In June, the project was going to take 8 weeks. By August, clearly it would be 12. Now, we’re hoping we can wrap everything up before we go past 5 months.
“Everyone” knows the remodeling projects go over budget and behind schedule, so I built a healthy 15% margin into our budget – should be plenty! But I forgot my dangerous tendency toward optimism.
Looking at the results of my SEI assessment (Six Seconds’ emotional intelligence test), there’s a telling passage in the “snapshot” of a leader with optimism scores like mine…
Sometimes pessimistic people complain these leaders are “always wearing rose colored glasses.” In a sense that is true, and it can lead to unrealistically minimizing risks and overstating reward.
I definitely minimized the perceived risks — fortunately the results are not dire, just rather challenging, but in other circumstances could have been a really serious financial issue. Not to mention the stress! Back in May & June making those plans, even though I recognized some risk, I focused much more on the excitement of the project and the potential (the “up side”) and so made decisions with inadequate caution. I don’t regret the whole project, but there are certainly days where I say, “if I’d known it was going to be this difficult and expensive, I never would have started.”
Perhaps this is one reason those who prefer a pessimistic style don’t really trust those of us who tend toward an optimistic view. They see that we “bite off more than we can chew” and sometimes break our teeth on the rocks of unexpected challenge. “I could have told you,” they delight to say, “but you don’t listen. I’m just trying to be realistic.”
Because we’re not realistic, of course. We live in a fantasy where almost anything is possible, and a great deal is probable.
On the other hand, the curmudgeon who loves pessimism is also living in a fantasy. One where high walls and a careful defense is required at all times. Where few things are possible, and little (good) is probable.
In which fantasy would you rather live?
Most of you would say, I suspect, “neither! I want to live in reality….” but just for a moment, suppose that isn’t an option — that the universe’s optometrist has run our of clear glasses so you can either wear “rose colored glasses” or “gloom colored glasses.”
I suspect that if I wore the gloom glasses, I would have no cause chorus the “if I’d only known” lament. On the other hand, I’d never have taken on this challenge. I suppose that in 15 years we can all look back and evaluate the merits of this decision with some balanced perspective, the data of hindsight, but in the present it’s a mystery. Except, that while I’m poorer in cash, my life is very rich. Yes, this continues to be an incredibly challenging process (especially since we’re leaving for 6 weeks in Asia in 10 days!!!), yet I’m feeling vibrantly alive, stretched to grow, awake to learn, engaged with my family in this endeavor, and going to bed exhausted by long days ripe with full effort.
We all know how invigorating play is to our energy levels. Brain researchers are also finding that play helps keep our brains healthy. Play is a natural and needed part of life.
Here is an incredible photo shoot narrated by Stuart Brown, a physician and clinical researcher who founded the National Institute for Play.
It’s an age-old question; “what makes us happy?” Is it true love? Is it fulfillment in our careers? Is it status, respect, intelligence, money, family, friends, health, or any combination of these factors? Well, we have an amazing source to turn to for some answers to this question. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930’s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. The architect responsible for continuing the study, Dr. George Vaillant, has dedicated his career since 1967 to following the men of the Grant study. (Arlie Bock, a physician who took over the health services at Harvard in the 1930’s, conceived the project with his patron, department-store magnate W.T. Grant.) Dr. Vaillant has said, “To be able to study lives in such depth, over so many decades….it was like looking through the Mount Palomar telescope.”
Dr. Vaillant identified with the longitudinal method of research, which tracks relatively small samples over long periods of time, in 1961, while a psychiatric resident at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Dr. Vaillant points out that longitudinal studies, like wine, improve with age. As the Grant study men entered middle age (in the 1960”s) many achieved wonderful success. Four members of the sample ran for the U.S. Senate, one served in a presidential Cabinet, and one was president. There was also a best-selling novelist. But there were also darker stories. By age 50, almost a third of the men had at one time or another met Dr. Vaillant’s criteria for mental illness. Although the Grant study men remain anonymous, some have revealed themselves. Ben Bradlee, the long-time editor of The Washington Post and John F. Kennedy both revealed themselves as part of the study. (President Kennedy’s records have been withdrawn from the study office and sealed until 2040).
Dr. Vaillant’s central question in the analysis of the Grant men has not been how much or how little trouble the men met, but rather precisely how-and to what effect- they responded to that trouble. Calling these responses “adaptations,” or defense mechanisms in the traditional psychoanalytic tradition, Dr. Vaillant feels that adaptations shape or distort a person’s reality. There are four categories of adaptations from worst to best. The unhealthiest adaptations are “psychotic” adaptations – like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania. The healthiest or “mature” adaptations include:
altruism (commitment to others’ wellbeing – i.e. empathy)
humor (acquired through knowing yourself)
anticipation (creating a sense of positive outcome – ie optimism)
suppression (a conscious decision to postpone an impulse or decision, to be
addressed in good time – ie consequential thinking)
sublimation (finding outlets and expressions for feelings that promote growth and
good decisions – ie, pursuing a noble goal)
Interviews, physicals, assessments with standardized instruments, and extensive physiological measurements (brain scans, heart scans etc.) have been the basis for analysis of the men’s lives. The data is rich, in qualitative style, and empirical, in the tradition of 1960’s psychological assessment. After following the study for a quarter of a century, Dr. Vaillant identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically: employing positive adaptation, education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Dr. Vaillant has said that the major difficulty in healthy aging is alcoholism, which he termed “the horse, not the cart, of pathology.” The key to happiness, according to Dr. Vaillant? “It is social aptitude, not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” When asked what he had learned from his 40 year association following the Grant study men, Dr. Vaillant replied, “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
When I finished reading the article describing this study in The Atlantic recently, I was incredibly excited, struck by how much the Grant study validates the importance of Emotional Intelligence (EI). The healthiest “adaptations” are EI competencies that are a core part of the programs that we teach. Altruism is another word for Empathy; Humor is acquired through knowing yourself, being able to step back from a situation, and choosing how to respond; anticipation is a combination of understanding patterns and consequences; suppression is taking six seconds to allow emotions and cognitions to connect; and sublimation is giving yourself to others in a socially acceptable, selfless and noble manner. Dr. Vaillant’s conclusions are echoed by the work and teachings of leaders of the emotional intelligence and social-emotional learning movement: Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, John Mayer, Martin Seligman, Maurice Elias, the Dalai Lama, Sam Goldstein, Edward Hallowell, Roger Weissberg, Patricia Wolfe, Karen Stone McCown, Anabel Jensen, Marsha Rideout, and Josh Freedman.
We are very privileged to have the research from the Grant study to draw on. The fact that it supports the main EI precepts that we teach is incredible validation. We need to shout this to the world!!
More about the Atlantic Article is in Tessy’s EQ Planet post below
I just got back from a presentation. It went well but my perfectionist voice harps incessantly. Did that one participant need more time to grapple with an exercise? Should I have tried the roleplay together instead of letting them work separately? Since each group reacts to exercises uniquely, it is impossible to control outcomes. I’m glad I have high standards and seek to constantly tweak and improve my workshops. But it is also helpful to remember that true perfectionism can be damaging. It can cause us to procrastinate and it can rob us of enjoying our real achievements.
I am a lousy vegetable gardener. I’ve never been formally taught and since I don’t use pesticides, it is even harder to ensure a crop. But every year I learn more and every year my family enjoys fresh lettuce, broccoli, rapini, Swiss chard, peas, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, arugula, peppers, and (if I’m lucky and outwit the nasty squash vine borer) zucchini. My garden isn’t organized; sometimes the plants grow too close. Tomato plants have sprawled on the ground, propped up by a cockeyed collection of poles or milk crates. My focus on the vegetable beds can leave little time to weed and other areas of the yard look messy. But because gardening is a hobby that doesn’t trigger my perfectionism, I continue despite my (very obvious) mistakes and enjoy whatever the garden yields.
I continue to work to be a smarter, more productive gardener but I am also able to celebrate each delectable success.
How good are you at balancing the quest for high standards with allowing the flow of natural learning, mistakes, and life’s unpredictability?
For the first time, a journalist, Joshua Wolshenk, has been given access to the archives of one of the most comprehensive longitutudinal studies in history. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. This fascinating article in The Atlantic looks at The Grant Study.
“The study began in the spirit of laying lives out on a microscope slide. But it turned out that the lives were too big, too weird, too full of subtleties and contradictions to fit any easy conception of “successful living.” Arlie Bock had gone looking for binary conclusions—yeses and nos, dos and don’ts. But the enduring lessons would be paradoxical, not only on the substance of the men’s lives (the most inspiring triumphs were often studies in hardship) but also with respect to method: if it was to come to life, this cleaver-sharp science project would need the rounding influence of storytelling.”
The article doesn’t just consider the research, but looks in the life of of George Vaillant, the study’s longtime director. Vaillant has been the chief investigator of the lives of these men for 42 years and has also been the chief analyst of their lessons – many of them viewed through the lens of psychiatry, an influence which is very apparent.
What are some of the key findings? There is so much in this study and in this article, but I have picked out a few points which really interested me.
The study looks at themes of maturing and ageing and paints a process far less painful than we assume when young. But there do seem to be some predictors of ageing well, both physically and mentally.
“Employing mature adaptations was one. The others were education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called “happy-well” and only 7.5 percent as “sad-sick.” Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up “happy-well” at 80. Even if they had been in adequate physical shape at 50, the men who had three or fewer protective factors were three times as likely to be dead at 80 as those with four or more factors.
The study has yielded some additional subtle surprises. Regular exercise in college predicted late-life mental health better than it did physical health. And depression turned out to be a major drain on physical health: of the men who were diagnosed with depression by age 50, more than 70 percent had died or were chronically ill by 63. More broadly, pessimists seemed to suffer physically in comparison with optimists, perhaps because they’re less likely to connect with others or care for themselves.”
Vaillant’s other main interest is the power of relationships. “It is social aptitude,” he writes, “not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging.” Warm connections are necessary—and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors. The men’s relationships at age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable, except defenses.
In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.”
Last year Vaillant gave a talk to Martin Seligman’s class:
“The happiness books say, ‘Try happiness. You’ll like it a lot more than misery’—which is perfectly true,” he told them. But why, he asked, do people tell psychologists they’d cross the street to avoid someone who had given them a compliment the previous day? In fact, Vaillant went on, positive emotions make us more vulnerable than negative ones. One reason is that they’re future-oriented. Fear and sadness have immediate payoffs—protecting us from attack or attracting resources at times of distress. Gratitude and joy, over time, will yield better health and deeper connections—but in the short term actually put us at risk. That’s because, while negative emotions tend to be insulating, positive emotions expose us to the common elements of rejection and heartbreak.”
How very wise, the sort of wise that studying the lives of people for 42 years can bring….
I have always loved little boxes, they’re all around our house and I have a collection near my desk.
I’ve decided to make one a Dream Box in an attempt to stay hopeful.
I’d like to say I’m not afraid to talk about this, but the truth is I am. I’m afraid that you will judge me because while I’m “supposed” to be tough, to be a “real man” and have that “executive presence,” in fact I’m uncertain and lonely. I often doubt myself and question the value of my work. I suspect this is true for a lot of people — I suspect it’s especially true for people who are attempting to lead and venture into new lands.
When work is relatively easy, the voice of doubt is quiet — or at least shouted down by all the excitement. But in times like these when economic pressures mount and work and life become more challenging, the doubts get louder and more pervasive. Apparently it’s not just an economic depression. I go from doubting my direction, into doubting my vision, and then the doubt spreads to my very identity and I feel depressed.
Sadly, I know just what to say to myself to cut myself down, and on “bad days” I overwhelm myself – I tell myself I’m not making a difference, that I’m wasting the best years of my life, that I’m sacrificing for nothing. I tell myself it would be so much easier to just work for someone else and let them worry, to go to some well worn conventional path rather than tilting at endless windmills – and that while it’s sad that I’d make more money doing meaningless work, the evidence is that’s more valuable. In our society the messages are pervasive money equates to value and success… and with so much economic uncertainty and fear abounding, that message becomes more potent.
Another part of me tries to stand up and challenge the doubter, but it’s all too easy to find evidence that the doubts are right. Especially when the phone isn’t ringing.
Yet somehow that other optimistic voice just won’t give up — and there are a lot of “good days” — and that’s why I want the dream box.
A few months ago someone emailed thanking me for an article and said, “never doubt that you are making a difference.” As I’ve thought about this post, those words keep running through my head. I don’t want to doubt — yet I do. So I’m going to go find that email and put those words in the dream box. Just yesterday someone name Kaye emailed about the EQ Certification training and wrote, “it is still the single most powerful professional development that I have done” — Kaye’s words are going in the Dream Box. Often after workshops people give me notes — they’re going in too.
Because even in the worst of these moments when almost all of me wants to give up, I try to imagine what I’d do instead, and I keep coming back to the foundation of our vision at Six Seconds. Yes, maybe it’s irrational and maybe even hopeless, but somehow we – humans – have to find a way out off the self-destructive treadmill we’ve created. We need to find value in ourselves and each other more than in money and things. We need new visions and new skills to learn to love more deeply, to genuinely care for ourselves, each others, and our world — and no, my contribution won’t make this change, but what if I could make just a small inroad? And if not me, then who? And then I see messages like Kaye’s and I think maybe we are — not fixing it, but leaning the right direction. Though the road is long and the path is steep, just a few steps might make a vast difference in a few people’s lives.
So I’ll take the reminders and put them in my dream box. Then when the doubts start shouting, that other voice will have some backup.
(that space was the “pause” while you went to take the poll… and if you did you saw more current results, but here you go)
Of course as a parent I want ALL of these and more – but in the poll you only get one! I offered 4 responses, two which are more “selfish” and two which are more “altruistic” — you can see the results.
Of course this is a SMALL and nonscientific poll, but what is the implication for our future?
I had a strange dream this morning. I was helping a new employee who had just been hired in our department. We worked comfortably together but then, at the end of the workday (as can happen in dreams), I suddenly realized that this new worker was actually a former colleague. How did I not recognize her?
In the past my former co-worker, “Cathy,” had caused great disruption and chaos in our department. She had felt like an adversary to many of us. But since I had no recollection of this in my dream, we began our “first” day at work together with ease and collegiality. My dream-state-temporary-amnesia allowed me to treat Cathy with warmth. If I had recognized her, our interaction would have been much different.
How many conflicts could be averted if we had selective amnesia with our rivals or foes? Our conversations would then be free of the tiny microexpressions and unconscious vocal tones that send out defensive messages (despite our best intentions). The problem is, our brain scrutinizes our environment for threats and then sears these threat-memories deep into our mind– for our protection. Our brain doesn’t want us to have amnesia precisely because we would then be more vulnerable to dangers around us.
Emotional Intelligence theories and techniques help us understand our brain’s design. We can then, depending on our circumstances, work to utilize or circumvent our evolutionary programming.
While we can never have complete amnesia about past events, we can at least be conscious of our feelings. These can give us a clue to the unconscious signals we are probably sending. That is why self-fulfilling prophecies work. If I come into a conversation anticipating the worst–my expectations are likely to be fulfilled because of the signals I’ve sent.
Even if we can’t control our unconscious nonverbal behaviors, we can try to compensate for them. If I were to meet with Cathy today, I could emphasize listening, eye contact, smiles, and a gentle tone of voice to counteract other signals I may inadvertently send. Then we might have the same easy relating that we had in my dream.
Destructive patterns of interacting are very hard to change since both parties become stuck sending aggressive or defensive signals. Still, knowing our feelings can help us break these patterns and create new exchanges with our coworkers.
Last month Professor Nicholas Chistakis (Harvard University) and Associate Professor James Folwer (University of California) published the analysis of their research into the spread of happiness in social networks. This study is one of those rather remarkable pieces of research which followed nearly 5000 individuals for 20 years – 1983 to 2003. Those 5000 individuals were embedded in a larger network of 12,000 people, they had an average of 11 connections to others in the social network and their happiness was assessed every few years using a standard measure.
Christakis and Folwer:
A person’s happiness is related to the happiness of their friends, their friends’ friends, and their friends’ friends’ friends—that is, to people well beyond their social horizon.
We found that happy people tend to be located in the center of their social networks and to be located in large clusters of other happy people.
And we found that each additional happy friend increases a person’s probability of being happy by about 9%. For comparison, having an extra $5,000 in income (in 1984 dollars) increased the probability of being happy by about 2%.
We found that social networks have clusters of happy and unhappy people within them that reach out to three degrees of separation.
Happiness, in short, is not merely a function of personal experience, but also is a property of groups. Emotions are a collective phenomenon.
As the authors explain we have known for some time that emotional contagion spreads between people through contact, but what this new study shows us that happiness spreads across a diverse array of social ties, over time and distance. The happiness effect reduces the further removed the contact is, but evidence is that three degrees of separation still has an impact on the individual.
A few things struck me in particular about the study:
The statistical models suggest that clusters of happiness result from the spread of happiness and not just a tendency for people to associate with similar individuals. So, we really can have a significant impact on the happiness of our friends and family, not just by giving them friendship, but simply by being happy ourselves.
Network characteristics independently predict which individuals will be happy years into the future.
Although happy people tended to be within a larger network of happier people, I couldn’t find anything specific about whether a happy individual attracts a larger, happier network, or whether the network itself makes an individual happier. I wondered about this particularly because my own experience is that my networks make me happy…
This research project reminded me very much of another longitudinal study which looked at resilience over a 30 year year period (1955-1985) on Kauai, and island of Hawaii. This study had been very important to my own recent studies, and their conclusions shared some characteristics of this latest report. They found that individuals with many strong and diverse social ties where more likely to overcome adversity. Social ties were considered one of the most significant ‘protective factors’.
Wonderful, painstaking, research. And so important to understand how we have so much potential to positively impact those around us…..
.I love the work of Alex Ostrowski. Alex won the RSA Design Directions award and has also produced a book called The Happiest Book in The World. And how perfect that there is only one copy!
The pic pretty much speaks for itself? Students from ten middle schools across Portland and Central Oregon are participating in Caldera’s Hello Neighbor project. Along with photographer Julie Keefe, the students have begun to identify, interview and photograph diverse people of all ages in their neighborhoods.
From their work, the Caldera students will create photo-and-word portraits to be displayed on large, 7 foot by 5 foot banners throughout their communities.
One of the most difficult things these days is to establish some truths about the state of the world. What really is happening? I read so many research papers, books and news stories simply in an effort to keep up and try to get a proper, realistic view…. an in-depth, informed perspective.Research is so complex, but it can lead to simple and powerful insights. This morning I was really thrilled to read a new research paper on happiness and wellbeing. The World Values Survey is publishing the results of a longitudinal research analysis in Perspectives on Psychological Science (July, 2008) Development, Freedom, and Happiness: A Global PerspectiveData from representative national surveys carried out from 1981 to 2007 show that happiness rose in 45 of the 52 countries. The country rankings showed that USA was 16, Britain was 21, Zimbabwe 97.Democratization and rising social tolerance contributed even more than economic development to a growing sense of free choice, and thus to rising levels of happiness.
“The strong version of the hedonic treadmill model was supported by three arguments: (a) individuals have a long-term happiness set point to which they readapt, despite changing circumstances; (b) this set-point is largely genetically determined; (c) societies’ happiness levels remain fixed over time. Recent research argues that the first two points should be re-interpreted as strong tendencies and not iron laws. The findings presented here support this reassessment, and demonstrate that the third point also needs to be modified: the happiness levels of nations can and do change.” “Taken together, these findings suggest that the hedonic treadmill model should be revised but not abandoned. The twin studies provide convincing evidence that genetic factors have an important impact on subjective well-being. And there is abundant and equally convincing evidence that people adapt to Development, Freedom, Happiness changes, so that subjective well-being levels tend to fluctuate around stable set-points. But these factors are not as dominant as earlier interpretations suggested. The hedonic treadmill model is a tendency that prevails only when other factors are constant.”
This paper questions some of the methods of previous happiness measurement data, but also within their conclusions they write:
“We would not expect subjective well-being to continue rising forever. Even apart from ceiling effects, recent years have seen a conjunction of favorable factors. Many low-income and middle-income countries experienced exceptionally high rates of economic growth, in the range of 4 to 11 percent annually. Rich countries had relatively little economic growth (in the range of 1 to 3%), but they experienced remarkable rates of social liberation, with hard-core opposition to gender equality and homosexuality falling by roughly half since 1981(Inglehart and Welzel, 2005).”
“These findings suggest that subjective well-being has important social consequences: Falling levels of subjective well-being were a leading indicator of the collapse of former communist systems. These findings also have important implications for social scientists and policymakers, for they imply that human happiness is not fixed, but can be influenced by belief systems and social policies.”
Did you see the little blurb in the Sunday NY Times business section? MBA students from the top 15 schools were asked to select the 3 topo factors they wanted in a job. #1 was ‘challenging job responsibilities”. The second was money – not the first as many think. Work-life balance followed and then came ‘potential to make a contribution to society’. These are MBA students, not teachers or social workers, and although money is important to them they want to contribute.
A lot of this is familiar, but I like how he has managed the principles based on the 24 Character strengths and virtues from Positive Psychology. Essentially Michael Lee Stallard describes how our individual efforts can bring about good organisational climates… I particularly like to include schools in this….
The bottom line is that connection plays a critical part in improving individual performance. People who are more connected with others fare better in life than those who are less connected. Connection, because it meets our human needs, makes people more trusting, more cooperative, more empathetic, more enthusiastic, more optimistic, more energetic, more creative and better problem solvers. It creates the type of environment in which people want to help their colleagues. They are more open to share information that helps decision makers become better-informed. The openness that emerges in a trusting and cooperative environment creates a robust marketplace of ideas that stimulates innovation.
One of the most difficult things these days is to establish some truths about the state of the world. What really is happening? I read so many research papers, books and news stories simply in an effort to keep up and try to get a proper, realistic view…. an in-depth, informed perspective.Research is so complex, but it can lead to simple and powerful insights. This morning I was really thrilled to read a new research paper on happiness and wellbeing. 
