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HoHoDooDa got a bit waylaid for me about midway. So completely caught up in the wonder the whimsey the crazy that is Christmas but now re-emerging from the holiday wackiness with a huge list of resolutions clutched in my fist.

By Anthony Scioli

From late December to the middle of January it is obligatory for people to make one or more New Years’ resolutions. Recent surveys reveal that the most common resolutions made by Americans include losing weight, getting fit, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, reducing debt, or getting organized. This list dovetails perfectly (unfortunately) with an international study of 24 character strengths which revealed that Americans rate themselves lowest in the virtue of “self-regulation”.

Ironically the other leading American resolutions involving getting or doing more rather than having or doing less. Americans want more socializing, more joy, and more learning. We want less and we want more. Should anyone be surprised that resolutions often fail to bring about lasting change?

Less than a handful of psychological studies have been done on New Years’ resolutions. There is scant advice in the database for the layperson to glean except that resolutions are more likely to be successful if an individual is more motivated and a goal is perceived as more important. This is not very helpful “self-help”.

As a psychologist, I would suggest that instead of a piecemeal focus on narrow goals that is bound to fail, people should aim for a higher horizon, a commitment to a more hopeful way of life.

Lighthouse. Photo by Fylkesarkivet i Sogn og Fjordane. Creative Commons License.

Deep below the surface of many desperate resolutions reside the most primitive fears. The dramatic turn of the calendar on December 31^st is a reminder of finitude on many levels, most poignantly, the fact that an individual has one less year. In the northern hemisphere this reminder comes when the nights are long and wind blows hard and cold. However, regardless of where one lives, a different freeze may be felt, what the existentialists call an “ego chill”, the sudden and full awareness that one day you will cease to exist.

The projected fears of the New Year are the same as the deathbed regrets of the dying. They are the twin fears of a self-aware being. “Did I live to my life to the fullest?” Have I have left a mark on the world?”

There is a strong need to feel that one did not leave too much unlived life “on the table”. Emerson put it this way:

“Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short, but when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day”.

Human beings also fear the specter of oblivion. Aristotle went so far as to coin the term entelechy to refer to an essential momentum within all living things to continue to be or exist, without end, in one form or another. I believe that we all have some form of entelechy etched into our DNA.

In Living A Life That Matters, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote, “In my forty years as a rabbi, I have tended to many people in the last moments of their lives…The people who had the most trouble with death were those who felt that they had never done anything worthwhile in their lives, and if God would only give them another two or three years, maybe they would finally get it right. It was not death that frightened them; it was insignificance, the fear that they would die and leave no mark on the world.”

The answer to this existential dilemma is to live a double-life. You should balance being anchored in the here and now with investments focused on a more transcendent plane. The scientific psychology of the 20^th century focused more and more on the here and now. The most obvious, and in my view, overrated example of this is the concept of “mindfulness”. At best, mindfulness, or an intentional, nonjudgmental awareness of the present is a corrective Eastern strategy for the distracted and hurried mind of the West. It is not a full program for living. Not only is it impractical to live just for the present but such a philosophy does not match up with the architecture of the brain which is dominated by the frontal lobes and other structures designed for projecting into the future or preserving the past. Human beings were meant to live in 3D, the past, present, and future.

In contrast, the American psychology of the 19^th century was initially influenced by “moral philosophy”. From about 1850 to 1890, it was not uncommon for psychologists to focus on more transcendent issues such as character, values, religion, or coping with death. In the 21^st century we need a more integrated philosophy.

Living a “Double – Life”

There is an old adage that “where there is life there is hope”. I would turn this around. I believe where there is hope, there is life. I understand hope as a composite of four basic needs: attachment (trust and openness), mastery (purpose and collaboration), survival (self-regulation and liberation), and spirituality (empowerment, connection, and salvation linked to a larger perceived force or entity). If you want to live more fully in the here and now while also investing in something more enduring, commit in 2013 to a life that includes more time for building and nurturing relationships, for articulating a mission in life, for increasing your perceived degrees of freedom, and for spiritual fulfillment. You will not only feel happier on a daily basis, but you will be far more likely to build an enduring legacy. Towards this end, I offer eight recommendations, two each for the four cardinal elements of hope (one for the left brain and one for the right brain).

Attachment

Attachments may be the most significant sources of hope. Note that even the perennial classics of the holiday season such as A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, and the Auld Lang Syne song (Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon?) all deal with the primacy of relationships.

For left brain attachment read Thornton Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey. For your right brain, follow this up with a live viewing of his play, Our Town. If you are seeking inspiration to nurture your relationships, it is difficult to find two better sources.

Mastery

Six months before his assassination, Martin Luther King Spoke about mastery to a group of Junior High School Students in Philadelphia.

“If it is your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.”

For left brain mastery, go to the positive psychology website at the University of Pennsylvania and take their VIA Survey of Character Strengths. Find out what your top five strengths are and find ways to craft your life around these virtues. For right brain mastery, listen to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Survival

Survival hope is strongly infused with a sense of liberation. In contrast, the most common experience in hopelessness is a sense of entrapment. The psychologist Rollo May contrasted freedom of doing with freedom of being. To maximize your freedom of doing, May suggested making the most of your potential or taking advantage of various forms of fate or destiny such as your genetics or time and place of birth. He also noted that when your freedom of doing is restricted, as a human being, you always have the freedom to be, to adopt a particular attitude.

For left brain survival hope, I would read Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. As a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, Frankl describes how he found hope by maximizing both types of freedom. For right brain survival hope I would follow Frankl with a viewing (or re-viewing) of the film Life is Beautiful.

Spirituality

For left brain spiritual development reflect on your spiritual type. Spiritual needs and passions will flow from your particular type. Are you a mystic seeking a sense of oneness? Are you a follower seeking structure? Are you an independent seeking support for a chosen path? Are you a collaborator looking to join forces with a powerful other? Are you a sufferer who seeks comfort? Are you a reformer seeking justice? For right brain spiritual development, I would review your list of favorite songs and find one or two that match up with your spiritual type and play them often in 2013. You can find music consistent with your particular religious affiliation that will nevertheless address your particular spiritual type. Here are six suggestions: For independent types: the Chariots of Fire theme; for followers, “Amazing Grace”; for collaborators, “Lord of the Dance”; for mystics, “Unchained Melody”; for sufferers, “Let It Be” (the Beatles); for reformers, “A Change is Gonna Come” (Sam Cooke).

Anthony Scioli is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Keene State College. He is the co-author of Hope in the Age of Anxiety with Henry Biller. Dr. Scioli completed Harvard fellowships in human motivation and behavioral medicine. He co-authored the chapter on emotion for the Encyclopedia of Mental Health and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Positive Psychology and the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. Read his previous blog articles: “Why spring is the season of hope” and “Contrasting profiles in hope.”

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The post A better New Year’s resolution: commit to hope appeared first on OUPblog.

By Susan David

We humans are funny. Often we create beliefs or engage in behaviors that seem to help us in the short term, only to discover they get in the way of the lives we really want to live, or the people we want to become.

Allow me to share the story of my friend, Erin. Over lunch one day, she told both her mentor and me about a division director job she had truly wanted. The role offered good challenges, the chance to develop her skills, fabulous travel, and unparalleled flexibility. It would have been “a dream come true”.

But then Erin began to recite a litany of reasons why she hadn’t gone after the job. She wasn’t good in interviews, having never received the coaching that so many candidates are privy to these days. She was overweight, which would surely make a poor impression. On top of all this, due to the economic downturn, many people more qualified than she would apply. She thought she’d be great at the job if she could have made it beyond the interview, but all things considered, she “knew” she hadn’t stood a chance.

“So I never applied,” she told us. “Instead, I sent the advertisement to a peer and encouraged him to interview.” She paused. “He got the job.”

How was it that this bright, hardworking, lovely young woman also had such an aptitude for self-sabotage?

There are plenty of smart, even gifted, people like Erin. They are bonded by a common behavior psychologists call “self-handicapping,” which involves anticipating a real or imagined obstacle that might get in the way of success, and using that obstacle as an excuse.

Self-handicapping allows us to protect ourselves from the pain of assuming responsibility for our failures, and people do it all the time. In a groundbreaking 1978 study, psychologists Berglas and Jones found that participants who “succeeded” at a test (that was really just luck-based) were more likely to choose to take a performance-inhibiting drug before taking a second test. In other words, they actively set themselves up for failure on the second try. By doing this, they could blame their subsequent poor performance on the drug, and also protect their earlier feeling of success.

In a more recent set of experiments conducted by psychologist Sean McCrea at the University of Konstanz in Germany, participants were asked to take several intelligence tests under a variety of conditions. The research showed that people who were encouraged to make excuses for their poor performance — blaming poor performance on loud noises, for example — maintained high self-esteem, but were also less motivated to improve.

This kind of behavior is often so subtle and habitual that we don’t notice we’re doing it. Think about the manager who has to give a big presentation and fails to practice ahead of the event, or people who procrastinate on work projects and wind up “not having enough time” to do a good job. In a 2010 HBR article, Jeffrey Pfeffer identified self-handicapping as one of three major barriers to building professional power: people avoid the pain of failure by never trying to build power in the first place.

What can you do to overcome self-handicapping? Here are four steps:

1. Watch for the warning signs. Drawing down your efforts, generating lists of excuses, or distracting yourself (music, alcohol, etc.) are signs that you’re engaging in self-handicapping. Everyone needs to take breaks and manage energy during the work day, but these activities can be clues that you are veering onto the trail of self-sabotage. A mentor or colleague can often help steer you back on course.
2. Use “what-ifs” and “if-onlys” to help you generate goals instead of excuses. Research shows that the thinking people engage in during self-handicapping can just as easily be flipped to be motivational. When you ponder what could have gone better, or recognize obstacles in your way, you generate valuable information. Identify factors within your control, and see what you can do about them. Erin, for example, could have responded to the thought “I’m not great in interviews” by researching the right skills, practicing them, and requesting support from her mentor.
3. Recognize and manage your negative emotions. Research shows that when we use our “if-onlys” to motivate rather than excuse ourselves, we will also likely experience negative emotions, such as disappointment and self-directed anger . If you can notice these emotions and be kind to yourself in working through them, you’re more likely to be able to move into positive, empowering behavior.
4. Go for mastery. Self-handicapping is most likely to kick in when we are trying to perform well in order to avoid negative feedback from external sources, such as criticism from colleagues. When we focus instead on developing mastery in a domain we care about, we tap into our inherent motivation to learn and grow. Recognize what matters to you, and brainstorm ideas to get yourself moving in that direction.

Going for what you really want takes considerable courage. Let’s face it, even when you put forth your best effort, things don’t always turn out as you would like. But by taking a risk you open yourself not only to the possibility of failure, but also the possibility of learning, growth, and real attainment. It’s up to you to decide which is more perilous: the risk of disappointment, or the risk of never reaching your potential.

Reprinted with permission from Harvard Business Reveiw.  This blog was originally published here.

Susan David is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Happiness (due out in January 2013) with Ilona Boniwell and Amanda Conley Ayers. Susan is is a founder and co-director of the Harvard/McLean Institute of Coaching and a member of the Harvard faculty. She is also the director of Evidence Based Psychology, a leadership development organization and management consultancy.

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The post New year’s resolution: don’t sabotage yourself appeared first on OUPblog.

Hard to believe but it's getting to be that time again when we here at Ypulse start reflecting back on the big trends, hits and misses of the past year. In the coming weeks before January 1, we'll post our reflections on what we saw emerge this past... Read the rest of this post

While everyone else seems to be making those pesky resolutions for the New Year, I'm working on some life resolutions instead. It's just going slightly slower than I expected. I have some good reasons for this but then everyone usually does because they generally fall into the category of life happens.

Mine include an unexpected business trip, my 16 1/2 year-old dog is ill and may not recover, the pace at work seems to continue to increase, and - well, you get the point. Life Happens!

I did write down some goals, or resolutions, such as: write more, travel more, better organization at work and home, yoga everyday, enjoy life wherever possible, and so on, and so on. I've come to the conclusion, however, over the many years of making New Year's resolutions that what I need is Life Resolutions - in other words, add/subtract things from my life that make sense for the rest of my life.

One of those "things" is yoga. I like the philosophy of yoga and the opportunity for growth and awareness. With New Year's resolutions, a very small percentage, including me, are able to keep them. I've always felt like a failure by February because for the most part, the resolutions weren't reasonable and didn't take into account that life happens.

With yoga and it's many forms of practice, the fact that life happens is part of the process. Besides, it's more workable to fit my goals above into the rest of my life instead of a year.

Happy writing everyone.

One of my favorite family movies is Akeelah and the Bee.  This powerful movie shows how an unlikely community unites to support a smart, determined eleven-year-old spelling dynamo to follow her dream of becoming a Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. If you want to see commitment, courage, conflict, action, drama, fear of failure, inspiration and a strong heroine who steadfastly works toward her dream despite the odds against her, watch this tearjerker of a movie. And you will truly be inspired to follow your own dream.

There is one scene of the movie, where Akeelah's coach, Dr. Larabee, asks her to read a framed quote hanging on the wall. The quote was so good, I became quite obsessed with finding out who was credited with this bit of inspired brilliance. After playing this DVD over again a couple times to hear this lovely nugget of wisdom, I Googled it and found Marianne Williamson. This quote is simply spot on perfect.

Our Deepest Fear
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
-A Return To Love:Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, by Marianne Williamson

I've never been good about the due diligence involved in having a life. By that I mean those boring, detail-oriented maintenance things that have to be done over and over and that you never get credit for. No one will ever walk into my house and say, “Whoa!! This place is staggeringly clean!” Or check out my desk and say, “How do you keep things so organized and tidy?”

            I have the labeled file folders, I just don’t always put anything into them.

            Here’s another example. I love gardening. I love picking out cool plants at the garden store and shoehorning them into my yard. I plant perennials, which are about as low-maintenance as gardening gets. But I don’t do the lift and divide thing and the thinning out and weeding thing and the clip off the spent blooms thing. So my garden is a chaotic battleground—a survival of the fittest. Usually weeds.

See? I have the theory down. I just can’t seem to fit the process into my life. Or don’t want to.

I think of myself as an idea person. I’ve mastered the use of the matrimonial “we.” Like, “Why don’t we plan a trip to Australia?” Or, “Why don’t we invest in an index fund?” Or, “Why don’t we build a sunroom?” And then I wait, hoping that my long-suffering spouse will take on the project. And he usually does.

He’s really good at it, and I know my limitations.

            That said, there are many maintenance tasks that go along with writing. An investment of time can both improve your writing and make your writing life more successful. Examples include reading about craft and the business of writing, planning projects before the launch, developing and honing computer skills, and keeping good records, financial and otherwise. It’s also important to maintain your blog, update your Website in a timely manner and network with other writers, librarians, teachers, and publishing people. Not to mention reading voraciously in the genre you’re working in.

            Mind, sometimes writers use those kinds of maintenance tasks to avoid writing altogether. They are so busy picking out wallpaper for the writing studio, reading books on craft and attending workshops that they never actually get down to business.

Not me, not usually. As soon as I finish one writing project I tend to charge headlong into the next, ready or not. I blame this on habits forged during a lifetime of working two full-time jobs and raising and neglecting children. Have a minute? Write a page or two.

In May I quit my day job. I’m still trying to re-allocate my time, to get over the notion that I have to write every minute.

At Christmas, I received a new Macbook. I have not written anything for an entire week. Not counting this blog. Instead, I have read the manual and attended workshops. Downloaded software. Fondled the keyboard and examined the drop-down menus. I’ve considered how this tool might expand my reach and sharpen my delivery.

I have also developed and refined a table of characters, places, and terminology for my new high fantasy trilogy. Redrew a map of the Seven Realms where the action takes place. Written a pre-history for the novels and selected photographs to illustrate setting. I have laid in bed, dreaming on my characters and what they’ll be doing in the next book.

I’ve answered scores of emails (I’m always pretty good about that) but I still have some snail-mail correspondence to catch up with.

My New Year’s Resolution: to develop a system for taking care of those other jobs in order to make my work and my writing life better. This includes making time for dreaming.  

As I am typing this, I am sitting under a palm tree watching the sun go down, my favorite time of day.  I will be spending New year's eve barefoot in the sand. Not bad at all, right?