This meetup will focus on practitioners. A definition of different types of practitioners is online including Educators, Executive Coaches, Life Coaches, Therpaists, OD Consultants, and Wellness Coaches. We’ll focus on the practice of positive psychology and discuss best practices.
Emiliya is a practitioner herself and will be leading a special workshop of particular interest to positive psychology practitioners. All people are welcome.
Easily accessible to public transportation and parking. Blue Line at 34th and Market and Green Line at 36th and Walnut.
This list of 5 Great Books on Organizational Leadership was compiled by a member of Positive Psychology Practitioners group on LinkedIn. More than 700 practitioners share best practices, problem-solve, and network with this free group . Join today.
Positive Leadership: Strategies for Extraordinary Performance
by Kim Cameron. This book is short, to the point, and the best summation of how the findings of positive psychology apply to organizations. To me, this book didn’t carry the emotional wallop of Building the Bridge as You Walk on It, but it certainly can help clarify the constructs and how they fit in the world of business and organizations.
Strengths-Based Leadership
by Tom Rath. This books builds on the strengths research underlying Gallup’s other books with lots of new research specifically applicable to leadership. Like the other books, it includes an access code to take the online Strengthsfinder 2.0 instrument, but in a version that comes with a report that focuses on leadership. The book describes how the 34 strengths themes group into four domains of leadership: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. These are illustrated with stories of four significant leaders, each working out of a set of strengths in one of the four domains. Finally, the authors report on Gallup’s research into the four basic needs of followers: Trust (honesty, integrity, respect); Compassion (caring, friendship, happiness, love); Stability (security, strength, support, peace), and Hope (direction, faith, guidance). Highly useful and original.
Making the Impossible Possible: Leading Extraordinary Performance: The Rocky Flats Story
by Kim Cameron and Marc Lavine. This is the story of how the same workers who were operating the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant — with lots of union grievances — managed to close and cleanup that facility in 1/10th the estimated time, at 1/6th the estimate cost, and to standards 13 times greater than federal requirements. Plus you get a real introduction to key areas of Dr. Cameron’s work. Excellent, and inspiring!
Energize Your Workplace: How to Create and Sustain High-Quality Connections at Work
by Jane Dutton. Dr. Dutton gives both the research on the importance of relationships at work — she calls them “high quality connections — and specific approaches to making and sustaining such connections, and helping those you lead to do the same. We are not talking deep intimacy here, just the quick, human-to-human link that lets emotional and cognitive information flow freely.
Angie LeVan is a resilience coach, positive psychology consultant and an associate of Positive Psychology Services, LLC. Angie has studied the science of well-being in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at University of Pennsylvania, and she is a blogger on the topic of resilience for psychologytoday.com. See her profile in our practitioner directory.
Can Comfort and Convenience Undermine Your Well-being?
Most of us will do anything to avoid challenge, discomfort or even the slightest bit of inconvenience (hence, the Clapper, remote controls and Velcro). But by doing so, are we doing more harm than good when it comes to our well-being?
I’ll be the first to admit, there are some conveniences I just can’t live without. After all, who doesn’t love the iPhone?! But let’s face it — modern-day conveniences have made it easier than ever to do less, to spend endless hours on our derrières and to just be ‘comfortable’ — perhaps too comfortable?
Think about it. We’re living during a time when everything we want is right at our fingertips (thanks to the Internet and credit cards). Yet, we’re less happy today than our ancestors were when food was sparse, career paths were non-existent and before 18 year-olds drove sports cars. According to researchers, less than 20% of people (1 in 5) are actually ‘flourishing’ – living the ‘good life’. Worse yet, about the same number of people report symptoms of depression and anxiety! Through comfort and convenience have we lost opportunities to have an engaging and meaningful life? Have we sacrificed opportunities to develop the resources that truly enable us to thrive in life?
3 Ways Comfort and Convenience May be Short-changing Your Well-being:
1) An Epidemic of Inactivity: Not surprisingly, physical inactivity has reached epidemic proportion. Heart disease, obesity, diabetes and a number of other physical and mental disorders are on the rise – a result of modern conveniences?
2) Less Opportunity for Growth: When we’re exposed to minor stressors or challenges, we have an opportunity to build the mental resources necessary to actively cope with future hardship. Less challenge equals less opportunity to build the precious, mental resources that, leveraged appropriately, can enable a person to thrive.
3) False Hopes for an Easy Ride: In a technology-driven world, it’s easy to fall prey to expectations for an easy ride in life. But that’s just not how it works — and perhaps that’s not how it should! Happiness takes work. It takes real effort and persistence to achieve the life you most desire.
Adopt a different mindset. Learn to love challenge and effort, and step out of your ‘comfort zone’ by finding safe ways to challenge yourself!
Stay tuned for more on how use challenge as pathway to a thriving life!
Positive places enhance our lives – they are spaces where we thrive now and flourish in the future. Positive places improve our experiences by: 1. Communicating. Human beings are social animals, and in positive places we can mingle with other people, when we choose. In positive spaces we not only communicate verbally with others, but also send personally desirable nonverbal messages about ourselves as people. Members of a culture can “read” the nonverbal communication of culture-mates, and we feel that nonverbal information is more honest than spoken statements. Place-based nonverbal communication is why we get so worked up about furniture selections – a lot of furniture is equally comfortable, but the style of the particular furniture we select from among those equally comfortable options speaks eloquently about who we are as a person. Why do you think we love video tours of celebrities’ homes? We want to know who they really are.
2. Comforting. A place comforts us in many ways – colors and scents can sooth, sounds can calm, and opportunities to control the space can reduce stress, for example – but people often don’t consider how a space can help them restock their psychological batteries. When we work mentally, we tire our brain and reduce the mental energy at our disposal – just as we can wear down the charge in batteries. Our mental batteries are rechargeable, happily. When we look out a window at nature or into a fish tank or at a fire (or watch nature, fish or fire videos), we are transported from our physical location into a different place mentally, a place where interesting things happen that we can understand effortlessly. While we’re in that place, energy flows back into our cognitive centers. A place that helps us restock our mental batteries is comforting.
3. Challenging. One of our fundamental human needs is to grow and develop in ways that interest us. Different people have different self-enhancement plans, so the ways that places can challenge us to change need to vary – a studio to practice the cello is different from a woodworking shop or a hideaway to write a great novel, but all three can help a person achieve their own personal goals.
4. Complying. A positive space supplies us with the tools we need to do whatever activities we’ve planned there – it’s hard to cook a roast in a bathtub. If we’re doing thoughtful work, we need to be able to focus without distractions, which many people designing home and workplace offices forget.
5. Continuing. A positive place has the ability to evolve as our place-based needs change – too many built ins can turn out to be way too much.
Use the 5 C’s for positive places (communicate, comfort, challenge, comply, and continue) when you’re in different spaces – home, school, office, . . . – to determine if you’re a place that will enhance your life – or not. Watch for additional blog posts here to learn how you can turn negative places into positive ones.
(From L-R) Doug Hensch, co-founder; Martin Seligman, Exclusive Consultant; Andrew Rosenthal, co-founder
Co-founders Andrew and Doug are going to be there talking about how to use the tools on happier.com! Learn how to use Active Constructive Responding to improve your relationships and Three Good Things to bring gratitude into your life and sleep better every night! If you are a happiness enthusiast anywhere near New York City, we would love to see you there! It’s an excellent opportunity to connect with more people who want to learn about the science of happiness.
The event is being hosted by Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP, a member of the happier.com Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory.
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