Celebrating great writing and sharing ideas
I’m in the midst of writing my final Capstone submission for my MAPP (Master of Applied Positive Psychology) program at the University of Pennsylvania. I can’t believe the hundreds of research papers that I’ve scoured and reviewed, in order to come up with my own paper. It will eventually be posted on the Scholarly Commons and I will announce the link when that is available.
In the meantime, I’m extra-appreciative of excellent writing and how other positive psychology practitioners – those using the research and philosophy of positive psychology to enrich the “real lives” of people, organizations and societies – are able to share their ideas widely.
Two examples:
Paula Davis-Laack is a lawyer who is using positive psychology to help those in the legal profession. Her company, The Marie Elizabeth Company, is all about empowering “strengths-based and resilient living”. Her writing may be aimed at those in the legal profession, but her wisdom is something we can all learn from. Today’s celebration for Paula is special as she was published in the Wisconsin Lawyer , the official publication of the state bar of Wisconsin. When a publication like that is paying attention, you know it’s important!
(I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention someone who has been inspirational to Paula, and also to me, Dan Bowling. Dan is also a lawyer, but a really really nice one – though he never shies away from controversy and debate. Dan was recently interviewed by the ABA journal, the journal of the American Bar Association. If you want to see the reaction to his article, conduct a search for “vibrant stew” and “Dan Bowling” and see what bubbles up…)
The second example is someone I’ve actually never met in person, but I have been in constant awe at his ability to apply research and write clearly about the most convoluted ideas. His contributions and generosity are impressive. Jeremy McCarthy works in the spa industry, which I would think is perfectly suited to positive psychology – it’s all about flourishing and knowing that other people matter. Jeremy blogs at The Psychology of Wellbeing and his articles are always well-written and bring a smile to my face. Today’s celebration for Jeremy is that his reach just got a big boost from About.com, perhaps one of the most-referenced websites for anything you want to know anything about. Kudos to Jeremy!
Of course, there are many many more practitioners out there writing and sharing great ideas about the application of positive psychology. If you know of any blogs or newsletters, please send them my way! I’d love to highlight them. A well-deserved toast to you all.
MAPP term 2
Celebrating having a few minutes to get back to this blog! Rather than lamenting the time that has passed and the busy-ness that has taken me away from it… I’m going for the positive approach! I find that I spend more time on Twitter (@LVSConsulting) and I enjoy posting snippits of articles that I’m reading, along with the bit.ly link. I’m able to get quite a few click-throughs that way, and I enjoy spreading the work that’s being done in Positive Psychology.
However, my mind right now is on two things: 1. an assignment I will be writing about character strengths in The Wizard of Oz (1939, starring Judy Garland) and 2. all the new books I have for this term on my new bookshelf.
Let me start with #2.
For the Spring MAPP term (for some reason, the University of Pennsylvania optimistically calls the Jan-April term “spring” term, even though it’s predominantly in winter, but perhaps that’s why I’m studying positive psychology there, and not at a “winter term” university?), I had to order quite a few new books – I have probably spent around $300, and that figure is lower than expected because I already owned some of the books. I’m also probably forgetting an online order or two…
Some of the books that I’m looking forward to:
Rath, T. & Conchie, B. (2008). Strengths-based leadership. Gallup Press: New York. (ISBN: 978-1595620255) – This aligns very nicely with a course that I’m now teaching to third year college / university students on Organizational Leadership. The course is Wednesday nights for 3 hours at a stretch, and it turns out that while almost all of my students know their weaknesses, almost none of them know their strengths. This week, they are taking the StrengthsFinder assessment and this week’s course will make use of what they’ve discovered. Stay tuned….
Prilleltensky, I. & Prilleltensky, O. (2006). Promoting Well-Being: Linking Personal, Organizational and Community Change. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. (ISBN: 978-0471719267) – I haven’t had the time to really get into this tome yet, but the title is inspirational. Especially when one considered the newly-emerging theories of social contagion. Well, there’s a lot of potential here!
Reivich, K. & Shatte, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Essential Skills for Overcoming Life’s Inevitable Obstacles. New York: Broadway Books (ISBN: 978-0767911900) – Dr. Karen Reivich is one of our professors this term, and she’s also leading the US Army resilience training program. A highly impressive individual, as well as a ground-breaking movement into resilience research and application. I do hope to become certified in the Penn Resiliency Program after my MAPP work is done. Great implications for children, families, parents, and, of course, in organizational life with leaders and employees.
Cooperrider, D. & Whitney, D. (2007). Appreciative Inquiry Handbook, 2nd Edition. Crown Custom Publishing. (ISBN: 978-1933403199) – As I’ve already mentioned, David Cooperrider came to lecture in our first MAPP class and it was amazing. I have some familiarity with Appreciative Inquiry, and I’m looking forward to deepening my understanding. This topic is of special interest because my service learning project involved helping to create (and possibly run) an AI Summit for organizational and community change. Completely thrilling and meaningful.
There are also several books that I bought “just because” – usually because a professor or classmate highly recommended it. I figure this puts my entire book-buying total for the MAPP program well over $1000, but it’s been well-spent! Although it might be 2011 before I get to read all of them…
As to #1 above, I’m writing a paper about character strengths as demonstrated in the movie The Wizard of Oz.
We know, for example, that the cowardly lion isn’t really cowardly, and that the TinMan really has a heart, and the Scarecrow is really quite intelligent – but what does this indicate for positive psychology? I’ll leave you to reflect on that yourself, or else here’s a list of PPND articles that might get your grey stuff going. PPND is the Positive Psychology News Daily, and if you’re at all interested in what’s on the cutting edge of Positive Psychology, I highly recommend an email subscription! I read every single one each day.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to ease on down the road (remember The Wiz? with Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow?) and put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, and ponder character strengths and the Yellow Brick Road… Hope I don’t fall into the poppies!
Predictably Irrational…
I have just finished reading a fun book called Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist from Duke University. Full disclosure: I fit into just about everything that he studied. I will cross town to save $2.00 on a paperback book, but not to save $2.00 on a laptop computer. I prefer to keep my options open, even if it costs me in the end. I would rather work for free, volunteering my time, than working at a minimal rate of, say, $5.00 per hour. If my dinner companion orders first, and orders something that I wanted to eat, I will probably change my mind and order something different, even if I know I won’t enjoy it as much. I hang my head in shame.
And yet, I am so like much of the rest of the human population because, according to the studies that Ariely and his colleagues have conducted, most people are like that.
I won’t spoil the results of the studies – some are quite counter-intuitive – but if you’ve enjoyed books by authors such as Malcolm Gladwell, or titles such as Freakonomics, then I recommend this one as well.
What does this have to do with positive psychology, you ask? Ah yes, I ask that too.
I am intrigued these days with individual decision making. How do we make decisions about our behaviour, and how might we choose to make “positive” decisions more often? I have recently read books on game theory, such as Rock, Paper, Scissors, and books on buying decisions / marketing, such as Why We Buy, and I would love to know how to take these consumeristic insights and mind games into the world of positive psychology. Can we use these real-world observations to steer people along the road to well-being? How can this lead to flourishing? Can this be incorporated into the structure of positive organizations?
When I publish, I’ll let you know.
Lord Richard Layard – Happiness and Public Policy
I seem to be managing to update this blog every two days or so. So be it! That allows me time to process the conference over time, which I know is working for me. I hope it’s working for my readers as well. Comments always welcome and appreciated!
The plenary on Saturday June 20 was given by Lord Richard Layard from the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK. His argument is that the government’s role in the world is to increase well-bring, and not so much about economic policy. It was an interesting concept and I’m still mulling it around in my mind. Typically the role of government has been, as I see it, the national regulation of finite resources, and “well being” is not a finite resource, so it’s a bit of a puzzle for me still… I’m not sure how the goverment would fill that role, but let me share a few tidbits from Lord Layard…
First of all, if you want to know more, please see his book titled Happiness - it will do a far better job of explaining his philosophy and theory.
Layard goes back to 18th century entitlement which set the quality of human experience, and he calls it a “tragedy” that early 20th century psychologists chose to focus on behaviourism, which also affected economists. While John Stuart Mills believed in promoting the happiness of citizens, psychologists said that happiness couldn’t be measured, and so that notion was abandoned in favour of measureable GDP and so on.
Layard believes that “happiness” is the over-arching good – if you ask about “why” we would pursue any other ambition, such as liberty, health, accomplishment, and so on, the answer always comes back to some form of “happiness”. But if you ask “why” about happiness, it is just taken for granted that this would be a natural thing to pursue. Therefore, if we accept that happiness is at the fundamental centre, then public policy needs to revolve around that.
I’m not going to get into his economic equations for considering policy changes and so on, but it was an interesting hypothesis. His “controversial statement” (self-proclaimed) is that all policy discussions should start by staing that “happiness is the only thing that matters”. I can see lots of trouble brewing around this one – not the least being that the positive psychology movement hasn’t defined happiness, and is already starting to move away from it (although it was a useful media buzzword to get the movement started…)
Overall, Layard proposed that five things have to change:
- Family – more parenting education, training & support with parenting taught in schools, free parenting courses for all new parents (physical and psychological health of baby AND parents AND their relationship)
- Mental health – not just treatment, but also prevention – one model is the Penn Resiliency Program which seems to have considerable traction in the UK
- Community and Values – more social learning to combat the “terrifying growth of individualism” – direct teaching of social values such as empathy, altruism in school curriculum
- Work and Income – to put stability before growth. Unemployment is a major cause of depression and human misery – people lose their sense of purpose.
- Measurement and Social Science – to put new priorities on “happiness” and “well-being” over other economic indicators
I have to say that this is particularly telling in today’s economic climate. Would the same decisions have been made over the past 20 years if “happiness” rather than “growth” was the key consideration? I would suggest it’s highly doubtful.
Now I also have to say that, generally, I have found Positive Psychologists to be a rather liberal lot in their political inclinations. If there were any US political references at the World Congress, it was largely to praise the arrival of Obama and express relief at the demise of the Bush administration. I do wonder what other people of other political preferences might think or say. Anyone out there willing to go out on a limb?
