Happy New Year! As this is often a time when we reflect on our past achievements and set new goals for the future, I’d like to share with you some of the latest positive psychology research which you may find helpful.

• Focus on creating approach goals

According to psychology research, avoidance goals (those with negative outcomes which we work to avoid) are stressful because constantly monitoring negative possibilities drains our energy and enjoyment, eventually taking its toll on our well-being. On the other hand if we set approach goals i.e. those with positive outcomes which we work towards, our focus is on achieving the presence of something positive, which is more energizing and enjoyable. According to psychologists this ultimately leads to greater well-being too.

• Increase your intrinsic motivation

Being intrinsically motivated (i.e. doing something because you want to, not because you have to) is an essential part of goal achievement. Intrinsic motivation can be increased by ensuring that, in identifying and pursuing your goal, three basic psychological needs are met:  i) control, ii) competence and iii) connection. If your goal is not freely chosen, how might you change it so that you increase the amount of control that you have?  To increase your level of competence, why not seek regular and constructive feedback on your performance from a trusted friend, colleague or mentor? And how might you ensure that you have positive support from those around you in achieving your goal?

• Develop your self-control and commitment

Fortunately for us, self-control is like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. This means that being more disciplined in one domain of your life can help you develop greater self-control in other areas. The key to self-control is to try to create new habits which simply become part of your day-to-day routine; after a while you don’t need much self-control at all.

Research into goal commitment suggests that it makes a difference to your self-motivation whether you focus on the progress you’ve already made, or whether you focus on the things that you have left to achieve.

• If you are fully committed to your goal, you can maintain your self-motivation by focusing on what you have left to do

•  But if your commitment is less than 10 out of 10, you can increase your self-motivation by focusing on what you have already accomplished.

Finally, remember that not all goals are equal in the well-being stakes: make sure yours are intrinsic, congruent and in harmony with each other.

Image courtesy of lululemon athletica

Christmas Lights

The holiday season and the New Year period can be a pretty stressful time. We’re inclined to think that everything must be perfect, and that includes the gifts we give, the food we prepare, the warmth of our welcome to guests, what we wear to the office party and so on. Often we also take on the responsibility for ensuring that everyone around us, our children, family, and friends, all have a good time – and that can be extremely hard work! So what’s the antidote to festive stress? Well, I think this time of year provides us with some ideal opportunities for savouring: noticing, appreciating, and enhancing the things which are already positive in our lives – and you’d be hard pressed to find anything easier to do. The rules of savouring are simple to follow, and you don’t need any special skills or equipment. In fact anyone, young or old, rich or poor, can learn how to savour and reap the benefits.

What is savouring?

Savouring is about slowing down and paying conscious attention to all your senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell). You stretch out the experience, and concentrate on noticing what it is that you really enjoy, whether it’s sipping a glass of chilled vintage champagne at the New Year’s Eve party, looking forward to seeing your children’s faces as they open their Christmas presents, or recollecting the time you played one of the three wise men in the school nativity play. By learning to savour, you can increase your capacity to notice what is good about your life and thus appreciate it more fully. In doing so, you can maximize your positive emotions and overcome the built-in survival mechanism called the negativity bias.

The flavours of savouring

The great thing about savouring is that it’s such a flexible technique, coming in so many different flavors. For example, think of all the different things that you might luxuriate or bask in, relish, treasure, or cherish. You can choose something tangible (like a warm bubble bath) or something intangible (like a lifelong friendship) to notice, appreciate, and enhance. You can use some or all of your senses when savouring, and you can savour across time dimensions, focusing on things in the past, present, or future. This gives you enormous scope when looking for opportunities to savour in your everyday life.

Bubbles

How to savour in 5 easy steps:

The ‘rules’ of savouring are very straightforward and easy to remember:

1. Slow down.
2. Pay attention.
3. Use all your senses – touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing.
4. S-t-r-e-t-c-h out the experience for as long as you can.
5. Reflect on your enjoyment.

It’s important to remember that savouring is a process not an outcome – in other words it’s something we do, not something we get.

Over the next 12 days, try some of the following savouring suggestions:

Savouring the future

• Anticipate the excitement and delight on your children’s faces as they open their presents on Christmas morning.
• Look forward to welcoming friends into your home.
• Anticipate the strong community bonds created by attending local carol services or neighbourhood parties.
• Look forward to a fresh start in 2012, the chance to set new goals, and the green shoots of Spring.

Savouring the present

• Relish that box of dark chocolate pralines that you received from Auntie Joyce.
• Drink in the aroma of cloves, tangerines, and cinnamon of the mulled wine as it simmers on the stove.
• Luxuriate in a warm bath scented with the fragrance of neroli oil, jasmine, and rose petals.
• Turn off your mobile phone so that you can snuggle up with your kids on the sofa and laugh at the latest Disney movie.

Winter Frost

Savouring the past

• Reminisce, with others if you can, about remarkable holidays in the past, such as the time when you built a mammoth snowman on the front lawn, volunteered at a downtown soup kitchen, or glimpsed reindeer in Lapland.
• Ring a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while and talk about the good old days.
• Get out the photo album, and spend 15 minutes remembering all those special occasions.
• Pick a prominent accomplishment from 2011 – an exam passed, a promotion gained, or weight lost – and savour your memories of the achievement.

Remember to take your time, to imagine the small details of the positive experience using all your senses if you can, and to share it with others.

How not to savour!

It’s worth bearing in mind that there are several things which can completely spoil your experience of savouring, or fail to get it off the ground. These include:

• Killjoy thinking about how the experience might be improved
• Analyzing in the moment why an experience is positive
• Rushing

And finally….What will you savour?

There are so many different ways to savour that there will be at least one which suits you. But why not use every spare ten minutes this festive season to try them all, and let us hear about your experiences?

Happy Savouring!

Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007) Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Quoidbach, J., Berry, E. V., Hansenne, M. & Mikolajczak, M. (2010). Positive emotion regulation and well-being: Comparing the impact of eight savoring and dampening strategies. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(5), 368-373. From the abstract:

“The present study examines the relative impact of the main positive emotion regulation strategies on two components of well-being: positive affect (PA) and life satisfaction (LS). A total of 282 participants completed measures of PA, LS, overall happiness, and the savoring and dampening strategies they typically used. Results show that when experiencing positive events, focusing attention on the present moment and engaging in positive rumination promoted PA, whereas telling others promoted LS. In contrast, being distracted diminished PA, while focusing on negative details and engaging in negative rumination reduced LS. … our results further show that … typically using various strategies rather than a few specific ones … was beneficial to overall happiness. Our findings suggest that there are several independent ways to make the best (or the worst) out of our positive emotions, and that the cultivation of multiple savoring strategies might be required to achieve lasting happiness.”

Images

Christmas Lights by Sirenz Lorraine:
Bubbles by ion-bogdan dumitrescu
Winter Frost by tlindenbaum

Changing Behaviour in Schools

My latest article for Positive Psychology News Daily is a review of a new Positive Psychology-based book by ed psych and consultant Sue Roffey, called Changing Behaviour in Schools: Promoting Positive Relationships and Well-being.

One of the great strengths of this book is its breadth, not just in terms of aims but also its evidence base. It draws on quantitative research from more than a dozen areas including restorative approaches, school culture and leadership, mental health, and values education, not just positive psychology. Thus the suggested approaches have a multi-dimensional foundation.  Not surprisingly, there isn’t space in just over 200 pages to describe positive psychology theories or research in great depth.

Roffey makes use of most of the main positive psychology concepts, such as flow, strengths, resilience, optimism, positive emotions, and emotional intelligence, although with the exception of emotional intelligence, they aren’t described in detail. Depending on your expectations and your association with positive psychology, this might be a disappointment or a welcome relief! I particularly liked the chapter on Being and Becoming Emotionally Literate, with its 11 dimensions of social and emotional literacy, and numerous questions for personal development.

I love the core message, which is that school can be a positive transformational experience, and that building positive relationships and school connectedness lead to both improved learning and better behaviour for all students.

Despite its limitations, I think this is a fabulous resource book for anyone working in primary or secondary education. Dip into almost any page and you will find some gem of information, a question that will challenge your thinking, an activity, or an insightful case study. If you picked up this book expecting it to help you manage challenging student behaviour you may be in for a surprise. It does this exceeding well in my opinion, but it does much more than that.

This book sets out the expectation that everyone in an education role, every teacher, trainee, teaching assistant, support person, and early childhood practitioner, can be a role model of well-being. Changing behaviour is schools is based on the premise that a theoretical knowledge of the subject isn’t sufficient. Teachers have to be able to do well-being in order to teach well-being.

For the full review, click here.

• some new research by Nathaniel Lambert, A. Marlea Gwinn, Tyler Stillman and Frank Fincham on how sharing positive experiences can boost your vitality and help you overcome tiredness,
• An interview with Barbara Fredrickson (famous for the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions), and
• A review of the film Happy, directed by Roko Belic

This edition is quite a lot shorter than the previous two – does this reflect a lack of material, or positive psychologists’ preference to be published in ‘traditional’ positive psychology journals? Whichever it is, let’s hope it isn’t a trend that will continue.

The Difference Engine

One of the very first pieces I wrote for Positive Psychology News Daily back in 2007 focused on the application of strengths – whether strengths as defined in positive psychology are always positive and how we know which strength to apply in any given situation. This was inspired by a great article by Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe (see below) about ‘practical wisdom’, the nous we all need to help us navigate life’s trickier waters. What I like about Schwartz and Sharpe is that they remind us that context is king. Positive psychologists tend to define strengths as inherently positive characteristics, but that doesn’t mean they can be applied willy-nilly, hence the need for some practical wisdom to guide our choice of behaviour.

This month’s article for Positive Psychology News looks at a 2011 paper by James McNulty and Frank Fincham (details below) in which the authors argue that positive psychology needs to be more contextual. They have a point – most psychology research is carried out on convenience samples of psychology students in a  college environment, which is hardly representative of people in the real world. They chose 4 well-documented positive psychology topics (forgiveness, positive attributions, optimism and kindness), presenting research which counters the usual positive psychology claims that more of them is better for well-being. However, I found their conclusions more interesting, in particular:

• The need to study the implications of various psychological concepts in the context of both happy and unhappy people. Perhaps some may benefit people in optimal circumstances, but may harm people in suboptimal circumstances. For example, some may not be suitable for people in therapy.

• The need to examine the implications of psychological characteristics over a long period of time. Most of the positive psychology studies look at consequences over the short term, the assumption being that if the immediate outcome is positive, the long term result will be too.

Of course, we should not forget that positive psychology is a very young discipline (about 13 years old). Hopefully it will continue too grow and mature, and perhaps over time it may even acquire the scientific kudos that Seligman is so keen on.

To read the full article and readers’ comments, click here.

* McNulty, J.K. & Fincham, F.D. (2011). Beyond positive psychology? Toward a contextual view of psychological processes and well-being. American Psychologist. doi: 10.1037/a0024572.

The Houses of Parliament and Big Ben

Back in February 2011 I looked at the British government’s plans to measure the nation’s well-being. Now the National Statistician, Jil Matheson, has published her Reflections on the National Debate on Measuring National Well-being.

Was it worth waiting for?  Have we learnt anything new about well-being?  Was it worth the £2m it cost to conduct this ‘debate?’

Based on the fact that they only captured the views of  some 35,000 people (about 0.06% of the population), probably not. Have we learnt anything new about well-being? Having read Ms Matheson’s Reflections, again probably not. As I pointed out before, they’d secured enough  experts on the advisory panel to tell them everything they needed to know about well-being without spending £2m and 10 months consulting the general public. If the exercise was intended to engage the public and make Cameron et al on the coalition government look like they’re more in touch with the general public, then judging by the numbers who took part, it probably hasn’t succeeded on those grounds either.

And of course, there is always the danger that politicians will actually bow to public opinion about what makes them happy, when they don’t actually know (the  ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ argument).

According to this report, a draft set of national well-being indicators will be published in Oct 2011.  We wait with bated breath.

UPDATE: 18/08/11

In the light of the recent riots in England, you might be interested to read what people said mattered most to them:

• “children who contributed to the debate through events in schools said eating breakfast in the morning, playing on computer games, playing with dolls and push-chairs, celebrating Christmas and birthdays were some of the things that matter most
• some young adults included make-up, good clothes, alcohol, music and fast food on their list
• some older people were concerned about the loss of a sense of community

All the age groups highlighted the importance of family, friends, health, financial security, equality and fairness in determining well-being” (p9).

I wonder what the Government will make of that.

Image: The British Parliament & Big Ben: ** Maurice **

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Most people with an interest in psychology have heard of Maslow’s theory of motivation and hierarchy of needs, which suggest that we’re driven to satisfy basic physiological needs (such as for food and shelter) first, then to satisfy our needs for safety, love and belonging, self-esteem and lastly self-actualization.

For those interested in positive psychology, there are many unanswered questions about the link between such needs and subjective well-being (SWB) which is why this new research by Louis Tay and Ed Diener* caught my eye today.  Some of the questions tackled in the study include whether needs really are universal and if so whether they are related to subjective well-being (SWB) in all cultures, and whether needs are individually required or influence well-being synergistically.

As this is a pretty complex piece of research, containing multiple studies, there isn’t space here to present the findings in detail, so the focus is on the things that stand out most.

Tay and Diener investigated  six types of needs (i.e. basic, safety, social support, respect, mastery and autonomy). When combined, the fulfillment of  these six needs explained between 10% and 23% of the total variance in SWB, depending on which aspect of SWB we’re referring to.  In terms of life evaluation, having needs met explained 13% of the variance; in terms of positive emotions, 23% of the variance; in terms of negative emotions, 10%. Tay and Diener refer to these percentages as substantial. I’m not sure I agree.

In order to understand which of the six needs is most important, these percentages have been broken down even further;  we’re told that

* basic needs were the strongest predictor of life evaluations (8%)

* respect and social needs were the important predictors of positive emotions  (8% and 5.5% respectively), and

* respect, basic and autonomy  needs were the important predictors of negative emotions (2.5%,  2.3% and 2.2%  respectively).

I don’t know about you, but I thought these percentages were surprisingly small.

To read the full article in Positive Psychology News, click here.

* Tay, L. & Diener, E. (2011). Needs and subjective well-being around the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Image:

Maslow hierarchy from creative chaos, Conversations with Dina

In the Positive Psychology Masterclasses that I co-present with fellow University of East London MAPP graduate, Miriam Akhtar, the important role that gratitude plays in boosting well-being often comes up. Gratitude is active when people write thank-you letters, reflect on three good things at the end of the week, or simply say, “Thank you,” to someone (and really mean it).

But our participants often balk at the prospect of reading out loud a Thank You letter to the person they want to thank. It seems that this kind of overt display of positive emotion is a step too far. “Posting a letter is one thing,” said Katrina, “but I couldn’t stand in front of [Mrs  X] and read it out loud – way too embarrassing, for both of us!”

As it happens, we’re in good company here: Thank you, Sonja Lyubomirsky, for being honest enough to admit that expressing gratitude doesn’t float your boat either.

The Importance of Fit

During our MAPP programme, when we were assigned to test out various happiness-enhancing activities on ourselves and report back, we often argued about the idea of fitness. Some of us found that a particular exercise worked really well, and we may even have continued to practice it after our assignment was handed in, whereas other students couldn’t get on with it at all and stopped at the earliest opportunity.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky devotes a whole chapter to the question of suitability, pointing out that although it’s widely accepted in the domains of diet and physical health, thinking about whether a particular approach will suit us isn’t something we often do when considering our emotional and psychological health.  She explains three elements of suitability: fit with the source of your unhappiness, fit with your strengths, and fit with your lifestyle. The advice is that choosing appropriately will vastly increase your chances of succeeding when you’re contemplating doing any exercises to increase your well-being.

On top of suitability, her new research with her colleagues Rene Dickerhoof and Julia Boehm (University of California, Riverside) and Kennon Sheldon (University of Missouri, Columbia) suggests there are two other important factors which influence your chances of increasing your happiness when you carry out an evidence-based happiness exercise: your motivation and the effort you invest.

Longitudinal Study

In this study involving approximately 330 students, Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues gave participants two choices: they could choose to participate in a happiness intervention or they could choose to participate in a cognitive exercises study. Participants in both groups were randomly assigned to one of two empirically-validated positive exercises or to a control activity, each of which involved writing for 15 minutes per week for 8 weeks, as described below:

• Evidence-based exercise 1: Expressing optimism by writing about an imagined future ideal self
• Evidence-based exercise 2: Expressing gratitude by remembering times when you were grateful to another person and writing a letter to that person (but not sending it).
• Control Activity: Writing about what you did in the past 7 days

Well-being was assessed using a range of measures at the start of the study, at the end of the 8^th week, and again another 6 months later. The degree of effort and energy that participants put into their writing exercises every week was assessed by independent coders who ranked it on a 7 point scale.

The Motivation Effect

The researchers interpreted self-selection into the happiness intervention group as an indication of motivation to become happier. They hypothesized that that the ones in the happiness intervention group that performed one of the positive exercises would report greater gains in well-being than those in the cognitive exercises group, even though they completed exactly the same empirically-validated happiness activities. They predicted that participants in the experimental conditions in both groups would report greater gains in well-being than those in the control condition.

The Effort Effect

Researchers also predicted that those participants who exerted more effort would demonstrate a greater boost in their well-being compared to those who exerted less effort, and that the effort effect would be strongest in the two experimental conditions and weakest or non-existent in the control condition.

The Results

As a whole, combining both happiness intervention and cognitive exercise groups, there was no significant difference in the well-being levels of the participants who completed the two empirically-validated exercises compared to the control group either at the end of the 8^th week, or at the 6 month follow-up.

Given that expressing gratitude and optimism have been shown in other studies to increase well-being, this may come as a surprise. The researchers explain this in terms of the role played by one’s motivation to be happier. In other studies, all participants were interested in increasing their own happiness and were aware that this was the purpose of the study. In this research, some participants thought they were signing up for cognitive exercises, but at the start were told that the aim of the study was to improve well-being. In other words, it may be that expressing optimism or gratitude is simply not as meaningful or useful to people who aren’t motivated to practice them.

At the end of 8 weeks the happiness intervention participants reported greater increases in well-being compared to the participants in the cognitive exercise group. The happiness intervention participants who completed the positive exercises reported greater increases in well-being compared to both the cognitive exercise participants who did the same exercises and to those in the control condition.

After 6 months, the happiness intervention participants who completed the positive activities reported greater boosts in well-being than those in the cognitive exercise group who practiced the same exercises and than those in the control groups.

What Role does Effort Play?

In terms of effort, as predicted, the results suggest that the amount of effort we use when practicing positive exercises such as expressing optimism or gratitude does affect subsequent gains in well-being, but doesn’t have a significant effect when we do a neutral or less meaningful activity, such as listing our previous week’s activities.

Research conclusion

The study results indicate that motivation to become happier (in this case demonstrated by self-selection into the happiness intervention group) and continued effort make a difference, but only in the two positive activity conditions, not the control.

Lyubomirsky and her colleagues conclude that happiness activities such as expressing optimism and gratitude are more than just placebos, but that they are more effective when participants are motivated to improve their well-being and put effort into doing them.

Summary

We can sum all of this up by saying that if you want to increase your happiness, there are three basic  rules you need to be aware of:

1. It’s important to do the right positive exercise.  It needs to be empirically validated, and it needs to be right for you. If expressing gratitude or optimism doesn’t do it for you, try something else.
2. You must be highly motivated to improve your well-being, and, if you’re working with clients, they need to be aware of purpose of the positive exercise. Sceptics need not apply!
3. There’s no getting away from it. You have to carry out the activity conscientiously and persistently. In other words, you need to invest time and effort into practicing. If you think you can take short cuts, forget it!

So with those three guidelines in mind, what will you do differently?

Lyubomirsky, S., Dickerhoof, R., Boehm, J. K., & Sheldon, K. M. (2011). Becoming happier takes both a will and a proper way: An experimental longitudinal intervention to boost well-being. Emotion, 11(2), 391-402.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Books.

Images

1. Gratitude: Kateausburn

2. Bright Optimism: Theen Moy

3. Day 25 Effort: Toastwife

In his forthcoming book, Flourish, Martin Seligman reveals his latest approach to well-being.

Readers of his Authentic Happiness (2002), the book which brought Positive Psychology out of the academic closet and into the mainstream, will remember the three pathways to happiness, which were:

1. Positive Emotions  – leading to a pleasurable life

2. Engagement (or flow) – leading to an engaged life

3. Meaning (and purpose) – leading to a meaningful life

All three together lead to ‘the Good Life’.

Now Seligman has updated this model to include two more elements: Relationships / social connections and Accomplishment. The model is now called ‘Well-being Theory’ because Seligman believes that ‘happiness’ is too woolly.

Well-being Theory can be remembered with the acronym PERMA:

1. Positive Emotions

2. Engagement (or flow)

3. Relationships/social connections

4. Meaning (and purpose)

5. Accomplishment

NB – PERMA is only a theory, and not everyone in the positive psychology world agrees with it! Accomplishment in particular causes a fair amount of discussion. Seligman suggests (and indeed recommends) that all 5 facets can be measured both subjectively and objectively, but these measures have yet to be agreed.

Image: Glädje (Joy) by Henrik Ström