Positive Psychology Archives - Page 7 of 8

Positivity in the workplace

Emotional Intelligence, Positive Psychology / My Holland

We can all learn a lot from positivity and positive thinking. Psychologist @Barbara Fredrickson believes it is the key to unlocking our potential in the workplace, as well as other parts of our lives. In her book Positivity, she explained the ten most common positive emotions and how to focus on them to live life to the full. These emotions are: love, serenity, forgiveness, awe, joy, interest, hope, pride, amusement and inspiration. She explains how focusing on these positive emotions can help us build skillsfor a happier and healthier life, in every aspect. In fact, she believes positivity is more important than happiness, or is at least the key to it. She believes itrelieves symptoms of stress and depression, boosts good health, broadens the mind and helps build skills and success. This theory can be applied successfully to the workplace. While there may be testing times at work such as feuds with a boss or colleague, feeling overworked or undervalued and general frustration, there is also equal potential to focus on and cultivate positivity. Sometimes these emotions may be hidden and feel harder to recognise and develop. We can all do more to help cultivate our own positivity and flourish through getting better quality sleep, regular exercise, staying social connected, meditating and reducing caffeine. We are all capable of tapping in to our own positivity. Doing so can help us see new possibilities, recover from setbacks and be more successful. What’s more, these emotions can act as a ripple effect which is beneficial in a work environment. Work occupies a large chunk of time in a person’s life and paying attention to positive emotions can combat negativity in the workplace. If you feel stressed or negative at work, the chances are you will bring this home and it can impact negatively on home life and relationships as well. A Harvard Business Review article described how growing research confirms that employment stress can cross over and impair the wellbeing of home life and family members. Fredrickson, a positive psychology pioneer, says that harnessing positivity can transform the way we live and lead richer lives. One of her theories is the ‘broaden and build’ theory. This explains that even though a positive emotion can last for just a short moment, it can have lasting benefits in terms of social bonding and traits and helps human growth and development. For this reason, it is an asset to a workplace to have somebody who is able to take the time to cultivate their positive thinking and mental state.

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Flow and sustainable happiness…

Engagement, Positive Psychology, Productivity, Wellbeing / My Holland

Flow – the secret of happiness Have you ever done an activity – a sport or something creative – where you have been totally absorbed in that exact moment, without a care about what is going on around you? Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the pioneers of the scientific study of happiness, called this feeling ‘flow’ and says it is the key to happiness. He said: “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” At that moment when you forget yourself and only the thing you are doing at that moment matters, you have effortless control and Csikszentmihalyi says this is an optimum state of happiness. Lots of psychologists and theorists argue that happiness must be worked at to achieve, it doesn’t simply happen. It can be achieved by setting ourselves challenges (nothing too hard or too simple) and making them unique to our passions. We need to cultivate our own happiness and one way to do that is to work out when and how we can achieve flow. Flow happens on our journey towards completing – so for example, it is the creative process of writing a story or painting a picture, or it is what athletes refer to as ‘being in the zone’ when they are preparing or running a race. When we are totally immersed in something we give it our full attention and can forget all of our external issues and problems. Cziksentmihalyi stated that happiness comes from within us and is unique to US –our passions, our likes, what makes us tick. In 1990, he explained flow as: “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” This is why it is so worthwhile to have hobbies in our lives and make the time to do the things we love to do. To achieve flow, Czikszentmihalyi said there are certain things to do and feel, such as having clear goals, allow awareness and action to meet, disregard time and allow self-consciousness to disappear. During ‘flow’ there is no worry about failing; instead we receive immediate feedback in the shape of gratification. So how do can we achieve flow on our lives? Csikszentmihalyi says that we need to immerse ourselves in an activity we can lose ourselves in. This will be different from one person to the next. It also requires us to practise mindfulness – being aware of the here and now. When we learn to enjoy the immediate experiences we face, we can experience flow and its benefits for our happiness.

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The New Way To Lead … With Compassion

Compassion, Leadership, Positive Psychology / My Holland

Leading with empathy, compassion: an authentic model where work and private life are in tune with real values! In business schools and corporate boardrooms, we were taught, or perhaps the better word is brainwashed, to lead with our heads not with our hearts. We’re expected to be tough as nails, like a first class marine sergeant completely focused on bringing-in results. We’re supposed to be these no-nonsense, don’t-mess-around-with-me- types of leaders obsessed almost with making our businesses a big success. But, following the September 11 tragedy that shattered the world, a new behavioral management pattern seems to have emerged on the business horizon. Leaders of big, prestigious companies and organizations in the US and in the western world are beginning to advocate and embrace a more humane, more compassionate kind of leadership… leading with the heart. The Change is Happening You see this change happening when leaders of giant firms devote precious press and radio/TV advertising budgets to either express their sorrow or empathy to families of victims of some tragic natural calamity or to express pride in the United States for some glorious, victorious event that made the country shine. You see this happening through corporate giving campaigns and fund-raising events for some lofty, noble cause rather than sell a product or a brand extolling their benefits. In a day-to-day office setting, you see this happening when the GM drops by a low rank employee’s work station to say thank you for a job well done. No doubt, we shall see these compassionate leaders multiplying in the months and years to come. The sensitivities that come to play in this compassionate leadership are inevitably transforming into favorable, positive results. Compassion Is In Everyone It is from some special spot, deep within us that compassion lives. It’s a gentle force that puts other people’s needs before our own, or a soft thrust to sympathise with their needs. Such sensitivity was evidenced in former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, when, during the September 11 tragic event, he took center stage to report and update the American people almost with every minute detail, news he was able to share, day after day. Governor George Pataki offered the support of New York State to help rebuild the city. Former president Bush shared hugs and handshakes with firemen and police officers with obvious empathy. Grown men wept openly on national TV. Who knows? Perhaps it’s what triggered this new wave of leadership with heart. Compassion is ever-present. Compassion is ever-natural. It’s not going to cost a penny to be a compassionate leader. It’s about being real and authentic with what matters to all of us. We can help in emotional intelligence assessments, where one of the elements we measure is empathy and self-awareness.

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Achieve Your Goals: Write Yourself A “Hope Letter”

Compassion, Positive Psychology / My Holland

We’re now in the month of February, 2016. By this time achieving any of those New Year’s resolutions we all fastidiously made at the end of 2015 may be slowly fading from our consciousness and starting to settle in the dust bin of “here today and gone tomorrow” goals. According to a study conducted by the University of Scranton’s 2014 Journal of Clinical Psychology, about forty five percent (45%) of residents in the United States typically make New Year’s resolutions. But among these Americans, there is only an eight percent (8%) chance of anyone realizing their goals. The main reason for this was never cited, although most experts contend it has to do with the degree or intensity of a person’s resoluteness and persistence to pursue whatever it is they set their minds to achieve for themselves and for their loved ones. Is There A Better Way To Improve This Situation? And so, you just might be telling yourself … “Heck! There’s got to be a better way to make good, significant changes in my live!” And there is. The “Hope Letter” The Hope Letter is a simple uncomplicated exercise. It is powerful though. This stems from what C.R. Snyder, Ph.D. professor of Psychology at the University of Kansas developed and called the Hope theory. This says that by concentrating on three important elements, the achievement of goals happens. He identified these factors to be: Having a clear goal Having ways and means of achieving this goal Believing in your ability to reach this goal. Researchers have further revealed that persons who have high hopes are more likely to cope better with physical pain or life’s many frustrations. They also tend to be happier and more satisfied. Building on the work of mental health professionals, who, from as early as the 1950’s begun realizing the key role hope played in the achievement of dreams, some creative, smart executive coaches developed the Hope Letter. When we write down our hopes and dreams…when we write down the ways and means we shall achieve them, we, in fact, become more successful in making them come true. This hope letter has been used among these executive coaches’ clients and have been known to work. Here then are the easy-to-follow, step by step guide on making one: Put it down on paper. Write a letter addressed to yourself. Date it precisely one year into the future. Don’t put a limit on yourself. Take the time to imagine what the scenario will be if you achieved or accomplished all your goals. Take into consideration your job and career, your health and finances, your love-life, family and friends, fun and personal growth. Prompt yourself with “What do I hope to have accomplished this time in 2017?” You’ll need to be accountable for this. When you’re done with the letter, give it to a close friend, your wife or special girl, your coach or colleague and ask him/her to mail it back to you, one year from the date you wrote it. You can also send a digital letter on www.futureme.org, program it so you will receive it in one year! Do this. When you get your letter back, you’ll be amazed at the number of things you shall have achieved, the reason being … when you set and write down your intentions, …your ways and methods of achieving them … your actions will naturally follow. Are all your goals … things you want to happen … do they happen, are they achieved? Not usually, but many do get realized. So, celebrate what you do achieve and learn from what you don’t and then write yourself another hope letter for the year ahead.

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True connections at work

Engagement, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, Productivity / My Holland

Well-connected people with strong social relationships are healthier and happier. Close ties with family and friends provides us with support, self-worth and add meaning to our lives. Networking can help us feel as though we belong to something significant. So why then, does social media and an age of feeling constantly connected to hundreds of friends, sometimes leave us feeling lonely and isolated? The Internet era means that we can message friends in real time, see photos of a relative across the globe on Instagram and read your sister’s reaction to her favourite TV programme on Twitter, despite a physical distance between you. But technology doesn’t include the physical contact that benefits our well-being. While social media provides us with a network of social connections which has been shown to decrease mental illness as we get older, it is the quality of the social connections that are important. Humans are social beings, and this involves physical contact such as hugging, and seeing facial expressions face-to-face. Chris Peterson, one of the founders of positive psychology said “other people matter” but does the count of Facebook ‘friends’ or Twitter ‘followers’ equate to happiness? Take the example of Instagram star Essena O’Neill. The Australian had over 600k Instagram followers and carved her career via the social media site. She posted regular pictures for her followers to comment on. Recently she decided to quit social media and revealed some of the deceit and fakeness attached to her online world. Her social media connections were not friends and the world and career she had built was not making her happy. Taking action to strengthen our relationships and build meaningful connections is essential for happiness. Ways in which to work on the quality of your relationships, and not just the quantity include: Two-way support – giving and receiving Shared activities Openly talking about feelings Shared experiences – the good, the bad and the ugly While messaging online, sending a text message or talking over the phone means we can interact easily with friends and family, the quality of the interaction is important and investing in your relationships will help improve your health and wellbeing. Emails are often referred to as ‘single strand’ interactions, while face-to-face relationship involves a more complex interaction and body chemistry. Ways to boost this include a meal or drink with a friend, going to the cinema, shopping or a holiday to visit a friend who lives further away. Building more connections can include joining a networking group for your career, volunteering with a group, a new hobby or taking part in a protest. According the recent Emotional Needs Audit of the UK, by the Human Givens Institute, 24.1% of people did not feel emotionally connected to others, 34.8% did not feel connected to the wider community. Loneliness can make you unhappy, unhealthy and shorten your life, so take the time to invest in the people that are important to you.

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Positive Psychology

Positivity in the workplace

Flow and sustainable happiness…

The New Way To Lead … With Compassion

Achieve Your Goals: Write Yourself A “Hope Letter”

True connections at work

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