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Yesterday I was walking with a group of friends and their dogs at a nature preserve in Palo Alto. As I was not walking a dog, I brought my camera along to take pictures of the group, their dogs, and the plentiful shorebirds that frequent the area.

I wanted to get photos of the entire group, but because I only brought my telephoto zoom lens with me, it necessitated running ahead of the group, taking pictures while the group caught up to me, running ahead again . . . you get the picture (pun intended.)

As the group sauntered toward me each time, I was vaguely aware of snippets of conversation. A mother and her 18-year-old daughter were telling the rest of the bunch a story from what I could tell. After awhile I caught on that it was a series of short stories. The women who were listening responded to the stories with “Oh!” and “Wow, that’s so frustrating!”

I ran ahead again.

This time as they came within earshot, I heard the mother laughingly say to the group, “So THAT’S why you don’t want to be in our family right now! Everything seems to be going wrong!” The daughter chimed in and said, “I know it’s all going to work out and be okay. It’s just that right now it’s very frustrating.” Then they said something I couldn’t hear, but the entire group laughed.

I liked this interaction. I liked it a lot. Not that I wish bad things on my friends, but I liked how this family is showing resiliency even in the little things. Let’s review their resiliency skills:

1. They talked about it. It was obvious that mom and daughter had talked about their circumstances quite a bit – they weren’t hiding things from each other. And they reached out for support to others even if only by telling their circumstances to elicit laughter. Which brings me to the next skill.

2. They laughed about it. Humor is a wonderful balm on all sorts of wounds. And the laughter was not that “We’re laughing about it only because we’re supposed to look brave” kind of laughter. This was “Can you believe life is throwing all this stuff at us at once? How ridiculous!” laughter. Real laughter.

3. They put things in perspective. They understood that life had hurled them tough stuff in the past and they had made it through. With this perspective, even the youngest woman in the group was able to understand that the frustrations she was facing now were temporary; past experiences gave her the confidence that everything would turn out okay.

It wasn’t any big deal. Just a mother and daughter telling some stories in a funny way about a rough patch in their lives. You might not have even noticed if you were walking beside the group. But that’s what resiliency can be – it doesn’t have to be big and heroic, sometimes it’s just a way of life.

Takeaway points: Humor, perspective, sharing. Just these three things can make life’s tough spots a lot easier.

What little things do you do that help you make resiliency a way of life?

In my last few posts (which you can see here and here), I’ve talked about the power of positivity and how generating three times as many positive feelings as negative helps to create more satisfaction and resilience in your life.

One of my concerns as I’ve shared this information with you is the possible message that negative emotions are “bad.” They’re not. Or, as Jerry Seinfeld might say about experiencing negative emotions: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Negative emotions are okay and we need them

As mentioned in my earlier posts, negative emotions have an important role in our lives. They cue us that something is wrong and, in extreme situations, prepare our bodies to react to danger. Imagine hiking along a scenic forest trail, lost in your pleasant thoughts and feelings. Suddenly, you notice a mama bear and her cub in the path ahead of you. If you weren’t able to access your negative emotion of fear, you might smile and continue ambling toward them, perhaps to get a better look. However, with your natural instinct of fear in place, your attention narrows and identifies this situation as possibly dangerous and preps your body to get out of this mama’s way.

More realistically, let’s say you look at a bill that reads “You are in danger of foreclosure if you are not able to pay what is due on your mortgage.” Because of your perpetual happiness, you are not triggered into immediate action causing you to teeter perilously toward losing your house.

Or perhaps you don’t notice that an important relationship is in trouble because you aren’t in tune with your own anxiety or your partner’s anger. So fear, anger, worry, and other “negative” emotions really do have a very important function in our lives.

When negativity goes too far

The problem with negative emotions is when they go beyond the cueing or triggering function and start to cause ongoing dissatisfaction or other problems in your world. This is the point at which you really need to start cranking up the problem-solving techniques as well as shooting for that 3:1 positivity ratio.

The trick to it all

As a final thought, it’s good to remember that emotions just are. We don’t have to always put them in the categories of “good” and “bad.” My colleague and fellow blogger, Doug Toft, had an excellent comment regarding this on my last post: As a meditator, my training is simply to observe emotions dispassionately without seeking to cultivate one type of emotion more than others. On the other hand, positive emotions feel GREAT and do have different physiological effects. Maybe the trick is to cultivate positive emotions without resisting negative emotions.

I think that is the trick exactly. Barbara Fredrickson’s work on positive emotions is quite clear that we will always have, and should have, negative emotions. We need to notice them, see what they are giving us cues about, and react in a positive manner without resistance to the negative stuff.

So, next time you feel anger, worry, sadness, or fear, assure yourself, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Takeaway points: Negative emotions are actually okay and we need them. Acceptance and non-resistance are the keys along with noticing what our negative emotions are telling us.

What’s your take on the seeming paradox of creating more positive emotions while at the same time accepting the negative ones?

Can positive emotions actually “undo” the effects of negative emotions? It turns out they can. Researcher Barbara Fredrickson has found that experiencing a 3:1 ratio of positive to negative emotions can actually make physical changes in your body and broaden your mindset to create more personal resilience.

The effects of negative emotions

Negative emotions such as fear and anger are useful in that they pump up your cardiovascular system to prepare you to either get away from or fight a threat to your well-being. The problem is, the increased heart rate, blood pressure, and shallow breathing continue long after the threat is gone and create other physical problems for you.

Another useful aspect of negative emotions is that they narrow your focus to the threat at hand so you can make a decision as to what to do. However, the downside is that continued negative emotions leave you in a very limited frame of mind, one that does not allow for the creativity and growth needed to live a satisfied and resilient life.

The “undoing” effect of positive emotions

Positive emotions such as love, joy, and interest allow the cardiovascular system to relax and, as it turns out, experiencing three times as many positive emotions as negative actually “undoes” the lingering cardiovascular restrictions caused by your negative emotions.

Similarly, positive feelings create an emotional space that allows you to broaden your attention and utilize your creativity to not only enjoy life more but also stock up on emotional and social resources that help you later when you face adversity.

Creating positivity

So, how can you go about getting more positive feelings in your life? Here are some ideas:

1. Notice positive moments.

Researchers Susan Folkman and Judith Moskowitz from UC San Francisco suggest that you take “psychological time-outs” by noticing the beautiful smile of a person walking by you, reflecting on a compliment someone gave you, or pausing to enjoy a beautiful sunset. Don’t let those wonderful little moments pass you by without taking a moment to appreciate them.

2. Practice mindfulness meditation.

Sit quietly, with your eyes closed, even for a few minutes. Focus on your breath and, as you notice your mind being active with thoughts, just allow those thoughts to float away like bubbles. And don’t judge either yourself or the thoughts passing through your mind. That’s the key to mindfulness meditation – lack of self-judgment. As you learn to be less judgmental toward yourself, you create more space for positive feelings about yourself and the world.

3. Practice random acts of kindness.

Helping others makes them feel good and increases your positivity, too.

Takeaway points: Positive emotions can help “undo” the effects of negative feelings, especially if your day is filled with three times more good stuff than negative stuff. Make a habit of looking for the good and positive experiences all around you.

What’s your favorite way of creating positive emotions?

Do positive emotions increase life satisfaction?

The answer is yes and they do it by building resilience. University of North Carolina professor Barbara Fredrickson has spent the past two decades looking into why we have positive emotions and what we do with them. She even has her own term for her work: positivity.

To quote an old commercial, “Why ask ‘why’?” when it comes to positive emotions? Shouldn’t we just enjoy them while they’re around? Sure, but maybe we can find even more about how these emotions benefit us.

Emotions have helped us survive

For example, we know that negative emotions evolved to keep us safe. Fear, anger, sadness, and other negative emotions actually narrow the focus of our attention while at the same time increasing the rate of our cardiovascular systems. Why? (There I go again.) So our ancestors could make quick decisions about new information coming into their brains and mobilize their bodies for action. Yes, it’s that old fight-or-flight response mechanism. When a predatory animal approached our ancestor, she needed to become very focused on the situation at hand and her body needed to amp up to either run or fight the animal. It’s a very adaptive response and one that helped the rest of us be here today. If our ancestor didn’t feel fear or anger or anxiety when facing a dangerous animal, she was most likely dinner for that particular hunter.

Are positive emotions adaptive or do they just make us feel good?

So how did positive emotions evolve? Being happy is not going to keep me safe or spur me into action, right? Or will it?

As it turns out, Fredrickson’s research shows that positive emotions are very adaptive and here’s why: being happy or content or joyful not only calms our cardiovascular systems so we can relax, but those emotions expand our mindsets and social openness, among other things, which allows us to have wider ranges of ideas and more flexibility in our behaviors. What does this all mean? We are able to problem-solve more easily, increase social support, and increase physical health – essential resiliency skills – all by experiencing positive emotions.

As Fredrickson says, “Put simply, positive emotions expand people’s mindsets in ways that little-by-little reshape who they are.” Indeed, she has found that experiencing positive emotions creates an “upward spiral” of increasingly better life satisfaction and contentment as opposed to the “downward spiral” of dissatisfaction triggered by self-perpetuating negative emotions.

Try this!

There is much more to be written about this topic, especially how to get ourselves to feel and experience positive emotions more often. In fact – here’s a teaser for my next post – Fredrickson has even discovered a formula for us to live by. It turns out that a 3:1 ratio of positive-to-negative emotions not only helps us feel good, but actually can “undo” some of the effects of the negative emotions we feel.

More next week, but until then, just try this to increase your positive emotions: Notice the little things. Does petting your dog bring you joy? Then make sure you are right there in the moment with your furry friend, noticing how you feel and being okay with feeling good. Allow yourself to feel happy and content in the small things in life – it’s okay, I give you permission!

Takeaway points: Positive emotions help improve our life satisfaction by helping us to relax and by broadening our imaginations and idea-generators so that we can more easily solve problems, gather people into our support network, and grow as human beings.

Do you ever find yourself thinking, “I shouldn’t be feeling this good” or, “If I feel this good now, I’m sure to have a big let-down afterwards”?

This month’s edition of “5 great quotes” (plus one terrific picture) gives us some ideas about how to develop a different mindset around the economic woes affecting our nation and us personally. Once again, here are words of wisdom from current and ancient sages:

1. Susan Salisbury Richards

The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is how we use them.

2. Jamie Paolinetti

Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.

3. Bernadette Roberts

When there is no longer a cyclone, there is no longer an eye.  So the storms, crises and sufferings of life are a way of finding the eye.  When everything is going our way we do not see the eye and feel no need to look for it.  But when everything is going against us, then we find the eye.

4. Theodore Rubin

The problem isn’t that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.

5. Charles C. West

We turn to God for help when our foundations are shaking, only to learn it is God who is shaking them.1

Takeaway points: Shifting our perspectives can help us make it through this difficult, if not harrowing, economic time.

What’s your favorite quote? Do you have suggestions as to how we can be resilient in this economy?

I’ve written about our superpowers previously and I love how we can use them to not only increase our own resiliency, but to help others bounce back as well.

I also love a good, heartwarming-if-not-a-bit-sappy story occasionally and I’ve got a great one for you today. Sometimes it’s the most innocent of us all that have the greatest powers to change others’ lives.

Please watch this short video to be reminded of a very simple truth.

Takeaway points: Love rules.

What are your thoughts about Jackson’s superpower?

Photo by Linds 🙂

Serious illness, along with the physical challenges, can bring out some very strange dynamics in relationships with friends and family. Some people disappear, others hover and become intrusive to meet their own needs to help, while still others worry incessantly about what the “right” thing to do might be.

I’ve always advocated for specificity – from both the helpers and the ill person. Rather than saying, “Let me know what I can do to help,” it’s more effective for friends to offer something concrete: “Do you need groceries? Can I walk the dogs for you?” Or, look the ill person in the eyes and ask, “What do you need right now?”

The same goes for the person who is ill. The more specific she can be with support people, the better for everyone involved. Which leads me to this great example from my friend, Cathy.

Cathy is a recently retired UC Davis professor. An active participant in dog agility sports, Cathy began to feel run-down and achy several months ago. After a myriad of tests and lots of false starts on a diagnosis, the true picture was finally revealed: metastatic non-smoker’s lung cancer. The cancer had spread to her bones – the cause of the aching – and several organs.

After overcoming her initial shock, Cathy has taken up her journey with cancer in a quite remarkable way. More of her story will be told in later posts on this blog. For now, though, I want to share an email she wrote to her friends and family. She demonstrates a perfect way to tell those who love her exactly what she needs. (I have put some of the important points in bold font.)

People have been sharing a number of thoughts with me (thank you!) so I wanted to talk about those things a little in this announcement. One common comment that I get is that each person wants to help, but the rides are taken really quickly, so I’m imagining that people feel like they can’t do much. At the same time, several people have asked whether I want to deal with emails from them. Actually, those two topics dovetail nicely, because staying in touch with me on how you are doing is the best way people can help me now.

The fact is that I don’t need much physical assistance. That’s a good thing, like really good. I’m feeling so much better because of treatment–and I’m tolerating treatment so well, that I am virtually self-sufficient. After this last treatment, my cancer pain is almost completely gone. The last lingering place, the pain from the met in my right shoulder, is fading away, and the rest of the pain that I had been having since March is completely gone. The pain I am treating now is from the chemo, probably the Taxol, which causes joint pain. And as my oncologist tells me, that is all wonderful news. The treatment is working. So, perhaps you can see it from my point of view. Being self-sufficient and living independently as I always have done is an incredibly important part of my healing process. I’d feel so much worse, in other words, if I needed much more of your help with rides, errands, and other chores.

Meanwhile, I love getting emails from people. You might not think that is much help, but it really IS help to hear from you. It helps me tremendously to know that people have me in their thoughts. And I love hearing about what you are doing, what is keeping you busy these days, because I’m still sticking close to home until my chemo is done (mid September). I’m pretty bored with talking about me and how I’m doing :-), although you know you are all welcome to ask any questions that you have. I miss hearing about your dogs, your agility trials, or if you’re on campus, how your research, fieldwork, teaching and so on is coming, or your vacation, etc. Many of you have been sending me those newsy emails, and I want to let you know that you can’t send too many of those. And it’s real help, every bit as much as driving me somewhere or helping me with chores.

So keep those emails coming and know that it’s a great help to me. For the local folks, we can also find times to get together but if you’re busy, know that email works really well for me. Once again, keeping me in your thoughts is incredibly important to my healing. Thank you for all of the help that you have already provided and will in the future.

Can you hear all of Cathy’s supporters breathing a collective sigh of relief? Now they know what to do! My partner, Andrea, exemplified many people’s experience when she wrote back to Cathy and said, “I’m so glad to hear you want e-mails from us! I have been afraid to bug you.”

The key here for both sides – ill person and supporters – is to determine what is needed. This, as Cathy says, is an incredibly important part of the healing process.

Takeaway points: Specificity rules! Hopefully, the person who is sick will be able to say what she needs and what is most helpful in her healing. If it’s a struggle for her, take the lead if you are a friend or family member: ask her what she needs and guide her toward understanding what is most effective in her healing.

What are your thoughts about helping or asking for help?

If you are ill, or a caregiver for someone who is, let’s talk about how you can survive – and even thrive – on this journey. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment.

Agency – from Latin, agere, to do, act.

Some people have “aha” moments and I occasionally have them as well. I have to admit, though, that I had a “duh . . .” moment the other day. Driving home from my office, the radio tuned to NPR (as always), I was listening to Marketplace. Kai Ryssdal was running down the numbers from the stock market which were all over the place that day, the Dow finally ending 600 points below where it began.

My mind started wandering. What is the deal with this economy? This is just like 2008 again. I wish people wouldn’t panic about the stock market, it will settle down. But it makes me anxious about the economy to hear this news. And it must be affecting my clients, too, because some of them have cancelled this week saying they are concerned about money.

Vaguely, I heard Kai say, “Commentator Robert Reich says the problem isn’t just a failure to compromise. It’s that it takes our eye way off the ball.”

I returned to my mental meandering.

What can I say about resiliency now when this sure looks like it’s a double-dip in our recession? Some of my friends’ spouses have lost their jobs . . . what happens if Andrea loses hers? I guess it’s just a matter of taking a breath, accepting what’s going on, and being grateful that we both still have jobs. But I wish there was something I could do . . .

My line of thinking was beginning to make me feel a wisp of panic in my stomach so I brought myself back into the present. Robert Reich was wrapping up his commentary. “We’re slouching toward a double dip because we’re getting the problem wrong. We’re not in a debt crisis. Our current crisis is jobs, wages and growth . . . The only hope now is voters will tell their members of Congress, who are on recess back home, to enact a bold jobs plan to jumpstart the economy.”

Duh . . .

I smirked at myself lightheartedly. Hello? You can do something. It’s as easy as writing to my Congresspeople and Senators. And telling them to do something and do it differently.

I had zeroed in on one of the tools in my resiliency toolkit that is most apt to get rusty: Doing something! My default reaction is to calm myself by breathing, accepting reality, and trying to find the gifts in a crisis or during adversity. Those are all great skills and have helped me immeasurably over the years, but a key component of resiliency is to have a sense of agency, to take action when possible to resolve the crisis.

So, this morning, I emailed both of my Senators and my Congresswoman with my thoughts about the economy and suggestions as to what they should concentrate on to get our country back on track. Will my emails resolve the crisis? Not by themselves, but maybe united with the voices of other citizens they will get the attention of our elected officials.

And, I feel a little more powerful, less like a victim of what’s happening “out there” because I chose to do something “in here,” something within my control.

I hope your sense of agency isn’t as rusty as mine, but if it is, get out there and do something about it!

By the way, if you would like to contact your elected officials, this is a great site to find out who they are and learn how to contact them directly.

Takeaway points: While other resiliency skills such as acceptance, getting social support, and finding the gifts in the moment are terrific and necessary, sometimes it helps to actually become an agent of change and do something.

What are some things that you can do about tough stuff in your life right now?