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Are you a High Hoper?

Hope is a psychological construct which is receiving more and more attention in the field of positive psychology. Hope helps us to achieve our goals in the face of adversity and gives us the willpower to keep going. High hopers have higher levels of well-being including improved relationships and performance and decreased negative emotions (Worgan, 2013).

Hope is different from optimism. Optimism can be defined as the extent to which people hold generable favourable expectancies for their future (Carver, Scheier & Segerstorm, 2010). Hope can be defined as the extent to which individuals can find pathways to reach their goals, and become motivated to reach those pathways (Synder, Rand & Sigmon) and is more goal specific than optimism.

There are three key elements to hope:

1) Goal directed thinking – our perception of our short and long term goals

2) Pathways thinking – or the ability to find different paths to reach our goals

3) Agency thinking – the motivation and will power to work towards our goals. We can call this our determination to achieve our goals!!

So how can we increase our levels of hope? Here are a few ideas!!

Do a brainstorming session, writing down as many possible paths to achieving your goal as possible.
Have a discussion with a friend or colleague – share your goal and ask how they would achieve the goal if it were their own!!
Write a list of five reasons why achieving your goal is important.
Reflect on your values. What are your top three values? Go back to your goal and relate it to your top three values.
Imagine you have achieved your goal. How would this feel? What would be different in your life? Make a list of the positive changes that achieving your goal would bring!!

Are you working on achieving an important goal? Would you try these ideas? I’d love to hear about your experiences!!

Positive Ageing

The thought of ageing is a scary concept for many of us. We’re constantly bombarded with messages about the beauty of youth, and the concept of old age is regarded by many as a time for dependency and losing the ability to enjoy the things one previously loved.

The way we age however, is heavily shaped by our perceptions around ageing.

Research in the field of positive psychology is extending to examine well-being during old age. Research by psychologist Carol Ryff describes the most important criteria for being well adjusted during old age as:

Being socially responsible and interested in others
Having the capacity to accept change
Being compassionate, caring and responsive to others

Harvard Professor of Psychiatry, Dr George Vaillant, in his book Positive Ageing, conducted research which followed 824 people for 60 years, from teen years to becoming grandparents! Based on this, Valliant outlines several predictors, which if adhered to before the age of 50, can lead to good physical and mental health at ages 70, 80 and beyond:

Positive relationships, including a good marriage
Alcohol used in moderation only
Creativity and playfulness
Learning to make younger friends and form new relationships as older friends are lost
Pursuing education and achievement
Ability to find creative ways to cope with difficult situations
Altruistic behaviour
Staying physically active
Being a non-smoker
Having a healthy weight

Some amazing research was done by Ellen Langer, Harvard Psychology Profession, in her “Counter Clockwise” study. Dr Langer had elderly men in their 70’s and 80’s attend a one week retreat where they were required to live like it was 1959!! The study involved the men reading only material from the time of 1959 or before, discussing the politics of the time and writing letters as their younger selves in 1959 to share with the other participants. At the end of the study, the men were evaluated as appearing taller, having better posture, having higher scores on intelligence tests and being perceived as younger by others viewing photographs of them. The researcher, Dr Langer, even reported that at the end of the week she was playing football with elderly men who had previously been walking with canes!! Some of the men who had been dependent on family members to help them with many activities of daily living were functioning independently during the retreat, including helping with meals and tidying up.

What amazing evidence to show that having a “young” mindset can have massive impacts of the physical body!!

Will you continue to maintain a “young” mind as you age? Do you have grandparents/parents/friends/relatives who have achieved amazing things in their old age? I would love to hear your stories!!

Acts of kindness can boost your happiness

Can doing something kind for others make you feel happier?

In a study by Lyubomirsky, Tkach & Sheldon (2004) students were asked to perform five acts of kindness each week, for a period of six weeks. The type of acts included things like visiting an elderly relative, donating blood, helping a friend with a paper, writing a thankyou note etc. Students completed measures of well-being before and after the six week period.

The results showed that the well-being of the students increased following the intervention….however, the researchers found that the timing of the acts of kindness was crucial…..only the students who did all of their acts of kindness in a single day each week showed increased well-being, not the students who spread their generosity over the entire week!!

So why is this!? A reason may be that because many of the kind acts performed by the students were small ones, spreading them out over a whole week may have decreased their power, or made them harder to distinguish from day-to-day habitual kind behaviours.

This fits in with another study by Baumester, Vohs, Aasker & Garbinsky (2013) which outlined that helping others is not correlated with happiness, but that people who help others have higher levels of meaning in their lives than people who don’t help others.

What does this mean? Helping others is related to higher levels of meaning in our lives and can help our well-being, but several small acts of kindness over one day are more likely to achieve this!!

Would you do a weekly “kindness” day? How might you do it? I would love to hear your ideas!!

How to Beat Performance Anxiety

Brooks (2013) conducted a series of studies looking at performance anxiety across different settings including giving a speech, singing karaoke and completing a maths test.

The studies found that individuals who “reappraised” their anxiety into thoughts of excitement, performed better than people who told themselves to remain calm.

Trying to deal with pre-performance anxiety? Try re-framing your feelings of anxiety into thoughts of excitement! Try some positive self talk with simple phrases like “lets get excited!” or “I can’t wait to do this!!” This is more effective than attempting to calm down.

Also – remember, we have an optimum level of anxiety that helps us to perform better! A little bit of nerves may actually help you!! (Just don’t tell yourself to calm down!!)

What techniques do you use to beat pre-performance anxiety? Would you try this technique?

How to use your signature strengths

Are you looking for ways to boost your sense of well-being?

Research shows that people who are aware of their strengths and who regularly use and apply those strengths, have greater levels of well-being (Govindi & Linley, 2007).

Do you know what your signature strengths are?

Try the Values in Action questionnaire online for free, to find out what your top 5 strengths are!! Once you identify your strengths, ask yourself the following questions:

How can I use one or more of my strengths on a daily basis?

How can I apply my strengths to one of my work tasks today?

Photo by RnR photographers

References

Govindi, R. & Linley, A (2007) Strengths use, self concordance and well-being: Implications for Coaching and Coaching Psychologists. International Coaching Psychology Review, 2(2), 143-154

Boost your psychological capital

What is psychological capital? Psychological capital is made up of four unique characteristics – hope, optimism, resilience and self efficacy. Studies should that people who score high in measures of Psychological Capital have better psychological wellbeing, as well as increased on the job performance (Avery, Reichard, Luthans and Mhatre, 2011).

So how can you increase your psychological capital to capitalise (excuse the pun!) your wellbeing?

Here are a few strategies you can try:

Set yourself small and challenging goals to increase your sense of self efficacy. Try breaking down tasks into smaller components to make them less daunting.
Master a task!! Task mastery increases self efficacy. How can you do this? Try observing someone such as a mentor or colleague and modelling the task based on their example. Online tutorials such as You-Tube clips can be a great way to master a new skill if you don’t have a real life example.
Reflect on times you’ve overcome setbacks in the past to increase your resilience! How did you do it?
Ask others to discuss how they might overcome a setback if they were in a similar position to increase your repertoire of strategies.
Think about how you can view a current challenging or difficult situation through a different perspective. Are you working long hours at the moment? What are some benefits of the situation? Are you taking on more of a leadership role and expanding your skills?

Would you put any of these strategies to the test?

References

Avey, J.B., Reichard, R.J., Luthans, F. & Mhatre, K.H. (2011). Meta-analysis

of the impact of positive psychological capital on employee attitudes, behaviors, and performance, Human Resource Development Quarterly, 22(2), 127-152

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Broaden and build with positive emotions

Positive emotions do more than make us feel good – they in fact help to increase our intellectual, social and physical resources!

The Broaden and Build Theory (Fredrikson, 2001) states that positive emotions such as joy, interest, contentment, pride and love increase our repertoire of thoughts and behaviours. For example, the emotion of interest increases the urge to explore and take in new information, and the emotion of joy increases our urge to play and be creative. The emotion of love increases our urge to savour and share experiences with our loved ones.

Negative emotions on the other hand, narrow our range of potential strategies for action – for example, the negative emotion of fear may lead us to simply flee or escape danger, which serves for the purpose of survival. However, when imminent danger is not present, negative emotions may narrow our range of cognitive resources when we need them the most. For example, you’re about to give an important presentation at work and are feeling terrified – the emotion of fear may lead us to focus narrowly on the task at hand, where are positive emotions may in fact help us to deliver a potentially more creative or socially inclusive presentation.

What are the implications of the Broaden and Build Theory for you? By experiencing more positive emotions, you may find that you perform better at tasks, think more creatively and flexibly and build stronger social connections!! Can you think of some ways you can increase your experience of positive emotions? What makes you happy/excited/interested? How can you harness these experiences to help you excel?

References

Fredrickson, B. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226

The Psychological Benefits of Playing Music

Many studies show that listening to music can enhance performance on cognitive tasks for a short period. This may be due to effect of music on mood and arousal….but what about playing music!? Does this have more long term effects on intellectual ability?

A study by Schellenberg (2005) showed that music lessons in childhood provide “small and general but long lasting intellectual benefits” and that these benefits could not be attributed to other factors like family income and the education level of parents.

With Shellenberg’s study in mind – playing a musical instrument may make it easier to perform well at other non-music related intellectual tasks.Thinking of taking up music lessons!? It’s never too late!!!After playing the guitar since the age of eight, there is no gift I am more grateful for having!! It’s fun, relaxing, and there is always something new to learn!!

Top – Country Road

Cushions – Country Road Home

Lipstick – Lancome Rouge 132

Guitar – Fender Telecaster, 1979 thinline

Photos by Lachy Doley

Change your health behaviour by reflecting on your values

Changing behaviour is not easy. Often we fall into bad habits such as skipping exercise and eating unhealthy food.
For people at high risk of neglecting their health, often hearing messages about healthy eating and exercise falls on deaf ears, and instead can lead to a fear or avoidance response. It’s all too easy to think “I’ll start tomorrow,” no matter how often we hear about the benefits of healthy behaviours.

A new study by Falk et al. (2015) showed that focusing on values that are personally important to an individual can help people to then act on health advice which they previously perceived as threatening.

Participants were given typical advice about health behaviour like they would receive from a doctor, and underwent neurological scans. Prior to receiving advice, half of the participants were lead through a self affirmation exercise where they reflected on what’s important to them, such as work or family. Those who did the self affirmations showed more behaviour change, in a follow up one month after the initial study.

The authors of the study state:

“Neural responses associated with self-related processing and value in response to an otherwise threatening health communication intervention can be changed using self affiramaton….

These findings suggest that affirmation of core values may exert its effects by allowing at-risk individuals to see the self-reference and value in otherwise-threatening messages.”

So what does this mean for you? Are you sitting on the fence of change? Before you seek out information, why don’t you think about your values around the change. For example – you know exercise is a good thing, but just can’t be bothered….why not think about what matters to you first. Do you value looking after your family? Think about how change may make you a better parent/sister/etc. Would better health impact your value of looking after your family?

Think about your values – they might just help you to achieve some serious goals!!

Set Goals, not Resolutions

It’s the new year which means new year’s resolutions. How many years have you found yourself setting resolution after resolution to lose weight, make more money, give up junk food etc, only to find that it’s February and you haven’t been to the gym in weeks, and have just eaten a chocolate brownie!!

Why is it that new year’s resolutions don’t work? Simply put, they are often overly generalised or vague, and don’t have the specificity and planning which is needed to help us succeed.

My advice – set goals (and make them good ones!!).

Here are some simple principles to put in to play which have been demonstrated to help people achieve their goals.

1) Goals must be specific!! Want to lose weight? How much do you want to lose? In what time frame do you want to achieve it? How will you measure it?
Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance (Locke, 1996). Making a goal specific helps us direct our action clearly and makes us more likely to achieve a difficult goal.

2) We need to be committed to our goals, particularly when they are difficult. Our commitment to goals comes through our belief that the goal is important (Locke, 1996). When setting your goals, reflect on how important you feel it is that you achieve it. Did you set the goal yourself, or are you trying to please someone else?

3) Self efficacy and our feeling of competence to achieve a goal fosters goal achievement. Do you feel that you have the skills or abilities to achieve your goal? If not, what will help you to feel more confident? Do you need a mentor, or perhaps additional resources like materials or information. The more empowered you feel, the more likely you are to achieve your goal!

4) Set implementation intentions. Implementation intentions are the small situational cues we set in line with our goals, which prompt us to take action. For example, your goal is to spend one hour each day studying. Your implementation intentions may include the exact time you plan on studying (6pm each night), where you will do it (the desk in your room, with the TV off), the materials you need to do it (notepad, textbook, highlighters). Setting implementation intentions has been shown to increase goal attainment on difficult tasks (Gollwitzer, 1999).

5) Write it down and share it with others!! You’re much more likely to succeed if you put your goal in writing, and enlist the support of others by sharing it with them!!

I hope this has helped with a touch of motivation to start 2015!! What are you goals for the new year?

References

Gollwitzer, P.M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Simple effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503

Locke, E. (1996). Motivation through conscious goal setting. Applied and Preventative Psychology, 5(2), 117-124