Everyone says it is Denmark. Well by everyone, we specifcally mean the World Happiness Report. Then again, Gallup does not share such enthusiasm placing the land of Lego much lower down–they land 36 places behind The Philipinnes. Jetpac concurs. They exminaed smailes on instagram and concluded the happiest country to be Brazil. Denmark ranked 87th. Phillipines came in 8th. The Happy Planet Index has NONE of the above even in their top 10 with Costa Rica placing first. Like College rankings, it all comes back to to what you count.
ALl good, but it missing a key aspect, so I got thinking but the core of happiness: Authenticity, Accepting and Appreciating
Authenticity
Living true to yourself is the heart of being yourself. Many people love ee cummings take on self: “
“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
But they miss where the whole passage comes from: He was responding to you young person asking for advice on becoming a poet:
A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel—but that’s thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling—not just knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but it’s very difficult to learn to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody – but – yourself.
To be nobody – but -yourself– in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for communicating nobody-but-yourself to others, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t real can possibly imagine. Why?
Because nothing is quite as easy as just being just like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time–and whenever we do it, we are not real.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve loved just once with a nobody-but-yourself heart, you”ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become real is: do something easy, like dreaming of freedom–unless you’re ready to commit yourself to feel and work and fight till you die.
But where to begin? Who is this you? Start with your strengths. There are mutiple of instruments to help you idnetify them. Two are free right now:
The Buddhist have a very strong notion of accepting things as they are. Tara Brach explains this in some detail in her talk:
Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder, if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn’t acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn’t it make us passive when what is needed is action? This talk explores some of the misunderstandings about acceptance and offers teachings on the nature of genuine and liberating acceptance.
Actor Thandie Newton covers one aspect of acceptance by telling the story of finding her “otherness” — first, as a child growing up in two distinct cultures, and then as an actor playing with many different selves.
Vunerability Researcher Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on.
Writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents — asking them: What’s the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?
Appreciating
There has been a growing body of work focusing on mindfulness and gratitude. Like the great philospher sang: Slow down, you move too fast.
Get involved: Let it Ripple Productions invite syou to join 750 like minded groups in premiering their 8 minute science of character. In addition to free customized versions of the film, Let it Ripple and partners like Common Sense Media will offer a list of films,games, and apps to strength particular character strengths, a free curriculum, a character strengths survey, and resource guide.
This film was inspired by the work of: Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, David Levin, Paul Tough, Dominic Randolph, Neal Mayerson, Adele Diamond, Clifford Nass, The Bezos Family Foundation, The Character Lab, The VIA Institute on Character, and many more. – See more at: http://letitripple.org/character/#sthash.k4saP05c.dpuf
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Bravey open us to possibility, possibility that we might experience joy, contentment, and gratitude or what Barbara Fredrickson calls her Broaden and Build Theory. Bravey overcomes our own vunerability. TED has many great talks on bravery, but the best is Brene Brown on Vunerability:
Marucs Buckingham has been instrumental in the development of strengths movement from the earliest days. He wrote the original Now, Discover Your Strengths. He left Gallup to start his own company and launched his own version of the strengthsfinder, STANDOUT.
Now, folks who follow the Lean In Blog, get to take the Standout strengths assessment for free.
The Marcus Buckingham Company is providing free strength assessments to Lean In users. After you watch the lecture, visit standout.tmbc.com/leanin and enter the code LEANIN00 to take the test and discover your strengths.
Leanin.org is inspired by and founded by Cheryl Sandberg, who also wrote the book. They aspire to:
The book Lean In is focused on encouraging women to pursue their ambitions, and changing the conversation from what we can’t do to what we can do. LeanIn.Org is the next chapter.
More about Lean In at the end of the post. As for StandOut, here is how bookoutlines summarizes it:
This assessment measures you across 9 archetypal Strengths Roles, and determines your top two. These are the roles which reflect your natural strengths, and if pursued, will give you a natural advantage in your career.
Each Role contains the following advice: * Phrases to describe your edge * How to make an immediate impact * How to take your performance to the next level * What to watch out for
The book also contains more specific advice based on your combination of top two roles: * Which careers fit your strengths combination * How you can win as a leader * How you can win as a manager * How you can win in sales * How you can win in client service
The 9 StandOut Strengths Roles are:
1) Advisor You are a practical, concrete thinkier who is at your most powerful when reacting to and solving other people’s problems
2) Connector You are a catalyst. Your power lies in your craving to bring two people or ideas together to make something bigger and better than it is now.
3) Creator You make sense of the world–pulling it apart, seeing a better configuration, and creating it.
4) Equalizer You are a levelheaded person whose power comes from keeping the world in balance, ethically and practically.
5) Influencer You engage people directly and persuade them to act. Your power is your persuasion.
6) Pioneer You see the world as a friendly place where around every corner good things will happen. Your power comes from your optimism in the face of uncertainty.
7) Provider You sense other people’s feelings, and you feel compelled to recognize those feelings, give them a voice, and act on them.
8) Stimulator You are the host of other people’s emotions. You feel responsible for them, for turning them around, for elevating them.
9) Teacher You are thrilled by the potential you see in each person. Your power comes from learning how to unleash it.
The way the strengths assessment works is that you are presented with a slightly stressful stimulation and a set of choices. You then have 45 seconds to make your choice. The time limit helps ensure that your answers reflect your instincts, and the choices are filled with trigger words that appeal to specific strengths roles. The result is complete strengths profile that doesn’t depend on self-assessment, and isn’t vulnerable to being gamed.
Gallup’s researchers and economists embarked on a decade-long study to identify the talents that successful entrepreneurs possess. Applying the same rigor Gallup used to develop the Clifton StrengthsFinder, we created, tested, and refined the Entrepreneurial StrengthsFinder assessment….The assessment reveals a person’s unique ranking and intensity of the 10 talents of entrepreneurship.
So while it shares a name with the original tool, the The Entrepreneurial Strengthsfinder diverges. It is not simply a rehashing of the 34 strengths, but rather a clear refinement, zeroing in on the ones that make successful entrepreneurs. Interviewing 5000 people, they identified the following 10 themes:
business focus, confidence, creative thinker, delegator, determination, independent, knowledge-seeker, promoter, relationship-builder and risk-taker.
Your personalized report also reveals whether each of the 10 talents are a dominant, contributing, or supporting talent for you. This remindes me of REALISE2. Unfortunately, no sample reports are available yet. At a cost of $40, it is a substantial investment for a student, but for a budding entrepreneur this could prove an invaluable tool that will give helpful insight and direction to applying your talents.
This I bet will be a welcome addition to the strengtsh development world. Bosses can savor “Strengths-Based Leadership.” For educators: “Teach With Your Strengths.” The sales force gets “Strengths Based Selling.” There’s even a book for frisky middle-schoolers: “StrengthsExplorer for Ages 10 to 14.”
Gallup has posted a video in the Called To Coach segment which explores and explains this new tool.
Title: Flourishing in Schools: Utilizing groundbreaking research and tools from positive psychology to improve student’s wellbeing. Description: There has been a quiet transformation happening in some schools around the world as they focus on the conditions under which students, parents and faculty flourish? How do we improve student engagement? How can we better address our communities well-being? What is positive education and how does it impact student learning? Deep questions, but with some very compelling and surprisingly simple ideas to address them. In this workshop, we will look into the current research from positive psychology and its implications for teachers, counselors and administrators. The day will have lots of interactive activities and demonstration giving participants tools that they can use in their own communities.
Bottom line: Even a little mindfulness medition can produce some results.
“For some of the participants, the amount of meditation they did was very small,” Goyal said. “That we saw anything was kind of neat. But we only saw it for mindfulness meditation, and we really saw nothing for TM, so there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done. Just because we didn’t find any evidence for many of the outcomes, one shouldn’t conclude that these either don’t work or that we’ve shown that they don’t work.”
So can fostering feelings of connection and nurturing positive skills—as opposed to just limiting negative thought patterns—reduce suicidal plans and death fantasies?
This is a great question and at the heart of what positive psychology aiims to serve. Normal is not enough. Thriving is the goal. While we have many tools that have truly helped in targeting suicidal ideation, The Greater Good Society explores how positive emotions can be leveraged in treatment of depression and suicidal ideation.
While it is easy to make fun of the “turn the frown upside down” approach and scoff at “happy therapy” when it comes to treating very real mental health issues, the article does highlight two key studies targeting Graitutude, Grit and Forgiveness.
Calvin and Hobbes launched in my senior year in high school. Never acused of being too cool for school, I adored the little man’s antics and philosophical queeries to his tiger. Bill celebrated the Child’s immagination before society has beaten it out of him, Character Building dad’s, brave mothers, teachers and babysitters who will have their revenge, slimy girls and deep friendships with tigers. He tooks us back to our day dreams and reminded us to invent our own rules because with out it how can you play Calvin Ball? Bill gave the commencement speech at Kenyon College back in 1995. Poignant. Inspired. A few months latter he retired Calvin and his world: “I will be stopping Calvin and Hobbes at the end of the year. This was not a recent or an easy decision, and I leave with some sadness. My interests have shifted, however, and I believe I’ve done what I can do within the constraints of daily deadlines and small panels. I am eager to work at a more thoughtful pace, with fewer artistic compromises.”
Now, Cartoonist Gavin Aung Than, of Zen Pencils, hasn taken the key elements of that speech and set them to a Bill Waterson stylized comic strip complete with Dinosaurs, red wagons and otherwroldly landscapes (although lacking any tiger). This panel is a celebration that living life authentically, being true to your own values, is the path to happiness. From Gavin’s profile of Bill, we learn that Watterson is not just creative, but persistent and full of intergirty. His comic strips reveal his humor, curiosity and wisdom.
So while it shares a name with the original tool, the The Entrepreneurial Strengthsfinder diverges. It is not simply a rehashing of the 34 strengths, but rather a clear refinement, zeroing in on the ones that make successful entrepreneurs. Interviewing 5000 people, they identified the following 10 themes:
