprise.  Some people travel “to find themselves”.  Others are drawn by challenge & adventure.

Exploration as necessity

Real challenges, though, when there is no safety net, and lasting, damaging failure is possible, are altogether different.  We are often paralysed by fear, and we come to know too well the phrase ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself’.  This really means, there is everything to fear, so much so that we cannot afford to indulge emotions that distract us from dealing with threat.

Am I suggesting that we “get hard”, or be Polyanna, and smile?

Julian Carron, a professor of theology at the University of Milan suggests we are all beggars and that to live our lives purposefully, in good times and bad, we must be conscious of our needs, aware of reality, and aware of our needs in our reality, whatever it is.

“The beggar has only one option: asking.”

“So the beggar is not the one who is most naive, but who is most realistic.  And, consequently, as we begin to defeat the confusion that surrounds and penetrates us, nothing can hinder us from become aware of ourselves in the the present moment.”

Like monsters in the dark, what is the unspoken need that panics you to name?

Is there not comfort in saying  “I ask for  .  .  .”?

Does not compassion for yourself awake in you compassion for others, whoever they are, and whatever their circumstances?

UPDATE:  The message that is delivered again and again by poets, philosophers and priests is that we must be able to talk to ourselves about our vulnerabilities; and it is only when we do that we can calm down pay attention.  When we refuse to acknowledge our predicaments, we become very anxious and cannot think straight.  Oddly, when we have not choice but to confront the threats against us, we often calm done and start to deal with them.

UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.

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Poetry in HR?

Published December 18, 2008 by Jo Jordan

Psychology and no poetry

I studied psychology and taught work psychology for many years.  I arrived in psychology from the physical sciences and found the hard core experimental and measurement approach quite familiar.  Indeed as a youngster, I might have fled had I been asked to deal with poetry.  Literature had been my worst subject at school by quite a long way and I simply lacked the frameworks for understanding what poetry offered.

Poetry in management theory

One of the pleasures of the school of positive organizational scholarship is that it embraces poetry.  Indeed, poetic language is one of the five original principles of appreciative inquiry.  Leading exponent, David Cooperrider, coins many a melodic expression, the best known being: the good, the true, the better and the possible.

Poetry in government

As he accepted his nomination for Secretary of Energy, I was delighted to see Nobel Prize winning physicist Stephen Chu quoting the words spoken by William Faulkner when he won his Nobel Prize in 1950.  Speaking to a world concerned about the ramifications of nuclear power and nuclear bombs, Faulkner said:

It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.

He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.

It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past.

The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

Poetry in business and HR?

If this is good enough for the Secretary for Energy and the White House, then it is good enough for factories, banks, shops and insurance brokers!

Do you employ a poet and an artist?  Do you think a style of HR that lifts hearts, reminds us of courage and honour and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of our past and are the glory of our present and our future, together?

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You smile, I smile, we smile

Published December 14, 2008 by Jo Jordan

Spread a smile

This morning, I quite fortuitously stumbled a charming little video around the theme “smile and the world will smile with you“.

Without spoiling the story,  a parking attendant sets the whole world smiling while he validates tickets at his counter in his gloomy, underground office.  Ostensibly, this is a touchy-feely, Polyanna-type, love story of a hero’s journey in 16.5 minutes.  The hero hears a call and sets off to ‘win the rings’.  He encounters trials and tribulations along the way, meets his nemesis, succumbs briefly to despair and then adjusting to reality, continues his life’s work.  Like all good love stories, everything ends happily.

A coach or trainer could use this video to explain the meaning of

  • validation
  • emotional contagion
  • hero’s journey.

It is a pleasant 16.5 minutes on a grey Sunday morning in the northern hemisphere.

Look out for the network effect

The reason I am flagging the video, though, is that it demonstrates the network effect of  happiness.   Fowler & Cristakis’ article in the BMJ on happiness and networks exploded into the blogosphere during the last fortnight.  Everyone in the personal development space, from Harvard down to myself reported this article in one way or another.  Its press coverage alone would make an amazing student research project.  I’ll let Zemanta recommend some of the articles for you to read.

Most reports took a slightly simplistic view of  ‘smile and the world will smile with you’.  Network effects are hard for us to understand.  Hidden in the story is an example of the network.   Someone began to smile when the network smiled.  I won’t say more, but look out for it!

As we reach the end of the video, it is easy to miss the import of the network effect, or to treat it as a just crutch to help the story along.  In a typical narrative, we focus on the hero, the hero’s actions and in shallow stories, on the hero’s rewards.  In deeper stories, we will look at the interaction of the hero’s character and circumstances.  How did he bring circumstances about?  How did he choose to react?  How did he change as a result?

Collaboration

I don’t want to spoil the ending for you.  After you’ve watched the video, maybe you can ask yourself whether the network effects matter and whether it matters whether we can explain it well to our clients?

I’d love to collaborate on developing a set of narratives and stories that help clients understand how this works and how they can use it to understand their work.

Please do drop me a comment if you would like to collaborate.

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Happiness and research: looking for a research buddy

Published December 12, 2008 by Jo Jordan

Breakthrough work on happiness

Happy networks

The blogosphere this week has been awash with comments on the article on happiness published by the British Medical Journal on happiness in social networks.  What does it mean that happiness is collective?   Are we also affected by our friends’ happiness online in networks like Facebook?

Expansive, successful business teams

Getting a lot less press, over at Pos-Psych, Marcial Losada has published two reports about increasing the emotional space in business teams and improving business performance.   Losada aims to develop teams whose positive to negative talk falls between 3:1 to 11:1.

New stats and new ways to think about psychological phenomena

The BMJ article relies on network theory and analysis.  Losada’s work relies on recursive differential equations.  Lost you? Exactly.  Few psychologists, and that includes me,  studied this type of statistical modelling  in their undergraduate years.

Moreover, these aren’t just new statistical techniques that we can plug into SPSS and go.  Both techniques offer epistemological and ontological revolutions in the way we think.

A zeitgeist

The ontological revolution is also happening in the qualitative areas of our field.  Take this phrase used by The Economist yesterday to describe India’s democracy: a political system that can cope with disgruntlement without suffering existential doubts.

That is a brilliant definition of happiness, though we might want a little more for flourishing!

Invitation

I started a wiki laying out the methodologies used by Losada in some detail and I would love a collaborator.  If you are interested, please drop me a comment and I will send you its name and password.

We are entering an interesting time in psychology and I can see all the textbooks being rewritten!

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Singing hearts 2009

Published December 11, 2008 by Jo Jordan

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 redundancies.  People 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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