23. September 2011 by John Schinnerer.

As an individual who is currently going through divorce, I know firsthand the emotional distress that divorcees experience. Divorce brings up feelings of loss, sadness, anger, jealousy, grief, guilt, shame, embarrassment, and anxiety (to name but a few!).

All of these are normal feelings for one muddling through a divorce. While I have struggled at times with my divorce, overall it has gone better than I ever could have imagined. Yes, there have been days filled with depression. There have been moments of hopelessness. There are the occasional bouts of anger. Yet, on the whole, I greatly misjudged just how difficult the experience would be.

Self-Compassion is the Key to an Easier Divorce

Partly, this success is due to my having taught and practiced self-compassion for the past five years.

Self-compassion is basically being kind to yourself when things go badly. However, this is a greatly watered down version of self-compassion.

The goal is to treat yourself with the same type of kindness and compassion that most people extend to loved ones when they fail. When someone else makes a mistake, most people will react with some degree of kindness and understanding. Self-compassion turns down the volume on anger typically associated with huge mistakes while still maintaining your sense of personal responsibility. A 2007 study at Duke University found that ‘inducing self-compassion may disengage the relationship between taking responsibility and experiencing negative affect.’ This allows you to still take full responsibility for your mistakes while minimizing the amount of time that you spend beating yourself up as well as reduced the intensity of those ubiquitous destructive emotions I mentioned earlier.

The way in which you do this is to speak to yourself as if you were a three-year-old child. This allows for mistakes (which is a major path for learning), screw ups, and errors. Self-compassion is related to greater resiliency (the ability to bounce back from difficulty) which every divorcee can use.

New Study on Self-Compassion and Divorce 

A study is coming out this month in Psychological Science on the importance of self-compassion for those in the midst of a divorce. The authors, David Sbarra, Hillary Smith and Matthias Mehl, state ‘Self-compassion can promote resilience and positive outcomes in the face of divorce.’

The study compared self-compassion to other major traits, such as self-esteem, resistance to depression, realistic optimism, or social intelligence. The findings?

Self-Compassion Accurately Predicted Quickest Positive Outcome Following Divorce 

The only trait that consistently predicted positive outcomes following a divorce was self-compassion. That is amazing!

The study involved 105 participants (38 men and 67 women) with an average age of 40. They’d been married, on average, for 13 years and had been divorced for 3-4 months. The researchers had the participants call to mind their ex-spouse and then talk for four minutes about their thoughts and emotions related to the break up. This was done at three time points - initial visit, three months later and six to nine months later.  The researchers looked at the frequency of intrusive unpleasant thoughts, negative emotions related to the divorce and their ex and how well they were getting on with life since the break up.

Those participants with higher levels of self-compassion recovered from divorce faster and were doing better after the nine month period.

Self-compassion, according to my former Cal classmate, Kristin Neff, is a combination of mindfulness (being aware of feelings of jealousy and anger, for example, without getting stuck in them), an awareness of the interconnectedness of humanity (we all suffer at times), and self-kindness.

Self-compassion, in my opinion, is an integral part of positive psychology in the sense that it is rapidly showing itself to be an instrumental tool in any happy, thriving, meaningful life.

To find out more, check out my award-winning self-help book, Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Managing Emotion and Thought which is currently available for free at www.GuideToSelf.com.

If you are angry about your divorce, please visit my new video blog (vlog) at AngerGeek.com for free tips on how to turn down the volume on anger!

To life, love and laughter,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self, Inc.

Award-winning author, award-winning blogger, national speaker, emotion expert

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26. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily.com….

Peace of Mind Closes Health Gap for Less-Educated, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 25, 2010) — Psychological well-being is powerful enough to counteract the pull of socioeconomic status on the long-term health of the disadvantaged, according to a study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lack of education is a powerful predictor of future poor health and a relatively early death. But among people whose formal education ended with a high school diploma or less, positive psychological characteristics such as meaningful relationships with others and a sense of purpose have a strong connection with lower levels of an inflammatory protein connected to an array of potentially deadly health problems.

“If you didn’t go that far in your education, but you walk around feeling good psychological stuff, you may not be more likely to suffer ill-health than people with a lot of schooling,” says Carol Ryff, UW-Madison psychology professor and co-author of the study, which appears in the current online edition of the journal Health Psychology. “Low educational attainment does not guarantee bad health consequences, or poor biological regulation.”

The researchers measured levels of Interleukin-6 in participants in the Survey of Midlife in the United States, a now 10-year-long study of age-related differences in physical and mental health.
“High levels of IL-6 are associated with many kinds of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, some cancers and other health problems,” says Jennifer Morozink, a UW-Madison psychology graduate student and lead author of the study. “These positive psychological characteristics all moderate the level of IL-6 for people without much education.”

Less-educated people who scored high on measures of general happiness or self-acceptance or who felt that the circumstances of their lives were manageable showed levels of the inflammatory protein comparable to similarly satisfied, but highly-educated peers.

The results are significant, according to Ryff, because they reinforce a new angle on eliminating the wide gap in overall health between the well-to-do and the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

“Other research shows that these psychological factors respond well to intervention,” Ryff says. “Therapies exist that give people the tools to keep all these psychological characteristics working in their favor. They’ve been shown to keep people from falling back into depression and anxiety, which we know means bad things for their health.”

The study, which was funded by the National Institute on Aging and included UW-Madison psychology professor Chris Coe and Institute on Aging scientist Elliot Friedman, melds two new directions in research: a focus on why socioeconomic inequality has such detrimental health effects for have-nots, and a shift toward scrutinizing the health impacts of positive psychological attributes, in contrast to decades of research linking psychological disorders and maladjustment to poor physical health.

“There’s a far richer understanding of how people get these strong psychosocial characteristics than there was not that long ago,” Morozink says. “There are studies of the brain showing people with higher levels of well-being react differently to negative situations.”

Environmental factors are also important in developing resiliency in the face of trying circumstances.

“Attentive parents, strong role models and feeling engaged in and important to their community could contribute a great deal to these psychological characteristics,” Ryff says.
Journal Reference:
1. Jennifer A. Morozink, Elliot M. Friedman, Christopher L. Coe, Carol D. Ryff. Socioeconomic and psychosocial predictors of interleukin-6 in the MIDUS national sample.. Health Psychology, 2010; DOI: 10.1037/a0021360

For a FREE PDF copy of the award-winning self-help book on how to create more positive psychological resources in your life, visit http://www.GuidetoSelf.com. In exchange for your email and name, you will receive an instant free copy of John Schinnerer’s fantastic self-help book Guide To Self: The Beginner’s Guide To Managing Emotion and Thought

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14. October 2010 by John Schinnerer.

From ScienceDaily…

ScienceDaily (Sep. 27, 2010) — A star golfer misses a critical putt; a brilliant student fails to ace a test; a savvy salesperson blows a key presentation. Each of these people has suffered the same bump in mental processing: They have just choked under pressure.

It’s tempting to dismiss such failures as “just nerves.” But to University of Chicago psychologist Sian Beilock, they are preventable results of information logjams in the brain. By studying how the brain works when we are doing our best — and when we choke — Beilock has formulated practical ideas about how to overcome performance lapses at critical moments.

“Choking is suboptimal performance, not just poor performance. It’s a performance that is inferior to what you can do and have done in the past and occurs when you feel pressure to get everything right,” said Beilock, an associate professor in psychology.

Preventing choking in sports Some of the most spectacular and memorable moments of choking occur in sports when the whole world is watching. Many remember golfer Greg Norman’s choke at the 1996 U.S. Masters. Norman had played brilliantly for the first three days of the tournament, taking a huge lead. But on the final day, his performance took a dive, and he ended the Masters five shots out of first place.

Choking in such cases happens when the polished programs executed by the brains of extremely accomplished athletes go awry. In “Choke,” Beilock recounts famous examples of these malfunctions in the context of brain science to tell the story of why people choke and what can be done to alleviate it.

Thinking too much about what you are doing, because you are worried about losing the lead (as in Norman’s case) or worrying about failing in general, can lead to “paralysis by analysis.” In a nutshell, paralysis by analysis occurs when people try to control every aspect of what they are doing in an attempt to ensure success.

Unfortunately, this increased control can backfire, disrupting what was once a fluid, flawless performance.

“My research team and I have found that highly skilled golfers are more likely to hole a simple 3-foot putt when we give them the tools to stop analyzing their shot, to stop thinking,” Beilock said. “Highly practiced putts run better when you don’t try to control every aspect of performance.” Even a simple trick of singing helps prevent portions of the brain that might interfere with performance from taking over, Beilock’s research shows.

Preventing choking on tests and in business The brain also can work to sabotage performance in ways other than paralysis by analysis. For instance, pressure-filled situations can deplete a part of the brain’s processing power known as working memory, which is critical to many everyday activities.

Beilock’s work has shown the importance of working memory in helping people perform their best, in academics and in business. Working memory is lodged in the prefrontal cortex and is a sort of mental scratch pad that is temporary storage for information relevant to the task at hand, whether that task is doing a math problem at the board or responding to tough, on-the-spot questions from a client. Talented people often have the most working memory, but when worries creep up, the working memory they normally use to succeed becomes overburdened. People lose the brain power necessary to excel.

One example is the phenomenon of “stereotype threat.” This is when otherwise talented people don’t perform up to their abilities because they are worried about confirming popular cultural myths that contend, for instance, that boys and girls naturally perform differently in math or that a person’s race determines his or her test performance.

Beilock’s research is the basis of her new book, “Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting it Right When You Have To,” published Sept. 21 by Simon and Schuster, Free Press.

In Choke, Beilock describes research demonstrating that high-achieving people underperform when they are worried about confirming a stereotype about the racial group or gender to which they belong. These worries deplete the working memory necessary for success. The perceptions take hold early in schooling and can be either reinforced or abolished by powerful role models.

In one study, researchers gave standardized tests to black and white students, both before and after President Obama was elected. Black test takers performed worse than white test takers before the election. Immediately after Obama’s election, however, blacks’ performance improved so much that their scores were nearly equal with whites. When black students can overcome the worries brought on by stereotypes, because they see someone like President Obama who directly counters myths about racial variation in intelligence, their performance improves.

Beilock and her colleagues also have shown that when first-grade girls believe that boys are better than girls at math, they perform more poorly on math tests. One big source of this belief? The girls’ female teachers. It turns out that elementary school teachers are often highly anxious about their own math abilities, and this anxiety is modeled from teacher to student. When the teachers serve as positive role models in math, their male and female students perform equally well.

Meditation and practice can help Even when a student is not a member of a stereotyped group, tests can be challenging for the brightest people, who can clutch if anxiety taps out their mental resources. In that instance, relaxation techniques can help.

In tests in her lab, Beilock and her research team gave people with no meditation experience 10 minutes of meditation training before they took a high-stakes test. Students with meditation preparation scored 87, or B+, versus the 82 or B- score of those without meditation training. This difference in performance occurred despite the fact that all students were of equal ability.

Stress can undermine performance in the world of business, where competition for sales, giving high-stakes presentations or even meeting your boss in the elevator are occasions when choking can squander opportunities.

Practice helps people navigate through these tosses on life’s ocean. But, more importantly, practicing under stress — even a moderate amount — helps a person feel comfortable when they find themselves standing in the line of fire, Beilock said. The experience of having dealt with stress makes those situations seem like old hat. The goal is to close the gap between practice and performance.

A person also can overcome anxiety by thinking about what to say, not what not to say, said Beilock, who added that staying positive is always a good idea.

“Think about the journey, not the outcome,” Beilock advised. “Remind yourself that you have the background to succeed and that you are in control of the situation. This can be the confidence boost you need to ace your pitch or to succeed in other ways when facing life’s challenges.”

University of Chicago (2010, September 27). Psychologist shows why we ‘choke’ and how to avoid it. ScienceDaily. Retrieved October 13, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2010/09/100925120110.htm

Mindfulness, meditation, stres management techniques, realistic optimism, resiliency, self-compassion, forgiveness, nonattachment are all examples of tools that are learnable and can be used to improve performance in business and in sports. These tools can be used to improve academic performance as well as satisfaction with life.

For a FREE copy of John’s award-winning self-help book that discusses all of these topics in depth, visit www.GuideToSelf.com and click on the yellow book icon on the left side of the page. In exchange for your email address and name, you will be granted instant access to your very own PDF copy of this invaluable book. Check it out now. It won’t take more than 90 seconds of your time.

All the best,

John Schinnerer, Ph.D.

Founder Guide to Self

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21. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

By Jeremy McCarthy on 17. Aug, 2010 in Mind

Be sure to check out Jeremy’s outstanding blog at The Psychology of Wellbeing!!! He hosts an amazing blog.

Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is the Army’s new training program that uses positive psychology to teach soldiers mental resilience strategies to maintain their psychological wellbeing while confronting the challenges of being separated from families, regularly facing conflict, and losing friends and colleagues.

The program, which calls for an army of “balanced, healthy, self-confident soldiers” and “improved soldier fitness and readiness,” sounds like a good plan to take care of our warriors’ mental health and to take a more holistic approach to toughening them up.  But recently, the program has come under some criticism, primarily for its publicly funded price tag ($117 million as reported in the New York Times) and for ethical questions about whether or not soldiers even should be trained to be desensitized to traumatic events.  Psychologist Bruce Levine recently published an article entitled, “How Psychologists Profit from Unending U.S. Wars,” (published elsewhere as “American Soldiers Brainwashed with ‘Positive Thinking’”,) condemning the program and pointing the finger at psychologists who are pocketing their fair share of the money for training 40,000 drill sergeants (who in turn will train 1.1 million U.S. soldiers.)

Some of Levine’s criticisms I agree with: “Psychologists should loudly warn politicians, military brass, and the nation that if soldiers and veterans discover that they have been deceived about the meaningfulness and necessity of their mission, it is only human for them to become more prone to emotional turmoil, which can lead to destructive behaviors for themselves and others.”  In general, I am a believer that there is usually a peaceful resolution to most conflict and that the U.S. policies tend to emphasize war, rather than negotiation, cooperation and collaboration to resolve issues.  So I don’t like the idea of any program designed to make war easier.

I also am not against criticizing the cost of the program, since I think most of the money we spend on our military efforts could probably be put to better use.  But I question whether the blame should be levied against the psychologists rather than the Army itself.  Our whole society is based on the capitalist ideals of creating services that people need and want in exchange for money.  While we understand that people sell computers and cars for profit, we tend to label as greedy anyone who sells loftier services in the domains of psychological or spiritual wellbeing.  I say, “hate the game, not the players.”

I have heard directly from Martin Seligman, the brains behind the program (and behind positive psychology for that matter) and Karen Reivich, the author of The Resilience Factor and one of the lead trainers for the Army workshops, and their intentions are in the right place.  This program is based on the idea that reactions to traumatic events are normally distributed. This means that after experiencing a major traumatic event, a small percentage of people will experience psychological problems such as depression and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD,) most people will adapt and bounce back, and another percentage of people will actually learn and grow from the experience (“Post Traumatic Growth”—see Washington Post article, “From Wounds, Inner Strength”.)  To me, a program designed to decrease PTSD and increase Post Traumatic Growth in our warriors seems like a worthwhile endeavor.  Especially when you consider the lasting impact of PTSD on a community (see recent study, “’Path of mental illness’ follows path of war, twenty years after conflict ends.”)

In Levine’s critique of the program he asks, “How much sense does it make to teach soldiers who are trying to stay alive in a war zone to put a positive spin on everything?”  Here, Levine makes the same mistake as other critics of positive psychology in that he confounds positive psychology with positive thinking—not the same things.  Does it make sense to teach soldiers to be happy at all times at all costs?  Absolutely not.  But how much sense does it make to teach soldiers how to let go of emotional issues and traps that might be distracting them from the tasks at hand?  Quite a lot actually, according to Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum who heads up the program for the Army.  In a recent interview, she described the difference between a realistic response and a catastrophic response to losing a friend in battle: “Realistically, we expect that people will grieve, that they will feel anger, they will probably feel bitterness and recurring grief . . . but you can’t just stay there and replay that over and over.”  Teaching soldiers techniques for managing the stress and anxiety of warfare may even be saving their lives.  One recent study showed that soldiers’ reactions to stress in dangerous combat actually cause them “to dissociate from threats [in battle] instead of becoming more vigilant.”

Furthermore, the program is not just about helping soldiers deal with the severe emotional traumas they encounter on the battle field.  It helps them to deal with the emotional issues surrounding their relationships, not only with their fellow soldiers, but with their families back home (some parts of the program are even being offered to family members.)  Thanks to cellphones and the internet, soldiers are more connected than ever before to the people back home.  And while I’m sure the soldiers appreciate this connectivity, it makes it harder than ever to remain detached and focused on their difficult job overseas.  Gone are the days of soldiers carrying around a single photograph of their spouse or child, as the only reminder of their life back home.  Today, they are more in touch than ever before, and there are emotional costs associated with that.

At the end of the day General Cornum is a manager of people (in one of the largest organizations in the world) and she is hoping that positive psychology training will improve performance in her workforce.  Other businesses (see my articles on Zappos here and here) are doing the same.  Dan Bowling, former head of HR for Coca Cola and a MAPP colleague of mine, is looking at how similar kinds of training could impact lawyers (another workforce prone to emotional issues).  And I have been working on new training programs applying positive psychology to the hospitality industry (appropriate since relationships and emotional connections are so important in our business.)

On a recent phone call that Martin Seligman had with the MAPP Alumni, I asked him if there were lessons being learned from the Army training that could be applied in other organizations.  “This is the second largest corporation in the world,” he said.  (The first is Walmart.)  “And so a program that involves training for the entire U.S. Army in which its effects on performance are being evaluated should be highly relevant to large corporations.”  When so many organizations today are still not thinking about the holistic welfare of their workforce, I commend the Army for leading us into this new frontier.

Don’t forget to check out Jeremy’s blog at The Psychology of Wellbeing. Check it out NOW! It’s too good to pass up! Bookmark it. Tell your friends! Thanks.

—

References and recommended reading:

Cornum, R. & Copeland, P. (1993).  She Went to War: The Rhonda Cornum Story.  Presidio Press.

Levine, B. E. (2007).  Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy.  Chelsea Green Publishing.

Reivich, K. & Shatte, A. (2003).  The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles.  Broadway Books.

Seligman, M. E. P. (2006).  Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life. Vintage.

Posted in Well-being, Pursuing Purpose, Reading terrorists minds, Tips to help anxiety, Staying calm, Positive Psychology, Realistic optimism, Sports Psychology | Print | No Comments »

20. August 2010 by John Schinnerer.

How do you feel about your employer? A new study in Perspectives on Psychological Science indicates that how happy a company’s employees are is strongly related to how well the company performs in a number of important areas - increased employee retention, improved customer loyalty, and greater profitability.

Such findings may signal a coming downturn for companies such as JetBlue whose former flight attendant recently told a customer over the loudspeaker to take a hike and then jumped out the emergency exit. Assuming more of Jetblue’s workforce is equally unhappy, the company’s profitability is likely to decrease in the short term.

Given the amount of time you spend at work, it seems reasonable that work influences how happy we are. More and more studies are documenting the connection between your attitudes towards work, your mood outside of the workplace and physical outcomes like coronary heart disease.
Come to find out, that may be merely the tip of the iceberg. Gallup scientist James K. Harter reported recently that how you perceive your work conditions also seems to have a significant effect on company profitability.

In Harter’s latest findings, Gallup examined data from over 2,000 business units (e.g., retail stores and sales offices) within 10 firms. Harter and colleagues pored over employee satisfaction surveys, customer loyalty numbers, employee retention rates, and financial performance of the organizations. Harter performed data anayses to determine the strength of relationships between employee job satisfaction and the outcome measures of the firms.

Findings showed that how employees perceive work conditions predict critical organizational outcomes. In other words, when employees hold their company in a positive light, the company was far more likely to have higher employee retention, increased customer loyalty, and improved profitability.

Unexpectedly, the findings indicate that employee perceptions influence these outcomes more than the outcomes affect employee perceptions. It may be that profitability begins with positive employee perceptions of their employer, their job and their overall contribution. Thus, happy employees seem to be key to increased profitability.

Harter suggests that ‘helping employees see the ultimate outcomes the organization is working to achieve and how they play a role in achieving those outcomes’ may be the greatest benefit managers can provide to those they supervise.

By John Schinnerer, Ph.D.
Founder Guide To Self
Award-winning author (Guide to Self: The Beginner’s Guide to Happiness)
Award-winning blogger (Top 3 in positive psychology by PostRank, Top 100 by The Daily Reviewer)
Free 216 page eBook on latest ways to increase happiness from the inside out at http://www.Guidetoself.com

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Journal References:

1.     Manon Mireille LeBlanc, Julian Barling. Workplace Aggression. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2004; 13 (1): 9 DOI: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01301003.x

2.     H. R. Bowles, M. Gelfand. Status and the Evaluation of Workplace Deviance. Psychological Science, 2009; 21 (1): 49 DOI: 10.1177/0956797609356509

3.     Paul E. Spector. Employee Control and Occupational Stress. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2002; 11 (4): 133 DOI: 10.1111/1467-8721.00185

4.     J. K. Harter, F. L. Schmidt, J. W. Asplund, E. A. Killham, S. Agrawal. Causal Impact of Employee Work Perceptions on the Bottom Line of Organizations. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2010; 5 (4): 378 DOI: 10.1177/1745691610374589

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