Hello, it’s been far too long.

If you are receiving this, it means once upon a time, long, long ago, you subscribed to my blog, The Psychology of Wellbeing.

I shut down the blog in 2019 (which is why you haven’t heard from me in so long,) but I wanted to drop a short note to let you know that I’m starting something new.

It’s called Leisure Alchemy and it will be another weekly publication focusing on the power of leisure experiences and the transformation economy. This is a very different topic from my earlier writing on the studies of positive psychology. But I will bring my psychology lens to this topic also, and so I hope you will at least check it out. You can find the first article here to see if it sparks any interest:

What is Leisure? The definition, etymology and philosophy of leisure.

If you aren’t interested, you don’t have to do anything. This mailing list will remain dormant, and you won’t be automatically subscribed to Leisure Alchemy. But if you want to check it out, the subscriptions are free and you can learn more about it and join here:

Join Leisure Alchemy | Free subscription covering leisure, wellness and hospitality | Leisure Alchemy

And if receiving this email brings back any nostalgia for my old blog on *The Psychology of Wellbeing,* you can still find all my old articles here: The Psychology of Wellbeing. I haven’t had the heart to take it down.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at Leisure Alchemy!

Yours,

Jeremy

The post An Introduction from an Old Friend . . . first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post An Introduction from an Old Friend . . . appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

Thank you for being a reader of my blog over the years. This blog has been an amazing place for me to process things that I have learned (or wrestled with) in understanding the science of human wellbeing. But those of you who have been with me for a while will have noticed that the articles have been less and less frequent and I think it is time to close this chapter. I will be removing the blog from the internet.  This is for a couple of reasons:

1. My energies have been more focused on other areas.
2. My writing interests have turned from broadly covering the psychology of wellbeing to more specifically looking at the intersection between technology and wellbeing.
3. While I enjoy the thought analysis and writing that comes from having a blog, the back-end administration is a pain in the @$$. I’m not a wordpress expert and dealing with constant security issues, upgrades, faulty plugins, etc. is not what I want to spend my time dealing with.
4. There are new platforms (like Medium)  where I can submit articles without having to deal with the back-end administration.
5. I’m interested in clearing things out to make space for new ideas.

I will keep you on my mailing list should I relaunch this or another blog in the future. But for now, if you want to follow me or my writing you can follow me on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/psychologyofwellbeing/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeremymcc

Medium: https://medium.com/@jeremymcc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremymcc/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/spajeremy/

Thank you so much for sharing this journey with me on The Psychology of Wellbeing. It has been a great ride. I’ve learned a lot and I hope you have too.

Sincerely,

Jeremy

The post Dear Readers, thank you and goodbye! first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Dear Readers, thank you and goodbye! appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The Hills are Alive . . . with the Sound of Wellness

I am just arriving to Cesena Italy for this year’s Global Wellness Summit and I find myself reminiscing about the summit from two years ago in Kitzbuhel, Austria. Kitzbuhel, a small town in the Austrian countryside, was the perfect setting for a wellness conference because the whole area oozes wellness. Every hotel is a “wellness” hotel, the “aufguss” sauna culture is everywhere, and the entire countryside is a giant playground for outdoor sports.

This was the year that I launched the Digital Wellness initiative for Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group and I had spent much of the year traveling around the world and talking to people about their challenges with technology. It was through these conversations that I came to realize how pervasive the impact of technology on wellbeing actually was. I met with people from cities all around the world, and they all had stories to tell of the challenges they had establishing boundaries around their technology use.

But not in Kitzbuhel. In rural Austria there was a different reality. Parents did not use Ipads as babysitters, teens were not glued to their screens all day, and adults did not spend their spare time staring at monitors.

I could see why. During my brief stint in the glorious beauty of Kitzbuhel, I wanted to spend as much time outdoors as possible. I went running every morning. When there were breaks in the conference, I strolled around the scenic town, I hiked up the mountain, or I “schvitzed” in the sauna. Who had time to waste on Facebook?

It made me realize the power of nature. The backdrop of Kitzbuhel affords residents and visitors the opportunities to play, to move their bodies, to relax, to appreciate beauty, and to share amazing experiences together. I wanted to move there.

But in the urban environments where I live and had been traveling, those opportunities are increasingly scarce. We come to the cities seeking wealth, information, opportunities, and productivity. But we leave the beauty of the natural world behind, trading in the Garden of Eden for our concrete cells. With less space to move, fewer opportunities for play, less beauty to appreciate, and more barriers between people, city residents turn to technology to fill the void.

And fill the void it does. We urban denizens get great benefit from our devices. Peering through our little screens we find great beauty, amazing entertainment, and rich sources of knowledge. Perhaps most importantly, we can establish meaningful connections with other people all around the world.

But the benefits of technology come with a price. With less opportunities to move our bodies, we turn more to technology for play and entertainment, and our bodies become less accustomed to moving. Technology brings great convenience, and we become dependent and less self-reliant. And while we turn to technology to counteract urban loneliness, making connections with people through virtual networks, we become less able to connect in real life.

Technology becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we use it, the more we need it. Virtual activity replaces physical activity. Virtual memory replaces mental memory. Online relationships replace real connections. Artificial intelligence replaces intelligence. Some futurists predict that eventually, we will upload our consciousness into the cloud and shed ourselves completely of our messy and flawed physiological systems.

But not in Kitzbuhel. In Kitzbuhel, you need to use your body, if only to force it—heart pounding and lungs heaving—up to the highest peaks you can find, to soak in the sun rising over the black Schwarzee lake. In Kitzubhel, you celebrate your messy, sweaty physiology in elaborate sauna rituals that bring the mind and body to new heights. In Kitzbuhel, you begin to wonder why you ever thought it was a good idea to spend time staring at your devices.

As I travel to Cesena for this year’s summit, I wonder if I will find a similar magic in the Italian countryside. I’m hopeful that I will.

By Jeremy McCarthy

Photo Credit: rbitting Flickr via Compfight cc

Whitepaper: Wellness in the Age of the Smartphone

Video: Wellness in the Age of Technology

The post Technology Detox in Kitzbuhel first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Technology Detox in Kitzbuhel appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

In an ironic turn, the recent controversy surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica eclipsed another controversy brewing months before. As 2017 came to close, the million-dollar question surrounding the company was, Does Facebook make us depressed?

Back in December, even Facebook itself posted an article on its official blog, titled, Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad For Us? The post cites a number of studies that prove spending time on Facebook can threaten well-being.

One study from the University of San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on four times as many links or liked twice as many posts as the average person reported decreased mental health in a survey. In their findings, increases in “likes clicked,” “links clicked,” or “status updates” were all associated with decreases in mental health. Another study from the University of Michigan found a noticeable difference in mood between students who were assigned to read Facebook versus talking to friends or posting on the social media site. The results showed a worse mood for passive Facebook users.

And this second study brings us to the more important question of how Facebook brings us down. For a thorough dive into what truly addict us to the site, ultimately leaving us feeling unsatisfied, check out this video, which explains the subject in depth:

The video presents arguments from two former employees, Sean Parker and Chamath Palihapitiya, who claim that Facebook was designed to prey on its users’ neurochemical reward systems. Dopamine, the chemical released in the brain during certain activities, such as exercising, finishing tasks at work, and finding food, has also been found to surge during social interactions. The brain desires cooperation and connection, so it sends reward signals in the form of dopamine when this cooperation or connection occurs. It could be something as simple as carrying a couch up a flight of stairs with a friend, or as profound as telling your partner you love her.

Because the brain cannot distinguish between, an interaction in real life and one on Facebook in terms of dopamine release, these rewards systems are integral to Facebook’s interface. Even the little red notification, or the ping sound we’ve all become accustomed to, produce a similar dopamine release.

The key insight in the video is that Facebook knows these dopamine hits are essential to their business model, the main driving force bringing people back to the site over and over and over again. Knowing this, they’ve ramped up notifications over the years, spiking our dopamine levels for something as mundane and uninteresting as someone having gone “live” a few hours ago, or a belated birthday, or even just to tell you that you haven’t posted in a while.

What happens, then, is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Your brain is rewarding you with dopamine for a successful social interaction, but in reality, no genuine connection has occurred, creating a disconnect between the chemical reward system in your brain and your actual lived experience.

Obviously, Facebook can depress its users in a number of ways. People often assume others’ lives are happier than theirs because of how their friends present themselves online. Teen brains are now trained to be distracted based on the interface alone. But this feeling, the dopamine hit followed by immediate disappointment with the reality of a meaningless notification, seems central to the deflating feeling Facebook can produce.

—

References and recommended reading:

Shakya, H., & Christakis, N. (2017). Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study. American Journal Of Epidemiology. doi: 10.1093/aje/kww189

Verduyn, P., Lee, D., Park, J., Shablack, H., Orvell, A., & Bayer, J. et al. (2015). Passive Facebook usage undermines affective well-being: Experimental and longitudinal evidence. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(2), 480-488. doi: 10.1037/xge0000057

Photo Credit: nodstrum Flickr via Compfight cc

By Michael Kaplan (OneHandClap )

The post Facebook and Mental Health first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Facebook and Mental Health appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

Warning: this post is at least twice as long as the typical articles on this blog. I hope you find it is worth your time . . .

As a father of two boys, now 6 and 7 years old, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to be raising digital natives in the modern age. We are the first generation to be raising kids who are born into the age of mobile technology, and we are completely underqualified, having had no personal experience of what it is like to grow up with technology. What do the experts say? There are no experts . . . this is a new frontier and we are all trying to figure out how to navigate in this strange new world.

This week, I gave a talk to the parents at my sons’ school and gave them 5 ideas for thinking about how to raise kids in the age of technology:

1. Delay technology use and ownership until appropriate levels of maturity and responsibility are demonstrated.

I can think of few advantages to giving kids earlier access to technology. The technology is getting easier and more intuitive to use, so it’s not like kids need a “head start” on figuring it out. And we don’t even know yet the long-term impact (on vision, on posture, on mental health, on emotional wellbeing) of kids who grow up staring at screens from a young age. What we do know is that technology is a powerful tool and it can be easy to get into trouble. It is also a bit of a “Pandora’s Box.” Once you open that door, it is very difficult to get it closed again.

In the U.S., there is a campaign called “Wait until 8^th” urging parents to pledge not to give their kids a smartphone until 8^th grade (or around 14 years of age.) This is a big commitment considering the average age for a first smartphone is now 10 years old (and dropping every year.) The nice thing about this campaign is it is so much easier to stick to if you can get an entire school or community to agree to the same policy. Otherwise, the social pressure ramps up pretty quickly and even the most resolute parent ends up caving in (which is why the age for smartphone usage keeps dropping.) The Wait until 8^th slogan is a good one: “let kids be kids a little longer.”

It is easy for parents to give up under the pressure and the feelings of inevitability that seem to be part and parcel of technological progress. But there are pockets of inspiration, like this family that managed to raise a teenage girl to the ripe old age of 18 without ever having a smartphone. I’ve heard lots of parents express regret at giving access to technology too soon, but the few families who manage to delay seem pretty happy with the outcomes.

2. Develop important skills for managing technology, relationships and presence in the digital age.

We understand that kids need to develop and mature before they get access to a motor vehicle. But many parents seem to be OK to simply “hand over the keys” to technology to their young kids. Considering a smartphone contains all the world’s information and a connection to every person on the planet, good or bad, it is a pretty powerful tool and a responsibility that should not be given lightly.

We should help our kids to develop technological literacy the same way we allow them to gradually develop driving skills. Kids aren’t just handed a car at a very young age. First, they observe their parent driving. Then they get some education around driving in school. Then they are allowed to drive with adult supervision, and finally they get their own license. Eventually, once they have proven themselves responsible, they might even get their own car, but only after all the other steps have been passed.

Technology should also have this progressive approach. It is all too easy to use technology as the digital babsitter, and plop kids in front of a screen while we are busy doing something else. But kids need interactive learning experiences, where they can use technology with an adult by their side, learning about the potential challenges and risks along with the amazing benefits.

Not only do kids need to learn how to use technology, they also need to learn how to not use technology. I hear a lot of parents say, “I had to get my son a smartphone because he has a 45 minute bus ride to school, and I don’t want him to get bored.” If we teach our kids to turn to technology to fill every moment of boredom or discomfort, this strategy will stay with them their entire life. In doing so, we strip them of the opportunity to learn how to be alone with their thoughts, how to manage their own emotions, and how to be creative in figuring out what to do, or how to connect with those around them. The technology is a great tool, and it’s nice to have, but it always comes at some sacrifice. Sometimes, it’s better to let kids be bored.

3. Define appropriate boundaries and etiquette for healthy technology use.

It’s hard to find clear guidelines for “healthy” technology use. The platforms are changing so rapidly, we don’t really know what is healthy. The American Academy of Pediatrics gives the following guidelines:

Children under 18 months      >>           no screen time

Children 18-24 months            >>           limited high quality programming with parents

Children 2-5 years                     >>           1 hour per day, high quality programming with parents

Children 6 years                         >>           Consistent limits, and monitor sleep and physical activity, etc.

All ages                                         >>           Designate media-free times and media-free zones for family interaction

                                                       >>           Ongoing interaction about online citizenship and safety

For Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, we created a “Digital Wellness Manifesto,” where participants can fill in the blanks to create their own household rules around technology. Items include:

“These are the three things I will do in the morning before looking at technology:________________,_________________,________________.”

 “Each week, I reserve this day for non-digital activities with loved ones:____________________.”

Naturally, the rules will vary family by family and household by household. But everyone should have some guidelines in place to keep technology use in check.

To see what happens when no boundaries are in place, check out this family who made an experiment out of giving their kids unfettered access to technology for a full weekend. Chaos ensues.

4. Diminish the impact of technology use on real world social interactions.

A couple of weeks ago I was at my younger son’s rugby match and one of the kids had his father’s cellphone. Immediately, all of the kids gathered around to watch him play video games. I’ve seen this countless times: at the beach, in a restaurant, out on a boat, at a playground; as soon as one child has a device, the social dynamic completely changes. With a device, the kids immediately become glued to the screen. Without a device, they have to figure things out, they have to be creative, a leader has to emerge, they have to figure out how to work together.

Bringing a phone into a social setting removes great opportunities for kids to develop social skills. And the device doesn’t only impact that child, it changes the dynamic for every child in the vicinity. As parents, we hope to teach our kids not to use devices around other children who don’t have them and not to allow devices to interfere with real-world social interaction.

5. Demonstrate healthy technology usage and etiquette with our own actions.

Ok, let’s be real. This may be the hardest one on the list. We can withhold technology from our kids and tell them they have to brush their teeth in the morning before they look at a device, but how good are we really at practicing what we preach.

In my case, the answer would be a resounding “not very good.” While our family has sheltered our children from screens (we don’t even have a TV) I have spent much of their early years staring down at my phone or ipad. Hypocrite much?

As my kids are getting older (and more savvy about the ways of the world) I have realized that my behavior needs to change. So recently my wife and I have created a new household rule: we do not look at screens in front of our kids. This doesn’t mean we are off of technology, we just keep it undercover. If we need to look at a device, we slip into another room, keeping out of sight of the little ones. One consequence of this is that we spend a lot more time in the bathroom now (try to keep that visual out of your head the next time you get a text from me.) But when we come back into the living room, our devices are put away and we are more connected to each other.

I don’t know how impactful this strategy will be on the development of our kids, but for us personally, I think it has been profound. Some people would argue that they have a million reasons why they must be more connected to their devices. But actually, technology tends to give us the feeling of being productive, without actually helping us to get anything meaningful done.

Keeping technology out of sight of our kids has forced me to bring out certain “ancient artefacts” such as paperback books, clocks, wristwatches, a camera for taking pictures, and my old metronome for guitar practice. The advantage of these outdated “single function” devices is that they allow you to focus on what you intended to do without opening up a window into a whole other world of notifications, e-mails and social media. When I do need to get some real work done, I sit down at my computer, do what I need to do, and then can be more present for the rest of the day. So in my case, cutting back on technology use at home has made me more productive, not less. Most importantly, I am modeling for my kids that we don’t use technology when around other people, an important lesson that will be hard to enforce if we can’t exhibit it ourselves.

These are the topics I’m thinking of in my own family for how to raise digital natives. Your strategy may be different. But the main thing is to have a strategy. Without it, our kids’ relationship to technology will be determined by the technology companies and their advertisers. Not good!

Our kids are young enough that we can still afford a certain level of naivete about what is coming. Some parents of older kids laugh at some of my suggestions and say, “yeah, good luck with that!” I realize none of this is easy and it will only get harder as our kids get older and our technology gets smarter. If you have found something that works for your family, I would love to hear about it.

by Jeremy McCarthy

Follow me on twitter, facebook or instagram.

See my recent talk on “Wellness in the Age of Technology” from the Global Wellness Summit:

The post Raising Digital Natives first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Raising Digital Natives appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

Jocelyn Brewer, a psychologist who specializes in issues with technology, recently published a provocative article suggesting that “digital detoxing is the tech equivalent of a juice cleanse—and neither of them work.”

I happen to be a long-time fan of Jocelyn’s (I’m taking the liberty of using her first name as I feel I know her—she participated in a Twitter Chat we hosted a while back and I’ve been following her on Twitter for a couple of years now.) What I like about her work is she takes a nuanced approach that acknowledges the complexity of life with technology. She uses a “digital nutrition” analogy to suggest that we should think about technology the way think about food. Rather than demonizing technology as inherently bad, we should be establishing the right “nutritional” guidelines around healthy consumption.

I think Jocelyn gets it right most of the time, and the digital nutrition analogy is a good one, and one I have used in my own speaking and writing. But I took exception to her recent article. I actually think there is an aspect about “digital detox” that doesn’t fit well with the digital nutrition model.

It has to do with what I will call the “response curve.” If you drastically reduce your food intake, by going on a fast for example, you will find it easy at the beginning, but over time, the hunger pangs begin to kick in, making it increasingly difficult. After several days of an extreme caloric reduction your overall health and wellbeing will eventually start to decline. If the fast continues too long you could eventually die of starvation.

With a tech detox, the response curve looks almost exactly the opposite. The first moments of being without technology (imagine the moment you realize you left your phone at home after leaving for a one week trip) would bring a spike of anxiety. But as you spend more time without technology, you may find that your wellbeing does not continue to decline but actually improves. You may realize you didn’t need the tech as much as you thought you did.

I need to admit here, that I have very little data to support this claim. But from what I observe in the one- to two-day tech detox retreats that we do in our spas, this is what we find. The three benefits that we repeatedly see are:

1. People realize that many of the things they were doing with technology were not as important as they thought they were.
2. People become more aware of other things that they have been sacrificing for technology.
3. People connect more meaningfully to the people they are with at the time.

People who stop eating food for a while rarely come to the conclusion that food is not as necessary as they thought it was.

I think what Jocelyn might say here is that I’m not taking into account all of the great supportive (read “nutritive”) aspects of technology that would also be lost in these experiences . . . and she would be right. This is where the digital nutrition model holds up really well.

And she also makes a great point that digital detoxes are not helpful if you immediately return to your unhealthy consumption habits pre-detox (which invariably happens in most cases.) But it’s hard to get someone to intelligently reflect on healthy technology habits when they are currently treading to keep their head above the digital stream. It’s like asking someone to think about the impact of drug use while high. Or to use the digital nutrition analogy, maybe it’s not a good idea to ask someone to start a healthy diet while they are fist deep in a quart of ice cream.

Jocelyn’s main point, which I agree with, is that we need to avoid “the binge-purge cycle” and “reclaim a sustainable relationship with technology.” I just happen to think that stepping away from technology for a few days might be a good way to find a clear vantage point from which to see what that relationship might look like.

The post Do Digital Detoxes Really Work? first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Do Digital Detoxes Really Work? appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

But then a stranger comes into town, Sylvester McMonkey McBean with a contraption to put stars on the bellies of the Plain-Belly Sneetches. Problem solved, right? Not so fast! Once all the Plain-Belly Sneetches had stars, the Star-Belly Sneetches felt like they needed to do something different to differentiate themselves, so they all had their stars removed. The society began to swing back and forth from putting stars on to taking them off until they were a mix of both again (right back where they started, except no one could remember “whether this one was that one or that one was this one. Or which one was what one or what one was who.”)

This story is usually used as a parable to teach the woes of discriminating against people for superficial reasons, but there is another lesson to be drawn here. Societies don’t tend to become homogenous, they tend to stabilize around an ideal level of diversity. If you push too far in one direction the scales will tip back the other way so that the point of stability is always achieved.

In the Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins describes this as “an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.” In any community where you have some “Hawks” (aggressive and ready to fight to resolve their problems) and some “Doves” (more collaborative and more likely to retreat if things get violent) the community will eventually stabilize to a set ratio of Hawks vs. Doves.

Related: Guns: Why Everyone’s Arguments are Wrong

Why does this happen? Because when there are too many Hawks they become more likely to fight with one another and a small handful of Doves will begin to thrive and multiply by staying out of the fray. But if there are too many Doves, a small handful of Hawks can quickly take power by asserting themselves forcefully, stifling the Doves and increasing the ranks of the Hawks. Invariably, a stable ratio is ultimately found (usually with more Hawks than Doves, BTW.)

In other words, the gun control debate is as futile as the fight over stars on the beaches of the Sneetches. By all means, advocate for the policies that you would like to see–that is how a democracy works. But realize you may only be able to tip the scales so far before it swings back in the other direction. The Hawks will never convince all the Doves that their way is right and the Doves will never convince all the Hawks that their way is right. We are just going to have to learn to live with each other in spite of our differences . . . just like the Sneetches.

The post Why The Gun Debate Will Never Be Resolved first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Why The Gun Debate Will Never Be Resolved appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The internet seems to be pointing its moral outrage this week at a woman on a plane who was captured on video doing yoga <<gasp!>> in the aisle on a plane. Another passenger took a video of the “incident” and it has gone viral, raising a discussion about what kind of behavior is appropriate on an airplane.

The internet “mob” handled this the way they handle most important issues in modern society: they quickly divided into two extreme camps with opposing views: those who felt this was completely acceptable, and those who felt the woman was way out of line. Internet comments described the woman as “bizarre,” a “liberal snowflake,” and “clearly needing attention.” and one article quoted someone as saying, “this is not your living room.”

I tend to side with the intrepid yogi in this case. Although I might not be brave enough to plop down in the aisle and do downward dog or a camel pose (as this woman did,) I will often leave my seat and quietly find a pocket of space to do a few stretches. I try my best to ignore the awkward stares of other passengers or the annoyed flight attendants who have to move around through the cabin, because I know my body does not like sitting for too long and my spine will thank me for it later.

But society, it seems, is not ready for this. We are taught, from a very early age, to spend our lives obediently sitting, first in classrooms, then in front of computers, and occasionally on airplanes. But a growing body of evidence seems to show that this is horrible for our health. And given that the ever accelerating rise of technology is also associated with an increase in sedentary lifestyle, maybe we should be working to change society rather than conforming to it.

For me, this yogi is the heroine in the story. By defiantly doing her yoga in the airplane aisle, she shows what it looks like to hold personal wellbeing sacred, refusing to sacrifice it for some arbitrary cultural or corporate norm. She was probably the kid who couldn’t sit still in her class or the graduate who chose an alternative career to avoid being chained to a desk in a cubicle all day. More power to her. Maybe, she will even inspire others to do the same and this will become a growing trend, with more people taking to the aisle to get their sun salutations in mid-flight. If enough people do this, airlines will be forced to create a space for passengers to do yoga on every flight.

I say let the revolution begin. Namaste.

by Jeremy McCarthy

Follow me on twitter, facebook or instagram.

The post Yoga on a Plane: Moving in a Sedentary World first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Yoga on a Plane: Moving in a Sedentary World appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

They say that people fear public speaking more than they fear death, and I can kind of see why. Perhaps one of the most stressful, panic-inducing experiences of my life was agreeing to emcee my company’s holiday party shortly after I had joined the group.

Being a somewhat experienced public speaker, I wasn’t all that nervous when they asked me if I would volunteer. I was new to the company and wanted to make a good impression, so I agreed to go along.

The planning committee for the event determined that the theme would be “Magic” and so I began to develop a script and a character.  I would play “The Amazing Jeremy,” an aspiring magician who would try (mostly unsuccessfully) different magic tricks (on my “assistant,” played by a colleague who also “volunteered” for the event.)

But as the weeks wore on and the planning progressed, my anxiety levels started to rise. I quickly realized a few things that would make this much harder than other public speaking engagements I have done:

1. I am normally speaking about things that I am well versed in (i.e. no need to really memorize a script as I could easily talk about them off the cuff.)
2. I was over-ambitious in my script-writing so I had to “perform” several complicated magic tricks.
3. I quickly realized it is much easier to “inform” (the goal of most of my speaking engagements) than it is to “entertain.” Getting the timing right to make jokes and tricks work takes training and experience (two things I was sorely lacking in.)

By the week before the event I was in a sheer panic. I was terrified that all my jokes would fall flat, my magic “tricks” wouldn’t work, and I would be a flop in front of all the executives of my new company.

I was thinking about this state of panic when I heard a talk by my friend, Todd Kashdan, the author of The Upside of Your Dark Side. Todd sees stress a little differently than the rest of us. Stress is not necessarily something to be avoided, but it is actually like a superpower that can enhance our capabilities for a temporary period of time.

Kashdan suggests we think about stress as a superhero, “Anxiety Girl,” that we can call on to help us when we need her. People might think of “Anxiety Girl” as a “buzzkill” since she is the one to point out how things can go wrong and to avert us away from danger. But Anxiety Girl revs up our systems to confront the challenges ahead and makes sure we are energized and prepared to do our best. “She never ends up in the story line in the Wall Street Journal,” says Kashdan, “but Anxiety Girl saves the day time and time again.”

For all my worries about the holiday party, “The Amazing Jeremy” ended up being a big success. I didn’t die of stage fright. Everyone had a good time. In fact, many people came up to me afterwards to tell me it was the best holiday party they had ever attended.

But listening to Kashdan’s talk, I realize that it wasn’t good in spite of my panic and anxiety. It was good because of it. Being stressed to the bone amped me up and forced me to think through my script, work out the problems, and practice relentlessly until I could get it right.

Thank you Anxiety Girl. Once again, you saved the day.

—

References and recommended reading:

Kashdan, T. & Biswas-Diener, R. (2014). The Upside of your Dark Side. Hudson Street Press.

by Jeremy McCarthy

Follow me on twitter, facebook or instagram.

The post Anxiety Girl to the Rescue first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Anxiety Girl to the Rescue appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

I fell in love with my wife while I was studying Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. It may be that these two events occurring simultaneously were a coincidence, but I actually think they are related in a deep way.

I was studying things like the importance of positive relationships to health and happiness, the positivity resonance that love inspires, and how to recognize and appreciate strengths in other people. And I found myself recognizing and appreciating the strengths in my girlfriend, and enjoying the positivity resonance that we shared together, and appreciating the value of being able to share my life with someone.

Probably I would have fallen in love with Catherine anyways. But we’ll never know, will we?

And I’m not the only one who has reported profound relationship changes from studying positive psychology. Alan Foster, a friend and Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) colleague, said when he was considering plunking down the considerable tuition for a MAPP degree, he tried to do an ROI analysis by interviewing previous graduates and learning more about the costs and benefits they experienced from their studies. “I was asking people how their careers changed, but people were telling me things like, ‘my relationship with my husband is much better,’” Alan said, “and I didn’t have a line in my spreadsheet for that.”

There is good news for people who want to profoundly improve their romantic relationships without the considerable time and money investment that is required for a graduate degree in positive psychology. I have just finished reading a review copy of a new book that has been written by Suzie Pawelski (another fellow MAPP grad) and her husband, James Pawelski, who is the director of the MAPP program and one of its most esteemed and beloved professors. Is it a coincidence that Suzie fell in love with James while studying positive psychology? This is a mystery that does not get solved in the book. But Suzie and James have indeed been applying the lessons they have learned through their studies to their own relationship and they are sharing their stories with others.

In the book, they discuss the pitfalls of having a relationship that is based purely on pleasure, or on utilitarian needs. They present the ideal as an “Aristotelian relationship,” which is a partnership dedicated to becoming the best version of yourself while simultaneously bringing out the best version of your partner. I had never heard this concept of Aristotelian relationships before, and I find it a wonderful lens to think about creating a relationship based on virtue.

Using “virtuosity” as the measuring stick for a relationship, is a lofty goal, but to hear Suzie and James explain it, it sounds like the right one. Most relationship advice seems to focus on “finding happiness” with another person or finding someone who “meets your needs.” This common language sounds superficial when you compare it to finding a relationship that elevates both partners to become their best selves. I like to think that my wife and I fit well into this idea, and that it was the recognition of this, early in our relationship, that led us to see the lifetime potential of staying joined together.

In the book, there are tips for getting to know your partner’s strengths and virtues, bringing them out in the relationship, and how to express and receive admiration along the way. James and Suzie do a good job of emphasizing the skills needed for both giving AND receiving in a relationship. As they describe, a relationship is like a dance in which both partners need to know how to lead at certain times, and both partners need to know how to follow. Since getting married, Suzie and James have been learning to dance (both literally and figuratively) and they share not only the strategies they have found successful, but some of their missteps along the way.

I think it’s safe to say that you don’t need to study positive psychology to have a great virtuous relationship. But it seems it doesn’t hurt. Check out Happy Together and let me know what you think.

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References and recommended reading:

Pawelski, S. P. & Pawelski, J. O. (2018). Happy Together: Using the Science of Positive Psychology to Build Love that Lasts. Penguin Group: TarcherPerigee.

by Jeremy McCarthy

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The post Happy Together: Love and Positive Psychology first appeared on The Psychology of Wellbeing.

The post Happy Together: Love and Positive Psychology appeared first on The Psychology of Wellbeing.