Recently in Positive Psychology Category

After reading the quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, I came across this TED interview with Krista Tippet. She is the host of NPR's Speaking of Faith.

http://www.ted.com/talks/krista_tippet_reconnecting_with_compassion.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2011-0216&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email

"The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with."

—Thich Nhat Hanh

Science Daily reports that psychologists have found that infants less than a year old can understand social superiority/inferiority by using the relative size of people to guess at who will prevail when the two people are in conflict. (Read details here)http://www.sciencedaily.com/release/2011/01/110127141653.htm

This research that supports the idea that from the earliest time of human life we are aware of what social position others have on the basis of a gross sense of superiority and inferiority. One can easily imagine the infant noticing that “big” people are more likely to get what they want than “small” people could choose to strive to be bigger.

We can see this infant growing up and noticing all the varieties of bigness that reveal themselves in the human community- gender, intelligence, money, attractiveness, dress, speech, aggressiveness, athleticism, skin color, and so on. By the time she reaches school age the child is well-equipped with the knowledge of other people’s inferiority and superiority. Not only that, she is aware of her own position relative to other people.

If parents, the school, the community, religion, and the larger society teach that one’s social position on the inferior/superior continuum is of relative significance the child will grow into adulthood and be able to cooperate and contribute to others well-being as a full member of the evolving human community.

If; however, this child grows up in a world where she is told only those who are deserving get to be superior, she could develop a profound sense of inferiority making it difficult or impossible to cooperate and contribute to human flourishing. Such a child may just go along as she does not have the looks, smarts, skin color, education, money and so on the “superior” people do. That is to say, she could accept her alleged “inferiority” and not strive to make her unique contribution to humanity. Conversely, she may compensate for her perceived inferiority by striving extra hard to be the “superior” person who is able to dominate others.

A talk from one of the founders of postive psychology

http://greatergood.berkely.edu/article/item/why_gratitude_is_good

With Thanksgiving around the corner, Robert Emmons, PhD discusses gratitude and its importance to our physical, psychological, and social well being.

Milay Csikszenalmihalyi uses the term flow to describe an internal state where a person is completely absorbed in the task at hand. When a person derives a positive experience from striving to move beyond their current performance they are more likely to further their skill development, invent something new and useful, perform better, contribute to others and so on. The flow state is a positive experience in terms of the feelings it produces and skillfulness it develops. It can be even seen as a reward for sticking one’s neck out beyond their comfort zone. In turn this “reward” increases the desire for further development. In fact, one can view flow as a reward for striving to go beyond what is and what one has to what one might become. One can see that our species has depended on flow to enhance the survival and flourishing of the human community.

Perhaps our wandering minds are not simply a reflection of the human condition but a reflection of our attitude toward life. Anthony Bruck, a student of Alfred Adler, wrote that “people are accustomed to considering difficulties as something negative. Adler made difficulties something positive, because the desire to overcome the difficulties develops the striving of the individual. The individual who had no difficulties will lack the disposition to face and overcome difficulties. A really courageous individual with self-confidence will seek out difficulties because he enjoys overcoming them. No only face the difficulties that come his way, but also, seek out difficulties.

It would seem that much of contemporary culture tells us that if one only had sufficient talent one would lead a problem free life where you would be happy and have it easy. If we listen to Anthony Bruck, contemporary writers on performance, and the findings of neuroscience we may discover flow in our daily challenges at work, relationships, and in the community at large. In fact we could come to appreciate our contact with the present moment accepting the difficulties as not only OK but useful to our natural strivings.

Perhaps this would be a more fruitful approach to discovering happiness for ourselves and others.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

In my last post on 9/11, Terror Management, and The Need to Belong, I discussed the role of mirror neurons in the development of imitation and empathy. Knowing that we can learn from others and feel what they feel (to a degree) allow humans to cooperate and contribute to each other’s survival. These imitative and empathic abilities are developed in our earliest relationships.

John Bowlby, the founder of attachment theory, states that humans are at their best and able to use their talents when they know that significant persons are there if they need them. For Bowlby this included memories of our relationships with our parents. These intimate attachments to significant others provide us with focus in which our lives revolve. The more we feel we belong, are accepted, and cared for the more we can move toward others in a cooperative and contributing way.

Similarly, if we do not form a healthy attachment to our parents we are likely to have trouble learning to cooperate and contribute as we move through life. We can come to see the world as a non-accepting and non-caring place that encourages competition and uncooperativeness. We can cultivate an attitude of, “well, if you are not going to cooperate with me, I’m not going to cooperate with you!” We can develop an egocentric approach to living where we are number one and others, if they are lucky, are number two.

One only has to look at the world as it appears in the daily news to see examples of our need to belong. Can one honestly look at our political process and discern a striving to cooperate and contribute? For mutual benefit? What we see is a pervasive lack of cooperation and contribution. What we see is self-centeredness, depreciation, hostility, and overt aggression. Project this lack of belonging out into the larger world and one can become quite discouraged, or one can be even more encouraged to contribute to human flourishing.

http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html