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Well-Being Challenge – Week 2
Dr. Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model –
In last week’s blog entry, we discussed the cultivation of positive emotion, as outlined in the PERMA Model. If you missed this discussion, feel free to go back through the blog archives to catch up on the initial entries in our Well-Being Challenge. In this week’s blog entry we will be addressing Engagement (“E”) in pleasurable or meaningful events, activities, or projects. It is hypothesized that meaningful engagement is a critical component of cultivating well-being.
“E” is for Engagement –
Most simply, engagement refers to those times in which we become completely immersed in an activity or project. Dr. Seligman links this experience with the often used construct of “flow.” Those of you who follow sports may be familiar with the term flow, which refers to the single-minded or complete absorption in a task. Often, athletes report a feeling of flow while competing, during which time they feel completely engaged in the task at hand, and often retrospectively report not remembering or acknowledging anything else occurring around them. Sometimes it helps to think about it like this – think back to the last time that you drove somewhere and suddenly ended up at your destination with little recall for the time that had elapsed or the sights you saw along the way. Flow is almost the exact opposite of this experience but includes the feeling of having time pass rapidly and unexpectedly. However, instead of being checked out mindlessly, you are so engaged in and aware of the nuances of the activity that you are pursuing, that everything else around you fades away and you may even lose track of time.
Keeping in mind the idea of flow, Seligman argues that engagement in activities that become completely immersive and pleasurable often create a sense of well-being for people. However, it is important to note that engagement is a subjective construct that involves using individuals’ retrospective reports of feelings of flow. For example, an individual may choose to begin working on a painting and after several hours reemerge from the task feeling a keen sense of enjoyment. This person may then look back and notice how absolutely engaged and absorbed they were in painting and realize that they have just spent a significant amount of time completing a very fulfilling project. Events like this can then be used to help shape future behavior and to provide us with important information about what adds meaning and vitality to our days.
Data would now suggest that fulfilling engagement in pleasurable tasks or activities is correlated with increased well-being, such that individuals who find themselves frequently engaging in flow-inducing activities often report higher levels of positive emotion (as discussed last week) and overall life satisfaction. Interestingly, Seligman’s research has determined that engagement in immersive and enjoyable activities is something that can be measured separately from the other elements of PERMA. This means that even if you may struggle with cultivating the other components of PERMA, simply incorporating “engagement” into your daily or weekly behavioral repertoire can be enough to contribute to increased well-being. At Equanimity Partners, we often help clients to identify activities and tasks that help provide meaning and fulfillment within their lives. We then help clients to create behavioral action plans to achieve these goals. The end results of these interventions are often quite remarkable. Specifically, identifying unique values and goals related to engagement often helps clients cultivate increased insight into what is meaningful in their lives. Next, such clinical interventions often help clients to organize and structure their lives in a manner that is consistent with their individual wishes and desires for fulfillment and engagement – unsurprisingly, living in this manner often also leads to increased well-being.
Exercises in Cultivating Increased Engagement –
1. In the service of bringing mindfulness to those events that have contributed to your own experiences with flow, try to create a list of past events or activities that have generated a feeling of complete absorption. If this is a struggle for you, try to begin small and just notice activities or tasks that have created a sense of fulfillment. You can then build from there.
2. After creating the aforementioned list, try incorporating at least three of these activities or experiences into your next week. Remember you can always start small – for example, maybe reading a chapter from a new book is enough to transport you into a feeling of complete engagement. This is a quick activity that can be done at any time of the day and is consistent with “engagement”.
Remember:
You can find a complete discussion of the PERMA model in Dr. Seligman’s book: Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (2011).
We hope that you have found this week’s discussion of engagement interesting. Next week we will be exploring Positive Relationships – the “R” in PERMA. As always, please feel free to leave a comment or question in the comments section of this blog. All respectful insights are welcomed!
– The Equanimity Partners Staff
Well-Being Challenge – Week 1
Dr. Martin Seligman’s PERMA Model –
In last week’s blog entry, we addressed what it means to be “happy” and referenced the world’s foremost expert on positive emotion: Dr. Martin Seligman.
In his most recent book: Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (2011), Dr. Seligman outlines a construct he refers to as PERMA. In actuality, PERMA is an acronym for the five components that Dr. Seligman believes contribute to a sense of overall well-being. In today’s blog entry we will be discussing the “P” in PERMA – Positive Emotion.
“P” is for Positive Emotion –
Dr. Seligman explains that positive emotion is one of the pillars upon which well-being rests. Within the category of positive emotion lie feelings such as happiness, peacefulness, security, life satisfaction, pleasure, love, etc. Importantly, the idea of “happiness” is only one emotion which resides in this category, thereby making room for other important aspects of positivity.
If you are interested in exploring your own level of positive emotion in a relatively objective manner, Dr. Seligman has provided a number of empirically validated measures on his website: http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu. For example, the Gratitude Questionnaire allows you to assess your appreciation for past events, while the Work-Life Questionnaire provides a composite score of work-life satisfaction. Additional measures explore constructs of optimism, compassion, forgiveness, and strength of character – all of which can help create a more nuanced understanding of positivity.
Because the pillar of positive emotion includes many components, it may be important to spend some time exploring the various positive emotions that you see arising in your everyday life. Simply exploring the nature of positive emotion can begin to help individuals recognize that “happiness” is not the end all be all of positivity. In fact, even if you wouldn’t describe yourself as a “happy” person, you may find that you are a particularly appreciative or satisfied person. The key idea is to recognize that positive emotion is much more than what is depicted in the general media. In fact cultivating positive emotion is indeed an achievable goal; whereas becoming “happy” can often be a dead-end road leading to additional hardship.
At Equanimity Partners, we are committed to helping individuals cultivate a life worth living. Importantly, our goal is not to eradicate human suffering and rid individuals of negative emotion, but instead to help people get into contact with things that are good and meaningful in their lives. That’s not to say that we are not interested in helping to alleviate suffering, but often this lessening of pain comes alongside becoming more mindful of what is positive in one’s life. Importantly, this goal is very much in line with Dr. Seligman’s research on cultivating positive emotion in one’s life. Specifically, Dr. Seligman conducted a study in which individuals were asked to write down five positive things that had happened during the day. Individuals were asked to complete this task before going to bed each night and to include both large and small items. For example, drinking a favorite coffee drink outside would be counted in the same way as attending a favorite concert. After completing this exercise for a period of time, participants in the study had not only begun to experience an increase in positive emotion, but had also experienced a decrease in negative emotion and depressive symptoms. How inspiring! Simply getting into contact with the good in one’s life was enough to help begin to lessen emotional suffering.
Exercises in Cultivating Positive Emotion –
1. In the service of cultivating positive emotion, let’s begin a positive events journal. Try to keep track of at least three to five positive events that happen each day. It is important to write down these events daily and not to wait and group them at the end of the week. The goal is to become increasingly more mindful of the positive that is happening on a daily basis. Remember to include big and small items. And remember, it’s ok if you’re having a bad day – the goal is to just try to become cognizant of any positive events (e.g. using a favorite lotion, receiving something in the mail, watching a favorite t.v. show, etc.).
2. If you feel like it may be useful, spend some time exploring Dr. Seligman’s website (listed above). Create a user profile and explore some of the questionnaires. It just may surprise you when you begin to consider different aspects of positive emotion and how they impact you on a daily basis.
We hope that you have found this week’s discussion of positive emotion useful and we in turn hope that you will join us next week as we explore “Engagement” – the “E” in PERMA. Also, feel free to leave a remark or question in the comment section of this blog entry. We welcome all forthright and respectful discussion!
The Equanimity Partners Staff
Cultivating Well-Being –
The Search for Happiness –
Judd Apatow’s last comedic film, “This is 40”, received praise for providing frank, if not crude, insights into married life and parenthood. Through a series of evolving conflicts, the film tells a story of a married couple struggling with the types of stereotypical conundrums (debt, declining sexual intimacy, ornery children) we’ve come to expect from Hollywood’s portrayal of the middle-aged. But woven into the fabric of the film is an underlying question of what it means to be happy – independently, in an intimate relationship, and with family and friends.
At one point in the film, Leslie Mann’s frustrated character, Debbie, exclaims: “let’s just get happy” – as though happiness could be willed by sheer mental force. What follows is a series of shots of the couple attending doctor’s appointments, quitting smoking, quitting cupcakes, swimming in a hotel pool, and more generally trying to be “productive” and “healthful” adults. Although maybe good in theory, the succession of attempts to do what “happy and healthy” couples should do, ultimately leave the two frazzled, angry, and far less connected.
This may be the most insightful message of the entire film. The more we try to be happy, get happy, and unfortunately sometimes buy happy, the more deeply unhappy we seem to become. Unfortunately, this truism is often eclipsed by the self-help industry espousing “five easy steps” or “the quick and simple solution” to everlasting happiness. We are also inundated by massive marketing campaigns encouraging people that happiness can be achieved through purchasing the right house, car, clothing, technological gear, etc. But the data is clear, despite experiencing ample wealth, opportunity, and advantage, American’s report lower levels of positive emotion than citizens of other less developed, wealthy, and powerful nations. In fact, the United States ranks a dismal No. 33 on a list of “happiest” countries (Clifton, 2012).
Well-Being as Opposed to Happiness –
What the psychological community has tried to address over the past several decades is that happiness is an ongoing process and a skill to be practiced. At the present time, Dr. Martin Seligman, esteemed researcher, professor, and founder of the positive psychology movement, is currently leading the field to a more nuanced and practical understanding of what it means to be “happy”. With his recent publication: Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (2011), Dr. Seligman outlines what he believes it means to be happy. However, the word “happiness” is importantly not utilized, instead in its place is the term “well-being.” Seligman argues that although positive emotions such as “happiness” are a part of the human experience, our search to feel content is better explained as a process of searching for overarching “well-being.” Over the next several weeks, this blog will be updated with a post exploring each of the five elements Seligman believes contribute to well-being. These include:
(1). Positive Emotion
(2). Engagement
(3). Relationships
(4). Meaning and Purpose
(5). Accomplishment
Here at Equanimity Partners, Inc. we work to incorporate such important aspects into our own lives and we will be taking the next five weeks to practice the same skills that we discuss with clients. Therefore, each blog post will discuss one of Dr. Seligman’s elements of well-being and will offer some practice exercises to help you explore the elements in greater depth. We hope you will follow along with our blog posts and take this “well-being” challenge with us.
– The Equanimity Partners Staff
Finding Calm in the Storm –
The recent bombings that occurred at the Boston Marathon combined with other high profile acts of violence in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado have instilled fear in many Americans. Despite assurances that such acts are infrequent, many find it difficult to cope with the anxiety and sadness that such events often create. Additionally, some people may find it a challenge to continue to engage in previously enjoyed outings like going to the movies, shopping in crowded places, or attending large gatherings for fear of experiencing an act of violence. Combined, this anxiety and behavioral avoidance can result in psychological distress that begins to impact both individuals and their families. In the service of helping individuals to find positive coping strategies, those of us at Equanimity Partners would like to offer a few effective strategies for managing such anxieties:
Managing Psychological Distress:
1. If you find yourself becoming anxious or distressed it is important to both acknowledge and respect such feelings. Our emotions provide us with important information about our surroundings and can help us clue in to specific things that may be upsetting. If we react with avoidance of such feelings we are both discounting our authentic reaction and exacerbating feelings of distress.
For example, when people have been encouraged to suppress thoughts, those thoughts often come back with more intensity and frequency. It’s like this – imagine if someone told you to think of anything except a pink elephant – despite your attempts that image is likely the first thing that gets cued in your mind. The same is true for emotions. Trying to get rid of an emotion (e.g. anxiety) often results in more of that emotion.
2. Next, it can also be useful to practice something we call “cognitive defusion.” Cognitive defusion involves taking a step back from distressing or painful thoughts and then evaluating them as simply chatter that your mind produces. For example, imagine that you have the thought: “I cannot stand to be in a crowded place.” If you can objectively notice that this is simply a thought that your mind has produced and not a truth, it can be very helpful. In fact, you could actually choose to be in a crowded place and “stand it” even if it did cause you anxiety.
Another example is this: try thinking about jumping up and down as hard as you can. Even though you’ve had the thought that you are going to jump up and down, this is very different from the experience of jumping up and down. Thus, you can think things without them happening or being true. I can think, “I am too afraid to leave the house,” and still leave. This brings us to the next point – following our values.
Pursuing Your Values in the Face of Discomfort –
1. Sometimes it can be helpful to remind yourself why you are engaging in certain activities. Think of the frequently used cliché: “If you stop living your life than the perpetrators of violence have won.” To some extent this statement carries a bit of truth, psychologically speaking. When we start avoiding anxiety-inducing situations, we are teaching our brains that such situations are indeed scary or worthy of anxiety. However, when we acknowledge that a situations is fear-inducing (e.g. going to a crowded parade), but then engage in that activity anyway, we are reminding our brains that our thoughts and emotions do not have to dictate our actions. Over time, repeatedly engaging in behaviors or activities that were once anxiety-producing (i.e. this is called exposure) begins to decrease our psychological distress reactions. This is called habituation. You can think of it like this – imagine sitting in a room with a loudly buzzing light bulb. This noise is certainly irritating in the beginning; however, if you remain in the room, the obnoxious noise begins to fade and we eventually often forget about it all together. This is also habituation. Therefore, the more you can remind yourself that it is okay to engage in previously-enjoyed activities, even in the face of anxiety, the more likely you are to train your brain that such activities can be managed with minimal distress.
2. The question then becomes – “how do I know when I should engage in an activity if I’m anxious or afraid?” This is where we draw in values. Values refer to those things that make our life meaningful or give vitality to our days. For example, many people have family related values (cultivating loving relationships; making time for shared activities, etc.). These values do not come from a “moral” or “right/wrong” place, but instead reflect what is important to a given individual.
3. If you can identify specific values (open-ended statements about what you would like your life to look like) then you can identify goals that go along with such values. Take the example above about making time for shared activities with the family. This value could lead to a goal of going to one public sporting event per month. Now you are in a position of recognizing that attending a crowded sporting event is in line with your stated value, even if it does produce some anxiety. Values can then help you navigate your personal goals and help you to engage in activities even in the face of discomfort.
Finally, if you have young children you may find that it is difficult to figure out the appropriate way to help them make sense of such events and to manage upsetting emotions. Some suggestions for navigating this process are as follows:
How to talk to your children:
1. Let them know it’s okay to feel afraid or sad – validating these emotions can help children understand that their experiences are natural and important. Telling them to get rid of specific emotions (e.g. “you need to stop feeling so upset”) can result in more of that emotion and/or a reluctance to come forward with other upsetting thoughts or feelings.
2. Validate your child’s emotional reaction – even if it doesn’t exactly match with yours. Even though you might be feeling anxious and angry, your child may be feeling sad or fearful of leaving the house. It’s okay if there is a discrepancy between your child’s emotions and your own. The important part is that you acknowledge and respect their individual reactions.
3. Sometimes children aren’t adept at verbalizing their emotions. You may need to be mindful of changes in their behavior (e.g. a reluctance to go to school, becoming fearful of going to bed, becoming more clingy or distant, etc.). If you notice such changes in behavior, ask questions. Open ended questions such as: “I wonder how you have felt about the events that recently happened” or “How do you feel when you see things like this on the news or hear about them at school?” Opening up a dialogue can help children feel comfortable in expressing things that may be difficult for them to understand or discuss.
4. If your children are old enough to have a more nuanced understanding of things like “probability” or “likelihood”, consider discussing with them the likelihood of such scary events happening to them. For example, after the shooting in the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre, many individuals expressed concerns about going to see movies. For some, it was helpful to consider the odds of experiencing an event like this. More specifically, it was helpful for some parents to remind their children that thousands of movies play every day across the country with no such instances. This can help reassure children that despite constant news coverage, violent events like the aforementioned continue to be rare.
We hope that this information may be useful.
– The Equanimity Partners Staff