Playing with rice bags, white cells or self-esteem

Submitted by tonyplant on December 31, 2005 - 17:04.

Amazon.com has just had its best ever season, but its biggest sellers were iPods and video games rather than books. Depending on whether or not you have ever stayed up all night to watch lemmings self-destruct or to attain a new level of gun-skill, games are to be decried as rotting the brains of The Young or promoted for developing problem-solving skills, particularly in the educational field.

 

What’s unusual about recent releases is the popularity of games with a social purpose or a personal-development slant. There are commercial offerings like The Journey to Wild Divine that use bio-feedback to help the player evolve through the levels until you attain the perfection of the Dalai Lama. However, there are some similarly aspirational free computer games on offer.

The United Nations World Food Program commissioned a game that was intended to teach children something about global hunger. Food Force had a low-key release at a children's book fair in Bologna. Food Force develops awareness that one person dies of hunger every five seconds. Despite this unpromising premise, Food Force has become a cult sensation, with so many download requests that the website kept collapsing under the volume of hits.

Unusally, despite being set on an island ravaged by the twin evils of drought and civil war, no-one blows anyone away in Food Force. Rebels are to be negotiated with, not used as target practice. Players participate in a number of missions, ranging from food drops to rebuilding a community.

read more | 2 comments | self-esteem | happiness | cinema therapy | bio-feedback | bibliotherapy

Auld Angst Whine

Submitted by tonyplant on December 31, 2005 - 14:37.

New Year tends to be a set-piece review date. A time for introspection on how we can improve our lives. An opportunity for reflecting on the past year and realising that we achieved everything that we wanted, and more. Or we confront ourselves with our failure to follow through on any of the plans and actions that we thought might bring us greater happiness and fulfilment.

 

Emotional self-flagellation makes it hard to view the up-coming year with optimism, so for some people New Year is an opportunity to re-visit the angst of past years. There is the usual laundry-list of unspecified goals such as losing weight, getting fit, earning more money. We hope that these things might make us happier despite the research that says, “Not necessarily”.

However, does this ritual introspection actually do us any good? Theodore Roethke robustly dismissed it:

Self-contemplation is a curse

That makes an old confusion worse.

There are few “Eureka!” moments that arise from pitiless self-assessment and rumination. Research by Susan Nolen-Hoeksema shows that when people are depressed, rumination just worsens their mood. Trite though it sounds, if we focus on the negative in our lives, we sink into a state from which it is difficult to recover motivation and energy. Rumination can suffocate our ability to come up with solutions for our predicaments. Nolen-Hoeksema reports that even when ruminators come up with a solution (such as joining a bereavement support group) they fail to follow through on their intention.

read more | add new comment | Theodore Roethke | rumination | optimism | Nolen-Hoeksema | new year | happiness | Aritstotle

Aristotle and why we should fake it 'til we make it

Submitted by tonyplant on December 30, 2005 - 15:44.

I was mauled for my supper last night. Listening to the people around me it seems as if happiness is even less worthy of serious consideration than David Icke’s theories on world government. I was surrounded by people who believe in the virtues of cosmetic surgery as a means of enhancing quality of life and defying our genetic heritage. Yet, when it comes to happiness, the overwhelming consensus was that either one is born happy, or one isn’t and there is nothing that can be done to alter that.

Quoting statistics or books and papers that no-one else has read is not a persuasive strategy for a dinner conversation and I’m belatedly learning that I need to learn another one. I argued that studies by Lykken and others show that we have a happiness set-point that is genetically related, but that this only contributes fifty per cent of our overall happiness level. Of the other fifty per cent, ten per cent depends upon our circumstances and the remaining forty reflects our voluntary actions. So, our behaviour and attitudes have a powerful influence on our happiness levels.

There were the usual cat-calls that alcohol consumption is therefore a significant contribution to happiness. There were derisory comments about the cognitive tyranny of positive thinking that blames the victims of unhappiness for their victimhood rather than attributing it to the blight of poor socio-economic circumstances.

I argued yet again that positive psychology is about far more than positive thinking, it’s about living a life that is fulfilled by the proper use of our character strengths and virtues. The words character and virtues shocked most of those present and were repeated in disbelief. So, I was startled when an Aristotle-quoting Russell Crowe figure entered the fray to support my claim that happiness is a topic that is worthy of our attention, energy and cultivation.

read more | add new comment | Sonja Lyubomirsky | kindness | happystance | happiness | depression | aristotle | alcohol

In praise of the volunteer consumer

Submitted by tonyplant on December 29, 2005 - 18:37.

Richard North has published a provocative piece arguing that Consumerism is virtuous. Similarly, Bob Friedland of the Center on an Aging Society argues that concern over the demographic time-bomb of paying for pensions and the health care of older citizens is overplayed. Friedland points to the virtues of economic growth in sparking

startling productivity gains. Even as the share of the population in the workforce has fallen, the output of each worker has more than offset the change. The result: Someone born in 1940 has experienced an 875 percent increase in his or her standard of living.(quoted in the National Journal: Must it be gloom and doom for the baby boom?)

However, it is interesting that neither author claims that this remarkable increase in our standard of living in the western world has been accompanied by an increase in happiness. Happiness and well-being are typically measured by indices such as personal satisfaction with life, the enjoyment of friends and family and feeling fulfilled by work or other activities. There are some life qualities that can not be transformed into commodities that can be traded.

Copyright 2005, Tony Plant Happystance Project

add new comment | Friedland | economic growth | consumerism

Sunshine in Northern Ireland: Krumping in LA

Submitted by tonyplant on December 29, 2005 - 14:30.

Thanks to the release of confidential Cabinet papers under the 30 Year Act, I've been fascinated to learn of the 1975 government’s proposals to bring normality and happiness to Ulster. The proposals ranged from Morecambe and Wise performing Bring Me Sunshine on the lawns of Stormont, to the presence of Frank Sinatra and the involvement of the Women’s Institute in ‘Good Cheer’ conferences.

Some of the plans seem ghastly in their inappropriateness. The anticipated Morecambe and Wise number might have played well in front of a back projection of re-arranging seats on The Titanic. And it might have paired well with the biting pathos of a performance of Send In The Clowns.

However, socially successful movements can come from the most unlikely places. Krump dancing has grown out of clown dancing to become a phenomenon that has recently been the subject of a documentary in RIZE. RIZE is set in inner-city Los Angeles, and charts the lives of vulnerable young people. Where they live, you are either in a gang or a dance group: the latter is responsible for sprained ankles, the former for a gut-tearing mortality rate. Krumping is seen to create both art and family: it gives hope in places where it seems all hope has been extinguished by the ever-present violence and drug addiction.

I do believe that local and national government have a role to play in monitoring levels of happiness as closely as they do other economic indicators. Likewise, their policies and spending priorities can make a remarkable difference to our quality of life. But, as with krumping, authentic, sustainable movements do need to grow from communities and the energy and talent of the individuals who comprise them.

read more | add new comment | resilience | happystance | happiness | creativity

Learning to be mauled for my supper

Submitted by tonyplant on December 28, 2005 - 19:19.

Many vegetarians and vegans are familiar with that popular dinner-party game, Bait the vegetarian. I’ve always been omnivorous but since developing Happystance I’ve acquired a keen sense of kinship with those who are accustomed to being mauled for their supper.

The first reaction on hearing about Happystance is usually, “Tell us a joke, then!”. Now, I wish I had Monkhouse’s facility with quickfire gags. The reason Kenneth Williams and Peter Ustinov are celebrated as brilliant raconteurs is because the gift of engaging others through story-telling is so unusual. So, I usually reply that we would all enjoy ourselves more if we either had an impromptu game of football or staged our own Singing in the Rain.

A dinner table never seems to be the best setting for explaining the history and scientific research that argue that present happiness consists of three elements: the meaningful life; the engaged life; and the pleasant life. Although listening to other people tell jokes has its contribution to happiness, it is a small one in the overall scheme of our lives.

And yet, a mixed-generation family dinner table is in many ways the perfect setting for a discussion of happiness. It just seems as if pre-conceptions about the frivolous nature of happiness preclude any meaningful discussion. Why bother with tomes on the human condition and the search for happiness if it could all be summed up in an exchange of one-liners?

When asked, “What do you want out of life?”, most people reply, “I want to be happy”. Similarly, when asked what they most wish for their children, most parents say, “I want them to be happy”. Yet, we rarely if ever discuss what form that happiness would take, or what it means to be happy. If my recent experience is anything to go by, then many people are opposed to the notion that happiness is a legitimate goal to pursue. Or they state that the only thing that would make them happy is winning the lottery. Which is overwhelmingly bleak when you consider that you are fourteen times more likely to be murdered than you are to win the lottery jackpot. Does the possibility of happiness really depend on such an implausibility?

read more | add new comment | resilience | happystance | happiness | Authentic Happiness | aristotle | alcohol

Thick skins and apathy

Submitted by tonyplant on December 22, 2005 - 19:05.

I spoke with a co-ordinator two weeks ago who said that she would pass on the details of my Happystance project to the relevant personnel in two groups to whom I would like to offer workshops. I emailed the information to the co-ordinator immediately after our phone call. Well, as I found out today, the information wasn’t passed on, although the people involved actually share an office with this worker and are at two adjacent desks to hers. I wouldn’t mind quite so much if I hadn’t asked for the email addresses of the people involved, only to be told, “I’ll pass it on. They'll understand more of what you’re trying to do if I explain that I’ve spoken with you”!

As advised by every communication expert whose has ever laid pen to paper, I believe in accepting responsibility for the success of my communication with others, but there are times when we could all give each other a helping hand. According to a recent report in The Guardian the Year of the Volunteer has not been as successful as had been hoped. The article is based on a report that muses on the phenomenon of ‘the selfish volunteer’. I muse on the number of people who have possibly enquired only to be put off by the apathy that met their enquiry. I know a number of people who have made enquiries of a number of charities this year, and finally gave up when no-one responded to their phone calls or emails. Or worse, responded with initial enthusiasm, passed them on to someone else, who then failed to respond to voice mails, emails etc.

read more | 1 comment | resilience | happystance | happiness

Happiness gives greater chance of success

Submitted by tonyplant on December 20, 2005 - 19:37.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

 

Weep, and you weep alone

I have always relegated the meaningfulness of this comment with the saws of my grandmother. My grandmother constantly predicted that the consumption of gin would lead to tears. Or, in the case of children, “Laughter soon turns to tears”. Plus those old stand-bys, “Running children soon fall and are grazed”, and, “If you go out with wet hair you’ll get pneumonia/meningitis”. But it now seems as if cynical responses to the rhyming wisdom of Ella Wheeler Wilcox have been misplaced.

 

When I was studying Authentic Happiness I was accustomed to reading jolly little papers with helpful titles like, “Positive affect and health-related neurodendocrine, cardiovascular and inflammatory processes”. Now, my grandmother’s expectations and mine concerning this topic are very different. She would have believed that all that positive emotion would exhaust your bodily systems and wreak terrible pay-back for those moments of jollity and frivolity. Inflammation would be too mild a retribution. Unless, of course, it involved running pustules and a complexion more commonly found in leper colonies.

1 attachment | read more | add new comment | resilience | happystance | happiness | Authentic Happiness

Answering "How are you?": counting blessings

Submitted by tonyplant on December 19, 2005 - 14:27.

Apparently, in Latin, you can ask a question that anticipates the answer. So, you use some grammatical forms if you expect the answer ‘No’, and others (presumably), if you expect the answer ‘Yes’. It sounds like an ancient form of mind-games and casts a new light on the art of conversation. But so often, our conversations can be formulaic, and this is especially true when it comes to social comments.

When I worked in Loughborough I was initially taken aback when the response to my polite enquiry, “How are you?”, was met with, “Fair to middling”. I was so accustomed to, “Fine”, that I didn’t know if the correct social action was to overlook it, or to enquire further and run the risk of learning more about IBS or the agonies of an enlarged prostate than I cared to know.

Throughout the UK there are local customs that dictate the answer to the question “How are you?”. I came across an item on blessings and the tricky task of navigating the appropriate answer to this question.

When someone asks me: How are you? 99% of the time I will answer “fine”. In Hebrew, you say, beseder, literally, in order, ok. It’s, “thanks for asking but I don’t need any special consideration right now, I’m ready to proceed”.

For this simple answer FINE, I have been criticized from two directions.

On the one side is my friend, who if I answer fine, responds: Fine? Fine! Is that all? Just fine? Look at the beautiful world around you, think of the fantastic day ahead, just fine!

read more | add new comment | resilience | happystance | happiness | blessings

'Tis the season for tension and re-hashing old scores

Submitted by tonyplant on December 18, 2005 - 14:25.

There are lots of kill-joy stories circulating about elderly people being upbraided for asking about the switching-on of the Christmas Lights rather than Winter Lights. And stories about singing services being cancelled for being insufficiently multi-denominational. In the US, some groups have brought successful law suits against towns whose public displays are reportedly too secular.

Rather than the usual, “the personal is the political”, it seems as if the personal experience is spreading to the political. If your family’s version of holiday spirit has usually been interpreted rather too literally (and liberally), leading to family tension and the annual re-hashing of old scores, then this is your kind of public holiday season. And, by and large, no alcohol has been required, just plain mean-spiritedness.

A friend works for a dictionary publishers and is the go-to person in many circles for linguistic niceties. She and her siblings now have their own families and gather together at her mother’s on set-piece days. A while ago, her mother was watching a TV programme and asked her, “What’s a dysfunctional family?”. In an admirable economy of words, my friend replied, “You know the way we all get on Boxing Day”; her mother nodded, “Well, dysfunctional families are like that the whole year round”.

For most of us, happiness is linked to spending non-adversarial time with friends and family. For others, it is avoidance of the festivities and everything associated with it. What can help us to retain our equanimity at this time of year? The solution varies from one individual to another, one family to another and one community to another. But one common thread that runs through observations of people who are happy is that they count their blessings (of which more in a later post).

read more | add new comment | resilience | happystance | happiness | blessings