It’s the end of January already! “Where has the time gone?” my elderly neighbour Stella asked this morning as we chatted about the weather, our families, and which birds we had  spotted in our gardens (the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is doing a nationwide Bird Watch this weekend).

Bird Watching

Stella is a real inspiration – she‘s in her late 70s, happily divorced with three grown-up children, and as well as being an avid birdwatcher, she paints and leads a regular poetry class at the local University of the Third Age.

We talked about New Year’s Resolutions. Does she set New Year’s Resolutions? Or have goals? No (in fact she snorted with laughter at this point). But she’s always thinking up something new to try, whether it’s writing Haiku, foraging for wild foods, or learning how to make soap. I started to wonder how goal-setting changes as you get older and whether there is a type of person for whom deliberate or conscious goal-setting isn’t required.

In our Positive Psychology Masterclass last week my colleague Miriam Akhtar and I devoted part of the two-day session to the application of positive psychology in coaching. The topic of goals – goal setting and goal achievement – is central to coaching, so the research related to goals and well-being played a major role in our discussion. Whether you are coaching yourself or someone else, it’s helpful to understand the different impacts of different types of goals.

Approach and Avoidance Goals

Approach goals are those with positive outcomes that we work towards.  Positive can mean different things in different contexts, such as liked, desirable, pleasurable, or beneficial.

Avoidance goals are those with negative outcomes that we work to avoid. Negative can mean different things, including disliked, undesirable, painful, or harmful.

Goal Poster

Research suggests that pursuing avoidance goals is detrimental to well-being. In one study, participants with a greater proportion of avoidance goals reported lower subjective well-being over the course of the semester and had lower well-being at the end of the semester than they had at the start. In another study therapy clients with more avoidance goals experienced smaller increases in subjective well-being than those with fewer.

One reason for this could be that constantly looking for evidence of the absence of something negative or monitoring negative possibilities drains your energy and enjoyment.  These findings suggest that creating approach goals, or positively reframing avoidance goals, is beneficial for well-being. For some people, however, it may not be that simple, for example where those with an avoidance temperament or a fear of failure. In this situation, researchers advise therapists to query their clients about why they think they are pursuing avoidance goals in the first place, and then to use the information gleaned to decide which direction to take in therapy. Coaches might also follow the same guidance with their clients.

Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Goals

Goals tend to fall into two categories – intrinsic goals (such as personal growth, physical fitness and contributing to the community that we want for their own sakes) and extrinsic goals (such as money, fame, status and physical attractiveness that we want because of their effect on others).  People often have a mix of both types of goals, and vary in terms of how much importance they place on them. Scientific studies indicate that vigorously pursuing extrinsic goals is linked to lower well-being, whereas intrinsic goals are associated with enhanced well-being. Although this seems like another simple recipe for improving well-being by reframing extrinsic goals as intrinsic ones, it isn’t quite so straightforward, it also depends on motivation.

One Step Further: Intrinsic versus Extrinsic Motivation

It’s not just a question of whether your goals are extrinsic or intrinsic, you also have to consider whether you’re extrinsically or intrinsically motivated, in other words, whether you want to do something or whether you feel you have to (because you’re being persuaded, manipulated, pressured, or threatened).

Made it to the top!

Being intrinsically motivated (doing something because you want to, for the sake of it) rather than being extrinsically motivated, enhances your well-being, your engagement with the activity, and your chances of being successful.

So how can we increase our intrinsic motivation for working towards a goal? Self-determination theory suggests that finding ways to increase autonomy (feeling in control), relatedness (feeling connected to others), and competence (feeling able to have an impact on the environment), will all increase intrinsic motivation and lead to greater well-being.

Say we want to increase a child’s intrinsic motivation towards doing homework. Offering money or threatening with loss of playtime may work in the short term, but will not build intrinsic motivation that drives them in the longer term. Instead we could try to increase their sense of autonomy by giving them some choices about how and when they do the homework and increase their sense of competence by providing positive feedback and helping them break down the task into manageable chunks such that they can quickly see progress. Scott Asalone has a good example of this in his article, Moving from “I Must” to “I Want To…”.

It’s also worth knowing that you can be intrinsically motivated to pursue extrinsic goals (and vice versa). If this is the case, having materialistic aspirations doesn’t necessarily decrease well-being if they help the person achieve basic financial security or other intrinsic goals. In fact it has been suggested that in some circumstances pursuing extrinsic goals may even contribute to well-being. So, before reframing extrinsic goals, explore the underlying motivation a little more deeply.

This article first apeared on Positive Psychology News on 31st January 2012

References

Bandura, A., & Schunk, D. H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self-efficacy, and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 586-598.

Brdar, I., Rijavec, M. & Miljkovic, D. (2009). Life goals and well-being: Are extrinsic aspirations always detrimental to well-being? Psychological Topics, 18(2), 317-334.

Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Essays in Social Psychology). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.

Elliott, A. & Church, M. (2002). Client-articulated avoidance goals in the therapy context. Journal of Counselling Psychology, 49(2), 243-254.

Elliot, A., Sheldon, K., & Church, M. (1997). Avoidance personal goals and subjective well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 915-927.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52, 1280-1300.

Kasser, T., & Ryan, R. M. (2001).  Be careful what you wish for:  Optimal functioning and the relative attainment of intrinsic and extrinsic goals.  In P. Schmuck & K. M. Sheldon (Eds.), Life Goals and Well-Being: Towards a Positive Psychology of Human Striving (pp. 116-131). Gottingen: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers.

Miller, C. A. & Frisch, M. B. (2009), Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide. New York: Sterling.

Images

Birdwatching courtesy of Rennett Stowe

Goal poster by EvelynGiggles

Made it to the top by magical-world

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

“The aim of life is appreciation.” ~ G. K. Chesterton

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.

The latest quarterly edition of the open-access International Journal of Well-being has just been published.  No. 3 includes

• 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.