Senia.com Positive Psychology Coaching

Hi! Tomorrow, I’m producing a one-hour show segment for Karen Salmansohn’s show “Be Happy, Dammit.” Karen Salmansohn is a great NYer and author of over 25 books. She asked me months ago to produce a segment of her show during which a panel talks about the research findings of “HAPPINESS AT WORK.” I invited a few classmates onto the program. Would love it if you can listen in, and she takes callers too!

On the air: Karen, me, Margaret Greenberg, David Pollay, Doug Turner
CALL-IN NUMBER: 1-866-LIME-114 (She often takes call-ins)

SPECIFICS:

• If you have SIRIUS RADIO, it’s
  ch. 114 Thursday (10-25-07) 8-9am live

• If you want to listen ONLINE on Th morning 8-9am,
  1) Go here http://www.sirius.com/listenonline
  and click “FREE 3-DAY TRIAL.”
  2) Then follow the directions in your email to logon and look in
  FAMILY & KIDS >>> LIME >>> LIME 114

Look forward to having a fun chat with this great panel!

S.

DETAILS:
PANEL:
Margaret Greenberg, President of the Greenberg Group – an organizational effectiveness consulting and coaching practice.
David J. Pollay, Syndicated columnist with the North Star Writers Group, and president of TheMomentumProject.com, an international training and consulting organization.
Doug Turner, Vice President of HR for the Washington, DC division of Balfour Beatty Construction company.

PRODUCED BY:
Senia Maymin, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of PositivePsychologyNews.com, and Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania in positive psychology.

“What is a Teacher? A Teacher is the special person who has the responsibility to provide the “Eyes” for a student, and helps the student to “See”. A good Teacher directs the student’s eyes to the simple parts first, and slowly, bit by bit, gently guides the seeking hands along a proven path. He carefully points out the next bits of knowledge, skillfully combining the simplicities, until the top of the mountain unfolds, not as a “complexity of facts”, but as a workable system, perfectly understood and usable by the student.”

~ Violin method book by Eden Vaning-Rosen

One of my favorite people in the world emailed me this today. I absolutely love it. So often, I say, “life is easy. it really is. I can choose the easy way to do something or the hard way. what if it were easy?” And the easy way needs to also be the right way.

I love too that this is in a violin book:
* Directs the student’s eyes to the simple parts first
* Points out the next bits of knowledge
until …
* a workable system
* the top of the mountain

I also like that the end result is not a “complexity of facts.” By the time you get there, you’re not memorizing facts; you’re using parts you understand. This is how I want to be as a teacher.

Make it a conversation.

That’s it. That’s the most important thing. Make your interviewer Joe have a good time; make your interviewer Joe enjoy himself in interviewing you. Make your interviewer Sally have something that she can say back at home to her spouse about how her day went. Make something you say able to be repeated by your interviewer Marcel at a cocktail party.

Make it a conversation.

Well, what do I mean “make it a conversation?” Specifically, I mean:

• Two-sided
• Cocktail-party interesting
• Having a lot of stories in your interview
• Enthusiastic and lively

These may be a lot of bullet points to remember, but you don’t need to remember them. All you need to think about is “How can I make this into an interesting conversation?” I work with clients frequently on interview practice, specifically the interview start.

Two specific tips:

1) How to start the interview in a fun way

• Ask the first question. Intrerviews follow a path of inertia once they get started. If the first question is to you, you’ve alredy turned the tides into a routine interview. So ask the first question. Ask about the company. Ask about the specific position. Learn something from the answer, and then address what you have learned in some of your follow on questions.
• Be curious. You don’t know everything. No one expects you to. Ask for clarification when you need it.
• If boxed into answering first, clarify the question to create a sense of back-and-forth.

2) How to have a conversation within a question

• Clarify the question. If you’ve been asked something and you don’t want to fall into the routine, “Interviewer asks, interviewee answers,” then clarify the question.
  Interviewer: “Tell me about a time when you’ve shown leadership.”
  YOU: “Would you like that to be in some recent experience or my overall largest example of such a time?”
  Interviewer: “An example from your current job would be great.”
  YOU: “Ok…”
• “To answer this, could I first ask you a couple of things about [the position, the work environment, the projects]?”
• Respond to conversational invitiations. Sometimes your interviewer Reggie may take an important call, and then after hanging up, may say, “That was from Operations. We’ve announced that we’re looking to buy a new plant.” Respond to this. Feel free to ask, “Is that good news or bad news?” Be open to these parts of the conversation.

Why do you need to travel to Scandinavia to enjoy a hot cup of tea after a meal in a restaurant? This is an idea I spoke with my friend E.C. about years and years ago. I still so simply and truly buy into this. You can be more observant. You can enjoy life more. You can do something different. You can enjoy a hot cup of tea right where you are - both in your kitchen and at a local restaurant.

E.C. told me that he had traveled to China, and had seen so much, and had observed so many details of regular life. And had taken so many photos. And then he wondered why people don’t do the same where they are? Why don’t people look for the details and observe the anomalies of daily living? Why don’t people explore what’s really underfoot?

There’s no expectation to do so, and people are busy, and people are not in a relaxation-enjoy-life mindset, and people feel rushed with daily chores, errands, expectations. But … does it need to be this way?

You don’t need to go to a monastery in India. Or break bread in the mills of Poland. Or dip into the Dead Sea.

Right around where you are. What can you do?

Gretchen wrote about breaking the hedonic treadmill by not having access to sending emails for a few days. Then, when she came back to email, it felt soooo good! Exactly.

My grandmother tells a story of a family with seven children that all lived in one room. The family went to the Rabbi and asked the rabbi, “What can we do? We have no space.” The Rabbi said, “Go get a goat and put her in the center of your one room.” The family said, “What?! That doesn’t make sense.” And the Rabbi said, “That’s my recommendation.” The family came back a week later, and told the Rabbi that didn’t seem to help. The Rabbi said, “Now, take the goat out of the room.”

That’s it! That’s the hedonic treadmill. Change things up. Feel too cramped? Make it more cramped, then relieve the pressure. And you can create your own new experiences to also break the hedonic treadmill. How can you do something very, very different just exactly where you are?

There’s a folk story about a man for whom everything had gone badly, and he went off to live in a far-off country. He wrote letters to his parents telling them of things going on with him, and eventually, things were not going great in the new place either. So his father write him a letter, “Son, how do you expect things to be very different there? You took down there the same thing that was an issue here - you took yourself. So come back and figure yourself out here. We’d love to see you.”

I read this story as very positive. Like, look inside and make the changes you want to make, and then enjoy yourself and your life more. I can see how it could be read differently, and give the father an overly didactic and moralistic tone, but I don’t think about it that way - I read it as a dad’s concern and suggestion for his son.

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In summary, try any of these 6 ways to do something differently - exactly where you are:

1. Go to a new restaurant nearby with your spouse or good friend. Dress nicely. Enjoy each bite. Write a review to each other over email afterwards.
2. Walk in an area of town you know, but take photos as if documenting for National Geographic and email them to friends later.
3. Do your regular sport but pay attention to each muscle. This is an idea I picked up from David Seah. If you’re not actively doing a sport, do this with walking.
4. Go enjoy the sun in a new way. Find a day that is sunny. Go outside for ten minutes with the idea of enjoying the sun in a new way. What can you try? With your eyes closed? Sunning just the back of your neck for example? Dancing in the sun?
5. Buy one flower, and spend ten minutes smelling it differently. Smell it when it’s near you, when it’s far away, when it’s in water, when it’s not, when it’s in the sun, when it’s in the shade. What works best?
6. Hug something soft - a stuffed animal, a dog, a cat. Really feel how the softness feels. Describe it to a friend.

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You’ll notice a lot of the above ideas are also about sharing the feeling of the something different that you’re doing - sending an email about it, describing it. Go ahead and share. As Karen Salmansohn says, really share. Shaaaaaare.

EXAMPLES:

• In a job interview, he who names the salary first loses.

• In a discussion with a teenager, he who loses his temper first loses.

• In a triathalon, he who starts off first often loses.

• At work, he who insists his way is the right way loses.

• In relationships, he who insists that there’s only one way to see things loses.

• In competitive skating, gymnastics (and other sports of an aesthetic nature), the skater or gymnast who goes first loses.

COUNTER-EXAMPLES:

• In a sprint, he who starts off out front often wins.

• In pool, he who starts first often wins.

• In apologizing, he who goes first often wins.

• In starting a project off, he who is assertive and starts first on a productive note often wins, in many cases taking the entire team towards that win.

Try this.

Next time a friend or a colleague asks you a question, feel free to answer, and then ask that person the same question back. I don’t know why this happens - this comes from no academic study that I know of - but I have found this to be consistently true.

People ask those things that they themselves want to be asked.

Maybe it’s because … people are practicing those questions in their head (speaking to themselves), and one day they ask that question aloud of someone.

Maybe it’s because … people can think of a personal answer while they are asking a question.

Maybe it’s because … these are typical questions that go on in the person’s head day in and day out, and the listener isn’t always with that person, and so doesn’t hear that question asked again and again. Perhaps Joselle asks everyone she meets, “Which is better - making more money but hating your job, or making less money but liking it a little more?” Maybe that’s just Joselle’s standard question.

Examples:
* “How are you?” - That person often wants to be asked how they are.
* “How are you getting on with your business partner?” - That person often wants to be asked about his/her business partner or work colleagues.
* “How many hours of TV do you let your child watch per day?” - This person is often thinking of how many hours are appropriate for his/her child.

Enjoy asking people those questions they want to be asked anyway!

In coaching, I often think about how to ask a person questions so that I can understand more of his world. Sometimes it feels as if there are not enough details, or I don’t quite see a situation from her point of view.

In this case, it’s natural to want to ask, “Is there anything more you can tell me?”

But that question is often a dead-end because to a degree it presupposes that, um, no, there’s not anything more that the person can tell me. “Well is there any other way that you could structure your day so that you have healthier food around you?” Um, no, not really, I’m already doing everything I can think of.

Try this question:
“What is some other way that you could structure your day so that you have healthier food around you?”

What did I do differently here?
1) I made it an open-ended question. “What is some way …?” as opposed to “Is there …?”
2) I asked about some way as opposed to any way.

I know this sounds silly - it’s just ONE WORD. On the other hand, you unburden the word by making it open: SOME vs. ANY. You put a new pre-supposition in there. The assumption is that there is some way. Or perhaps together we could think of some way.

“What are some new ways that we could approach this company and this department if you want a job here?” “Well, I’ve already talked to my contacts there, and I’ve approached the person who has the same responsibilities as me.” “What might be some other ways?” “Well, I could contact someone else.” “Great, who might be some other people that you could contact? What might their roles be? What might they be involved with at the company?”

The openness of “some” and of open-ended “what” questions can move you closer to something true that leads to action. Enjoy!

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
~ Mohandas Gandhi

If you tend to describe a friend by saying, “she’s nice, but a real gossip,” then people may start to associate “gossip” with you. If you call someone dumb, people may start to associate dumbness with you. If you decribe how beautiful your friend is, then people may think of you as beautiful.

So shows the research by Mae, Carlston, and Skowronski (1998). David Myers summarizes the Mae et. al. research as a particular tendency that people have “when hearing someone say something good or bad about another, to associate the good or bad trait with the speaker.” Furthermore, Myers points out that this could mean that bearers of bad news get disliked, as do strangers that may remind someone of a disliked person.

This is part of a set of research called “spontaneous trait inference,” which includes infering something about a person based on how you may hear that person describe others. (Also within this field, researchers study the effects of describing, for example, a sad event while drinking coffee, and then the trait of sadness being spontaneously from that point on associated unconsciously with coffee).

One study in this field by Mae, Carlston, Skowronski, and Crawford (1999) works like this: participants are asked to memorize some photo and text pairings, such as a photo of a woman and a description about her character, and then later participants are asked to rank the woman on her character. In the same study, another group is asked to memorize pairings of a photo of a woman and a quote that she uses to describe a friend of hers, and then later participants are asked to rank the woman on her character, and the conclusions drawn about the speaker’s character are the same as if she had been describing herself and not her friend.

Even when in a different study, participants are told that pairings of photos and text are random, participants still describe (when asked two days later) the person in the photo as “cruel” or “kind” depending on the random text that had been written next to the photo. Another study in the Mae et. al. (1999) paper is when participants watch a videotape of actors pretending to be college students that describe their friends. Again, people tranfer those descriptions of friends onto the “college students” themselves.

Here is a cute article in Self-Help Magazine about being careful with gosssip. In the Mae et. al. (1999) study, the authors end the paper with their thoughts, “This has significant practical and theoretical implications. It suggests that gossip and other forms of social discourse may have rather surprising, and often unintended, implications for a communicator. Thus, it supports the cliche that if one cannot say something nice about someone, one ought not to say anything at all. It also indicates that self-presenters may achieve desired trait attributions merely by talking about others who have the desired traits.”

Here, here, and here are some additional articles in this field. Could it then be that you are what you say?