Positive Psychology Articles

As a kid, I was really out of touch with my body. I hardly noticed it most of the time, and when I did, I prodded it like a mule to do a better job of hauling "me" - the head - around.

The traditional saying that's this week's practice has been sinking in for me lately. Thoughts have been swirling around like a sandstorm about work, things I've been reading, household tasks, finances, conce s about people, a yard that needs mowing, loose ends, projects, etc. etc. The other day I told my wife: "I'm thinking about too many things." Know the feeling?

Can you remember a time when you offered a gift to someone? Perhaps a holiday present, or a treat to a child, or taking time for a friend – or anything at all. How did this feel? Researchers have found that giving stimulates the same neural networks that light up when we feel physical pleasure, such as eating a cookie or running warm water over cold hands. Long ago, the Buddha said that generosity makes one happy before, during, and after the giving.

Liking feels good, plus it encourages us to approach and engage the world rather than withdraw from it. Your brain continually tracks whether something is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. In essence, is it a carrot, a stick, or safely ignored? Naturally, we like - we enjoy - what's pleasant, dislike what's unpleasant, and with what's neutral would get pleasant pronto.

Throughout history, people have wondered about human nature. Deep down, are we basically good or bad?

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I did a meditation retreat (at Spirit Rock, a wonderful place, including for workshops). One evening as we walked out of the hall after the last sit, I was feeling rattled and discombobulated. (One of the benefits of a retreat - though it can be uncomfortable - is that it stirs up the sediments of your psyche, which can muddy your mental waters for a while.)

“Tell the truth.” It’s the foundation of science – and the foundation of healthy relationships, communities, and countries. But the truth of things is complicated. To simplify, there is the good of things that are enjoyable and helpful, the bad of things that are painful and harmful, and the neutral of things that are neither.

Most people, me included, are holding onto at least one thing way past its expiration date.

Hustling through an airport, I stopped to buy some water. At the shop’s refrigerator, a man bent over, loading bottles into it. I reached past him and pulled out one he’d put in. He looked up, stopped working, got a bottle from another shelf, and held it out to me, saying, “This one is cold.” I said thanks and took the one he offered.

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Things keep changing. The clock ticks, the day unfolds, trees grow, leaves turn brown, hair turns gray, children grow up and leave home, attention skitters from this to that, the cookie is delicious but then it’s all gone, you’re mad about something for a while and then get over it, consciousness streams on and on and on.

When you're young, the territory of the psyche is like a vast estate, with rolling hills, forests and plains, swamps, and meadows. So many things can be experienced, expressed, wanted, and loved.

Waking up is like the sun rising. At first, it's mostly dark, as glimmers of consciousness begin to light the shadows. Emerging into full wakefulness, the fogs and veils dissolve and the whole plain of your mind comes into view. It's quiet: a restiveness in the body, sleepy still, not yet much internal verbal chatter. There's an intimacy with yourself, abiding as the core of your being.

There’s a profound and miraculous mystery right under our noses: this instant of now has no duration at all, yet somehow it contains all the causes from the past that are creating the future. Everything arising to become this moment vanishes beneath our feet as the next moment wells up. Since it’s always now, now is ete al.

I did my Ph.D. dissertation by videotaping 20 mother-toddler pairs and analyzing what happened when the mom offered an alte ative to a problematic want ("not the chainsaw, sweetie, how about this red truck?!"). Hundreds of bleary-eyed hours later, I found that offering alte atives reduced the child's negative emotions and increased cooperation with the parent.

[If for you the breath is associated with trauma and discomfort, you probably shouldn't try this practice in its form below. But you might adapt it to something that is more nurturing for you, such as a saying or image.]

As I was meditating one morning, our cat hopped up onto my lap. It felt sweet to sit there with him. And yet - even though I was feeling fine and had plenty of time, there was this internal pressure to start zipping along with emails and calls and all the other clamoring minutiae of the day.

Lately, I've been wondering what would be on my personal list of top five practices (all tied for first place). You might ask yourself the same question, knowing that you can cluster related practices under a single umbrella, your list may differ from mine, and your practices may change over time. In these JOTs, so far I've written about two of my top practices:

Meditation is to the mind what aerobic exercise is to the body. Like exercise, there are many good ways to do it and you can find the one that suits you best.

Feeling both the world and myself these days, one phrase keeps calling: lived by love. Explicitly, this means coming from love in a broad sense, from compassion, good intentions, self-control, warmth, finding what’s to like, caring, connecting, and kindness.

Why?

One slice of the pie of life feels relaxed and contented. And then there is that other slice, in which we feel driven and stressed. Trying to get pleasures, avoid pains, pile up accomplishments and recognitions, be loved by more people. Lose more weight, try to fill the hole in the heart. Slake the thirst, satisfy the hunger. Strive, strain, press. This other slice is the conventional strategy for happiness. We pursue it for four reasons.

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Goodwill and ill will are about intention: the will is for good or ill. These intentions are expressed through action and inaction, word and deed, and-especially-thoughts. How do you feel when you sense another person taking potshots at you in her mind? What does it feel like to take potshots of your own? Ill will plays a lot of mini-movies in the simulator, those little grumbling stories about other people. Remember: while the movie is running, your neurons are wiring together.

Research shows that relationships are built from interactions, and interactions are built from moments. A critical moment in an interaction is when one person wants something from the other one. ("Wants" include wishes, needs, desires, hopes, and longings.) The want could be simple and concrete, like "Please pass the salt." Or it could be complex and intangible, such as "Please love me as a romantic partner."

Want to try a little experiment? Stop breathing. Really. For a few seconds, maybe a few dozen seconds, and see how it feels. For me, this experiment is an intimate way to experience a deep truth that we live dependently, relying on 10,000 things for physical survival, happiness, love, and success.

You may have seen the old Mickey Mouse movie in which he is working at a conveyor belt in a factory. More and more widgets come at him that he must handle, and he gets increasingly frazzled as he struggles to keep up.

I’m old enough to remember a time when people usually answered “good” when you asked them the standard, “How are you?” (often said “harya?”). These days the answer is commonly “busy.” I know what it feels like to get very busy and start to feel dispersed: juggling a dozen priorities at any moment, attention skittering from one thing to another, body revved up, feeling stretched thin and spread out like being squished between two sheets of glass.

“Peace” can sound merely sentimental or clichéd (“visualize whirled peas”). But deep down, it’s what most of us long for. Consider the proverb: The highest happiness is peace.

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By "war," I mean here a mindset, not combat between nations with tanks and bombs. The "war" I'm referring to is an attitude of conflict and animosity toward a person, object, or condition. Parents can feel at war with a misbehaving teenager, and certainly vice versa. Neighbors quarreling over a fence. Spouses edging toward divorce; divorced parents continuing to battle over holidays. Someone stuck in traffic, at war with other drivers. Ideologues reviling the other side. Kicking the chair after stubbing a toe against it.

As general clusters that each include a number of specific methods, my Top 5 types of practices (all tied for first place) are:

I admit it: whether close to home or far away, I wish some people were different. Depending on who they are, I wish they'd stop doing things like leaving cabinet doors open in our kitchen, sending me spam emails, or turning a blind eye to global warming. And I wish they'd start doing things like being friendlier toward me or spending more money on public education. Even if it doesn't affect me directly, for their own sake, I do wish that various people I care about were more energetic, less anxious, or less self-critical.

The fifth of my personal Top 5 practices (all tied for first place) is open out, by which I mean relaxing into a growing sense of connection, even oneness, with all things.

We're all carrying a load, including tasks, challenges, worries, inner criticism, mistreatment from others, physical and emotional pain, loss and illness now or later, and everyday stresses and frustrations. Take a moment to get a sense of your own load. It's very real, isn't it? Recognizing it is just honesty and self-compassion, not exaggeration or self-pity.

By "sobriety," I mean healthy self-control, a centered enjoyment of life, and inner freedom from drivenness. We typically apply this sense of balance and self-care to things like food, drugs and alcohol, sexuality, money, and risky behaviors. And if you like, you could bring sobriety to other things as well, such as righteousness, contentiousness, over-working, or controlling others.

My wife and kids tease me that the title of this practice is corny - and it is. Still, I like it. If you don't nourish the things that nourish you, they wither away like a plant in dry stony ground. Looking to the year ahead for you - a year that can begin whenever you want - what's one key thing that will bear lots of fruit for you if you take care of it?

Sometimes things are difficult. Your legs are tired and you still have to stay on your feet another hour at work. You love a child who's finding her independence through emotional distance from you. A long-term relationship could be losing its spark. It's finals week in college. You're trying to start a business and it's struggling. You've got a chronic health problem or a disability. Sometimes people don't appreciate your work. You're being discriminated against or otherwise treated unjustly. The body ages, sags, and grows weary.

We're pulled and prodded by financial pressures, commuter traffic, corporate policies, technology, advertising, politics, and the people we work with and live with. As well, internal forces yank the proverbial chains, including emotional reactions, compelling desires, "shoulds," and internalized "voices" from parents and other authority figures.

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Many years ago, I was in a significant relationship in which the other person started doing things that surprised and hurt me. I'll preserve the privacy here so I won't be concrete, but it was pretty intense. After going through the first wave of reactions - What?! How could you? Are you kidding me?! - I settled down a bit. I had a choice.

Gravity and entropy are powerful processes in the natural world. Gravity draws things together, toward a center, while entropy scatters them into disorder. In much the same way, in our own lives, some things bring us to the center, while others disturb and disperse us.

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When I look back on mistakes I've made - like dumping my anger on someone, making assumptions in haste, partying too much, losing my nerve, being afraid to speak from my heart - in all cases, a part of me had taken over. You know what I mean. The parts of us that have a partial view are driven by one aim, clamp down on other parts, really want to have a particular experience or to eat/drink/smoke a particular molecule, yammer away critically, or hold onto resentments toward others.

In my early 20's, I went through Rolfing, a form of deep-tissue bodywork, and I nervously anticipated the 5th session, the one that goes deep into the belly. But instead of gobs of repressed emotional pain, what poured out was love - waves, and waves of love that I'd pushed down due to embarrassment, fears of closeness, and my struggles with my mother.

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The easiest and usually most effective way to replenish your body is through good nutrition.