When I first moved to the the DC area in the mid-1990’s, it took me a couple of months to find a job. One summer day, I got a call saying that I had been offered a training specialist position. I was overjoyed. This was a completely new career for me and I looked upon it as a major achievement after countless interviews and applications.
About three months after starting the job, however, I was laid off as the business was downsizing. I was devastated and had trouble thinking straight for a couple of days. How was I going to find something, again, with so little experience? How was I going to pay the bills? These and many more questions kept running through my mind. I did find another job, of course, but it was a very difficult time.
Looking back on my reaction, I probably would have been better served by focusing on action. That is, my goal was to find another job, so my energy would have been more productively spent updating my resume, building contacts, applying for jobs, etc. By keeping it in perspective and focusing on solutions I am also convinced I would have felt much better.
And, the research shows that some people will actually grow from this type of experience and be stronger as a result. In fact, I would venture to say that if we all looked back on many of our own adversities, we would recognize that as one door closed, eventually, another one opened.
In my own case, I was able to land a position with an up-and-coming wireless telecom company that ended up being a spring board for my entire career. In fact, I probably would not have been looking for this particular job had I not been laid off. As I look at the other adversities that I have faced in sports, business, and my personal life, I realize that I actually did benefit from each bad event. I learned specific lessons that will help me for the rest of my life.
And, while this knowledge does not prevent future adversities from happening, I know that I am stronger and more resilient as a result. I know that (as my Winston Churchil and my Dad) have said, “This, too, shall pass.”
So, the next time an adversity hits, do your best to keep it in perspective and recognize that there may actually be an opportunity for growth waiting for you at the other end.
In the meantime, learn from your past adversities through our What Door Opened? exercise or take a minute to read some great stories of resilience in our Community section.
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
A recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer covers an exciting project involving the U.S. Military and research in positive psychology. The project focuses on resilience, which is the collection of skills that help people bounce back and persevere in the face of adversity. happier.com includes a number of resilience-building tools including:
Active and Constructive Responding build the bonds of strong relationships. Stronger relationships help ensure that, when faced with adversity, you find ways to excel together.
Control Negative Thoughts is an in-the-moment psychological strengthening tool to help minimize the impact of stressful situations and prepare you to excel even in though situations.
By Stacey Burling, Inquirer Staff Writer
Army sergeants may have a tough-guy image, but University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman thinks they’re in a perfect position to teach their fellow soldiers how to better handle emotions.
That is why sergeants – the line teachers of the Army – will be the first to receive resiliency training when a new project designed to revamp the Army’s approach to mental health rolls out next month. Fifty noncommissioned officers will go to Penn’s campus for a week of training by staff of the Positive Psychology Center, which Seligman directs. After that, 300 will arrive in November and December. They will take what they’ve learned about preventing psychological problems and living more fulfilling lives back to their troops, Seligman said.
Worried about rising suicide rates and thousands of soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder, the Army is launching the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program to help 1.1 million soldiers and their families cope more effectively with the stress of military life and combat.
“They’re not coming into the service with the coping skills they need,” said Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Army chief of staff. “That’s how the resilience program was born.”
The goal is to reduce problems and increase the number of people who improve and grow personally after surviving trauma, undergoing what psychologists call posttraumatic growth. Seligman has long argued that psychologists should think not only about what makes people miserable but also about what makes them happy and successful.
“Having an Army that’s just as psychologically fit as physically fit will make for a much more effective Army of the future,” he said.
Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, a doctor who has a Ph.D. in nutrition and biochemistry, will direct the initiative. She knows something about stress. During the Persian Gulf War, she was in a helicopter that was shot down in late February 1991. Iraqi forces held her captive for more than a week before repatriating her in early March.
Cornum said yesterday that she never questioned her ability to survive. “I had absolute confidence that I would do well and that I would be emotionally fine when I got back,” she said. And, she said, the experience even made her a better person. But she realizes that not everyone was “brought up to look at things that were difficult as challenges. . . . The time to teach that is not when they’re in a prison in Baghdad.”
The Army, she said, historically has done a much better job of teaching physical fitness and technical skills than of addressing emotions. Now that soldiers face repeated conflict, they need more help.
“We decided it wasn’t a good idea to just wait until people had a problem and then try to solve it,” Cornum said. She likened mental problems to heart attacks. You can give a patient a bypass afterward, but it’s better to head off the attack with healthy food and exercise.
The initiative will cost $100 million over three years. Seligman said Penn would receive about $1 million for its work this year. Contracts have not yet been completed for training in 2010 and beyond. The program will also include periodic assessments of soldiers’ mental fitness in four areas: emotional, social, family, and spiritual. Soldiers will fill out a 150-item questionnaire in October and will take it every two years. They will be told confidentially how they did and will be offered classes developed by experts in the four key areas. Classes will also be made available to their family members.
Seligman said he was impressed by the Army’s approach. “They are calling on the best civilian science here,” he said. “This is a very classy operation they’ve mounted.”
Penn will teach soldiers to think differently about what happens to them. The program, originally developed to teach schoolchildren, will help the noncommissioned officers avoid “catastrophizing,” a tendency to imagine and fret about worst-case scenarios. It will also help them play to their strengths and virtues and build better relationships.
For example, Seligman said, they will be taught “active, constructive responding,” a technique that helps people draw out detail in a conversation that allows the other speaker to “relive good events.”
Cornum said 35 soldiers tried the program in May and gave it rave reviews. They said they had used its lessons immediately at work and at home. “Every single one of them said that,” Cornum said of six graduates she questioned at Fort Jackson yesterday. “I was happily amazed.”
She said the Army was working with Penn to “militarize the curriculum” so it is better suited to soldiers. “It probably wasn’t Braveheart and Band of Brothers,” she said of the original curriculum.
Seligman said he was especially pleased that the Army decided to take the program out of its medicine department and put it under education and training.
“Ever since being APA president,” he said, referring to the American Psychological Association, “I’ve been arguing that psychology wants to move out of this pathology model that it’s painted itself into.”
The original article is available from the Philadelphia Inquirer
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
Last week, I wrote about explanatory style. I related one experience where I got really down on myself for making a mistake at work and how my own style at the time put me in a downward spiral. It was this event that helped me realize that I was a pessimist. Over time, I was able to alter this thinking style and improve my happiness and my ability to solve problems. One simple and effective way to do this is through the ABCDE method.
It takes practice but it does have the ability to help you challenge your beliefs and create a more optimistic way of seeing events and situations.
A – State the Adversity in objective terms. Avoid any judgments and just state the facts of the situation. In my case, there was a mistake on a report that I sent out to some senior people at my company.
B – Listen to your Beliefs. I proceeded to blame myself. I thought I was incompetent, stupid, and responsible for this happening. (Notice how I did not state my feelings, at this point.)
C – State the Consequences. As a result of these beliefs, I felt sad, anxious, and even angry with myself. My thoughts were completely out of perspective as I ended my internal rant by thinking that I was going to lose my job. I had spiraled completely out of control.
D – Dispute your beliefs. If someone had come up to me and said that I was a terrible project manager and that I was stupid and incompetent, you can bet that I would have spent the rest of my day arguing with this person. But, because these beliefs came from me, I let them stick. Today, I would put this in perspective by saying something to the effect: “I have done an excellent job on this project, so far. Yes, I made the mistake, but at least four other people on our team did not catch it, either. I have received lots of praise from many of my clients and I am a valued part of this organization. My work has saved the company tens of thousands of dollars and I helped this team gain some notoriety throughout the company.”
E – Observe the Energization that this creates. This can be difficult but it is important step in savoring your new way of thinking. With regard to my situation, I would have said, “Wow, I feel a lot better. I am glad that I was able to put this in perspective and I am encouraged by the fact that I was able to challenge my own beliefs. This will help me a great deal in the future because I know that this is not the last time that I will make a mistake…”
In their book, The Resilience Factor, Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte write that “…if you want to improve your ability to respond to adversity, you must listen to what you are saying to yourself when it occurs.” And, if you are constantly blaming yourself or thinking in an overly negative way, it is time to think in terms of ABCDE.
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
“I’m an idiot,” I said to a colleague after I had made a mistake on a report that had just been sent to several senior people at our company. “I can’t believe I did this, again. I’m always screwing up like this,” I said, thinking that this had become a habit and that I made mistakes all the time. Immediately, my thoughts spiraled into a mini-panic attack. Additional negative thoughts included:
- I’m going to lose this project.
- My career is in jeopardy.
- Everyone is going to think I am stupid.
- I’m a failure as a father and a husband.
- I have let my family down and I’m going to be out of a job…
My colleague let me finish my rant, and said, “Wow. You’re pretty hard on yourself. Did you listen to what you just said?” If he had only heard what I was thinking…
No, I had not been really listening to myself but his question hit me like a ton of bricks. I knew that much of what I was saying and thinking was completely false but I couldn’t escape the pit in my stomach.
Shortly after this happened, another colleague of mine recommended that I read Martin Seligman’s latest book, Learned Optimism – How to change your mind and your life. Within the first few pages, I came to the realization that the way I was explaining events (both good AND bad) was not very healthy – I was a pessimist.
Dr. Seligman writes that there are three dimensions of your explanatory style: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. If you look at my statements from above, there was a certain degree of permanence to them - “always” and “I’m an idiot.”
As for pervasiveness, I took a small mistake at work and ended thinking that I wasn’t a good father or husband. Making a universal explanation for a specific adversity leads to giving up in other areas of your life.
Finally, I personalized this adversity. I didn’t take into account that several people helped me write the report and had actually signed off on it. I took full responsibility for something that I should have recognized was actually shared by others.
After determining my explanatory style, I recognized all the negative consequences that went with it. I was afraid to take risks. I didn’t take on the most difficult projects. I stayed in my comfort zone. When something bad happened, I focused on feeling bad as opposed to solving problems. Most importantly, I realized that I was planting the seeds of pessimism with my kids. (The research shows that there is a very strong correlation between a parent’s explanatory style and that of the child.)
I decided to work on my pessimism, but I wanted to get a more accurate read on my explanatory style, first. One way to to do this is to take Dr. Seligman’s Optimism Test. The test presents you with 12 different situations, asks you to come up with one major cause for each situation, and then asks you to rate the question on three different scales. A higher score indicates an optimistic explanatory style while a lower score indicates a pessimistic style.
The good news is that we can change our explanatory styles (come back next Tuesday for more on that…). All it takes is practice and some patience. But, the first step is to be mindful. Your friends, colleagues, and your kids are listening to your explanations – you should, too.
What is your explanatory style?
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
There is good evidence that building optimism will make you more resilient from depression and more productive at work. There is also mounting evidence that optimism may make you physically healthier, with some of the strongest evidence coming from well-designed studies of cardiac mortality. I believe that your learning the skill of optimism could save your life. (If I am wrong, you have very little to lose except some of your pessimism.) Here’s why I believe this:
The story begins at a poker game in Northern Iowa in the late 1980’s. Bob Colligan, a psychologist from the Mayo Clinic, sat to my right. After singing “two tenors” every time a pair of tens appeared on the table, he made an intriguing suggestion about health. I had presented a talk earlier that evening on the suggestive evidence that optimism improves health in aging men. Bob mentioned that since 1950 every patient admitted to the Mayo Clinic for any physical problem took the Minnesota Multiphasic Inventory, the MMPI. This is a 500 item yes-no test (“I am a secret agent of God”). Could we somehow code each item for optimism or pessimism and form a new optimism-pessimism scale?
Chris Peterson did just that, and Bob soon began to analyze the optimism or pessimism of patients admitted to the Mayo Clinic for all causes, using Chris’s technique. To see if optimism predicted longevity, Bob selected 839 consecutive patients who referred themselves for medical care in 1950. Death from any cause was the focus of the study and two hundred of these patients had died by the year 2000. The optimists had a whopping nineteen percent increase in longevity when their expected life span was compared to that of the pessimists.
Many of these deaths were cardiac, so Greg Buchanan and I undertook a prospective study of optimism and second heart attack. In this study, unlike the Mayo Clinic study, we knew the entire range of risk factors for each patient, so we could better zero in on pessimism as the deadly culprit. One hundred and twenty-six men had their first heart attack in the early 1980s in San Francisco. At that time, they were all interviewed about their lives. Their “attributional style” — pessimism or optimism — was derived from these interviews in just the same content-analytic way that we derived the optimism or pessimism of the MMPI items. The raters of the interviews were, of course, blind, unaware of the health of the men. Over the next eight years, half of these men died, mostly of a second heart attack. What predicted who would survive and who would die? Damage to the heart at the first heart attack, Type A, blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and the entire panoply of traditional physical risk factors did not predict second heart attack. Pessimism, on the other hand, predicted second heart attack and death. Of the most pessimistic quartile, 86 percent died, whereas only 33 percent of the most optimistic quartile died (Buchanan, 1994).
Laura Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health found similar results. In 1986, 1306 men took the MMPI, from which she derived the optimism-pessimism score. In 10 years of follow-up, 162 cases of coronary heart disease occurred: 71 cases of nonfatal myocardial infarction, 31 cases of fatal coronary heart disease, and 60 cases of angina pectoris. She adjusted for smoking, weight, blood pressure, and a variety of other traditional risk factors. Men with high levels of optimism had less than half the risk for combined fatal and nonfatal myocardial infarction and for angina pectoris. The greater their optimism, the lower the risk for cardiac incidents.
In the largest study, 999 Dutch men and women from the Arnhem Elderly Study, took a variety of psychological tests and were followed for nine years, from 1991 to 2001. 397 died, and a high level of optimism was far and away the best predictor of survival. Taking sex, age, disease, education, smoking, alcohol, prior cardiac disease, cholesterol, and weight into account, strong optimists were at one-quarter the risk for cardiac death. Again the higher the optimism, the more protection against cardiac death. This was true of both men and women.
So the effects of optimism on risk for heart attack are strong, stronger probably than most or even all of the traditional risk factors. But is optimism the cause of the lower risk for heart attack or does it merely correlate with some unknown protective factor, like serotonin level or genes, which in turn is the active ingredient, causing both the optimism and the protection from heart attack?
We do not know, and there is really only one impeccable way to find out: a random-assignment experimental study, in which some people are randomly assigned to become optimists and later heart attacks are measured. Random assignment rules out all such confounding “third variables.” There is one such study in the literature: My research group invites the most pessimistic members of Penn’s entering freshmen to be randomly assigned to a control group or to a workshop which teaches the optimism techniques you will learn over the next three months. The freshmen who learn optimism not only have less depression and anxiety over the next three years but their physical health is significantly better than the controls. While the study is not about heart attack, but about the whole mélange of undergraduate physical ills, it shows optimism to be a cause, not just a correlate of better health.
I urge you (and the people you care about) to do the exercises on happier.com diligently, and as my mother used to say “use them in good health.”
References:
Buchanan, G.M., Gardenswartz, C.A.R., & Seligman, M.E.P. (1999). Physical health following a cognitive-behavioral intervention. Prevention and Treatment, 2.
Giltay, E., Geleljnse, J., Zitman, F., Hoekstra, T., & Schouten, E.(2004). Dispositional optimism and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in a prospective cohort of elderly Dutch men and women. Archives of General Psychiatry, 61, 1126-1135.
Kubzansky, L. Sparrow, D. Vokonas, P. and Kawachi, I. (2001). Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full? A Prospective Study of Optimism and Coronary Heart Disease in the Normative Aging Study. Psychosomatic Medicine, 63, 910-916
Maruta, T., Colligan, R. Malinchoc, M. & Offord, K (2000). Optimists vs. pessimists: Survival rate among medical patients over a 30-year period. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 75, 140-143.
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
