4 posts tagged “joy”

Read the book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by foremost researcher, Martin Seligman.

It is the best book for learning how to become more resilient and successful in work and in relationships.

What makes some people more capable than others in maintaining close relationships and improving their performance? More than your IQ, hard work, or attractiveness, your level of optimism determines your success and happiness. That's what former American Psychology Association president Dr. Martin Seligman discovered.

To rebound from difficulties and capture more opportunities, learn from the most experienced researcher on the topic exactly how to be a clear-eyed optimist. After 15 years of studying helplessness and hopelessness, this pioneer in Positive Psychology turned his attention to studying optimism. Our physical and emotional health and capacity to maintain strong relationships and to get ahead in work are directly related to our level of optimism, Seligman found. He made another extraordinary discovery: you can actually learn to become more optimistic.

Unlike many shallow "think positive" books, this one is backed by sound research. As opposed to those who advocate boosting self-esteem regardless of one's abilities, Seligman teaches people to be positively proactive in light of their actual situations.

Seligman found that depressives have pessimistic thought patterns that are destructive. They focus on how things will get worse, believing that a bad situation is Permanent (will always be this bad), Pervasive (because this bad happened, I see the bad side of everything in my life), and Personal (most of all it happened worst to me). They often prove themselves right. If you want to step out of that downward spiral of destructive behavior, read and practice Seligman's methods.

I have given this book to 43 very smart, successful men who created their own walls of depression in the midst of their achievement. They liked the concrete, research-based program to make real change.  Their wives and co-workers liked the changes too.

Take the questionnaire in this book to learn where you are on the pessimist-to-optimist scale. Read how your level of optimism is affecting your life. Then follow the suggested steps to lift your level of optimism and maintain it at that higher level.

Organizations as diverse as a major insurance company and the UC-Berkeley swim team have used Seligman's methods to dramatically improve morale and performance. I have read this book four times and given away over 50 copies.

This book is especially important for girls entering their teen years where their higher-than-average optimism tends to fall. If you've experienced recent failures, want to hire the best job candidate, or hope to support those you manage in becoming more successful, read this book. Every home, school, and counseling or H.R. office should have a copy of this book.

To brighten your life further, practice ways to bring out others' more optimistic side so you can become happier and higher performing together. Read how in LikeABILITY, which you can download immediately.

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
a book by Paul Ekman

"What is he really feeling?," you ponder as you search his face. If you knew, you might get along better. For recognizing true emotions -- yours and others' -- read this book. From the preeminent expert on reading faces and on deception comes his most complete book yet.

I have a friend who looks judgmental when he's in contemplation and a client who appears angry when she's tired. With this book you can become more adept at reading others' emotional signals. Also learn to alter your own feelings through recognizing them sooner. Book includes photos and exercises, such as how to recognize a genuine smile. Ekman's clients range from the FBI to Pixar animation studios.

"There hasn't been a book on this subject of such range and insight since Darwin's famous Expression of the Emotions" is how Oliver Sacks describes this book that culls from 40 years of research.

Everyone from lawyers to teachers and salesfolks can use Ekman's insights to better understand human behavior.

As you learn to recognize emotions -- yours and others -- you can also learn to sidestep conflict and bring out the best in others by reading LikeAbility. You can download it right now.

Don't stop there. Enjoy becoming more clear, compelling and quotable by listening to 100 communication and persuasion tips in Make Yourself Memorable.

Book:  Show us a book everyone should read before they die. 
Submitted by Rob.

The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate by Harriet Lerner.

Great book, especially for women, for strengthening your most cherished relationships.

While we share many of our most joyful moments with our family members and dearest friends, our deepest struggles often arise out of those same relationships. When women feel a conflicting tug of emotions in attempting to share concerns, seek support, or stand up for oneself, psychologist Lerner suggests responses to demonstrate one's authentic self.

How can you care for yourself and be caring with others? Learner's thoughtful advice has helped me with such questions for some twenty years. Her approaches to our most common dilemmas show how we can be vulnerable with those we love without becoming a doormat or a nag. From the enormously popular author of The Dance of Intimacy, The Dance of Deception, and The Mother Dance comes her most widely useful book yet -- one of my two favorites -- along with The Dance of Anger -- in an illuminating series.

This book is a thoughtful gift for a family member's or friend's birthday, wedding, approaching empty nest, or other significant situation.

... to Move Past Procrastination to Savor Your Just Rewards

Remember the agitated, bleary late-night looks on your friends' faces in college as they attempted to cram a semester of learning into the night before a final? Perhaps you were one of those crammers.

Then you probably resented righteous-looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.

 You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks.

Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.

 We just have different kinds of places we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village of Sausalito.

Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour (minimum needed) work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?

 Here's some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.

Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios

Picture the worst and best case situations -- in all their emotional details -- for not starting an important task now.

How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right?

How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly?

What if you intend to start it later today?

How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?

 What small indulgence could you give yourself when you're done? Take a break to savor time with a colleague who makes you laugh? Get a surprise gift for a friend who's been especially thoughtful recently? Dive into another, slightly less pressing task and actually get ahead of the curve for once?

 See Your Success Again and Again

 Since most nurses have time-pressed lives, allowing yourself to savor each success is akin to imprinting on your psyche the experience of satisfaction with a task completed.

Just as athletes learn new habits to improve performance by watching videos of master athletes, then store up memories of those images of successful work-outs for their constant internal play-back, your stored-up memories of ease in task completion can motivate you to have those satisfying experiences more often.

You are literally seeing yourself repeat your performance. That's new habit-forming. You will become more naturally inclined to dive in early and get more tasks completed in a state of inward and outward grace.

 Take on a Big Task, a Bite at a Time

 Large or unfamiliar tasks where you don't feel especially confident about your future performance are the ones you're most likely to avoid. Write down the steps to completion.

 Call this approach "going slow to go faster later."
 Writing will make the steps more real and doable to you and your commitment to the timetables you attach to each task become more vital. They are right in front of you. Post your " tasks and timetable" where you can't avoid seeing it. Tell others of your commitment to that sheet. These actions will place the task higher in your consciousness.

 
Reward Yourself and Savor Your Rewards

Plan your rewards ahead of time. Diligent nurse that you are, don't deny yourself the reward when you are done by rushing onto the next task. Life goes by too fast anyway. For example, when I complete boring tasks -- and not before -- I allow myself time to do something that gives me pleasure, such as a stop at a bookstore or time with a friend. When I finish a big important task I give myself a bigger reward such as a trip or new outfit.

 Sidelong Glancing at It

Sometimes facing a task straight on just makes you freeze. Try to picture how to do it by "sidelong glancing", that is getting small glimpses out of the corner of your mental eye about how you can most easily do the task.

One of the best ways is to literally get moving and looking around. In times of mind-blocks, anger or tension, men tend to act out more while women tend to shut down, moving less. You will be more aware of your emotions and motivations when you get into motion. Consider walking, showering, eating or otherwise being "on your way" to doing the task. You will let your mind go naturally free.

 When you are in motion and not focusing directly on what you have to do, especially if you can get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, you can literally see farther, gain a larger perspective and see how the parts of the task can fit together.

You will pull up ideas from lower in your consciousness, think of apparently unrelated ideas that do, in fact, have a bearing on ways to get the task done. Your unconscious mind becomes your friend in helping you recognize your best path to accomplishing the task. And the task will seem less onerous because you lift your mood when you put yourself in motion.