Accentuate the positive: how to go about it
Last updated on 16th October 2019
"You've got to spread joy up to the maximum. Bring gloom down to the minimum. Otherwise pandemonium ... Liable to walk upon the scene". Bing Crosby sings
"You've got to spread joy up to the maximum. Bring gloom down to the minimum. Otherwise pandemonium ... Liable to walk upon the scene". Bing Crosby sings
"You've got to accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative. Latch onto the affirmative. Don't mess with Mr In-Between". Bing Crosby sings!
"Ten thousand flowers in the spring; the moon in autumn; a cool breeze in summer; snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life." Wu-wen
"Thus weave for us a garment of brightness; that we may walk fittingly where birds sing; that we may walk fittingly where grass is green; O' our Mother the Earth, O' our Father the Sky." Tewa Indian 'Song of the Sky Loom'
A sense of meaning, connection to our values and real engagement in what we do are crucial to nourish high wellbeing in our lives … and then high wellbeing feeds back to help us be more vital & effective in what we do. But it’s important too to ‘smell the flowers’ on our journey. Excessive focus on being happy is likely to be counter-productive but being too ‘puritanical’ tends to shoot ourselves in the foot as well. The fascinating work of Barbara Fredrickson on the 'broaden & build’ function of positive/pleasurable emotions illustrates the way that deepening our enjoyment & appreciation of life doesn’t just balance energy & effectiveness, it actually boosts these qualities. A high emotional ‘ "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." Henry Ford "Knowledge is only rumour, until it is in the muscle." New Guinea proverb Reappraisal (changing the meaning we give to experiences) has been repeatedly shown to be one of the most effective ways we have to regulate our emotions. It's one of the star components of effective emotion-regulation, coping-skill toolkits ... and it's important to realise that these toolkits can be very helpful (De Castella, 2017). Reappraisal is important across a variety of difficult states ... depression (Cheng, 2017), anxiety (Goldin, 2017), anger, interpersonal conflict, minor hassles (Richardson, 2017), and major life difficulties. I wrote yesterday about the "European Positive Psychology conference: better 2nd day - culture, use of strengths, loving-kindness, education & passion". This third day was also full to bursting with intriguing presentations. Barbara Fredrickson gave the 9.00am keynote on "Why prioritize positivity?". Barbara is a bit of a star of the positive psychology world, so having her on first looked a good way of encouraging conference attendees to arrive on time. Sayyed Fatemi spoke on "Positive psychology and psychology of possibility". I'm in Angers, France at the 8th European Conference on Positive Psychology. Yesterday I went to a couple of pre-conference workshops and then attended the Opening Ceremony and the first keynote lecture. The conference venue is lovely, on the edge of Angers Botanic Gardens. It feels too that the organising group here have put in a huge amount of work to try to make the conference a success ... so many thanks to them. So why do I say that I found the first day disappointing ... and actually quite worrying? "Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new." Ursula Le Guin Last September I went back to Cambridge for a reunion ... the first time I'd ever been back to school or university for such a thing. It was an experiment in "emotional archaeology" and I wrote a series of blog posts about it. At one stage I experimented with a dialogue between the 22 year old and the current 62 year old versions of me. In the post "Going back for a university reunion: self-esteem, hallucinogens, wonder & the transpersonal", I wrote "I changed subject too from philosophy to medicine (in 1970).How to live well: 2nd meeting - mindset, motivation, positive emotions, exercise & sleep
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