September 2023 – Food for thoughts

Define your value / worth in life

We often give more power to others to decide what value we have. In my eyes this should be different. I think it should always start with allowing ourselves to recognise and internalise our own value.

We tend to accept that our value is defined by the opinions of others, by our salary or by our status symbols. We rarely reflect on the skills we possess and who we are in terms of character. What value would we place on ourselves?

In my opinion, we must first value ourselves from within and define how we see our own worth, not measure our own worth through the eyes of others who can only judge from their own beliefs and value us by comparing us to what they are doing. Appreciation that comes from the outside has to be seen in the context of the situation. As an extreme example to illustrate my thoughts, surely the value that a mafia boss would define would be opposite to a clergyman on some issues.

When we begin to value ourselves, we will be able to value others in a non-judgmental way. If we begin to value ourselves, we will be more patient with others and less competitive, because we will have little or no need for the appreciation and recognition of others.

Our own appreciation and esteem for ourselves should be enough and weigh more than that of others.

I found this story, with thanks to Nadja Sandmann for posting the German version, which illustrates these thoughts very well: https://youtu.be/tb5iRxXahyI

Coaching is like a good (mental) fitness trainer

The main analogy is that the performance coach needs to be a role model.

Only when he/she shows the same attitudes, behavior and mindset what the performance coach wants to see at the employee, the employee will adapt it. When your sports trainer is not accurate in what he/she practise the mistake will be transferred to the participant.

The analog to a trainer and a performance coaching is

accountable partnership
process discipline
process goals
planning
review/ tracking / recording progress
attitude role modelling

Without a trainer / coach the most people would have achieved less of what they would have reached without a specialist accountability partner who ensures that the agreed process is rigorously followed, and that performance progress is tracked and visible.

There is an investment in an optional service with results that are exponentially better than if the individual or team went without focused and specialist support.

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:

coherence,
significance
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

coping with stress,
trauma, and adversity,
including greater use of effective coping strategies, such as using cognitive reappraisal of stressors and
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

Chocolate and its dark side

Chocolate in all combinations and tasts smile at you from every supermarket. But the sweet seduction also has its dark side. I’m not talking about dark chocolate, but about what researchers have recently discovered.

In a study of 1018 adults (694 men and 324 women) from San Diego, California, without diabetes or known coronary artery disease was studied in a cross-sectional analysis, wanted to find out whether depressive or depressive-prone people have an increased consumption of chocolate.

This was indeed proven. The higher the score for depression, the higher the chocolate consumption.

It is still unclear whether chocolate triggers depression or whether depression causes more chocolate to be eaten in order to activate serotonin production.

It’s just like Paracelsus said: „All things are poisons, for there is nothing without poisonous qualities. It is only the dose which makes a thing poison.“

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.

What is the characteristic of a highly motivated person?

According to Prof. Michaela Brom-Badry, lecturer in the theory of motivation at the University of Karlsruhe, there are three identical characteristics of looking at oneself as a reason to be highly motivated.

These are:

Acting Autonomously: If you would say the following sentence to yourself: „I have the choice and feel free in what I do“, then you perceive your activity as acting autonomously. The higher your satisfaction with your own autonomy, the higher your sense of well-being and motivation to perform.
Competent: If the following sentence fits you, you feel competent: „I have the feeling that I can successfully master difficult tasks.
Socially Connected: If you are socially connected, you would say: „I have a warm feeling for the people I spend time with.“ Or „I feel close and connected to people I care about.“

If you want to feel more motivated, work on the three things: Feeling free, feeling competent and feeling connected.

Positive Psychologe: For the future we need courage!

Courage with which it is possible for us to overcome our fear, to be able to go new ways, to trust ourselves, to overcome our own limits, to live our own convictions, to be authentic, to master life, to grow personally, in short, to live in our personal courage zone.

Courage is something different for everyone.

It means taking a risk to achieve a goal that is valuable to oneself. Therefor the proportionality plays an important role.

The relative proportionality of the risk compared to the value of the goal is based on the subjective assessment of the person taking or observing the action. Actions that are considered courageous by all are usually those where everyone agrees that the risk is significant, and the goal is valuable.

Courage plays a special role in times of crisis or challenging situations to overcome them.

If you like to reflect what the meaning of courage is to you, feel free to use the thought flower.

Positive Psychology: Power of Gratitude

To work in harmonious and force human flourishing you should be grateful and demonstrate gratitude to reach this aim. This is scientifically proven.

In order to get a positive emotional reaction to one’s own behaviour, it is necessary to promote goodness in itself through gratitude in and towards oneself.

Gratitude is well proven in many studies that this is beneficial for your well-being in the psychology, physical and spiritual level. Gratitude supports you to have in orientation in your life it lowers the stress level and increase the positive emotions, and through gratitude social relationship will flourish and maintain.

With your appreciation you support the interrelationship between each other.

Studies shows that gratitude helps you to overcome critical situations in live and see the tragic in your life with more distance.

Like Solomon a lecturer on Søren Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre and other said in the Oxford University press 20002:

Gratitude, I want to suggest, is not only the best answer to the tragedies of life. It is the best approach to life itself.