One of my closest friends played professional football for one of the best teams in the NFL during the early 1990’s. The team had talented players, a good front office, and excellent coaches. They believed they would win every game they played.
At the beginning of his sixth season, my friend was picked up by another team. He was impressed by the front office and the players on this new team. He missed his old teammates but he was excited for a new beginning in a new city. His new team was scheduled to play the San Francisco 49ers – a perennial powerhouse. At my friend’s first team meeting, the head coach walked into the team’s film room, turned to the team, paused for a second, then said, “I think we can stay with these guys…”
“Stay with these guys?” my buddy recounted to me. “I wanted to hear him say that we were going to win by 20 points!” he continued.
Sports are different, in many ways, from other aspects of our lives but I still believe the key ingredient in any successful leader is optimism. Why would you ever want to follow someone who didn’t truly believe in a better tomorrow?
The optimistic leader is better equipped to handle adversity. She sees obstacles and issues as challenges to be overcome, not a permanent setback. A truly talented leader uses optimism to motivate people and keep them engaged. She is realistic, flexible, and hopeful.
So, how can you be a more optimistic leader? Try these tips to lead with a flexible, realistic optimism:
- Don’t take it personally: It’s ok NOT to blame yourself for everything that goes wrong. It’s ok to acknowledge the fact that some things are out of your control. If you do not believe in yourself, don’t expect others to follow.
- Keep adversities in their place: When something bad happens, don’t let it affect other areas of your life. Dropping the ball on one project does not mean you are not a good leader.
- This too shall pass: 99.9% of the bad things that happen are temporary. Set a good example for the people following you by showing them that you are ready for the next challenge by not dwelling on the past.
So, while most of life requires a realistic optimism, if you find yourself coaching an NFL team, make sure to the players, “We’re going to win by 20 points!”
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.
This is the final in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. The first post is available online.
3. Deeply Savor Successes, Big and Small: In sport, the odds are always against you – for every one winner, there are countless many losers left behind wondering what went wrong. In many instances, long term goals, such as winning a gold medal in the Olympics, never come true for most athletes. Making happiness and satisfaction contingent on a singular goal can often lead to depression and feelings of worthlessness. Setting process goals in addition to outcome goals and celebrating little victories along the way can help maintain morale and motivation. Part of growing as an athlete requires frequent feedback from others on skills that have to be improved, and so simple exercises such as Three Good Things can help shift your attention to what is going well and offset the tendency to focus only on what went wrong.
Looking back on my childhood as a competitive figure skater, I can’t help but wish I knew then even just a little bit of what I know now about positive psychology. I wish someone could have taught me about the connection between my explanatory style and my cognitions and emotions. I wish I understood the gravity of negative experiences and their uncanny ability to linger around long after the fleeting high from a success. I wish I learned of my strengths, instead of ruminating only about the weaknesses I had to shore up in order to succeed. I wish I realized that finding happiness was not just about standing at the top of a podium.
Although hindsight is 20/20, I feel blessed that these unfulfilled wishes have pulled me toward the fields of positive and applied sport and exercise psychology, and a calling to connect the dots between these two fields.
This is the final in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. The introductory post, first tip and second tip are available online.
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.
This is the third in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. The original post is available online. Check back tomorrow for the next post.
2. Build Strengths through Daily Activity: Daily engagement in and pursuit of life activities congruent with an individual’s signature strengths correlates robustly with well-being. Take the VIA Survey and learn about your signature strengths. Think about how you can use your strengths in day to day training or in competition. For example, if playfulness is one of your top strengths, how could you use humor appropriately to diffuse a stressful or unexpected situation? You can also take the VIA with teammates and create a tree or grid that represents your collective strengths, and brainstorm together to create strategies for leveraging strengths to enhance team cohesion.
This is the third in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. Yesterday’s post, and the original post, are available online. Check back tomorrow for the next post.
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.
This is the second in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. The original post is available online. Check back tomorrow for the next post.
1. Fortify Mental Toughness through Cognitive Behavioral Skills:Mental toughness or resilience is a characteristic that is most often cited as a critical psychological nutrient for athletic success. For example, research has found that optimistic swimmers performed as well or better than their first efforts after perceived sport failure and enabled young students to perform better and experience a lower drop in success expectation and less stress/anxiety compared with pessimists. The Optimism Test can help you learn about how you interpret success and failure. Then, using exercises like Control Negative Thoughts, you can learn how to quiet your destructive self-talk and think more accurately and flexibly about the challenges at hand.
For more information, see:
Seligman, M. E. P., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Thornton, N., & Thornton, K. M. (1990). Explanatory style as a mechanism of disappointing athletic performance.Psychological Science, 1, 143-146.)
Martin-Krumm, C. P., Sarrazin, P. G., Peterson, C., & Famose, J. (2003). Explanatory style and resilience after sports failure. Personality and Individual Differences, 35,1685-1695.
This is the second in a series of posts on Putting Positive Psychology In Motion, written by invited contributor Gloria Park Perin. The original post is available online. Check back tomorrow for the next post.
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.
By guest contributor Gloria Park Perin
When it comes to achievement in life, sport is easily one of the most visible, globally and socially valued performance domains in society. Martin Seligman’s notion of the Victorious Life, or a life of achievement, conjures up visions of human bodies in motion: Breathless relay swimmers stretching every limb towards a wall of awaiting teammates, gymnasts sticking a landing after a high-flying double front dismount, or Dick Hoyt and his quadriplegic son, Rick, making their way across a finish line after an Ironman competition. For me, few sights are more elevating and inspiring than watching others push their mortal limits to achieve what was previously unachievable.
Excelling in sport takes much more than just physical ability and raw talent. Long before positive psychology was given a proper name, practitioners of sport psychology have been studying the requisite mindset and psychological attributes of athletes with the goal of illuminating how the mind can impact physical performance. Competitive athletics are high-stakes ventures that require time, commitment, and perseverance, which can often come at the cost of well-being. What we often don’t see behind the championship images portrayed in the media are the stories of their struggles and years and years of sacrifice. There is something very telling about the stigma that still surrounds sport psychology, and the mentality that only the weak and frail need the sport psychologists to help them fix what is wrong.
Positive psychology has brought with it an awareness that psychology is about much more than resolving pathology and frailty. Happiness and well-being are not by-products of an absence of illness, but desirable in its own right. Happy people generally experience more success in many different domains in life including marriage, relationships, work, and physical and psychological health, and reap many benefits through life, such as more frequently occupying positions of leadership and stronger interpersonal relationships. (1) It would make sense for this logic to be extended to the world of sport to safeguard athlete well being and enhance performance.
Looking back on my childhood as a competitive figure skater, I can’t help but wish I knew then even just a little bit of what I know now about positive psychology. I wish someone could have taught me about the connection between my explanatory style and my cognitions and emotions. I wish I understood the gravity of negative experiences and their uncanny ability to linger around long after the fleeting high from a success. I wish I learned of my strengths, instead of ruminating only about the weaknesses I had to shore up in order to succeed. I wish I realized that finding happiness was not just about standing at the top of a podium. Although hindsight is 20/20, I feel blessed that these unfulfilled wishes have pulled me toward the fields of positive and applied sport and exercise psychology, and a calling to connect the dots between these two fields. Stay tuned this week for simple tips on using positive psychology in sport!
Come back tomorrow for the first of three tips on applying positive psychology to sports.
For more information:
Lyubomirsky, S., King, L.A., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803–855.
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.
