Kategorie: Positive Psychologie

Serenity is wisdom

This week’s quote comes from James Allen: „Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience, and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought.“

Serenity or calmness is a virtue for a reason. It is particularly difficult to be calm when you have a goal too much in mind, when you want more than you should, are allowed to do less than you could and foresee the end, which is highly likely to happen, and yet have to let it happen. Because everyone must and has the right to make their own experiences.

Serenity also means being in the moment, enjoying the seconds that we can only influence and understanding that the world does not belong to you, but that you have been given the gift of being a guest in order to grow and learn. But this also means that everyone can and should learn and grow at their own pace and on the path that they feel is right for them. Serenity means allowing this to happen and not trying to „pull the grass to make it grow faster“. Understanding that this is not possible and that every thing has and needs its time. Serenity is not factual knowledge, it comes from within and arises from our attitude, interpretation / thinking patterns and attitudes. For me, that is wisdom.

Breathing is living and feeling alive.

This Sunday I found the following quote from B.K.S. Tyengar: „The mind is the king of the senses. The breath is the king of the mind.“

Considering Stephen W. Porges findings on the Polyvagal Theory, this quote is biologically verifiable.  Porges found that the autonomic nervous system is co-regulated by the vagus nerve in mammals. The autonomic can be co-regulated by the SMART vagus, a part of the vagus nerve. The SMART vagus is influenced for example by facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice of the conversational partner. It can have a calming effect on the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system determines breathing and heart rate, among other things. Consciously calm and even breathing has a correspondingly calming effect on the autonomic nervous system. This also calms the heart rate. Porges refers to this as neuroception.

Relaxation techniques that influence the breath, mindfulness exercises that focus on the here and now, have a calming effect on breathing and thus on the thoughts in our head and restlessness in the body.

A simple exercise is to draw attention to the breath in order to become aware of its vital function. Life only exists through breathing. Focussing on the breath means concentrating on life and allowing the spirits of life to become conscious.

To calm the breath, the rule of thumb is to breathe out twice as long as you breathe in.

Exercise: At the beginning, count to two for inhaling and to four for exhaling. The speed of counting should be the same. After a few breaths, increase the count by one, i.e. count to three for inhaling and six for exhaling. You should notice that you become calmer, your voice becomes more relaxed and your shoulders lower.

Breathing is living and feeling alive.

What we think matters

Last week’s quote was from Andrew Carnegie. He said: „Remember, happiness does not depend on what you are or what you have, it depends on what you think.“

Andrew Carnegie was one of the richest people of his time. He certainly had few money worries and was able to occupy himself with other matters than meeting his basic needs. He was certainly respected and socialised with the most influential people of his time. He himself emigrated to the USA with his family as a child, as his father, a weaver in Scotland, had less and less to do due to industrialisation.

Carnegie got to know all kinds of personalities in his life, from ordinary people to aristocrats and high-ranking personalities. This enabled him to compare the different cultures and milieus. That’s why I find this quote so fantastic. He learnt the intrinsic value, in my interpretation, of the people who surrounded him. This led him to the conclusion that thinking, i.e. the inner processes of being, are more important than external factors such as status, rank and hierarchies.

Carnegie recognised that the only thing that counts is the inner world of the individual. Because what we think is visible in our attitude and this in turn determines our actions.

Our thoughts lead us to attract people into our lives who think similarly, as they have a similar attitude and their actions are similar. Through our thoughts, we have the power to be who we want to be and thus attract those we want to surround ourselves with.

Accept the now as your reality

My calendar quote for this week was „Be present in everything you do, because the only reality is now.“ (Wisdom from Zen Buddhism)

I really like this quote. The past is unchangeable, the more time passes, the sooner we will re-evaluate and interpret it in a more positive way. But the facts will remain the same. The personal past is a bit paradoxical, as the older it gets, the more beautiful it seems to us.

The future lies ahead of us, it is covered by curtains. We guess what may come, but we can never be sure, if and how it will and could really happen. Maybe it’s similar to a mirage, we’re working towards something, but maybe it disappears before we reach it completely, or it remains. We have to take care of the future, but we will never live in exactly the future we had planned.

What remains is now. That’s why it’s important to take full advantage of the moment, who knows how many „now“ each of us still have and can fully enjoy.

This becomes particularly clear to you when you lie in bed with a high fever and either doze or sleep the whole day and night, in this way you will lose the sense of time. Then it blurs now and you can’t be present at all. Time is then like jelly, it drags, the now becomes sand and glides through your fingers. To be present, the now should be like clay, something with which you can be active and do something good for others and yourself.

Do you use the now like clay or more like sand?

New Year: Focus on personal, character development

The new year is in the starting blocks and awaits us with many surprises and changes in our lives.

This is the time of the year when new goals are set, which are usually out of the question after a few weeks. This may be why younger people are more likely to make New Year’s resolutions. Statistically, 31% of 18-24 year olds set goals and resolutions for the New Year. 80% of the over 55s do not set any new goals or resolutions for the New Year. (Statista)

One reason for this may be that they have learned that New Year’s resolutions are often not stable and do not last in everyday life.

Instead of setting resolutions or goals, use New Year’s Day to reflect on what went really well in the past year and where you are in the present. What have you learnt? What was good this year?

Even if 2023 had some bad surprises in store for you, it also had good aspects to discover and focus on. We can all be grateful that we can end this year by focusing on the present and our own personal development. Instead of thinking about new resolutions, think about your behaviour and remember the times in the year that is drawing to a close, when you had the opportunity to learn and process your learning areas in order to become aware of your own development path. I am not referring to your professional development, but to your personal, character development.

For example, I learned that my family gives me strength and helps me to be resilient. I have been able to see for myself the impact of micro-politics and the importance of networks and real personal interactions. I am grateful to Springer Gabler for publishing my book. In this book, I was able to contribute my knowledge, which has helped and support me to develop myself further. What have you learnt, and what are you grateful for?

Positive feelings: The result of questions

Feelings are the result of emotions. Positive feelings are a result of our thinking. According to Barbara Fredrickson, everyone can enable positive feelings through self-exploration:

  1. Happiness: what observation would make me happy under different circumstances?
  2. Gratitude: What can I be grateful for in this situation? What have I learned and what will I be grateful for in the future?
  3. Cheerfulness: How can I change the context so that it cheers me up? What elements would I enjoy under different circumstances?
  4. Interest: What was unexpected, what made me curious and what would I like to understand better?
  5. Hope: What can I change to make a difference next time? What can I do to make it more fun?
  6. Pride: What was I proud of in this situation? Which skills did I use best? What thought patterns got me this far?
  7. Pleasure: What could I have laughed at because it came as such a surprise?
  8. Inspiration: What behaviour, what message from my conversation partner did I find inspiring?
  9. Awe: What was so fascinating, wonderful, and heart-warming and made a deep impression on me? What is the big picture that is different from normality?
  10. Love: Was there a moment when all the above feelings came together?

This is challenging in many situations, but it helps us to build resilience. Practicing this promotes positive feelings, which lead to positive thinking, which leads to behaviour change.

In the long term, such thinking will transform challenging and static thinking patterns and beliefs into a growth mindset and positive thinking, and appropriate, empowering behaviour.

Give it a try!

For more information, read my book from side 114 forward:

Erfolgreich Gespräche im Berufsalltag führen:
Der Einfluss von Haltung, Deutungsmustern und Unterbewusstsein auf Gesprächssituationen
| SpringerLink

Self-critism and / or self-awarness?

Self-knowledge has a long history and is mentioned in Sanskrit „This is you“ and in the Temple of Delphi „Know thyself“. In psychology, it is the introspective analysis of one’s own thought patterns, interpretations, and character in order to find answers: What am I like? Who am I? It is about understanding the reasons for one’s behaviour and actions to be able to change them. (source: Selbsterkenntnis – Lexikon der Psychologie (spektrum.de))

Self-criticism is looking critically at oneself and finding misbehaviour or shortcomings in oneself. The core question of self-criticism is: „Why did this happen? Why did I make this mistake?“ If a person names the shortcomings themselves, they will be more motivated to change them than if they are criticised by someone else. (source: Selbstkritik – Lexikon der Psychologie (spektrum.de))

In this way, self-criticism is needed to build self-awareness, but it is limited because it focuses on a person’s shortcomings rather than their strengths. Self-awareness is a balanced approach that considers both the strengths and the weaknesses of the self. This has a more positive impact on the self than focusing solely on failures and areas for development, and has an impact on a person’s performance. The Gallup Institute suggests that focusing on strengths leads to six times greater emotional engagement in one’s work, employees are six times more likely to do what they do best every day, three times more likely to feel that their quality of life is excellent, and 8-18% higher performance, which increases turnover by 10-19% and profits by 14-29%. (source: Learn About the Science of CliftonStrengths | EN – Gallup))

To create an environment of self-awareness rather than self-criticism, Tasha Eurich´s tip might be useful. Ask yourself and others questions that start with What…. rather than Why… . The why always looks backwards and seeks out the „culprit“. What looks forward and tries to find solutions. This allows for real reflection on what has happened.

Give more weight to the What in your everyday communication.

Positive psychology: Importance of meaning

Barbara Frederickson is well known as the pioneer for positive psychology in research explains with her colloquies in her latest article “Positive psychology in a pandemic: buffering, bolstering, and building mental health” which abilities helps us to stay positive even during the pandemic.

In the next articles I will summarize the key points of the recent publication of “The Journal of Positive Psychology”.

 Meaning:

To have meaning in life means, to see sense of your live and the world around you. When you see your live as having inherent value and that is worth to live. Therefore, you need to have the three elements, which are:

  1. coherence,
  2. significance
  3. purpose

 

Meaning is a foundational component of wellbeing like many studies show.

People who found their meaning in life:

  • are happier,
  • express more frequent and strong positive emotions,
  • endorse and use their character strengths more,
  • have more satisfying relationships
  • are viewed as more desirable potential friends,
  • help others more,
  • feel better subjective health,
  • report fewer health symptoms,
  • have better functioning immune systems,
  • lower levels of inflammatory cytokines,
  • engage in less risky sexual and substance behaviors,
  • show slower advancement of cognitive decline
  • Alzheimer’s disease,
  • live longer

(for reviews, see Cohen et al., 2016; Roepke et al., 2014; Steger, 2012)

 

Meaning plays an important role in

  1. coping with stress,
  2. trauma, and adversity,
  3. including greater use of effective coping strategies, such as using cognitive reappraisal of stressors and
  4. avoiding emotional suppression.

 

Meaning has both buffering against pessimism and building effects for Optimism.

Positive Psychology Part: Did you know that coping strategies could lower your stress level?

Stress is defined by Lazarus and Folkman (1984) as the internal or external demands appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the individual.

 Studies shows that positive psychology can help you to increase the experience of positive cognition (e.g., positive reappraisal) and positive emotions (e.g., gratitude)

hold significant promise for helping people bolster their mental health.

 These have demonstrated effects on a number of indicators of psychological well being such as:

  • positive affect
  • meaning and purpose
  • depression.

Study results suggest that positive psychology interventions have much to offer to help everyone cope better with both day-to-day stress as well as more major stressors.

 If you ask yourself: Which positive psychology intervention are possible to integrate them into my daily business?

Here are some examples you could use with each other in your daily communication:

  • noticing positive events,
  • savoring,
  • gratitude,
  • mindful awareness,
  • positive reappraisal,
  • personal strengths,
  • acts of kindness,
  • self-compassion
  • appreciation and recognition

 “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Ghandi

Positive Psychology: The power of self-compassion to overcome adversity

Self -compassion means to treat your self with care, kindness and concern you would show to your be loved when they are struggling.

In this way, treat yourself like you would behave towards others.

 Often we are more cruel and colder to our-self than to others. Self-compassion turns this around and we have against us compassion as well.

To be able to be compassion against our-self we need to be mindful with our feelings and pains we have.

There fore we have to observe them, accept them and acknowledge them instead of ignoring and suppress them. We need to look at the chance of the situation than to focus on how bad things are.

 Instead of feeling isolated and lonely we should assume that nobody is perfect and has to deal by them self with challenges in their live.

This is what differentiates self- compassion from self-pity.

 Instead of trying to replace bad feelings with ‘better’ ones, we can create sustainable positive emotions through dealing with our suffering with kindness and care. In this way both sort of feelings can be felt in parallel. Such friendly and benevolent ability helps us to come over the difficulties we are coping with and explain why self-compassionate people are happier, more optimistic, and satisfied with their lives than those who don´t care for them self.

From a scientific perspective strengthen such behaviour your immune system and enhances physical health by decreasing cortisol and increasing heart rate variability.