Click on one of the articles below:

Smile and Others Smile with You: Health Benefits, Emotional Contagion & Mimcry
Healthy Minds Reside in Healthy Bodies
What is Positive Psychology?
Becoming an Optimist
Science of Gratitude
Shining Your Light

What do you do when bad things happen to you? More importantly, how do you explain why that bad thing has happened to you? Do you tell yourself that bad thing happened because you have rotten luck? Or that it’s all your fault and you never get things right?

Research shows that how you explain why the events occur is one of the most powerful predictor of whether or not you become depressed. This is what separates resilient people who are able to bounce back on their feet when bad events happen to them and people who become paralyzed when adversity strikes.

Great news! According to world famous psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman and decades of scientific research, you can learn to become more optimistic! I’ll teach you how.

Read on…

Firstly, there is a lot more to pessimism than seeing the glass half-empty and a lot more to optimism than looking on the bright side of things. Optimism and pessimism are not traits they are ways of thinking.

That’s important, I’ll repeat it. It is not about what happens to you, it’s about the way that you think!

That means you are not born an optimist or a pessimist, you learn to think like an optimist or a pessimist. Psychologists fondly refer to this as your explanatory style (ES); or how you explain the good and bad things that happen to you in your life.

Dr. Martin Seligman shows that people with a pessimistic explanatory style are more likely to describe the bad things that happen in their life as being their fault. If, for example, you ask a depressed child or one with a pessimistic ES, why he failed the test, his reply might be something like, “I’m stupid,” “I suck at school,” or “My teacher hates me!” A child with an optimistic ES might say he failed the test because, “The test was hard,” or “I did not study enough”. It is irrelevant which explanation for the failed test is true. What’s important is what happens after years of building and accumulating thoughts that support either ES.

There is a model for explanatory style. We call it:

Me vs. Not Me
Always vs. Not Always
Everything vs. Not Everything.

People with a pessimistic ES describe negative events as Me, Always and Everything and positive events as Not Me, Not Always and Not Everything. For example, Jack asks a Kelly out on a date and she politely declines. Having a pessimistic ES, Jack thinks to himself, “No wonder she doesn’t want to go out with me, I’m a loser”. He explains the event as being his fault (Me), and not just limited to this situation (Everything), saying “I’m a loser,” refers to many areas of his life. Taking it further, he might even think, “I’ll never get married” (Always).

If a positive event happens, like getting the job he wants, and someone asks him why that good thing happen, he might say “I got lucky.” He certainly wouldn’t forecast more luck in his future. The positive thing isn’t attributed to his qualifications for the position (Not Me). He is referring to luck in this one particular situation (Not Always) which would be different from someone saying, “I’m a lucky kind of guy” or predict this luck to trickle into his love life (Not Everything).

Someone with an optimistic ES that gets rejected would say something like, “She is just not interested (Not Me). Oh well plenty of fish in the sea.” That one negative event does not pervade their whole life (Not Everything) and just because this person rejected them doesn’t mean everyone will (Not Always). Positive events, like getting a job are the result of their own actions “I got the job because I’m qualified for the position (Me) and I present myself well to others (Everything).

Test this out in your own life. Think back to the negative events. Why did those things happen? And the good events? Are you expecting more positive events in your future? Or you on the look out for all the things that could go wrong?

Remember, we create our own reality based on our thoughts. Most of the time we don’t pay attention to our thoughts and we accept them as unquestionable truth. So tune in. Challenge your Me, Always, Everything thoughts with the possibility of Not Me, Not Always, Not Everything thoughts.

Again, this is one of the most powerful techniques for combating depression and increasing your happiness. Put it into action!

Now can a person have too much optimism? Yes, they can. But that will be the topic of another article.

Gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to increase your health and life-satisfaction.

Let's start of with what happens when you are in a crappy mood. You'll notice that the good 'ol adage, "When it rains it pours," holds true. You wake up and the day gets off to a bad start, you fight with your family and running late to work. Then you unexpectedly hit traffic which thoroughly pisses you off, and then the guy next to you nearly smashes into your car when he's trying to change lanes. You turn on the news and hear about the negative and violent events going on in the news, which makes you even more upset. You get to work now and you are fired up, pissed off and prone to anxiety from your morning. You can see how this wave of negative can continue if not escalate for the remainder of the day. This is a negative cycle to get stuck in and only breeds more negativity.

Contrast that to the feeling you get when you are grateful for what you have and things are going well in your life. You wake up, the sun is shining. You have breakfast with your family where you take a moment to express gratitude for the meal that is nourishing your body and for the family you have. You leave for work and you hit traffic. But your not stressed about it, you know you can't control the traffic so you just sit back and take this as an opportunity to listen to some music till you get to work. You get to the office content, happy and ready to tackle your day.

Scientists describe this positive loop as the link between gratitude and happienss. When you feel grateful for something you have, you enhance the experience of it. You can savor it longer. For example, if I'm really grateful to be spending time with my best friend, research shows that reinforcing to myself that I am grateful helps me experience the situation more fully. When we feel grateful and have these enhanced experiences we are happier. When we are happier, we tend to notice more good things happening around us and feel more grateful. It's really a wonderful cycle to be in.

Additional research shows that grateful people:

- Are happier and more optimistic
- Spend more time exercising and caring for themselves
- Are more energetic and enthusiastic
- Sleep better bpth quantitatively and qualitatively
- Are more likely to be pro-social and do things for others
- Have lower rates of cardiovascular disease
- Have higher life satisfaction

In studies where people were told to express gratitude for something, compared to a control group, those who expressed gratitude:

- Experienced increased immune systems
- Decressed blood pressure, stress hormones and depressive symptoms
- Had increased positive mood. vitality and general well being.

Luckily gratitude is one of the quickest ways to increase your happiness level. It doesn't take years to master and you experience the benefits instantaneously, Start right now, what is one thing that you are grateful for? What other opportunities will you have today to express gratitude for something you have or are doing? Set a reminder for yourself to express gratitude throughout the day. Keep a gratitude journal and in the evenings write down what you are grateful for and how you contributed to that good thing happening.

One of my favorite cartoons reads, "If you aren't grateful than you're not paying attention" That's because if you begin to pay attention you'll see that there is tons of things to be grateful for in the world around you. Begin to acknowledge those things is one of the most powerful things you can do for your health and well being.

Marianne Williamson said that people do not fear failure as much as they fear stepping into their greatness. If you look at the evolutionary roll of fear, it is meant to warn you of potential future threats. Our ancestors that were very good at anticipating all things that could go wrong had a hire survival rate than those who were overly optimistic about the future. During those times you needed to anticipate the life threatening tiger lurking in the bushes. If you thought the kitty was there just to play nice, you weren't passing your genes along.

So the genes that survived were the ones that anticipated bad things happening. Now this is the most important part. Those threats are potential, they aren't necessarily real or accurate. Nowadays we don't have the same life threatening events.

Stepping out of your comfort zone creates the same types of visceral reactions. It's something different, new and potentially scary. So your brain and body begins to get worked up, sirens scream "Warning, you can get hurt." And you begin to think of all the things that can go wrong.

Begin to recognize that just because those things can possible go wrong, doesn't mean they are going to. And that youro brain is hard wired to detect those possible threats. The question is, what will serve you best in the moment and how accurate are those treats. Say you are in a job that you hate and you have tons of fears about leaving. Your mind chatters "What if I never get another job?" "What if I can't make my bills?" "What if my family suffers?" You can "what if" yourself all day and still not exhaust all the possibilities.

It's important to learn how to accurately assess those threats and how rational those fears are. Learn to, as Susan Jeffreys puts it, feel the fear and do it anyway. Because afterall that is really all that it is... an emotion that wants to protect you from getting hurt. And the truth of the matter is, you will find a new job and that it most likely will not be as bad as you think.

Think back to a time where that happened to you. You had all these fears about things that could go wrong, but you did it anyway. What did that feel like? You expanded yourself, your comfort zone grew. I'll put money on the fact that those things you feared didn't come true and the outcome was well worth taking the risk.

Fear of failure is a common fear that people have. The pain of failure is so great they avoid it all costs. But I think the fear of greatness is even stronger than fear of failure. Imagine you are limitless and have the power to do just about anything you put your mind to doing. The fact that you aren't doing the things that you want to do and that you are living a minimally fulfilling life is pretty painful. Knowing that the problem isn't that you are going to fail but that if you are really powerful, why haven't you taken control of your life sooner.

We all have an inner light, an inner gift that we are here to spread. Living a life of fulfillment, of flourishing involves feeling the fear of failure and fear of greatness and doing it anyway. Recognize that many of the fears and insecurities we have are not accurate, they are just thoughts and emotions. Choose to step into your own power and greatness, take those slightly uncomfortable steps to making your life better.

In the early days, psychology was mainly about research. They wanted to understand how reflexes worked (touch a hot stove… Ouch! Move your hand away), perception worked (I see an old lady… now I see a princess...) and how behavior worked (dog sees food… it salivates).

When psychology started it had 3 aims: treat and cure mental illness, support ‘creative genius’ or prodigies which back then may have been mistaken for mental illness, and help every day people live better lives.

Mental illness became a popular topic after WWI and WWII.  Psychologists who used to play in labs and give lectures all day had new career opportunities. They could treat people who were coming home from war plagued by mental illness.

And poof…

A lot of funding and money poured into studying how to fix what was wrong with people.

Well in 2008, we now know A LOT about what is wrong with people. We have treatments for most mental illnesses and even some cures. We also know a lot about creative genius, but as a whole psychology did not know a lot about your every day Joe.

So in 1998 Dr. Martin Seligman created a new field in psychology… positive psychology.

Seligman spent most of his life studying depression and proved that depression is learned. Then he asked, what about optimism?

For a long time, psychologists thought that if you took a person who was depressed and took their depression away, you’d have a happy person. But that’s not true.

Just because you don’t have a cold, doesn’t mean you are optimally healthy. Just because you aren’t depressed doesn’t mean you feel vibrant, joyful and love your life.

The field of positive psychology, sometimes referred to as the science of happiness, uses the same scientific rigor that has been applied to studying what’s wrong with people and how to fix them, to understanding the breadth of human potential. Positive psychologists conduct research on things like optimism, resilience, grit, hope, joy, awe, strengths, happiness, flow, prayer, and humor.

Anyone can apply the research that has come out of positive psychology into their lives and careers. Practitioners such as psychologists, therapists and life coaches, use positive psychology to find what is already working with clients and help them build their strengths, find engagement and meaning in their life. They help them feel happier and more fulfilled.

Positive psychology is different than “happiology”. We are not advocating people be happy, happy, happy all the time. It’s extremely important to feel angry, frustrated and sad when it is appropriate. Positive psychology is about what Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar calls, “the permission to be human.” That is, feeling all the emotions that human beings feel as opposed to trying to tell ourselves we should be happy all the time. It's about allowing yourself to feel all emotions as they come up without getting stuck.

For a long time, psychology did not give people the permission to be human. The field was heavily skewed on the side of mental illness, positive psychology is about evening out the scale. Bringing as much focus to the positive side of life as we have to the negative. 

The research coming out of positive psychology is fascinating. Never before have scientists ran double-blind placebo studies on things like happiness, gratitude and optimism.

Now, you might be thinking, why bother conducting a research study to find out that doing good things for others can help you feel better? I completely agree with you. Inherently we know those things are good and we should do that. But, how many miserable or slightly unhappy people do you come across in your life? How many people do you know that go out of their way to do something nice for someone else? Even better, go out of their way for a complete stranger?

Research shows that you can dramatically and instantaneously improve your happiness level just by doing something nice for someone else. These people are happier, have better relationships, are more liked by others and feel better about themselves.

Yes, we know that doing these things can benefit our lives. But we forget. Or we don’t realize the impact it can have on us.

Sound scientific research is powerful stuff. A study showed that sales people who learn skills on becoming more resilient and optimistic were three times more successful than their depressed counterparts. If you’re a company owner, that’s a big deal.

Research shows that engaging in work that enables you to use your strengths and what you are naturally good at not only enables you to be happier but also more effective. Makes sense right? But how many people do you know that actually get to do what they are good at and love to do every day?

Positive psychology is unique from self-help and pop psychology. Its founder Martin Seligman is very clear that positive psychology should be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. Meaning, rather than doing research about what increases happiness and then telling people what to do with their lives, positive psychology should describe the research on these topics. According to Seligman, people conduct sound studies on topics such as resilience, gratitude and prayer, figure out how these things affect people and the mechanisms by which they work.

Then they educate people on what the research shows. For example, studies show that expressing increases your experience of positive emotions and reduces symptoms of depression. Grateful people are more optimistic about future events, feel more connected with others and even report better quality sleep. As scientists conduct these studies they aim to understand the mechanisms involved in gratitude: how does it work? Why does it work?

Positive psychologist say, “show people the research, help them make informed decisions about what would work best in their life.” This is powerful and profoundly different from prescribing or telling people how to live their lives.

In my practice, I combine both a descriptive and a prescriptive approach. I describe positive psychology based approaches for creating the positive change they want to see, and I make suggestions based on what has worked for me and others I have worked with.

As a field, positive psychology has taken off. Just Google “happiness” + “study” and look at how much happiness has been in the media recently. Try words like resilience, joy, humor, strengths, grit, life satisfaction and you’ll see that positive psychology is rapidly expanding. The formal definition of positive psychology, a la Wikipedia, is “the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.” Every month there are more and more fascinating studies coming out in the field. We have barely scratched the surface of what we understand to be these strengths and virtues, nevertheless, positive psychology is transforming people’s lives world wide.

If you would like to keep abreast of research in positive psychology, and receive my descriptions and prescriptions for creating positive change in your life, click here to sign-up for my free newsletter.