This is one of those studies that take a moment to get your mind around.

Imagine you are an itinerant individual living in absolute penury in a third-world country. You survive by going through other people’s garbage and extracting your food for the day as well as other essentials like clothing and footwear. You live your life hand to mouth and what your hand finds are the things others have discarded. You recycle what you can for money, and this considerable effort earns you about $3 a day.

By downward social comparison, almost anyone seeing a person living in these conditions would assume the individuals engaged in this activity would resent their life circumstance and view their life as anything but happy.

But this study shows this is a false assumption.

Not only are these people not depressed, they are optimistic, have good relationships, and many of them play sports and read. The majority of them are happy with their lives.

Extreme poverty is considered to have a negative effect on happiness. In those instances, when poor people are happy, it is attributed either to their having very low future expectations or having adapted to their circumstances. But this study showed something different. Overall these rubbish collectors’ attitude is better about their future than their present. They believe their tomorrow will be better than today.

Research has shown that being a consumer of material goods does not in and of itself make us happy. What does increase our well-being and happiness is more leisure time and activities, support and connection with family, and being involved in good relationships. We are social creatures first and foremost. The desire to belong and identify with others is woven into our wiring as human beings. Everything from our health to our happiness improves when our social relations improve.

This is also true when we are involved in meaningful work — particularly work where we have an opportunity to develop our abilities, work toward objectives, have supervisory support, feel safe, and get status from the work we do. But these are hardly the conditions for rubbish collectors. Trash pickers are exposed to health problems, violence, and severe social stigmatization. This is despite the fact that the work they do provides a benefit to society. Recycling problems around the world are ubiquitous and trash pickers render a service that is both environmentally useful and economically practical. Still, this group is typically marginalized by society.

Yet the trash collectors of León are a resilient group and this study sheds some light on the relationship between income and happiness. Rather than any connection to income, the research found that the key to feeling happy is having a positive expectation for the future. Of those who rated themselves as happy, more than twice as many trash collectors could see brighter futures for themselves than their less optimistic counterparts. Additionally, men were happier than women, as were those who lived with fewer people.

But what about having enough food?

The pioneering work of Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs proposed that we must have lower needs satisfied before having higher needs met. He argued we need to have our physiological needs met (things like food, water and sleep) before concerning ourselves with safety and security needs — and that these have to be satisfied before we move toward our need to be loved, esteemed, and eventually self-actualized.

The current research shows that having enough food is, indeed, a significant factor in whether an individual ranks himself as happy. Almost 90 percent of the trash collectors who rated themselves as happy had enough food to eat during the last month. This was a statistically significant finding in the study and would seem to be an indication that Maslow was right.

But in the article Vazquez points out an interesting fact: While not statistically significant, more than 70 percent of those who did not have enough to eat still rated themselves as happy. These individuals did not have the most basic ability to find enough food to feed themselves properly the month prior to the rating. This means that in spite of hunger, optimism and relationship may be more satisfying than knowing where our next meal is coming from. Socrates could have been talking about the trash collectors of León when he said: “Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.”

What can we learn from the stigmatized, impoverished, yet resilient trash pickers of León? We discover that optimism about tomorrow is important to us today; that good relationships are better than money in the bank; and that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs may not always be true.

In the words of Vazquez we come to find: “… the majority of the collectors are happy, and are convinced that they can achieve a better quality of life in the future with hard work and perseverance.”

In other words — like many of us.

Reference

Vázquez, J.J. (2013) Happiness among the garbage: Differences in overall happiness among trash pickers in León (Nicaragua), The Journal of Positive Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1–11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2012.743574

Barbara Fredrickson’s new book, Love 2.0, is a powerful new perspective on what love, a renewable resource, means to our body. She walks us through a biochemical and behavioral labyrinth that is fascinating and gives us pause for thought. (To read a recent review of this leading researcher’s book check here.)

The key to understanding what happens to us during the time there is mutual caring is called “positivity resonance” for Fredrickson. It is a type of alignment of three features where there is a release of the neuropeptide oxytocin (sometime dubbed the love hormone because it is released in large quantities during orgasm); an enhanced vagal tone (the association of heart rate to breathing rate); and our brain syncing with another person during something called, appropriately enough, “brain coupling”. It is the sharing of positive emotions that generates what Fredrickson calls ‘micro-moments’. The moments are “virtually identical” whether they occur between parent and child, friends, lovers, or total strangers.

Wait a minute.

Let’s break this down: If your son brings home his report card and is proud to show you the “A” he received and you hug him that certainly would seem to qualify. If you are sitting across from your best friend and share a laugh over a joke he has told you, this is a micro-moment. If you are making love and are lost in your lover’s eyes this is certainly on the list. But what if you are on line at Starbucks and you and a stranger notice a little girl with her lips pressed against the glass counter trying to kiss the goodies on the other side. You and the stranger smile and nod slightly toward each other. Both of you would know this was a shared positive emotion – that it was a unique experience for the two of you. Certainly it is a micro-moment. But is this love?

Barbara Fredrickson would say yes.

She doesn’t think we need to limit our definition of love to one person or even to a small group of intimates. She believes we should look for and savor these micro-moments as they can happen all around us – even with strangers.

Her book offers several suggestions for ‘priming the pump’ so to speak for increasing the likelihood of these experiences. Here are a couple from the book—and you can go online at positivityresonance.com under the ‘tools’ section and register free to keep track of your progress in building positive emotions.

The first one is the social connections reflection. In this experience pick the three longest social connections you’ve had during the day and review them at the end of the day. Then see how true these two statements are:

• During these social connections I felt “in tune” with the person/s around me.

• During these social connections I felt close to the person/s.

Rate the truth of these statements on a scale from 1-7 where 1 is not true at all and 7 is very true.

This simple reflection on daily social encounters showed that over time it increases upward spirals of positivity and, even more surprisingly, increase vagal tone. It literally makes your heart better.

The next practice is a Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM). The goal here is to rouse tender, loving feelings as you visualize someone you love. There are many versions of this and the links below will take you to more complete meditations, but the essence of the practice is to imagine someone you love, allow warm feeling for them arise, and as you do recite these phrases to yourself.

• May (this person) feel safe.

• May (this person) feel happy.
• May (this person) feel healthy.
• May (this person) live his or her life with ease.

Dr. Fredrickson has kindly (of course) created a beautiful collection of meditations on her site, including one for LKM. You should check it out and try them all.

The quality of her research on LKM was so impressive on improving vagal tone that the Dalai Lama invited her to talk with him. Fredrickson was able to determine that those who had the largest increases in vagal tone had the most frequent positivity resonance experiences with others. Why was her research so important? Before her studies vagal tone was thought to be as stable and as unchangeable as one’s height. You either had good tone or not.

We could all use a little more love in our life, yes? Then keep your eyes wide as you wait in line for that latte. You may find it comes with a little extra sweetness.

But there is a new perspective emerging as to what psychotherapy can offer. Positive psychotherapy (PPT) is a strengths-based approach that is directly aimed at offering a more comprehensive perspective of a client and his or her life circumstances. It is becoming known as an evidence-based standpoint that explores both strengths and weaknesses to achieve greater well-being and functioning.

We are moving from looking at what is wrong to looking at what is strong.

The emphasis on symptom reduction has dominated psychotherapeutic interventions and practice. The result is a deficit-oriented assessment, which asks: “What is wrong with you?”

What we are left with is a negative bias. We look at what is wrong and believe that treating it makes us well. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 due to be released this year, is a compendium of what is not okay with us. The manual will again only give us only half the picture and skews our thinking about human strengths.

This perspective is so embedded that in the DSM-IV that altruism is noted as a coping mechanism to deal with feelings of guilt — and traits such as anticipation, affiliation and humor are labeled as defense mechanisms (American Psychiatric Association, 2000, p. 752).

Really?

The research showing that PPT may be an important new direction is mounting — and compelling. The emphasis is on using well-documented positive interventions. The shift is toward understanding what our strengths are, using them, and highlighting and valuing positive interactions.

The focus on strengths is key and serves as the foundation to initiating this shift. The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS) is a free online questionnaire that will assesses your top five strengths. It was developed by two of the leading figures in positive psychology, Chris Peterson and Martin Seligman, as a proposed complementary approach to the DSM and mental health that focuses on human strengths and potential.

Studies have shown that by understanding what your strengths are and using them more regularly in your daily life it will not only decrease your symptoms of depression, but improve your well-being. To learn more about the VIA-IS check out Ryan Niemiec’s blog on character strengths here at Psych Central. He is VIA’s director and you can tap into the latest research on using strengths.

The research on using PPT is gaining more attention in the clinical sector. Consider one of the studies in positive psychotherapy conducted in a group therapy format. Forty mild to moderately depressed University of Pennsylvania students were divided into a treatment and a non-treatment group. The treatment condition consisted of two groups of 8-11 participants seen for 6 weeks for two-hour sessions.

The session was comprised of half a discussion of the exercise assigned from the previous week, and an introduction to the new exercise. The participants carried out homework assignments and reported back each week on their progress.

The first week participants were asked to take the VIA-IS survey and use their top five strengths more often in their day-to-day lives. Week two involved writing down three good things that have happened during the day and why you think they occurred. The third week participants were asked to write a brief essay on what they want to be remembered for the most: A biography or obituary, if you will, of having lived a satisfying life. The next session involved composing a letter of gratitude to someone they may never have thanked adequately and reading that letter to them in person or by phone.

During the fifth session the members were asked to respond very positively and enthusiastically each day to good news received by someone else. The final session involved savoring daily events in our life that we normally do not take the time to enjoy, and journaling how this experience differed from our normally rushed occurrence. Time was also spent during this last session on tailoring the exercises for their use following the end of the study.

Six sessions: Twelve hours.

As you might expect the group PPT participants did better than the no-treatment group on assessments of depression and satisfaction with life.

But there is a powerful finding beyond this positive change. The gains made by the PPT groups were maintained with no other intervention by the researchers throughout a one-year follow-up, while the baseline levels of depression for the non-treatment group remained unchanged.

Six sessions and twelve hours: With no booster sessions during the year. This is very unusual in the study of depression and highlights how the use of these exercises involved self-maintaining features that served the participants beyond the intervention.

Positive psychology is a new direction that is generating a great deal of excellent research and PPT is emerging as one of the most important ways in which the findings from this new subfield can be applied.

Further Reading

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV TR. American Psychiatric Association, Washington D.C., U.S.A. (2000).

Duckworth, A. L., Steen, T. A., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Positive psychology in
clinical practice. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 1:629–651.

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook
of classification. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rashid, T., & Ostermann, R. F. (2009). Strength-based assessment in clinical practice.
Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65:488–498.

Seligman MEP, Rashid T, Parks AC. Positive psychotherapy. American Psychologist 2006;61:774–788.

Strong woman photo available from Shutterstock

Such research looks at the way sleep affects cardiometobolic disease, the name given to disruption of a variety of physical and cognitive functions. These disruptions can affect basic skills such as appetite regulation and mood. Sleep researchers apparently are issuing the rest of us a wake-up call.

Each of us has an internal clock, a circadian rhythm that regulates our sleep needs. This is synchronized by the amount of sunlight we are exposed to.

But when we are tempted by the demands of our social clock — such as reading that last email, staying up for late-night TV, or going out and staying out late with our friends — we fall out of sync and the effects can take their toll. This circadian disruption often is at the core of numerous problems.

The problems with sleep may not just be limited to this earthly world. David Dinges, a sleep expert at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, recently published a study with his colleagues that looked at the potential effects of a simulated 17-month-long trip to Mars. In this unique experiment conducted in Moscow by Russian and European space agencies, six volunteers — three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a Chinese — were confined in a mock spaceship.

All but one of the volunteers had problems with getting enough sleep. In turn they became lethargic, started showing signs of depression, and were also inclined to do less exercise, which likely would have counteracted some of these effects.

In addition to sleep disruption in tight quarters, isolation from family and lack of privacy may also have played a role or had an impact. A report on this simulation and its effect on the volunteers recently was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sleep Quiz

So whether you are planning a trip to Mars, or just following your social clock, take our quiz on sleep and see our suggestions at the end for making sure you get what you need to function well.

1. What can be affected by too-little sleep?
A. Glucose Metabolism
B. Hormone regulation
C. Immune functioning
D. All of the above

Answer? D. Various studies have shown that too little sleep affects each of these functions.

2. What percent of U.S. adults say they do not get enough sleep half the time?

A. 35
B. 25
C. 15
D. 5

Answer? B. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 25 percent of us do not get the sleep we need at least half the time.

3. How many American workers get fewer than 6 hours of sleep a night?
A. Just over 60 million.
B. Just over 50 million
C. Just over 40 million
D. Just over 20 million

Answer: C. According to CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety, about 41 million people get this little sleep.

4. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driver fatigue results in how many crashes annually?

A. 100,000
B. 75,000
C. 50,000
D. 25,000

Answer: A. Not only are there 100,000 crashes, there are 1,550 deaths and over 70,000 injuries.

5. Significantly less sleep per night has been associated with all but which of the following?
A. Greater total calorie intake
B. Increased fat consumption
C. Burning more energy
D. Eating more snacks

Answer: C. In a 2011 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition short sleep made people eat more, but they didn’t use more energy to burn up the extra calories. The authors point to this finding as one possible explanation for obesity.

6. Recent studies suggest that how many people lose an hour of sleep a week because of their social demands?

A. 15%
B. 25%
C. 50%
D. Nearly 70%.

Answer: D. In a 2012 study in Current Biology researchers in Germany and the Netherlands found 69 percent of those surveyed lost an hour a week. They also found that about 33 percent lost more than two hours.

7. Neighborhoods with higher rates of physical and social disorder:

A. Have poorer sleep quality
B. See themselves as having fewer physical problems
C. Experience depression
D. A and C

Answer: D. Where you sleep actually introduces a risk factor, according to a 2012 article published in Social Science & Medicine.

Get Good Sleep Tonight

Suggestions for getting a better and longer good night’s sleep:

• Try to keep the temperature moderate, the lights out and use a night light when you get up. Remember, our bodies are affected by light. Keep iit low so it lets you see, but doesn’t stir your biochemistry.
• Just before you go to bed, avoid caffeine, nicotine, chocolate, and over-the-counter medication that may contain stimulants. While alcohol initially may help you fall asleep, the process your body uses to remove it from your system changes your metabolism and can wake you.
• If you do exercise (which you should if you have medical clearance), don’t do it right before sleep. This often arouses people and can make it difficult to get to sleep.
• Keep the bed a special space for sleeping and lovemaking. The mind can associate the bed with almost everything else that can detract from falling and staying asleep. Eating, TV, and deep emotional discussions are frequent culprits.Pleasant dreams.

Want to learn more?

Check out this feature article from the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology’s January 2013 issue, Awakening to Sleep.

Yep. That’s me in my fabulous Nehru tux getting ready for my prom date. I was about as spiffy then as spiffy could be. The tux was rented, but I had my regular Nehrus in the closet. They were next to my bell-bottoms, tie-dyes and 8-tracks.

What happened?

The Nehru went out of style around 11:55 p.m. the night of the prom and I had to hang on to my bell-bottoms and tie-dyes for about 30 years for them to come back around into fashion. The 8-tracks? They gave way to those newfangled cassettes.

How could I have been so wrong about the future of Nehrus and 8-tracks? Actually, when I think about it, I was wrong about a lot of things: The Afro perm I thought would look spectacular on me forever, the Beatles never breaking up, my best friend Kevin and I being pals for life, the Osborn 55-pound “portable” computer, and the 8-track tape player (which cost me a week’s salary) I had installed in my car. Naturally I thought my prom date would never change.

But in spite of my convictions at the time I was about as wrong as wrong could be. The good news is I am not alone.

Research recently reported on in the New York Times about a study on self-perception published in Science shows that individuals at every age and demographic make this kind of error: They call it the End of History Illusion because at each age we tend to underestimate the changes we will go through in the coming decade — even when we can point to all the changes we’ve been through in the last 10 years.

We think — somehow — that we have arrived at a more evolved plateau of being. We tend to think we are in a good enough place, perhaps even somewhat satisfied, and that things are not going to change that much. This builds on research that shows we do better at remembering who we were than predicting how much we will change. That brings us to the bad news.

I am (we are) about to do it all over again. Right now the chances are we are thinking the same thing about our future — we believe we are going to live, love and long for where, who, and what we are thinking about right now. But the research says it just ain’t so. This too is a transient state.

Professor Daniel Gilbert and postdoctoral fellow Jordi Quoidbach of Harvard and Timothy D. Wilson of the University of Virginia studied over 19,000 participants ranging in age from 18 to 68 in an online questionnaire. Each phase of life group underestimates how much they are likely to change in the coming decade. In other words, the research demonstrated that at every age we describe more changes in the past 10 years than we would have predicted a decade ago.

According to Gilbert, “What these data suggest, and what scads of other data from our lab and others suggest, is that people really aren’t very good at knowing who they’re going to be and hence what they’re going to want a decade from now.”

How could this be? Mounting evidence indicates that we are influenced by what is happening to us now to the point that it creates a distortion of what we want and what will make us happy in the future. These findings were made popular by Daniel Gilbert’s bestselling book Stumbling on Happiness . He noted that there is a cognitive bias as to what makes us happy. This bias makes us predict very poorly what will make us happy in the future.

It is a hard pill to swallow. But the fact remains that we tend to make systematic mistakes about what is going to make us happy downstream. The advice? Don’t imagine your future. Use others’ experience to chart your course. We have lots of data about what people experience in different life stages. This is a more realistic guide to how you are going to feel once you have those experiences – not your own imagination of what it will be like. (In other words, hold off on that tattoo you were thinking of getting until you talk to someone who has had one for a while.)

Or you can simply remember the words of Yogi Berra: The future ain’t what it used to be.

Additional Reading

Quoidbach J., Gilbert, D.T., and Wilson, T.D. The End of History Illusion. Science 4 January 2013: 96-98. [DOI:10.1126/science.1229294]

Imagine that you are at a Wal-Mart around midnight. Dark parking lot. Little security and yet a number of random people wandering around. A man with a little boy thrown over his shoulder passes you. The little boy is screaming and kicking and crying and yelling for his mama.

The man slaps and spanks the boy and is telling him to shut up. He never uses the boy’s name. There is no woman near them and the man is moving faster. Also, imagine the boy is blond and the man has dark hair. Onlookers shake their heads but do nothing.

What would you do? Would you watch and not do anything? Or would you intervene? Social psychologists tell us there is a very good likelihood we will do nothing.

But this is the story of a woman, Pam, who did.

Pam asked the security to go check on the boy. The security man did, and then turned away. Pam asked the security guard what transpired. As she does the man screams at her: “The little shit is crying for his mother like a pansy-ass.”

“At that moment,” said Pam as she recalled her ordeal, “I forgot to be scared.”

The man shoved the boy into the back set of the car all the while cursing and screaming at him. He got in the car and backed up. Pam stood behind the car and blocked the man from going. She walked over to the driver, told him to roll down his window and then asked the boy if the man was his dad. The boy said nothing.

The man pushed Pam back from the window and threw open the door. He swore at her, stumbled and fell onto the car next to his. He was drunk. Very drunk. As this was happening Pam went over to the boy and asked again if the man was his dad. She tells him she knows he is very good at telling the truth, and that she is just there to see what is the matter for all those tears. The man is quiet and never moves but mutters something and then laughs.

Pam faces the man, apologizes for inconveniencing him and tells him she knows how unpredictable children who are tired can be. But given the circumstances she was pretty sure a good dad like him would want people to care that no child was being abducted in their presence. She said she hopes she is wrong in her suspicion.

Pam’s powerful display of courage, acting to help a victim while others are not responding is a correction for one of the most replicable effects in social psychology. The bystander effect, or Genovese syndrome, is the name given to the phenomenon where the presence of bystanders decreases the likelihood that someone will intervene. In fact, there is an inverse relationship between the number of witnesses and the likelihood someone will help: The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely someone is to respond.

Researchers John Darley and Bibb Latene were interested in the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York City where witnesses to the murder did not respond. While there is controversy about the reports on the number of witnesses and their reasons for not responding, the newspaper reports of the murder and apathy inspired the researchers to conduct experiments to demonstrate the effect.

But there is more to Pam’s story than just speaking up.

Pam introduces herself to the boy and asks him again if the man is his dad. He nods and is able to tell her his daddy’s name. She then asks the man to show her his driver’s license. By then the security guard has returned to check the license, which is expired. The security guard hands the license back to the man and walks away.

He walks away.

Pam says in a very loud voice that she will be happy to wait until the police arrive so this little boy doesn’t have to drive in a car with a drunk driver who has an expired license. She then dials 911, asks the security guard to stay with her and she talks to the boy. The father is furious. He curses and kicks a can at Pam. It hits her in the shoulder and Pam is unmoved as she continues to talk to the boy, asking him about his mama. He tells Pam about her, his sister, and his grandpa.

When the police arrived Pam gave a statement and they arrested the man for public intoxication. Pam waited with the little boy, another policeman, and the security guard until the boy’s grandpa came to get him.

Pam has done more than challenge the bystander effect. She is an everyday hero. Research on the Genovese syndrome has resulted in three processes that are important for people to respond to others in distress. The first is to actually notice the situation. When there are many other people around we may narrow our awareness – so the first thing Pam did was realize something was happening with the man and the boy. In other words, she paid attention to her surroundings.

Second, those who respond interpret the situation as an emergency. Pam did this the moment she saw the boy being hit. The best response I have ever heard for an intervention came from a woman who witnessed another woman hit her child several times at a park. The witness told her to stop and the abusive parent said, “It is none of your business.” The woman who intervened said: “If you do this in public it makes it my business.”

Pam made it her business, which is the final point the researchers formulated. Once you notice, and interpret the situation as an emergency, then you finally take responsibility for helping.

This is an area Phil Zimbardo, another leading social psychologist, is studying: What it takes to be a hero. His latest endeavor involves fostering heroic imagination. He has noted that heroes are never going to conform to group norms and highlights the two core principles of heroism:

1. Heroes act when others are passive.
2. Heroes act sociocentrically, not egocentrically.

They act alone, and for the good of others. It also seems they don’t like to boast about their deeds. That is why we need to honor their stories and retell them when we hear about them. That is why Pam’s story appears here.

Dr. Zimbardo calls it Heroes in Waiting, and we need to be prepared. In his own words, we need to be “waiting for the right situation to come along, to put heroic imagination into action. Because it may only happen once in your life, and when you pass it by you’ll always know, I could have been a hero and I let it pass me by. So the point is thinking it and then doing it.”

Pam is an inspiration because she didn’t let her opportunity pass her by. I hope we can all do the same when it is our turn.

I live on the water at the Jersey shore and the reports about Hurricane Sandy were not to be taken lightly. I caught the last train out of Washington D.C. and headed back to the home. Everything on the dock had to be secured or removed and it was already raining.  From the Amtrak station I raced down the Garden State Parkway. 

The rain was relentless.

I went straight through the house to the back prepared to work in the rain to save my stuff.  I had only moved into my house months earlier, and since I travel a lot barely knew the neighbors.  The water was rapidly rising. Trees were already down and everyone had already been evacuated. The town was broadcasting a red alert. I had to get in and get out — fast.

I came in the front door and ran to the back to get out to the dock. But what I saw stopped me in my tracks. 

My neighbors, Tom and Eileen, had done an act of kindness above and beyond anything I might have expected. They had removed ALL of the furniture including tables, chairs, footstools, cushions and whatever else was lying around and brought them up to the house under the protective cover of the porch. Then they secured everything that needed to be tied down. 

This wasn’t a ten-minute job. If I had to have done it myself it would have taken nearly an hour to move and secure each piece.

I knew a flood of near-Biblical proportions was coming, but what I didn’t know was that the greater surge would be in the pervasive kindness, altruism and gratitude among people. Caring moves us to act.

Edward O. Wilson, sociobiologist and professor emeritus, Harvard University believes that our drive to survive favors altruism when our group, our community is involved.  In other words, we move from competing against others in our group (selfishness) toward helping them when it serves evolution.  We stop competing and begin helping when the chips are down. Or, in his words “individual selection promoted sin, while group selection promoted virtue.”

As a psychologist living in Monmouth County I was immediately immersed in trauma work.  The therapeutic community could not help but be inundated. Nothing, not even 9/11 matched the intense and prolonged pain people shared.  Monmouth had the greatest loss of people in the terrorist attack and many were directly affected.  But with the hurricane everyone you spoke to was distressed.

One of the people I spoke with was a first responder.  When the seawall broke in Sea Bright he left his home in Union Beach, the next town over, to respond.  During the surge he became part of a rescue team that saved four people trapped in their home. Nineteen hours later an Army vehicle was driving him back home — but they couldn’t find it. It was gone. Not just damaged.  Gone. So was his car.  Everything.  Gone. They could not even find the cement slab his home had been built on because it was buried under mounds of shifted sand.  Everything he owned was in the house.  Nothing survived.

How did he cope?  He said he was lucky he wasn’t in the house and asked them to turn around and let him go back and do what he could to help the people in Sea Bright.

Over the next several weeks I worked with about 50 people who were deeply affected by the storm.  No matter their story a collective chant arose:  “We were lucky,” they each said.  On occasion someone offered a variant:  “We were very lucky.” But the feeling of being lucky motivated each person to help others. Empathy drives altruism.

Jeremy Rifkin has written in Empathic Civilization that to empathize is to civilize, and to civilize is to empathize. He argues that there is no empathy in heaven or utopia because empathy is based on the commonness of human struggle and our shared fragility of life. Without the essential common bond of mortality and struggle there is no empathic awareness. Rather than narcissism, materialism and aggression he views empathy, compassion, and humanitarianism as the primary drives.

In the wake of the storm are endless stories of gratitude and thanks followed by stories of those feeling gratitude helping others. Those who had a little damage were thankful they didn’t have more and were willing to share their good fortune by donating their time or their money or their clothes for others. Those who lost their home and their business were thankful for their lives, and then donated their time to help the utility workers get fed, or the Army or National Guard get messages home. Gratitude in almost every instance gave way to altruism, which in turn inspired others.

As the power outage continued and the gasoline became scarce there was a shift toward greater sharing and unselfishness.  One man had a large freezer full of salmon burgers that were quickly thawing.  He texted the neighborhood and told everyone to bring some bread and their friends. He fired up his gas grill and spent the afternoon cooking for 30 people.

Some of the restaurants in the area pooled together their collective resources and started cooking for the people from the armed forces, the National Guard, and the utility workers. They could have easily banded together simply to preserve the food they had, but instead made a direct effort to cook and prepare it for others. Three meals a day were provided in many areas by a team of restaurateurs that made it all happen. Those with generators let their friends and neighbors move in.  Those with cash gave money to those who couldn’t use the ATM machines. Many hotels dropped their rates to let people stay longer. Verizon didn’t charge for domestic calls or texts during the storm or recovery period.   My local laundromat and dry cleaner hired extra people and stayed open late to make sure folks got clean clothes.

I’ve seen devastation on the news in other parts of the country from tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and the like. While I had sympathy, I never had true empathy. 

Now I will never see images of a natural disaster and not be moved. The most poignant moment for me was walking by a well-known hotel in the shore area that had hundreds of out-of-town utility workers staying in it. Plates from Ohio, Mississippi, Washington, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Kentucky littered the parking lot.  On the night I walked by there were more out-of-town plates than those from New Jersey:  People coming to help us. That was unique. We were always the ones going to help others. Now they were able to return the favor.

The first responder mentioned above stayed in shelters until some of his friends put him up. He was staying with them when I spoke to him about his ordeal. After helping him begin the grief work to manage when a disaster pushes the reset button on your life –he offered me an expression I’ve heard many times in the last several weeks.

“I was lucky,” he said.  “I had a chance to help save someone’s life. Some of my coworkers were out of town when the storm hit and they didn’t get that chance. I was very lucky.”

Part One chronicles Butler’s ongoing effort to demonstrate gratitude to all those who helped during her treatment.  These are simple acts of gratitude such as writing notes, bringing a tray of goodies into the treatment center, and even lollipops to the parking attendants.

Although these offerings of gratitude are modest, these actions undid the anxiety of recalling the day, while activating a positive sense of self and affecting others.  Instead of anxiety and depression, she was able to instill joy, feelings of well-being, and hope — because some of the goodies were delivered personally to women currently undergoing radiation.

We could leave this as a beautiful example of a human interest story, knowing that the tale alone will inspire others to approach their diagnosis day, divorce day, or whatever their “D” Day is in a different manner.  But there is something more to this story that intrigued me.

What Jen had done intuitively was to follow some foundational research in gratitude.  In fact, the cornerstone of what she did is an exact representation of one of the original positive interventions offered by Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association and the man introduced at conferences now as the “Father of Positive Psychology.”

In a seminal 2005 article, Seligman and his colleagues (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005) reported on studies with five positive interventions.  One of these they simply called the gratitude visit.  The Internet-based study engaged participants to write a letter of gratitude to someone who had been particularly kind to them in the past, but who had never been properly thanked.  Then the participants had to deliver the letter personally.

Sound familiar?

What made this study so unique in the field of positive psychology was that it was a randomized control study. The gold standard of research designs, it randomly assigns participants to the condition(s) being studied, one of which is a placebo.  The placebo condition for this experiment was to ask participants to write about their early memories every night for a week. These folks were then compared to people delivering the gratitude visit.  Those participants were given a week to write and deliver a letter of gratitude as described above.

The researchers used results from 411 participants and measured them on two scales, the Center for Epidemiological Studies–Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Steen Happiness Index (SHI).

The results?  One week after the study, people taking part in the gratitude visit were happier and less depressed, and this lasted for one month after they had completed the visit.  Of the five interventions studied, those taking part in the gratitude visit demonstrated the greatest positive change.

There are two interesting features of this study.  First, it demonstrates that a gratitude visit isn’t merely an act of kindness, it is a proven method of improving well-being by increasing happiness and reducing symptoms of depression.  Second, a six-month followup of all participants found that those who continued their particular exercise on their own continued to experience long-term benefits.

Jen thinks about her gratitude visits all year long.  Her benefits are ongoing.

Thank you, Jen, for giving us inspiration and encouragement with your ongoing examples of turning lemons into lemon trees.  For the rest of us there is only one question left: Who are we going to write our gratitude letter to?

For more information and another gratitude intervention check here.

References

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410.

Tomasulo, D. (2012). The Year in Gratitude: Introducing the Virtual Gratitude Visit. Psych Central. Retrieved on October 28, 2012, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/01/03/the-year-in-gratitude-introducing-the-virtual-gratitude-visit/

While survival rates for many cancers have improved, there are quality of life issues following the diagnosis, including the emotional difficulty of coping with the anniversary date.  Survival rates are measured in 1-, 5- and 10-year markers.  This often creates an emotional conflict as the diagnosis date approaches.  Each year provides a measure both of success and trepidation.  Diagnosis day is when the war on cancer begins in your body.  It is sometimes shortened to military lingo for the day an attack or operation is launched: D-Day.

As with most traumas, people can tell you the vivid details of their diagnosis. They remember the time, what was said, what they did, and what they felt.  D-day is etched in their psyche, and as the anniversary date approaches, so does the anxiety.

But one woman, Jen Cunningham Butler, has done something different. In honor of breast cancer awareness month I wanted to tell you her story.

“I called home to see if the biopsy results are in,” she says. “The doctor tells me to page him.  I do.  He tells me: You have breast cancer.”

“I was in my office about to walk out into the adolescent hum of opening night of the eighth-grade play,” she continues. “The seventh-grade ushers were waiting for me and their final instructions before parents and friends arrived. They needed me to help them, and I needed to drive home and tell my husband I had cancer. Dr Meyer had given me the number for Larry Shulman, head of breast oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “In the event of an emergency please page me at…”

I hung up. Was this an emergency?

When I reached Larry he pulled up the pathology on his computer: “It’s invasive,” he told me. We agreed to speak the next morning to form a plan. I got ready to go out into the hall, trying to figure out what to do next.

It was Tuesday, March 8, 2005. 5:30 pm.

Over the next several days, weeks and months Jen lived in two different worlds of coping with work and home and the agony of additional biopsies, MRIs, CT scans then the surgery, the radiation, and the recovery.

“I could tell you of moments of jagged fear, the comfort of “to do” lists, the beauty of the people who steadied me,” she told me. “I could tell you how simply breathing became a gift of release and how the things I could do physically, like riding my bike (even though I was slow) with my cycling friends, calmed and settled me.”

But as D-day approached, Jen knew there was a predictability of anxiety based on what others had told her. But she was determined: “I needed to find a way to turn the day around.”

She did just that.

“Coming into that first-year anniversary, I thought about how much being strong, healthy and well meant to me. I thought about the doctors, nurses, radiation therapists and others who took part in my treatment. I thought about Ellen Moore, who listened to a healthy-looking young woman’s assertion that a very small lump was of concern and took it seriously. I thought about Dr. Meyer (if someone has to tell you that you have cancer, it should be him – professional, knowledgeable, kind, gentle, matter-of-fact).

“Ultimately, I decided that Diagnosis Day was a day to give back to the people who helped me through that time. They gave me my life, and I was grateful,” she said.  “As a teacher, every once in a while you get a letter or email saying, “You made a difference in my life.” The idea for Diagnosis Day undoubtedly came from that – from how we feel when a former student lets us know that the work we do is worthwhile. I knew I didn’t choose cancer, but I knew I could choose some parts of the journey.”

But Jen did much more than this.  She acted on her thoughts of gratitude for the team that worked with her, and became an ambassador of hope.  On March 8, 2006 she baked heart-shaped, individual chocolate cakes for the women in the radiation waiting room and wrote a note saying she was healthy and well a year out and hoped the same for them.

“I also bought presents for Dr. Meyer, Ellen Moore, Dr. Shulman, nurse Anne Kelly, and my wonderful surgeon, Dr. Beth-Ann Lesnikoski (with whom discussing options like “lumpectomy or mastectomy?” could feel like a conversation over coffee with an old friend). With the presents went notes that thanked each for their contributions to my care.”

Each year since 2005, March 8 has been a day of gratitude and service. She says there is still an undertone of shakiness as the day approaches, but the day itself has transformed.

“I go to Dana-Farber with presents for my doctors, radiation therapists and nurses and bring a tray of goodies and a note to the women currently in radiation. On year five, I wrote notes to the people who helped me in myriad ways, for the colleague who saw me emerge from my office that night in 2005 and took over the play ushers for me, to the school nurse who kept my confidences and helped me manage day-to-day life at work, to the friends who rode with me even though my pace didn’t match their training plans, to my husband who stayed true and kind and loving throughout. Each year is a little different. Each year I think of who or what continues to resonate. One year it was the Dana-Farber parking attendants who got a big bag of organic lollipops; their smiles and help during treatment meant more than they’ll ever know.”

But what struck me about Jen’s inspirational story was the fact that much of the good feeling she generated in herself and others was actually part of well-documented research on gratitude.  Jen had attended one of my Power of Positive Being workshops where I discussed the research on the gratitude visit.  Jen’s intuition about how to turn D-day around mirrored what we know about outcome studies in gratitude.  She came up to me after the workshop at Kripalu, a spiritual retreat in Western Massachusetts and the largest residential facility for holistic education and well-being in North America, and related her story.

In part two, I’ll discuss the research on gratitude and how Jen intuitively followed all of the principles scientists have determined help improve our well-being.  But for now I just want to celebrate a woman with courage: The courage to heal, the courage to change, and the courage to be grateful.

Frank Bruni was a fat kid.  He was also the New York Times food critic from 2004-2009 and the best-selling author of Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater.  In his deeply moving memoir, he explains the problems and perils of being fat and the emotional struggle food caused him as a child and an adult.  He said he wanted to write his memoir to show  “what food could do to trip people up.”

Apparently food can do a lot to trip you up.  Being obese can have a devastating impact on life. A child born in this century has a one in three chance of developing diabetes and an alarmingly high percentage will suffer obesity-related conditions such as cancer, asthma, high blood pressure and heart disease.  Those numbers go up dramatically in the Hispanic and African-American communities:  Right now 40 percent of these children are overweight or obese.

With these statistics, is it any wonder that Michelle Obama would introduce Let’s Move to combat childhood obesity?

I was a fat kid too. Nutrition and exercise have always been passions of mine as an adult, and I take an interest in movements and programs that help children and families learn to live healthier lives.

The solution to childhood obesity seems clear: It lies in early correction and prevention through diet and exercise.  This will help curtail lifelong health problems, financial burdens and issues associated with social bias. Movement, along with diet, is a key ingredient in the formula for change. We need to make time for it and use that time well. While a walk around the block will help, there are some powerful, inspiring programs that are leading the way to something a bit more engaging and dynamic. 

One organization, the Jump for Joy Foundation, is making a real difference.  J4JF is one of the most proactive fitness nonprofits nationwide, especially when it comes to childhood obesity prevention.  It works through the power of inspiration and knowledge. J4JF is the brainchild of former UNLV students and camp co-founders Anthony Alegrete and Branden Collinsworth. “We want to make it cool for kids to be fit,” Collinsworth says. “Because we’re competing with Facebook and video games, we want to make it one of the coolest experiences that they’ve ever had and something they can take with them the rest of their lives,” adds Alegrete.

As the research shows, Alegrete and Collinsworth know what they are up against.   The duo formed a partnership after Alegrete began employing Collinsworth as a personal trainer. The results were remarkable enough that Alegrete told Collinsworth they had to do the same for kids.

The fitness expert and the businessman joining forces made a win-win situation.  But there is a twist to the story.  Ironically, Alegrete struggled with being underweight.  Over time, he gained 20 pounds of muscle and got into the best shape of his life. “Without Branden,” says Alegrete,  “I never would have found this direction.”

I met Branden in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is learning to bring the science of positive psychology to children to help create a positive social identity.  Naturally, I wanted to learn more.

The first J4JF camp in 2010 drew three kids, but since then — through social media, the press, and word of mouth — they have became the “cool” guys of fitness and nutrition.  They have now had over 100 events and camps and have helped over 3,000 kids.  Although J4JF is housed at the Pearson Community Center in North Las Vegas, they also take their program on the road when necessary. They expose children to healthy social identities by offering such fun, friendly and diverse activities as basketball; dance; mixed martial arts; football; jump rope and hiphop.

The men make exercise fun and hip by bringing in celebrity athletes and entertainers and giving parents tools and education. Past celebrities have included professional boxer Lightning Lonnie Smith; KB of the Jabawockies High Profile and Prodigy dance crews; Hey Reb, the UNLV mascot,  professional breakdancers; UFC fighters Gilbert “the Hurricane” Yvel, Kevin Randleman, Stephan Bonner, and Larry Mir; UNLV football stars; and even James Brewster Thompson, the world record holder in rope jumping.  He wowed the camp-goers by jumping with a 6-pound metal chain for his “rope” and three people on his back.

The stun of learning that Lance Armstrong will be stripped of his seven titles for doping by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was the first time in more than a decade I can remember crying after hearing a news broadcast.  The last time was on the morning of 9/11.

Without a doubt Lance Armstrong was my hero.  A genuine, certified hero. 

No one in the history of the sport of cycling has won seven titles at the Tour de France, beat cancer, and became a beacon of hope for patients.  His legacy was a source of inspiration for millions. 

But in spite of his fundraising and being a cancer survivor-turned-spokesperson, he is no longer my hero. 

I am grateful for what he has done in raising cancer awareness and funds for cancer research, but now I must readjust my thinking about how he has represented himself.  I will need to accept the fact that Lance Armstrong has done a tremendous amount of good in the world and he is a fraud.  Because both things now appear to be true.

With his unimaginatively weak statement, the man who almost single-handedly galvanized attention, interest, and fascination in the Tour de France and in raising consciousness (and money) for cancer research and treatment has seemingly admitted to being nothing more than another sports hero impostor. 

The man who became famous for never giving up is giving up. If there was any truth behind his innocence, I believe that Lance Armstrong would have fought this — as he did his own cancer — until he was victorious.  But his giving up is, in my opinion, as clear an admission of wrongdoing as can be. It also stops the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from pursuing further investigations — including apparently 10 former teammates waiting in the wings ready to testify against him. 

In my opinion, Lance Armstrong is a survivor and a liar. He is an incredibly strong man, and an incredibly weak man. Armstrong is a source of inspiration, and a source of disgrace and embarrassment. He is both a hero and a villain. In short, he has become the modern-day example of cognitive dissonance.

In 1957 Leon Festinger published a theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory has now been a central focus of research in social psychology for over half a century.  The theory points out that our cognitive process — how we think — can have a bias, what Festinger called “dissonance reduction.” 

In other words, whenever there is conflicting information, we try to find consonance — or balance — in one of three ways: we make one of the factors less important, we add components to our thinking to make greater harmony with our thoughts, or we simply change one of the dissonant aspects. 

If you ever had that little talk with yourself about ordering dessert, then you know about dissonance reduction.  The conflicting information is that the double fudge chocolate dipped brownie is famously delicious and you are five pounds overweight.  The dissonance reduction strategies you might use are:  The size of the dessert isn’t large and I don’t have to eat it all; I will work out a little longer tomorrow morning; and my personal favorite; I shouldn’t worry about one little dessert.

Lance Armstrong generates dissonance. He is both a winner and a loser.  When Muhammad Ali, three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, became a conscientious objector and refused to go to war, the comedian George Carlin offered the perfect way to cope with such dissonance, saying, “Ali figured it was all right to beat people up, but not to kill them.” 

But Armstrong’s clay-feet hero status is more difficult to navigate. The theory of cognitive dissonance would predict that people would strive for dissonance reduction by using these three strategies.  They might sound something like this:

“He shouldn’t have to keep defending himself against these charges.  He was right to give up;” “It doesn’t matter that they stripped him of his titles because he has already done so much good in the world;” “We don’t need false heroes to raise money for cancer treatment, there are plenty of other good people to do that.”

But the bias in doing so nudges us away from reality.  The truth now appears to be that Lance Armstrong is both good and bad; inspiring and despicable; a legend and a fake.

The struggle is in trying not to make this dissonance even out, take it away, or stop it.  Instead the work is to try to leave the truth as it is: Lance Armstrong is profoundly, unmistakably human.

Is there any good news in this?  Is there any possibility of joy or celebration available here? 

If Armstrong is stripped of his titles, they would normally be passed on to the second-place finishers.  Customarily I would throw my positive feelings toward them and celebrate their victory.  But there is another problem.  All of the second and third place finishers in every one of Armstrong’s victories have been identified in doping either through admission or investigation.

But even in this professional cycling mess, I am certain there are fourth- or fifth- or sixth-place winners who are true champions whom we can celebrate. 

We need to applaud these genuine heroes when we find them for two reasons.  First and foremost because they deserve it; and second, because it will help us cope.

The research is pouring in from all over the globe indicating that sustainable ways to shift our thinking and perception toward a more optimistic perspective of life has amazing health and well-being benefits — not the least of which include a longer, healthier, and more productive life.

Here are six questions about some of the findings that may intrigue you and test your knowledge. The good news?  You can’t fail a positive psychology quiz!  Use this as a guide to learn more about the developing field. Or, if you got them all right, you know how good it is to be kind — so get out there and help someone!

1.  True or false?  Negative thoughts are more powerful than positive thoughts.

A: True

Barbara Fredrickson’s (2009) work on positivity created a way of measuring internal dynamics by using a Losada ratio, a measure of positive to negative thoughts. She found a ratio of 3 to 1 seems to be a tipping point of sorts for positivity.   In other words, we need three positive thoughts to counteract the effect of one negative thought.

This is the equivalent of the discovery that we have good and bad cholesterol, HDL and LDL, and that the ratio between the two determines cardiovascular health.  We need more positive than negative thoughts in the same way we need more HDL, the good cholesterol, than LDL.  You can assess your current ratio at her website.

 “You have to make the mind run the body.”
~General George S. Patton Jr.

A recently published article in the Journal of Clinical Psychology by Kearney, McDermott, Malte, Martinez, and Simpson (2012) may have broad implications for veterans suffering with symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 

These researchers demonstrated that engagement in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) showed significant improvements after six months in reducing soldiers’ symptoms of PTSD, depression, behavioral activation (the ability to engage in activities to achieve a goal in spite of aversive symptoms), and self-acceptance. 

Forty-seven percent of the veterans in the study showed clinically significant improvements in their PTSD symptoms. This highlights the fact that sustainable symptom reduction may be possible by employing a mindfulness technique. MBSR and other mindfulness-based meditation practices may provide broad-based ancillary interventions in the treatment of PTSD that can complement the current psychotherapeutic and pharmacological practices.

PTSD is a particularly nasty collection of symptoms.  Some of the more difficult indications include hyperarousal, rumination about the event, depression and anxiety. In addition to the study noted above, other researchers (Vujanovic, Niles, Pietrefesa, Schmertz, & Potter, 2011) have also found a link between mindfulness meditation and reduced PTSD symptoms in veterans.  In both studies it appears that accepting one’s emotional pain appears to actually help alleviate that pain.

This is good news for the toolbox needed to treat PTSD — because there is also evidence that being unable to accept and adequately regulate trauma-activated emotional responses may cause poor interpersonal relationships (Roth, Newman, Pelcovitz, ver der Kolk, & Mandel, 1997). In turn, poor relationships may make using the more traditional exposure-based treatments (such as desensitization) a risk for exacerbating symptoms (Cloitre, Koenen, Cohen, & Han, 2002).  What is valuable about mindfulness techniques is that they can be practiced independently after training.

Mindfulness meditation has largely been derived from Buddhist practices known as the eight-fold path.  Of the eight, mindfulness is specifically devoted to enhancing the ability to focus our attention. Developed to cope with human suffering, it involves a cultivation of private experiences with the aim of nurturing calmness.  The primary goal is to help achieve self-acceptance.  According to Pema Chodron (2001), an American Tibetan Buddhist nun (or Ani), there are four components of this self-acceptance: commitment; awareness; willingness to experience emotional distress; and attention to the present moment.

Over the years, a number of researchers have shown that meditation practices — including cultivating self–acceptance and the tolerance for emotionally distressing experiences — both reduce stress and increase well-being (Kabat-Zinn, 1990, 1994; Simpson, et al., 2007; Thompson, & Waltz, 2008; Smith, et al., 2011).  But the question has always been if these changes are sustainable.  At least one study has indicated that they are.

Researchers Michael A. Cohna and Barbara L. Fredrickson (2010) demonstrated that, after an initial meditation practice was introduced, subjects sustained positive experiences for fifteen months. Although veterans were not part of the investigation, this was one of the first studies to show a link between meditation and sustainable positive experiences.

Acceptance-based therapies such as mindfulness provide an alternative to traditional Western approaches for dealing with pain (Folette, Palm and Pearson, 2006).  As Ekman, Davidson, Ricard and Wallace (2005) have pointed out, mindfulness is used to tolerate emotional distress rather than to try to control or overcome negative feelings. In other words, trying to control or avoid negative emotions may not be the most effective way to manage them.

It also appears that mindfulness may facilitate resilience.  In another study, Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong and Gelfand (2010) found that providing military personnel mindfulness training (MT) might help to guard against functional impairments in stressful contexts.

The more mindfulness meditation is researched, the more it appears to be able both to prevent and correct trauma, particularly for military veterans.

In the past few years the Army has invested in training soldiers to be psychologically as well as physically fit. The Master Resilience Training (MAT) program (Reivich, Seligman, & McBride, 2011) has a series of modules designed to help soldiers maximize their potential and cope with combat stressors.  Meditation is specifically identified as a technique to be taught as part of the larger resilience effort and part of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program.

Self-acceptance through mindfulness meditation is an ancient tool that is needed now more than ever, but it is no easy task. In the words of Pema Chodron: “The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”

References
Chodron, P. (2001). The places that scare you: A guide to fearlessness in difficult times. Boston: Shambhala.

Ekman, P, Davidson, R. J., Ricard, M., & Wallace, B. A. (2005). Buddhist and psychological perspectives on emotional well-being. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(2), 59–63.

Follette, V., Palm, K. M., & Pearson, A. N. (2006). Mindfulness and trauma: Implications for treatment. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 24(1), 45-61.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life (1st ed.). New York: Hyperion.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York: Dell Publishing.

Kearney, D. J., McDermott, K., Malte, C., Martinez, M., & Simpson, T. L. (2012). Association of participation in a mindfulness program with measures of PTSD, depression and quality of life in a veteran sample.Journal of Clinical Psychology,

Roth, S., Newman, E., Pelcovitz, D., van der Kolk, B., & Mandel, D. (1997). Complex PTSD in victims exposed to physical and sexual abuse: Results from the DSM-IV field trial for posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10(4), 539–555.

Simpson, T., Kaysen, D., Bowen, S., MacPherson, L., Chawla, N., Blume, A., . . . Larimer, M. (2007). PTSD symptoms, substance use, and vipassana meditation among incarcerated individuals. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 20(3), 239-249.

Smith, B. W., Ortiz, J. A., Steffen, L. E., Tooley, E. M., Wiggins, K. T., Yeater, E. A., . . . Bernard, M. L. (2011). Mindfulness is associated with fewer PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and alcohol problems in urban firefighters.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 79(5), 613.

Thompson, B. L., & Waltz, J. (2008). Self‐compassion and PTSD symptom severity.Journal of Traumatic Stress, 21(6), 556-558.

Vujanovic, A. A., Niles, B., Pietrefesa, A., Schmertz, S. K., & Potter, C. M. (2011). Mindfulness in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder among military veterans. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 42(1), 24.

And it is free.

Like anything worthwhile, there is a learning curve that needs to be dealt with, but it is worth the time and trouble to learn it.  Since December, every presentation I have done has been Prezi-based, and literally every person I have shared it with was eager to learn how to do his or her own.

It was developed by Adam Somlai-Fischer, a Hungarian architect, as a tool to help with visualization.  But instead he has developed one of the more interesting storytelling devices yet created.  It follows the speaker with a visual narrative of the material.  True to the developer’s mission to “make sharing ideas more interesting,” this presentation tool does just that.  What it does is give the user complete freedom to exploit the visual experience by using a zoom feature. The techies among you will recognize this as a Zooming User Interface, cloud-based SaaS, (Software as a Service) presentation delivery model.

With Prezi you don’t have to think outside the box — because there is no box.  Imagine a huge screen — no, bigger — the size of a movie screen in a theater.  Then imagine you could design any kind of saying, photo, image, anything you’d like.  You could start anywhere on the screen and put photos, videos, words in colors and different sizes — anything you want to show in any angle or size.  Then imagine there is a flying camera that will zoom in on your images and scoot across the screen making each image right-side up for the audience.  If you can imagine that you have a taste of what it is like to watch a Prezi.

One of the more fun features I’ve found is to write something very, very tiny on a photo I am showing — then ZOOM into it.  The words, the statistics, the data comes alive because the material is visually interesting.  Even with a lengthy presentation the surprise factor is there to engage the learner. I am certain someone will be doing studies showing the retention with Prezi-style presentations is higher:  The level of engagement and attention certainly warrant it.

You can upgrade your PowerPoint or Keynotes by putting them into Prezi and making your changes there.  Again, be prepared for a bit of a learning curve, but the online tutorials are excellent, and more and more users are finding their way to Prezi.  Take a peek at some of the samples linked at the end of the article, and look at the companies who are using it.  It is the next generation of presentation.

The other interesting feature is the use of frames to group material so you can alternate between a structured presentation with a linear format and one that accesses frames of images collected around a central topic.  This means that you can use a “path” to move in a linear fashion from one topic to the next, like the way a PowerPoint is organized, but you can also select out the material and group it within a frame so when the question and answer time comes your material is all instantly visually available to you.  You can then fly — well, actually, zoom — to the cluster of images you want to refer to.  There is also the capability to leave all of your images on this huge screen freeform and not linked by a path.  This gives you the freedom to move from topic to topic as needed.

The free version allows you to create and download your Prezis on your computer or iPad.  There is a size limit, but it is very generous.  There are two other levels, an EDU and a PRO, for which there are modest annual fees.   But if you have an .edu email account as either a student or teacher the Edu / Enjoy level is available to you with no charge. This level gives you more storage capability. The Pro level lets you develop a Prezi without being online. There is also a Prezi meeting feature, which allows people to create a Prezi from different locations all at one time.

But the main attraction here isn’t even the glitz or technology or the entrepreneurship.  It is the statement of values upon which the company is built.  A while back I wrote an article about generosity as a business model. This was before I knew about Prezi.  They have a page devoted to their values.  It clearly provides their moral rudder as well as explaining the ethical and constructivist nature of their endeavor.  It is worth reading if for no other reason than to learn a bit about the company’s character.

I chose to write about Prezi because it had four elements that were very positive.  First, it was fun to learn, use and get others excited about.  Second, it had a strong positive value and mission statement, something I think businesses are moving toward.  Then it directly linked the visual arts with science, education and business — not-too-shabby enterprise — and finally, it directly invites creativity into presentations. That’s something that anyone who has been tortured by a dull PowerPoint can appreciate.

So what are you waiting for?  Zoom over and see their examples!

Shawn Achor spent over a decade living, researching, and lecturing at Harvard University, and has been involved in one of the largest studies of happiness and potential at Harvard and others at companies like UBS and KPMG.  He brings a truly unique perspective of applying positive psychology to the business world.

In 1998 Martin Seligman, then president of the American Psychological Association, set a new direction for the discipline:  Positive psychology. What has followed is an unprecedented publication of robust research and applied interventions.  In 2000, Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow:  The Psychology of Optimal Experience, published an article in the American Psychologist that anchored positive psychology as an evidence–based practice.

Since then the positive psychology movement has boomed.  Founded with the intention of building thriving individuals, families, and communities, proponents of the discipline can be found in popular and academic publications, working with an array of corporate entities, and teaching on college campuses throughout the world. There are even graduate degrees in positive psychology.

In 2005, under Seligman’s guidance, the University of Pennsylvania offered the first applied positive psychology master’s program. It continues to thrive today. Undergraduate courses are showing up in the curriculum of colleges around the world. Dozens of universities now offer masters degrees in positive psychology.  Csikszentmihalyi has even created a Ph.D program at his Claremont, Calif. campus.

Shawn Achor is rapidly becoming a leader in each of these areas.  In 2006, he was Head Teaching Fellow for Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s “Positive Psychology,” the most popular course at Harvard University at the time.

The following year, Achor founded Good Think Inc. to share his research with a wider population.  He has since gone on to speak in over 45 countries, and found tremendous success with his book The Happiness Advantage.

Achor offers a dynamic, research-based shift for businesses wishing to apply positive psychology.  He has taken time out of his busy schedule to do an enlightening interview for Psych Central about the background and direction of his work.

PC: In “The Happiness Advantage” you seem to employ a careful balance of science and storytelling.  How did this develop?

SA: I was a debater in high school, which means two things: I didn’t date much, and I write like I’m making a case.  But watching my academic heroes, I realized that they were terrible communicators.  Fantastic ideas presented in a non-engaging way means that the passion for the subject and its import are not translated to the listener.

Even more importantly, stories help you remember and implement the information. My favorite professor at Harvard, Brian Little (who wasn’t even tenured), used to fill his lectures with engaging stories. I actually thought it was a waste because I’d have to listen to like 3 to 5 minutes of a story before finding a single nugget to write down in my notes to prepare for the exam. But I not only remember almost all those stories, I remember all the nuggets, whereas intro psych courses are often a waste because they are an information dump, which leads to your brain quickly dumping that information from working memory.

So after crafting the scientific case for why happiness fuels performance and not the other way around, I then went back through and actually highlighted in blue jokes, interesting facts, or stories in my manuscript. If I had a block of black on a page with no blue, I went back in and added more blue-worthy sections.

PC: What are the main effects of the happiness advantage?

SA: The biggest effect is the belief that your behavior matters.  If you start a positive habit and see that it has a positive effect upon your business or health outcomes, your brain is more willing to utilize resources to continue that behavior and scan for new ones.  The resulting effect is a cascade of success as greater meaning and well-being fuel more successes than garnered by defensive pessimism or cynicism.

In HBR Magazine this January, I talk about an assessment I’m working on testing not whether you receive social support, but if you give it.  Individuals in the top quartile on this assessment were 40 percent more likely to have received a promotion in the past year and were 10 times more engaged at work than those in the lowest quartile. Companies who are interested in engagement, which was the flavor of the year for 2011, should start understanding more about what causes engagement than merely evaluating it.  Yet many companies think, “we can talk about happiness once the economy recovers,” but if positive mindset leads to greater success rates as Lyubomirsky’s meta-analysis suggests, then it’s too late.