DaveShearon

Positivity, Health, & Country Music

Should you try to be more optimistic, hopeful, and positive because it could make you live longer?

CBS News has a story out entitled "Just how powerful IS positive thinking?"  (OK, "positive thinking" is a poor term for the constructs referenced in the research.  It's journalism - take what you get!) The story questions - based on research - whether optimists, for example, experience better recovery results when faced with things like cardiovascular disease or cancer.  The article leaves the impression that science clearly says no.  Leading researcher Marty Seligman in his new book Flourish, disputes that conclusion, pointing to a recent review of 83 studies of optimism and physical health that indicate some significant effects. Dr. Seligman suggests the cancer question is unsettled but also predicts that work coming out of the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program is going to give us much better answers to these questions in the next few years.

So what?

None of us is getting out of this alive.

The question is, how are you going to live?

In my (still mostly hypothetical) course Positive Psychology through Country Music, I'd probably use Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying." (Video below!)  It's the message of man who thought he had a short time to live and  started doing what he knew was important and meaningful to him.  Think bucket list.

I am reminded of the story in The Resilience Factor by Reivich and Shatte of the man diagnosed with a terminal but manageable illness who spent the time he had scouring the world for a "cure" only to realize that he had thereby ignored many opportunities to do what really mattered to him, especially being with family and friends. "Other people matter." A participant in a training I conducted recently talked about his sister's way of dealing with terminal cancer by focusing on living fully in ways she cared about such as checking herself out of the hospital to go home for a few days and organize a birthday celebration for one of her children. It was obviously powerfully positive for him. That's how I'd like to go out.

With all of that, I agree with Barbara Ehrenreich's rejection of "blame the victim" and efforts to tell others how they "should" react to any situation. I think most of us are doing the best we can under all the circumstances, and no one else knows all my circumstances. I don't even know all my circumstances. So, encourage, yes. Then cut ourselves and others some slack. Other people matter, even when they are struggling.  Here's Tim.  Enjoy!

Thursday Tunes -- The Gambler

It's time and past time for another entry in the Positive Psychology through Country Music series, so here it is.  Thanks to Chris Peterson for this one; his comment on a listserve pointed out the connection.

For a while, researchers thought optimists were likely to keep pursuing impossible goals.  Turns out to be wrong.  They quit on impossible goals, maybe even sooner than pessimists, but the keep after possible goals with high levels of energy.  That's what Karen Reivich and Jane Gillham call "flexible and accurate thinking."  Further, according to Suzanne Segerstrom, optimists are better at setting goals that are aligned with their values and they tend to pursue goals across the important domains of life -- work, family, friends, leisure, community.  In other words, they are often balanced.  So, in honor of these flexible, accurate, goal-oriented, persistent, energetic, and balanced folks -- Kenny Rogers and The Gambler!

Chasin' your goals!

Here's another in the series on Positive Psychology through Country Music, this time in honor of the late Jerry Reed.  The first lines to this song are:

East bound and down, loaded up and truckin!

We gonna do what they say can’t be done.

We’ve got a long way to go and a short time to git there.

I’m east bound just watch ole Bandit run!

My classmate, Caroline Miller, is an expert on goals, and she's helped me re-evaluate their importance.  Caroline says the toughest regrets her clients face are those about goals they did not pursue.  Goals can generate focus, determination, energy, and excitement.

So, how 'bout you?  Any crazy, wild, can't-be-done goals pulling at you?  What are you trying to do that "they" say can't be done? Or have you lost the ability to feel the pull?  No guarantee you'll succeed, but opting for the safe way often isn't very successful either.  What's going to be your story?

These don't have to be pointless, daredevil style goals.  Maybe you want to do something that matters.  I once ran for and won a seat on the Nasvhille School Board because I wanted to make a difference.  Resigned for the same reason.  Now I'm working to improve lawyering and education.  Seems crazy sometimes, but it sure is energizing!  Is something like that pulling at you?

Who's your Smokey?  Who's going to try and stop you.  I'm not talking about those who have reasonable expectations of you -- family and loved ones.  We've all got responsibilities to meet and we need to meet them -- but that's not the complete barrier to pursuing those crazy, demanding, challenging, meaningful goals we sometime make it out to be.  No, I'm talking about those out there who're going to want to stop you because, well, maybe just because!  Or maybe you scare them.  Or threaten them.  Whatever.  If you lead, some will accuse you of bad motives and personal character flaws.  Who's your Smokey?

And who's your Snowman?  Or your Bandit?  Are you hauling the load, or clearing the path?  Who's on your team?  Maybe yours aren't solo goals. 

If something's been pulling at you, if you've got a goal you've been fighting, you might want to give it another think.  If you've lost touch with your goals and are just sort of going through the motions, "fidgeting till you die" as Marty Seligman says, then maybe now's the time to re-engage.  Build some well-being, re-configure your explanatory style, dig into your strengths, nurture your relationships.  I suspect you'll find some goals glimmering into sight like stars on a moonless night. 

OK.  Enough preaching.  Sometimes that Baptist-since-birth thing just gets the better of me!

Hope y'all are doing well! 

Teaching Optimism

The University of Pennsylvania has announced a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology under Martin E.P. Seligman.  The site includes:

Teaching Taskforce
A research-based initiative is underway to engage high school teachers and students in a program designed to build students' understanding of and ability to make use of the tools of positive psychology in their own lives and in the larger community.

I think the program would be interesting and the Teaching Taskforce is very interesting.

Turning Over Rocks

A business associate who strikes me as an optimist said to me this last week, "My Dad always said you have to turn over a lot of rocks to find the right thing."  Classic example of the energy and action orientation of optimists.  Man, are they fun to work with, or what?

On Living with Optimists

Optimists can be REALLY IRRITATING to those that aren't with them. Think about it. I bet you've known some of these folks. They just keep smiling and moving. They're always saying how things are going to work out. And you just always know they are underestimating the problems, overestimating their strengths, and generally just not grounded in reality. But they keep smiling and moving and good things keep happening to them. Frustrating, huh? But, it doesn't have to be a source of frustration. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  Now I'm not saying any of us should disconnect from reality! Nope. But I am saying it's a good idea to put yourself in league with the optimists in your life. They're the people who get things done. Hire optimists. Contract with optimists. Get optimists in your circle of friends and spend time with them. When they start to wear on you, consider becoming more like them -- you'll be glad you did. (To learn how, read the book, or click here.)

Quote of the day

With the picture of SpaceShipOne occupying the upper left corner today, this Frank Lloyd Wright quote seems appropriate:

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in the thing makes it happen.

Do you dare to be an office Pollyanna?

I'm in Quebec City for an meeting of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on Specialization. Picked up the Globe and Mail and ran accross a guest article by John Izzo entitled "Do you dare to be an office Pollyanna?" It's a little about optimism and a little about finding meaning in work. Of course, it happens he's got a book out, Second Innocence: Renewing Work & Daily Life. But, that's ok -- just because he's selling doesn't mean I shouldn't be buying. One part of the story:

How do you keep feeling glad about work after you've done a job for many years? One real-life Pollyanna I met had been teaching fourth graders at the sameVancouver school for 42 years. Yet she seemed to have kept her fire for teaching.

I don't know about the book, but the article is worth a read.

The "wrong" blacks, optimism, hard work, and "closing the gap"

Clarence Page's July 8 column at JWR ties the report out of Harvard that most of that school's black minorities are "West Indian and African immigrants or their children, or to a lesser extent, children of biracial couples" to optimisim and hard work. I've tied Bill Cosby's recent remarks to hard work, and I agree completely with Mr. Page's assertion that optimism is key to that based on Dr. Seligman's research. Mr. Page writes:

I can offer the group one easy possibility, no charge: Immigrant kids work harder.

They work harder, in part, because their parents work harder — and their parents work harder because of their relentless optimism: Where others might see a dead-end job, immigrants of all colors see an entry-level opportunity.

Where others may see inequities, immigrants tend to see a ladder to be climbed. With a hyperoptimism, they move ahead, upward and outward, undeterred by discrimination, short-term poverty, substandard housing, lack of financial capital or any other barriers that fate throws in the way of their hopes and dreams.

And they pass this spirit of enterprise on to their children. A University of Chicago study in 1995, for example, found children from a variety of minority groups whose mothers are immigrants outperform students from their respective ethnic groups whose mothers were born in the United States. "Family optimism" about the future played a crucially important role in determining school success, according to sociology professor Marta Tienda, an author of the study.

And the more recent the family's arrival, the better the children perform, according to a study of Asian and Hispanic families by Laurence Steinberg, a Temple University social scientist whose latest book is "The 10 Basic Principles of Good Parenting."

What's your attributional style?

I just posted on the optimism meme. To check your own attributional style (positive or negative, a/k/a optimistic or pessimistic), go here.