MODULE 8 - THE ROLE OF CONNECTEDNESS AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY |
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Objectives:
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IMPORTANT TERMS
Flourishing
Hopelessness
Positive Psychology
- A combination of social, emotional and psychological well-being. Consistent with the WHO’s mental health description:
- “a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stressors of life, and work productivity and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community” (WHO)
- “meaning and purpose, supportive and rewarding relationships, engaged and interested in contributing to the well-being of others, competency, self-acceptance, optimism and being respected.” (Diener, et.al) (Eraslan-Capan, 2016)
Hopelessness
- “thought process that comprises a pessimistic way of ascribing the future, and one’s inability to change what the future brings. It is one’s thinking of adverse events and incapability of changing the future.”
- “The lesson is that in the pursuit of our best life, positive relationships and social support are absolutely necessary.” -Darren Morton
Positive Psychology
- Martin Seligman, father of positive psychology and is one of the leading researchers in the field of psychology worked for 14 years focusing on topics around positive psychology, resilience, optimism, learned helplessness, depression and pessimism. He defined optimism as “looking at misfortunes and defeat as a temporary setback or challenge.”
- During the world war II, psychology had been focused on fixing the negative aspects of behavior and experiences that contributed to mental health illnesses. Martin Seligman and his colleagues began to focus on what was good and pleasant. He found out that the most satisfied people are those that made use of their signature strengths that could enable them to one live a pleasant, good and meaningful life.
- “Use your signature strengths and virtues in the service of something much larger than you are.” -Martin Seligman (2002, p. 263) (Seligman, 2018)
positive psychology
Positive psychology is focusing on one’s strength rather than one’s weakness and building on the best things in life. It is the contentment and satisfaction of the past, the flow in the present and hope and optimism for the future. Mental health is much more than just the absence of mental illness and leads to greater achievement, lower depression rates and better physical health.
The use of positive psychology has a direct impact on the body’s emotional, physical, mental and social well-being and indirectly can influence how we maintain and sustain our healthy behaviors for good health.
Positive emotions create non-conscious and increasing motives for wellness behavior and positivity lights the path to sustained behavior change. In order for one to flourish, the positive to negative ratio should be >3:1.
The pillars of positive psychology includes having 3 Components for Happiness
Additional Reference Video Review
The use of positive psychology has a direct impact on the body’s emotional, physical, mental and social well-being and indirectly can influence how we maintain and sustain our healthy behaviors for good health.
Positive emotions create non-conscious and increasing motives for wellness behavior and positivity lights the path to sustained behavior change. In order for one to flourish, the positive to negative ratio should be >3:1.
The pillars of positive psychology includes having 3 Components for Happiness
- Positive emotions, “feeling good” the ability to be happy and optimistic of the past, present and future. It involves living a pleasant life with positive experiences that can help foster good relationships and help sustain a healthy habit. This is really crucial because it helps people go through life’s challenges while being optimistic about the eventual outcome of events. Joy, comfort, happiness
- Engagement, “finding flow” or to be fully aware of the present that stretches ones intelligence, skill or emotional capability, refers to doing a task at hand that one finds pleasurable to do and is absorbed by it using one’s discovered unique signature strengths in their work or task, relationship and hobbies. What is flow? Being engaged in the activities you find enjoyable helps us to be in the present and it floods your body with positive neurotransmitters and hormones that elevate one’s sense of well-being. When time “flies by” during an activity, it is because the people involved were experiencing this sense of engagement. Examples include playing a musical instrument, doing a hobby like crocheting, painting, dancing, working on an interesting project, being creative, etc. Recrafting your life, your love, your play, your friendship, your work to the best of its abilities so as to derive more flow. This type of flow enhances our intelligence, skills and emotional capabilities.
- Relationships “authentic connections” with family members, friends, colleagues, peers are important in fostering a meaningful life. Having positive connections with other human beings help one thrives emotionally and physically. We are social beings that need to bond and depend on other human beings and is an ingredient to overall joy. Having deep and meaningful relationships provide support in difficult times that require resilience. Social isolation and loneliness increases one’s risk in developing cardiovascular events -29% increase risk for heart disease and 32% for stroke, and is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. (CDC, 2020)
- Meaning “purposeful existence” having a purpose in life is a gateway to live a life full of meaning and zest by knowing what your highest signature strengths are and using them to something larger that you are. This is the “biggest driver for well-being,” according to Alan Rozanski. Knowing one’s purpose why you are on this earth can provide meaning to one’s life and appears to be more important for decreasing risk of death than drinking, smoking or having regular exercise. Religion and spirituality play a big role in this aspect. People without a strong life purpose had 2x the risk of dying compared to those who have a strong life purpose. The relationship of having a low level of purpose in life and death was the same whether one is rich or poor, regardless of gender, race or educational level. (Gordon, 2019)
- Achievement “a sense of accomplishment” Working on something with realistic goals can give life satisfaction and that you have something to look forward to that can give you a sense of pride, fulfillment and satisfaction. Having accomplishments in life is important to keep us going, thriving and flourishing.
Additional Reference Video Review
- Seligman Discuss his PERMA model
APPLICATION OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY
Positive psychology is a key intervention in behavior change therapy. Screening, diagnosing and referring to mental health when appropriate and employing positive psychology activities and behavioral change counselling in all stages of the transtheoretical model of change along with MI in the precontemplation and contemplation and CBT in the preparation, action and maintenance.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an approach for motivating change and enhancing well-being that focuses on exploring and amplifying the best in a person or situation. AI uses the patient’s strengths and imagine possibilities to go through and be above of their problem instead of looking on their weaknesses and trying to fix what is broken. This is a valuable coaching tool for discovering one’s best while building positive emotions. There are five principles of appreciative inquiry (Jung): (Arnold, 2017)
The Positive Principle
Positive emotions and positive energy propels one for transformational change by broadening one’s thinking, expand awareness, increase abilities, build resilience, generate new possibilities, creating an upward spiral of learning and growth. If we identify, acknowledge and amplifies strengths, people are creative and motivated to make solutions and move forward to lead to sustainable change.
The Constructionist Principle
Positive emotions and energy is derived from positive conversations and interactions leading to positive actions and outcomes. Our interaction with other people make us create realities in the world we live in. We create the world we live in and see it through our unique lenses based on our experience, beliefs, values, traditions and predictions. (reality is co-created). Not only do we construct our own reality but we can also reconstruct it. This principle invites us to grow self-awareness instead
The Simultaneity Principle
This principle acknowledges that when we are genuinely curious, and ask positive and powerful questions, the question themselves will set the direction and directs our thinking and action. What is the best thing that happened to you today? Positive conversations and interactions stem from positive questions and reflections. When the answer to the questions will allow one to have a positive conversation or tell a positive story.
The Anticipatory Principle
When we believe it, we see it.
Positive questions and reflections stem from positive anticipation of the future.
The more positive and hopeful we see life is in the future, the more positive our present day action will be. Whatever we are anticipating, we are more likely to get it and our expectations could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Having a clear image of success, the more likelihood that we are able to achieve it.
The Poetic Principle
What we focus on grows.
Positive anticipation of the future stems from positive attention in the present.
This principle is about acknowledging that there are endless ways to interpret reality. Sometimes it is hard to identify what we want, instead of what we do not want. We tend to notice things that make us uncomfortable, then we know right away that we want less of. But what we focus on is a choice, and we should make the deliberate choice on where we put our attention in the now because that’s what shapes our future.
Appreciative Inquiry is an important tool for energizing, motivating and mobilizing a client towards behavior change. It helps one envision that anything is possible and it can happen thereby increasing the patient’s self-esteem and self-efficacy making them think of the future, designing them in a positive way. Eliciting the patient’s best experiences, core values in the past and in the present increases the patient’s readiness, willingness and ability to move forward in the future.
This is a great place to start especially when the patient do not yet have a clear focus. We should know how to ask questions that will elicit positive visions that is related to their desired future. Such positive frame can dramatically accelerate the behavior change process. It is not enough to make SMART goals, but one should engage the patient’s desires and awaken one’s imagination in line with what they envision themselves to be.
The more creative their dreams are, the greater their energy for change will be. When they know what they want and can imagine their way of being in the world, they end up realizing that aspiration as they grow to be their best selves and making sustainable behavior change. A powerful way to develop our AI muscle is to practice gratitude. This is not about ignoring challenges but trying to find lessons within them.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is an approach for motivating change and enhancing well-being that focuses on exploring and amplifying the best in a person or situation. AI uses the patient’s strengths and imagine possibilities to go through and be above of their problem instead of looking on their weaknesses and trying to fix what is broken. This is a valuable coaching tool for discovering one’s best while building positive emotions. There are five principles of appreciative inquiry (Jung): (Arnold, 2017)
The Positive Principle
Positive emotions and positive energy propels one for transformational change by broadening one’s thinking, expand awareness, increase abilities, build resilience, generate new possibilities, creating an upward spiral of learning and growth. If we identify, acknowledge and amplifies strengths, people are creative and motivated to make solutions and move forward to lead to sustainable change.
The Constructionist Principle
Positive emotions and energy is derived from positive conversations and interactions leading to positive actions and outcomes. Our interaction with other people make us create realities in the world we live in. We create the world we live in and see it through our unique lenses based on our experience, beliefs, values, traditions and predictions. (reality is co-created). Not only do we construct our own reality but we can also reconstruct it. This principle invites us to grow self-awareness instead
The Simultaneity Principle
This principle acknowledges that when we are genuinely curious, and ask positive and powerful questions, the question themselves will set the direction and directs our thinking and action. What is the best thing that happened to you today? Positive conversations and interactions stem from positive questions and reflections. When the answer to the questions will allow one to have a positive conversation or tell a positive story.
The Anticipatory Principle
When we believe it, we see it.
Positive questions and reflections stem from positive anticipation of the future.
The more positive and hopeful we see life is in the future, the more positive our present day action will be. Whatever we are anticipating, we are more likely to get it and our expectations could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Having a clear image of success, the more likelihood that we are able to achieve it.
The Poetic Principle
What we focus on grows.
Positive anticipation of the future stems from positive attention in the present.
This principle is about acknowledging that there are endless ways to interpret reality. Sometimes it is hard to identify what we want, instead of what we do not want. We tend to notice things that make us uncomfortable, then we know right away that we want less of. But what we focus on is a choice, and we should make the deliberate choice on where we put our attention in the now because that’s what shapes our future.
Appreciative Inquiry is an important tool for energizing, motivating and mobilizing a client towards behavior change. It helps one envision that anything is possible and it can happen thereby increasing the patient’s self-esteem and self-efficacy making them think of the future, designing them in a positive way. Eliciting the patient’s best experiences, core values in the past and in the present increases the patient’s readiness, willingness and ability to move forward in the future.
This is a great place to start especially when the patient do not yet have a clear focus. We should know how to ask questions that will elicit positive visions that is related to their desired future. Such positive frame can dramatically accelerate the behavior change process. It is not enough to make SMART goals, but one should engage the patient’s desires and awaken one’s imagination in line with what they envision themselves to be.
The more creative their dreams are, the greater their energy for change will be. When they know what they want and can imagine their way of being in the world, they end up realizing that aspiration as they grow to be their best selves and making sustainable behavior change. A powerful way to develop our AI muscle is to practice gratitude. This is not about ignoring challenges but trying to find lessons within them.
gratitude
Doing daily acts of gratitude can have a big impact on your health and happiness. These effects are noted when you do daily practice of gratitude journaling. It only takes a few minutes of your time each day but feeling good to feeling great will last give you a lasting mood boost. A gratitude journal is a tool to keep track of the good things that is happening in your life. Even though how hard one’s life is, there is always something to be grateful for.
This will also help you recognize what you already have and illuminate it to help you make us of what you have. The benefits of gratitude of a gratitude journal includes: (Courtney Ackerman, n.d.)
GRATITUDE JOURNAL PRESCRIPTION
This will also help you recognize what you already have and illuminate it to help you make us of what you have. The benefits of gratitude of a gratitude journal includes: (Courtney Ackerman, n.d.)
- Makes you feel more balanced and lower your stress levels
- makes you feel calmer especially at night because you now tend to notice that there are a lot of small good things that are already happening
- gives you a new perspective on what is important to you and what you truly appreciate in life and you tend to see good things and god people drawing you to the positivity in life
- clarifies what you want to have more in life, and what you can do without. It highlights your accomplishments no matter how small it is
- helps you find focus on what truly matters to you by making you be more mindful
- helps you learn more about yourself, thus you be more self-aware
- reminds you how things in life are interconnected and realize that the world is so much bigger than us, yet we are grateful just to be a small part of it
- makes you write anything you feel without worrying about judgement from others
- reminds you of the good things in life when life becomes hard for you
GRATITUDE JOURNAL PRESCRIPTION
- Write in your gratitude journal 5-10 things you are thankful for, every night 15 minutes before bed for 1 month.
- Tips: Starting a new hobby or practice may be difficult to do at first especially if you are not used to journaling lest trying to see the good things. It can be overwhelming or be a highly emotional experience but as you go along, you will see how the above benefits unfold in your life.
- Task: Tell someone something that you are truly thankful for and excited about.
- Write a gratitude journal for a month and record your experience.
HAPPINES
“Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill. As a result, happy people live longer. One mechanism to this is that chronic unhappiness causes stress, which in turn reduces the immune system.” (Veenhoven, 2008)
In a study done by a researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger on one of the longest studies of adult life, showed good relationships keep us happier and healthier and loneliness kills and concluded:
Studies done by Cohen showed that there is a clear link between mood and health. The immune system is more effective in happy people than in depressed people due to higher levels of natural killer cells. Happier people tend to get less sick and complain less when they are sick, they also resist infection due to their stronger immune response. Many health behaviors are related to happiness, hope and optimism.
Happier people tend to eat well, exercise more and so healthy habits, while unhealthy people are more likely to die from lung cancer and liver disease because they tend to smoke and drink alcohol. Our bodies age faster if one is exposed to stress because cells have less capacity to repair and be replaced. Stress and unhappiness age our telomeres faster. Telomeres are the caps of DNA that protect the ends of our chromosomes.
As part of aging, old cells die and are replaced by new cells and when cells divide to produce new cells, we lose some portion of the telomeres thus its length shortens as we age. When we lose our telomeres our old cells age and eventually die. Shorter telomeres are associated with death at a younger age with a greater risk for cardiovascular diseases and with serious infections. Obesity and smoking may also shorten our telomeres and is also associated with being less happy. Knowing that stress is related with shorter telomeres is critically important. (Biswas-Diener, 2008)
In a study done by a researcher and psychiatrist Robert Waldinger on one of the longest studies of adult life, showed good relationships keep us happier and healthier and loneliness kills and concluded:
- A happy childhood has very, very long-lasting effects. Having warm family relations (parents and siblings) is a good predictor of a more secure relationships during adulthood. It extends across decades and predicts more secure relationships with their spouses.
- In case one has had a difficult childhood, they can make up for them in midlife. Forming close relationship with your kids as you rear them can help. Psychologists call this “generativity” or an interest in establishing and guiding the next generation, were happier and better adjusted than those who didn’t.
- Learning how to cope up with stress has a long-term benefit. Having a more adaptive attitude have better relationships with other people. They are easier to be with other people and make others want to support them and in midlife, their brains stayed sharper loner and most of all have healthier aging in their 60’s and 70’s.
- Being with others protects us from the life’s treacherous challenges. People who spend quality time with others are happier in a daily basis. Quality relationships matters as well as quality. (Chen, 2017) A good marriage help buffer against stresses from work in relation to cardiovascular problems.
Studies done by Cohen showed that there is a clear link between mood and health. The immune system is more effective in happy people than in depressed people due to higher levels of natural killer cells. Happier people tend to get less sick and complain less when they are sick, they also resist infection due to their stronger immune response. Many health behaviors are related to happiness, hope and optimism.
Happier people tend to eat well, exercise more and so healthy habits, while unhealthy people are more likely to die from lung cancer and liver disease because they tend to smoke and drink alcohol. Our bodies age faster if one is exposed to stress because cells have less capacity to repair and be replaced. Stress and unhappiness age our telomeres faster. Telomeres are the caps of DNA that protect the ends of our chromosomes.
As part of aging, old cells die and are replaced by new cells and when cells divide to produce new cells, we lose some portion of the telomeres thus its length shortens as we age. When we lose our telomeres our old cells age and eventually die. Shorter telomeres are associated with death at a younger age with a greater risk for cardiovascular diseases and with serious infections. Obesity and smoking may also shorten our telomeres and is also associated with being less happy. Knowing that stress is related with shorter telomeres is critically important. (Biswas-Diener, 2008)
EUDAIMONIA AND HEDONIA
Hedonia
Diener’s Subjective Well-being. Positive affect-happy, joyful, fun, life satisfaction, low negative affect. Happiness can be felt when there is the presence of positive emotions and expressions for life satisfaction. It is characterized by the “Absence of distress”, comfort, enjoyment, pleasure.
Elements of hedonia:
Eudaimonia
Important in understanding well-being and human flourishing. Eudaimonia: an objective standard of happiness based on what it means to live a human life well. It is the pursuit of virtue excellence, and cultivating the best within us. (Moore, 2020)
4 elements of eudaimonia
Hedonia
It is more fundamental but eudaimonia has a higher value, but the combination of this is linked to higher well-being, and this will help keep each other in check. We both need to pursue eudaimonia and hedonia to achieve the greatest and most well-rounded personal well-being than pursuing only one of these.
It is important to note that both pathways to happiness should go hand in hand. Meaningful experiences can certainly bring pleasure and taking care of ourselves can certainly add more meaning to our lives. We need to grow both dimensions in order to live a truly fulfilling life.
Article Review
Video Review
Diener’s Subjective Well-being. Positive affect-happy, joyful, fun, life satisfaction, low negative affect. Happiness can be felt when there is the presence of positive emotions and expressions for life satisfaction. It is characterized by the “Absence of distress”, comfort, enjoyment, pleasure.
Elements of hedonia:
- Pleasure: feeling good, joy, fun, happiness
- Comfort: relaxation, ease, absence of pain
Eudaimonia
Important in understanding well-being and human flourishing. Eudaimonia: an objective standard of happiness based on what it means to live a human life well. It is the pursuit of virtue excellence, and cultivating the best within us. (Moore, 2020)
- Additional Reference:
4 elements of eudaimonia
- Growth: self-actualization, learning, maturity
- Authenticity: honesty, self-knowledge, integrity
- Meaning: caring for the big picture, understanding
- Excellence: virtue, quality performance
Hedonia
It is more fundamental but eudaimonia has a higher value, but the combination of this is linked to higher well-being, and this will help keep each other in check. We both need to pursue eudaimonia and hedonia to achieve the greatest and most well-rounded personal well-being than pursuing only one of these.
It is important to note that both pathways to happiness should go hand in hand. Meaningful experiences can certainly bring pleasure and taking care of ourselves can certainly add more meaning to our lives. We need to grow both dimensions in order to live a truly fulfilling life.
Article Review
Video Review
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TASK - Reflective Journal |
Topics covered:
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