The cost of ill-health to the British economy is a staggering £103 billion a year according to a recent report from Professor Dame Carol Black, National Director for Health and Work. This article from today’s spiked suggests that the government’s attempts to get the unemployed back to work by e.g. re-branding “Incapacity Benefit” as “Employment and Support Allowance”, is merely tinkering at the edges. I’m inclined to agree. Other carrot-and-stick measures such as tougher health tests for those claiming IB and requiring doctors to intervene sooner are unlikely to be successful and will instead just create more expensive targets and measures to be monitored and circumvented, in the same way that hospital waiting lists have been.

The article quotes one professor of psychiatry, Simon Wessely, as saying that many normal human experiences are being medicalised; for example feeling sadness after a bereavement is now seen as a health “problem” for which there should be a medical cure. People are encouraged to think of negative emotions as something can and should be avoided – take the frequency with which counselling is offered after traumatic events for example, even though there is growing scientific evidence that most people heal better and more quickly without it.

Off hand I don’t know how the UK compares to other European countries regarding the true cost of ill-health (if anyone reading this does, let me know!). I agree with Mick Hume that the answer lies not in treating the entire problem as one of ill-health (and certainly not in the ways the government proposes), rather we need to be looking more seriously at the underlying causes. If it is the case that many of those people on IB should really be at work, the question is why they prefer to claim state benefits rather than make a meaningful contribution to society. That is a much deeper issue.

Once again I’m left thinking that those of us with an interest in Positive Psychology and the science behind happiness need to ensure we talk about the benefits of PP in business without it sounding like we inhabit cloud-cuckoo land.

Image: Lindseyy

…pure inspiration…

One of our March blogs looked at the subject of legacy and making a contribution ; we featured the fabulous Peter, aka Geriatric1927 , who posts his own unique videoblogs on Youtube. Well, he’s popped up again, this time as part of the band, The Zimmers, who stormed into the UK Singles Charts at Number 26 this week with a brilliant version of The Who’s “My Generation” . Believe it or not the lead singer, Alf, is 90.

You might have seen The Zimmers featured on Tim Samuels’ BBC2 documentary last week, Power to the People: The Great Granny Chart Invasion. What an inspirational bunch of people. This is positive ageing in practice.

The other day I came across the most fantastic video-blogger on Youtube:  a 79 year old called Peter, aka Geriatric1927 . You must listen to this interview with him on the World Service , which is also posted on Youtube. Musing on the fact that what started out as a bit of fun has turned into quite a responsible role, Peter says ‘I do believe that I’ve encouraged more older people to copy me and have a go and therefore widened the age range of people who use video-blogging, and so I could go out of this world feeling that I have contributed something’.

What a brilliant contribution to have made.

On a similar note, I heard Charles Handy speak last year, he’s one of my favourite management gurus. (he brought ‘unconditional positive regard’ into management-speak years before anyone else). Anyway, the point is that, reflecting on his life and his contribution to the world, Handy mentioned that he writes letters about his view on life, as well as everyday stuff, for his grandchildren to read when they’ve grown up. I thought what a fantastic legacy idea this was, a bit like Geriatric1927 on Youtube.

In the meantime, I can thoroughly recommend having a go at writing your own legacy (see this blog entry for details). We use this technique with many of our coaching clients; here are some of their comments:

• It was a very creative way of finding out what really matters to me

• I was surprised by what came to mind, it wasn’t what I was expecting and it has helped me get my work:life balance sorted out

When Jenny and I were completing our Certified NLP Practitioner’s course, one of the exercises we were required to do was to write a Daily Journal. Part of the Daily Journal focussed on confirming 3 outcomes for the following day, the other part focussed on reviewing the past 24 hours, identifying the best bits and the learning points. John Seymour , our trainer, was confident that this exercise would make a difference to our lives, and informal research amongst our peer group at the time confirmed this to be the case.

Around the time I started writing my journal, I read an article, ˜Writing Wrongs’, in the first issue of Psychologies magazine by Professor David Servan-Schreiber of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In the article, about the value of writing things down, he quoted a clinical study which showed that “..those (patients) who had spent just 20 minutes a day writing about their problems, for three days in a row, were feeling better, taking fewer drugs to relieve their symptoms and seeing their doctor less often”. His ‘journal rules’ are as follows:

1. The journal must remain strictly confidential
2. It must be honest (don’t waste time lying to yourself)
3. You must write it on a regular basis and stick to your timetable.

As a Positive Psychology student, my interest is weighted more towards counting my blessings than writing about the negatives. Nevertheless, I don’t doubt the value of Writing Wrongs in specific contexts (and, interestingly, I thought Servan-Schreiber’s explanation of the impact of the process of writing on images stored in the brain made sense of why NLP works).

If, like me, you are keener to try identifying good things in your life than you are to dwell on the bad things, here are the instructions for a 10-15 minute exercise, courtesy of Chris Peterson*

1. At the end of each day, before going to sleep, write down 3 things that went well during the day. Do this every night for 1 week.
2. The 3 things can be of relatively small importance (my friend told me a brilliant joke) or relatively large importance (my friend just got married).
3. After each positive thing, answer in your own words the question ‘Why did this good thing happen?’

You may be interested to know that Peterson’s own research shows that if you continue to do this exercise beyond the suggested 1 week, you can increase your happiness and decrease your symptoms of depression over the long-term. 10-15 minutes of your time every day doesn’t seem like a lot to ask for such a reward, does it? Go on, have a go, you know you’re worth it….

* Peterson, C, A Primer in Positive Psychology(2006) p38.