Goals That Increase Well Being

It is coming up to New Year. So here is a finding that gives some clues as to what might be wise to include in our New Year’s resolutions – if we want to increase our level of well being!


Park, Petersen and Seligman found the following values to be consistently associated with life satisfaction:

1. Hope (optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation)
2. Zest for Life (vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, energy)
3. Gratitude (awareness and thankfulness of good things)
4. Capacity to Love and be Loved (valuing close relationships)
5. Curiosity (interest, novelty seeking, openness to experience)

Whatever goals you set yourself - see if you can weave in at least one of these values.

Vulnerability and Connection

Truly wonderful TED talk by Brene Brown on vulnerability and connection.

She describes her research on 'the whole hearted'.  She found that they demonstrate:

• the courage to be imperfect
• compassion - for self and others
• connection to others as a result of authenticity
• willingness to fully embrace vulnerability as a necessary part of a life well-lived.

'In order for connection to happen we have to allow ourselves to be seen....really seen'

Everyday Mindfulness v Mindfulness During Sitting Meditation

Everyday mindfulness involves maintaining an ‘open, accepting, present focus of attention during day-to-day life.’ It seems to be a life enhancing approach, but do you need to be good at mindfulness meditation to be able to focus on the present in your day to day life?  And do they have the same benefits?

This paper starts to explore this topic. The authors found little relationship between levels of everyday mindfulness and being able to be mindful during meditation. 


The authors also looked at the relationship between personality factors and mindfulness. They report that both 'everyday mindfulness' and 'mindfulness during meditation' are associated with greater ‘openness to experience’ (being curious, interested in new ideas and tending to seek new experiences).

Everyday mindfulness was associated with

·        lower levels of neuroticism, (a tendency to experience more intense and more persistent painful emotions), and,

·        higher levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness.

However, this study didn’t find a relationship between mindfulness during meditation and levels of neuroticism, agreeableness or conscientiousness.

What is unclear is whether being good at everyday mindfulness leads to less neuroticism and more agreeableness or whether people who are more neurotic and agreeable find it easier to be mindful in their daily lives. My pick is that it is a bit of both.

My point here is maybe, just maybe, we can become nicer and less neurotic by putting energy, moment to moment, into being present and accepting. And, although mindfulness meditation seems to be very good for us perhaps my favourite meditation teacher is right - the important thing is to just turn up rather than worry too much about getting it 'right'?

My suggestion about everyday mindfulness is to take the IPIP-Neo (free here) to discover how neurotic and agreeable you currently are. Then focus on building your levels of everyday mindfulness and see what happens. 

Another Reason to Build Self-Compassion

A new study just published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders has found that Self-compassion is a better predictor than mindfulness of symptom severity and quality of life in mixed anxiety and depression

‘Self-compassion predicts 18–44% of variance in anxiety, depression, worry, and quality of life’

In this community sample of people seeking self-help for 'anxious distress', self compassion had ten times more impact on the level of anxiety, depression, worry and quality of life than did mindfulness.

To put this study in context, the authors used the MAAS mindfulness scale and the self compassion scale in the comparison.

Some experts in mindfulness view the MAAS as only focussing on one aspect of mindfulness - 'open or receptive awareness of and attention to what is taking place in the present' - whereas if you look at questions in the self compassion scale it is hard not to imagine it would be associated with well being.

Having said that, this is still a cool piece of research adding to the data suggesting it is a smart idea to foster self-compassion.

There is more information on self-compassion here.  And some tips on how to increase your level of self-compassion here.

Becoming More Like My Ideal Self - The Part of Me that You Bring Out

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We can all relate to this feeling of becoming a better person in the presence of the one we love. In The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Caryl Rusbult, Eli Finkel and Madoka Kumashiro explore this.  They state that: 

'In harmonious relationships, close partners promote one another’s ideal selves, and each person is likely to move closer to achieving his or her ideals' (Drigotas, Rusbult, Wieselquist, & Whitton, 1999)

So how do we help each other to become closer to our 'ideal' self?

1. Clarify what your ideal self is like. Who do you want to be in the world? What sort of partner, parent, friend, worker etc? Explore this with your partner with openness and curiosity. You are not trying to change each other but support each other in moving in a freely chosen direction.
2. Support each other by:
• Validating the dream 
• Encouraging each other to go for it. Often uncomfortable emotions hold us back - realistic encouragement from a trusted partner can make all the difference.
• Responding positively to attempts to enact new behaviours in line with those ideals - even if the attempt doesn't get the desired outcome.
• Showing compassion when either of you fail to behave in line with those values - whatever you do, don't become the 'values police'. 
• Acting as if your partner has those qualities already - people tend to live up (or down) to our expectations of them
• Displaying the behaviour yourself
• Being a supportive voice of reason - when a plan looks doomed to fail, help each other to brainstorm a more realistic but optimistic plan. 

Getting Feedback

Today, my son told me that my hair smelt strange.
Yesterday, my daughter told me that the last paragraph on a recent blogpost I had written didn't make sense.  She was right. I changed it.

I think that this makes me very fortunate.  I have people in my life who love me enough to tell me the truth in a kind and straightforward way.

Brilliant!

The Complex Psychology of Present Giving

Sheldon (from The Big Bang Theory) demonstrates the complexity involved in Christmas present exchanges in this funny exchange (sorry they won't let me embed it).

'Penny, you haven't given me a gift, you have given me an obligation' - Sheldon

Fundamentally, if we are to give the 'right' present, we have to make sure that the gift not only says the right thing about:

• Who we are (A handmade bag from the Oxfam shop v Perfume from Myer)
• How we see the person we are giving the gift to (Someone who cares about less fortunate people v Someone who deserves to be spoilt)
• The sort of relationship we have (Close? Intimate? Helpful neighbour? BFF?)

but also, our gift to them has to be of a similar value to the gift they give to us - so we don't set up an uncomfortable reciprocation debt.  Aaagh!

I don't feel I do this particularly well. I have conflicting values around wanting to be generous and also wanting to avoid unnecessary consumption/materialism. This conflict tends to paralyse me.  At Christmas, I would like to just make a donation to a charity but many of my friends and family don't seem to enjoy that as much as a carefully chosen 'thing' wrapped in shiny paper!

However, what I can tell you, is that spending time giving to others makes us happier for longer than if we spent the time doing something pleasurable for ourselves.  So one option is to view the time we spend searching for the ideal gift for our loved ones, as time spent giving to them. I know that when it is really clear that a gift was the result of careful thought, it utterly touches my heart.  Another option is to spend less time shopping and stressing, buy them something simple and then spend the time really enjoying their company.

Living on Purpose

“Figure who you are; then do it on purpose.” Dolly Parton
"Figure out who you want to be; then do it on purpose." Patrick Self

Carrying Our Battle Scars with a Swagger

Clarissa Pinkola Estes encourage women to make a 'scapecoat' that represents all the wounds, scars, insults and trauma they have endured through their life.  To somehow record all the times when they have made poor choices or felt overwhelmed and without hope. She expected women to want to destroy this symbol of so much pain and shame but she discovered that, instead, women want to keep them as 'proof of the endurance, the failures and the victories'. She hung her own scapecoat in her hallway and whenever she walked past it she found herself:

'Admiring the ovarios of the woman who could wear such a coat and still be walking foursquare, singing, creating, and wagging her tail'

 Clarissa Pinkola Estes is highlighting a choice here - to hunch over and protect our old wounds or to acknowledge them as part of our rich history and walk with a swagger.  I would ask you to add a liberal dose of compassion to either of those choices - it is important to honour our pain.

The Well Being Equivalent of 5 Fruit and Vegetables a Day

The Foresight Mental Capital and Wellbeing Project aimed to, amongst other things, 'identify the wellbeing equivalent of “five fruit and vegetables a day”.' Based on an extensive review of the evidence they came up with:

1. Connect… with the people around you. 

2. Be active… find a physical activity you enjoy that suits your level of mobility and fitness... and do it!

3. Take notice… be curious. Savour each moment. Reflect on your experiences to help you appreciate what really matters to you.

4. Keep learning… try something new. Rediscover an old interest. Set a challenge you enjoy achieving. 

5. Give … practice intentional acts of kindness. Show gratitude. 

Nice.  These truths about how to live a good life are fairly obvious. It interests me how often I need to be reminded of them if I am to actually do them.

I would also add a sixth 'serving'  - without this one, the others are pretty meaningless: 

6. Develop Psychological Flexibility:

The ability to contact the present moment

fully and without defence

as a conscious human being

engaged in life as it is – not as your mind says it is –

and, based on what the situation affords,

changing or persisting in behaviour

in the service of chosen values (Steve Hayes)

The evidence for the association between psychological flexibility and emotional well being is becoming pretty compelling.  

Dance Whilst You Can!

Mum and Dad in the days
when they would dance all night

My Mum just got invited to a New Year's Eve party and she said to me 'I realised that I wouldn't enjoy it as much as I used to when I was younger because I can't dance all night any more, and I felt sad about that'.
Her advice:

'Make sure that whilst you are fit enough to dance all night, you do it. A time will come when you can't - that time is much easier to accept if you made the most of your health when you had it'.

Taking A Risk to Be Real

Christian Bale in a recent interview with  Esquire Magazine:

BALE: No. All I knew was that there was a whole lot more there that I'd never seen and there was some extreme in the interpretation that should be taken. So I just said, "I just gotta hope that they're gonna go with that, and if they don't, that's not the version I'd like to be involved with anyway." And it's that perverse thing in life, where when you're able to achieve a certain recklessness, you actually end up getting good results. You have to throw everything aside and say, "What the hell, I'm gonna do it this way, and if they don't like it, I wanna do it anyway." It avoids that anxiety of "How do I manipulate this and fake it so that people believe me?" That's never gonna work. So that's the kind of abandonment you gotta have.

If You Want Your Teenager to Tidy Their Room - Do It With Them

My Mum gave me some great parenting advice recently. She said: 'When I look back on how I raised you, I wish I had realised that it would have been better for me to do chores with you, rather than send you off to do them on your own'.
This is solid advice - most of us get progressively more sad on our own (unless it is a conscious choice to have some 'alone time') and doing chores alone is even worse. But doing chores with family members is important bonding time - time to gently chat whilst doing something useful.

I spoke to a lovely psychologist last week who works with Indigenous Australian youth. He doesn't do formal, sitting in an office, talking about your feelings type sessions with his clients. They head out to the park and do stuff together and, whilst they are kicking a football, moments will arise when the young person shares something important.

So doing those chores with your teenager is a wonderful opportunity to create a space where an important conversation can flower - relish it. They grow up and leave us so soon.

Moving on From the Nature v Nurture Debate

A really interesting development in the nature v nurture debate - our environment determines which genes get switched on.

Keep Going Until You Stop

This is really, really good - on lots of levels.

Changing Emotions by Changing Behaviour

In 1996 Neil Jacobson found that, in the treatment of depression, 'adding cognitive techniques to behavioural activation does nothing to improve outcomes at the end of acute treatment and at two-year follow-up' (Gortner, Gollan,Dobson & Jacobson, 1998) quoted in Kanter et al (2010).

What that means is, during periods of depression, just getting help to get moving again, re-engaging with the world step by step, is a highly effective approach and it isn't actually necessary to change your thinking.  That the feelings can follow the behaviour. 


'The shortest, most reliable way to change how you're feeling is to change what you're doing. When you feel bad, don't wait to feel good to do what you love. Start doing what you love. Good feelings will likely follow.'
If I had known this a few years ago it would have saved me a lot of time and effort trying to get my thoughts 'right'.

The Near Enemy of Psychological Flexibility

I recently presented an ACT workshop with NeLi Martin and she spoke about the concept of the 'near enemy'.
In our attempts to become better people the near enemy can actually be more dangerous than the far enemy.  For example, the far enemy of compassion is hatred but the near enemy is pity. It is easy to differentiate compassion from hatred but much more difficult to spot the more subtle differences between pity and compassion.
In this blog, I often mention psychological flexibility because it is associated with well being.  Steve Hayes defines psychological flexibility as:

The ability to contact the present moment

fully and without defence

as a conscious human being

engaged in life as it is – not as your mind says it is –

and, based on what the situation affords,

changing or persisting in behaviour

in the service of chosen values.

The far enemy of psychological flexibility is 'experiential avoidance' - making inflexible choices that aren't aligned with values and that have the core aim of avoiding painful thoughts, feelings or memories.  Experiential avoidance is associated with all sorts of poor outcomes.

But the near enemy is to turn the choice to live a value laden life into a harsh, 'fake it 'til you make it'; 'suck it up'; 'carry on regardless' approach.  I think if we want to avoid this near enemy, we need to have a stance of self-compassion when we are doing our best to live our values.

When I am 80

I recently went to a 'Happiness Trap' workshop run by Russ Harris.  One of the exercises we did that has stayed with me was this:
Imagine it is your 80th birthday and three people who are important to you come to see you.  You have a special mind reading machine and can tune in to their thoughts and hear what they really think about you - what you meant to them, how you have influenced them, what are their strongest memories of you. What would you want them to think?
Give yourself a moment to drop into those thoughts - who do you really want to be when you grow up?

When I think of my grandmother I think of how easily she laughed; how gentle she was when she told people if they had upset her; how she was still learning to play the violin when she was in her 70's; how she was very quick to give praise; how she didn't sweat the small stuff (she thought ironing and tidying up were a complete waste of time); how she showed us all how very much she loved us.

That seems like a life well lived to me.

If you want to be happy, become more extroverted

People who score highly for extroversion are more likely to have increases in life satisfaction over time.  People who score highly for neuroticism are more likely to have decreases in life satisfaction over time (Headey,2009).

People who are extroverted have a tendency towards: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, enthusiasm and feeling energised in company. Whereas people with high Neuroticism scores have a tendency to experience more feelings of anxiety, anger, depression and guilt than those low in neuroticism. People high in neuroticism tend to feel overwhelmed in stressful circumstances; interpret ordinary situations as threatening and have difficulty not acting on urges.

Headey suggests that these differences in life satisfaction as life progresses are because extroverted personality traits are associated with experiencing more positive life events and neurotic personality traits with more adverse life events. Extroverted people tend to build relationships.  Being part of a supportive network of people is strongly associated with happiness, so extroverted behaviour makes life better. Whereas, neurotic people tend to get overwhelmed by their painful emotions and often start to avoid challenging situations. Their lives becomes progressively more narrow.

Our personality may not be as fixed as we thought, on average we tend to become less neurotic and less extroverted with age.

So, assuming we want to be happy with our lives, what might this suggest we should do?  Here are my suggestions:

1. Take the free IPIP Neo test to see how you currently score
2. If you are low in extroversion - accept that you do need time alone to recharge but don't hide away from the world.  Introverts who push themselves to become more social become happier. Work out what your values are around relationships with others. Then try to say 'yes' more often to experiences with others that align with those values. 
3. If you are high in neuroticism - practice mindfulness, get good at noticing what is really happening in the world rather than what your mind is telling you is happening.  Get good at noticing urges to act in 'neurotic' ways and see if you can sit with the urge and instead act in line with your values.  
4. Show yourself compassion - this stuff is harder for you than for happy-go-lucky, bubbly extroverts. 

My personal experience with this?  I have been practising ACT (the approach that much of this blog rests on) for several years now and my neuroticism scores have fallen. This is anecdotal - but I am pretty pleased!

If You Want to Improve Your Life Satisfaction

A large German prospective study, lasting 15 years, suggests that if we want to increase our life satisfaction then we need to:

1. Focus on becoming more extroverted and less neurotic  - more on that in another post
2. Pursue goals relating to
• Family life: building a happy marriage, developing good relationships with our children, and,
• Altruism: building friendships, helping others, social and political activism.

Whereas pursuing 'success' goals (career success and material gains) actually leads to decreasing life satisfaction.

It isn't rocket science is it?  But there is a lot of cultural pressure encouraging us to put energy into 'success goals' so it is good to keep being reminded that it really doesn't lead to more happiness. However, my instinct is that balance is the key here. I think that we can assume that most of the study participants were working, which actually means that the study found that adding goals around relationships and altruism increased well being.

When all else has been stripped away this remains

'Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after -- lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again.'- Louise Erdrich

In my twenties I was a junior hospital doctor. The nature of that work is that you spend a lot of time with people who are close to death. And the experience taught me two things - firstly, to cherish life, as you never know when it will end, and secondly, that those who had loved well and put effort into something that they were passionate about seemed to face death with more ease than those who had focussed on gathering wealth and status.

There was a beautiful show on Radio 4 some years ago called 'Advice to the Living' which was advice from people with terminal disease. I still remember one of the people saying:

'Am I loved?  Am I loving well?  When all else has been stripped away this will still remain'

Advice to live by.

Loneliness makes us more vulnerable to exploitation

In a game of negotiation, lonely people were more like to accept unfair offers than non-lonely people.
Anita E. Kelly draws the following insight from this study:

'Perhaps we all look back at times in our lives when we put up with abusive behaviors from family, friends, or lovers that we would never tolerate now. We scratch our heads and wonder why we did. Well, maybe it was because we were lonely. And maybe we can forgive ourselves now that we're not.'

 This makes a lot of sense to me. Loneliness is very painful for primates.

Many psychologists tell recently single people that they must get used to being alone before they start dating. I have given my take on this in another post. I think that much wiser advice is to put effort into building and maintaining a supportive network of friends and family so that you aren't entering into dating relationships from a place of vulnerability.

The Opposite of Parental Autonomy Support

I've blogged recently on the benefits of encouraging your teenagers to develop autonomy - this is what the opposite of that feels like.

Why Teenagers Sometimes Respond Unpredictably

Teenagers 'may process emotions differently than adults'. A team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard's McLean Hospital scanned the brain activity of five young teenagers whilst they viewed pictures of faces and worked out what emotions were being felt by the people in the pictures. The study found that the teenagers' amygdala was activated when they did the task.  The amygdala is a brain centre that processes emotions and memories. Whereas when adults make these assessments they tend show activity in both the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is involved in 'planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior'.


It is interesting to note that teenagers tend to be much worse than adults at identifying someone's emotion by looking at their face.


This is a small sample but I think what it is suggesting is important.    This study suggests that teenagers may be poor at identifying others' emotions because they interpret other people's emotions by noticing their own feelings and perhaps assuming that the other person is feeling the same as they are.


If you think back to what it was like as a teenager - how self-critical you were and how you assumed that others were just as critical of you - this finding makes sense of a lot of teenage behaviour.  


So how do we help our teenagers with this? I think we need to challenge the cultural belief that our thoughts and emotions control our behaviour.  Steve Hayes has written a great blog post on this.


We need to teach them something slightly different.  We need to teach them that thoughts and feelings aren't truth.  We need to teach them to notice their thoughts and feelings, notice the urge associated with those thoughts and feelings, and then pause and check in with who they want to be in the world.


And we need to be very, very kind and compassionate - it isn't easy being a teenager....or a parent.

Trying to Avoid Stress is Counter Productive

A paper by H. Harrington Cleveland and Kitty S. Harris exploring  the processes that trigger cravings and prevent some addicts from building a sustained recovery. They found that recovering addicts who deal with stressful social experiences (such as ' hostility, insensitivity, interference, and ridicule' from others) by trying to avoid those experiences, have 'twice the number of cravings in a stressful day compared to persons who use problem solving strategies to understand and deal with the stress.' 


 'According to Cleveland, the findings suggest the impulse to avoid stress is never going to help recovering addicts because stressful experiences cannot be avoided.  "If your basic life strategy is to avoid stress, then your problems will probably end up multiplying and causing you more problems."

On-line Dating - some research and also some thoughts on handling the unpleasant emotions it can trigger

PsyBlog has a great article on on-line dating.
The highlights are:

'Internet daters are more likely to be sociable, have high self-esteem and be low in dating anxiety'

'Nine out of ten had lied on at least one of the attributes measured, but the lies were only small ones - e.g. shaving 5% off their weight'

The type of photo you use may impact on the level of interaction.  'Photos associated with the longest online conversations were where it showed the dater:

• Doing something interesting
• With an animal
• In an interesting location (travel photo)'

The photo type associated with the least interactions were of the person drinking.

Using positive emotional words 'like 'excited' and 'wonderful', made a better impression on both men and women.'


On-line dating is 'unsatisfying and aversive' for many - reading lots of profiles can feel more like you are screening resumes. However 'this will change as online dating services move towards more experiential methods'.


I had a lot of really positive experiences during my foray into on-line dating, I met some nice people and learnt a lot about myself.  And an on-line dating site, RSVP, enabled me to meet lovely Albert (my current partner). However, it was also emotionally really tough. Lots of rejection and disappointment; moments of cynicism after I felt someone had treated me badly; and a few days of addictive 'RSVP checking' that led me to decide to take a break for a while.


I think what was helpful was:

• Being clear about what values I was living - for me it was about genuinely wanting to be in a loving, committed relationship (note - it wasn't just about 'being in a relationship' - when defining values, the quality of the behaviour is very important).
• Being willing to experience emotional pain in the service of that value and working to keep myself present when painful emotions (fear of rejection, vulnerability, anger, disappointment) arose.
• Not losing sight of other important values - demonstrating love and compassion for myself and others; being a good friend; being a present, loving mother; doing work that makes a positive difference in the world.
• Knowing that the crazy stuff my mind was doing (e.g. noticing who had looked at my profile and then analysing why they didn't send me a kiss!) is just what the problem solving mind does.  Observing that with compassion.
• Viewing it as an experiment - a great opportunity to learn about myself and others.

Meeting Online Is Growing in Importance for Meeting Romantic Partners

Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University and the lead author of the study, “Meeting Online: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary.” states 'In the next several years the Internet could eclipse friends as the most influential way Americans meet their romantic partners, displacing friends out of the top position for the first time since the early 1940s,” 
The study also found that the Internet is especially important for finding potential partners in groups where the supply is small or difficult to identify such as in the gay, lesbian, and middle-aged heterosexual communities.

Read more: Web Access Increases Odds of Romantic Relationships http://www.tricitypsychology.com/blog/web-access-increases-odds-of-romantic-relationships/#ixzz0zXmKxgPx

Why 'The Secret' is Bad for Your Health

In 'The Secret', Rhonda Byrne describes the 'Law of attraction' and suggests that the way to achieve what you want is to: 'Ask' the Universe; truly 'Believe' that you deserve it and will get it, and then, 'Receive'.  This seems like a harmless new age idea, so why does it bother me so much?


Others have written about the victim blaming and guilt around illness that this belief system tends to encourage.  Rhonda Byrne apparently 'once claimed that disasters like the 2006 tsunami can only happen to people who are “on the same frequency as the event,” which appears to suggest that the victims brought catastrophe on themselves.' There is also a good discussion here questioning both the validity of the ideas and the sources that Byrne claim support her.


What I want to raise is how 'The Secret' can actually harm mental well being. Following the strategies suggested by 'The Secret' can potentially decrease two important healthy behaviours: psychological flexibility and mindfulness.  


Psychological flexibility is 'the process of contacting the present moment fully as a conscious human being and persisting or changing behavior in the service of chosen values' (Hayes SC, Luoma JB, Bond FW, Masuda A, Lillis J (2006)).  Which means being in touch with the present moment and making flexible choices based on who you want to be in the world and what is really important to you.  Numerous studies have found that psychological flexibility is associated with emotional well being and better quality of life. 
One of my concerns about 'The Secret' is that it encourages people to focus energy on controlling their thoughts and feelings and also on avoiding situations that may trigger painful feelings.  These are both markers of psychological inflexibility.  In terms of emotional well being, this is a disaster. 

If you want to test how psychologically flexible you are, take the AAQ (Note - the AAQ II on pg 4 of the document is simpler).  There is a great article on the dangers of avoiding painful emotions here.


My other major concern is that I don't think it is possible to practice both mindfulness and 'The Secret' and, like psychological flexibility, mindfulness is associated with emotional well being. 
Mindfulness has two components

1. self-regulation of attention so that it is maintained on immediate experience, thereby allowing for increased recognition of mental events in the present moment.  
2. adopting a particular orientation toward one’s experiences in the present moment, an orientation that is characterized by curiosity, openness and acceptance. (Bishop et al. (2004:232)

I think 'The Secret' encourages too much focus on an imagined future and also discourages an open, accepting approach to the present moment (especially to thoughts and feelings). I can't find a way to see this as healthy.

In my post on Science and The Secret I suggest some alternative approaches to creating success.

And the medal goes to....

The Most Generous Countries on Earth - NYTimes.com

Australia and NZ tie first place on Gallup's world giving index, a survey of donations, volunteering and being prepared to help strangers.

Australia is my adopted home - all I can say is 'Go us!'

Improving Your Relationship by Writing About it

I am a big fan of journaling.
Writing about our deepest thoughts and feelings for 20 minutes a day for just 3 days is associated with improved health, improved immune functioning, lessening of psychological distress following painful events and improved relationships..
This lovely study by James Pennebaker found that when couples journal their deepest thoughts and feelings about their relationship, they then tend to become more emotionally expressive with each other and are more likely to be together 3 months later.

Mindfulness and acceptance are associated with exercise maintenance

Mindfulness and acceptance are associated with exe... [Behav Res Ther. 2010] - PubMed result

How many of us start an exercise program and then...give it up?  A lot of us!
This paper makes the stunning suggestion that the reason we give up is because exercise is often uncomfortable.  But then they discuss an interesting finding - there is an association between mindfulness, acceptance and exercising more regularly. When people are able to non-judgementally notice the sensations produced by exercise and accept the discomfort as part of the price to be paid for the many benefits of regular exercise; they tend to miss fewer exercise sessions and feel more positive about achieving their fitness goals.

I have been pondering this finding. I think acceptance of discomfort, in the service of values around being healthy, is important in maintaining an exercise regime. However I also think that mindfulness transforms the experience of exercise. Instead of rushing to get to the end of each set of reps, if I observe with curiosity the sensations that arise as I repeat a movement, it becomes fascinating and also utterly joyful. And I feel so grateful that I have a body that does what I ask it to.

But I don't think that lack of acceptance is actually the major reason that most of us (including me!) aren't exercising enough. I think it is more about competing values. If I am to exercise more, then I need to do less of something else that I value - hanging out with my loved ones chatting and laughing? Focussing on my work?          Writing this blog? What do I give up?

I think that this is actually a genuinely difficult dilemma. The most recent pieces of research that have helped me with this are

• Mindfully doing housework increases the fitness benefits
• Gardening is good for children's self esteem - just wish I could get the kids on board with this one!
• Self compassion is a really good idea

And IMHO by far the best book on time management is 'Do it Tomorrow'

Forster recommends a 'Closed List Day Planner'  - each day write a list of what you need to get done, but only include what you can realistically get done in a day.  Then just do what is on the list. When you have finished the list - STOP and go and play!

Effective Parents Encourage Autonomy

If you want your teenager to

• Make good choices because they want to (rather than to please others)
• Handle their emotions effectively
• Pursue their interests with passion 
• Like and respect you, rather than resent you

Then you need to support your children in developing autonomy.

Practically what that means, is that you:

• Are interested in hearing their perspective even when it is different to your own (and don't act like their perspective is somehow less valid because they are a teenager)
• Give reasons for your opinions and advice
• Let them make their own decisions - but coach them to help them to consider all of the different options and think through the likely consequences of those different options
• Give them support when they need it - autonomy is different to independence.  They can get overwhelmed and feel a bit abandoned if you push them to become too independent too fast
• Live the values that you think are important.  For example, If you want them to value getting a good education then seeing you putting effort into learning new skills has more of an impact than all of the lectures you give them about how they must do well at school

What to do when you walk into a crowded room and discover you don't know anyone

Look for the person who looks most lonely, shy or anxious and go over and focus on doing what you can to make them feel more comfortable.

I read this years ago and have no idea of the source but it is a real humdinger of a tip

Watching Someone Else Struggle

'The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.' 

Science and 'The Secret'

Rob Archer just wrote a post on 'The Secret'.  He described it as 'Bollocks' and part of me went 'Yey!' because there is so much in 'The Secret' that is damaging (more on that in another post!) , but it got me thinking. So many people love 'The Secret' and persist with it, are there aspects of it that are useful? Is it possible to tease out the positive parts of the approach without the detrimental 'I have to send positive energy out to the universe by controlling my thoughts and feelings' part (which, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive). 
  
So 'Is there any science to support any of the idea's in 'The Secret'?'

'The Secret' seems to be based on a core belief that picturing what you want and having a positive expectation that it will happen, will actually make what you want to happen, really happen.  Now I can't find any science to support that core hypothesis and there are some huge flaws in the idea. However, this idea does relate to a couple of other important idea's that are worth exploring.

1. That it is possible to control how lucky you are
2. That believing you will succeed increases your chance of succeeding.

So let's look at those idea's.

1. Seeing yourself as 'lucky'. 

 Richard Wisemann has found that people who see themselves as lucky, live 'amazingly charmed lives, full of good fortune.' He found that lucky people actually generate their own good fortune via four principles.

'They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.'

Wiseman found that teaching people these strategies increases their 'luck'.  The beauty of these strategies is that they are much easier to follow than trying to think happy thoughts all the time (which, as I have mentioned, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive!).

 2. Believing that you will be successful


The belief that you will be able to do what is necessary, so that you will achieve your goals is called Self- Efficacy. A lot of research has been done on how self-efficacy interacts with success.  The ideal level of self-efficacy (i.e.confidence that we will succeed) is to have slightly more confidence in ourselves than our actual ability.  This optimism encourages us to stretch ourselves, tackle challenges and persist in the face of difficulty. Which, of course, means we learn new skills, our life expands and we are more likely to be successful.  


However, if our self-efficacy outstrips our ability by too much, we can end up biting off more than we can chew and  fail.  This is a risk of 'The Secret'.  Followers of 'The Secret' seem to believe that thinking the right thoughts will help them to succeed. They don't seem to judge their likelihood of success based on past experiences of success or failure. This means that occasionally they will succeed at something surprising but they also risk repeated and sometimes disastrous failure.  Further, because they attribute success or failure to how well they managed to control their thoughts and feelings (which, I may have mentioned, is not only impossible but actually counter-productive!) they can fail to learn from their mistakes.


So if I was to write a best selling book on the secrets to a successful life (based on research on luck, self-efficacy and a little bit of ACT (of course!)) this is what it would say:

My Cat

• Have a clear picture of what 'success' looks like to you - be aware that we are constantly being told that success looks a certain way (usually involving money and status). Create your own picture. Mine involves a garden; some chickens; a cat, and the people I love.
• Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine  - if your usual approach isn't getting you the outcomes you want, try doing one thing different
• Set yourself written goals that stretch you a little - record your successes and remind yourself of those successes when you have to do something similar but more challenging
• Measure your success in two ways
• Did you achieve the outcome you wanted?
• Did you live your values?  Were you the person you want to be in the world?
• Repeatedly connect to the present moment through your five senses - so you get accurate information about what is happening and don't miss opportunities
• Use your intuition as a source of information - don't treat it as truth. But intuition can sometimes signal to us that we need to notice some aspect of a situation we haven't paid sufficient attention to
• When you want to do something challenging, prepare well and make a plan
• When your mind starts freaking you out, telling you how you will fail - accept that this is what minds do. Don't feel you have to either control or buy the thoughts. Check in with what is really happening in the world rather than what your mind is telling you is happening.  If what you want to do is important to you, 'Feel the fear and do it anyway!'

There is only one thing - to learn!

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."  
T.H. White

Does personality affect your outcome if you get cancer?

No, it doesn't.

There is a widespread belief in our society that people get, or, fail to recover from, cancer because of unresolved psychological issues or faulty approaches to handling thoughts and emotions.
Extensive research has shown no relationship between personality and likelihood of getting or recovering from cancer. But there is some contradictory research on the broader topic of emotions and illness:

1. Having a mental illness, like depression or anxiety, has been associated with increased physical illness and earlier death in a number of studies
2. Having 'trait positive affect' i.e. having a tendency to experience a lot of 'positive' emotions in your life - like joy, happiness, enthusiasm - is associated with longer life in some populations (e.g. community based older people) but not in others (e.g. people who were 'gifted' as children and had high levels of positive emotion were actually more likely to die before 65 than less happy gifted children)
3. Minimization of emotions has been found to be associated with longer survival in breast cancer patients but denial is associated with shorter survival.  The differences between these two approaches are important but subtle.
4. Emotions seem to pay a larger role in illnesses where inflammation is an important factor (e.g Heart Attacks, Diabetes, Infections) than in illness where inflammation isn't central (e.g.many cancers)
5. Research findings about one subset of an illness are sometimes different to another subset e.g. 'In breast cancer patients with a hormone (estrogen and/or progesterone) receptor positive status (biological factor), life events were related to recurrence of breast cancer, while such a relationship did not occur in women with hormone receptor negative breast cancer.' 
6. Some factors e.g.depression, perceived social support, anger/hostility, denial/avoidance) have shown both positive and negative relationships with survival from breast cancer.

So what are we to do in response to all this contradiction and uncertainty?  Here is my advice (for what it is worth!)

1. There is a consistent finding that social support is associated with emotional and physical health - so put effort into broadening and building important relationships.
2. Get clear about what a rich and meaningful life looks like to you and who you want to be in the world. Then behave in ways that move you towards living that life in each moment.  If you do develop a serious illness (we all will some day) you can look back on a life well-lived.
3. If you have a loved one with a serious illness and feel an urge to tell them how they should be handling their emotions
• Accept that different people have different ways of coping with challenges - something that works for you may not be right for them.
• Know that the messages our society gives about how 'unresolved psychological issues' cause illness, create feelings of guilt in people living with serious illness - do you want to add to that burden of guilt?
• Be aware that your urge may be more about dealing with your own distress than genuinely helping them.
• Remember the link between social support and health - the most important help you can give your loved one is to show them that you care about them.