Too busy for pleasure

In his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, Martin Seligman, one of the founders of "Positive Psychology", urges readers to, "Inject into your life as many events that produce pleasure as you can", but who has the time?

We tend to be too busy to take enough time for pleasure.  Seligman defines pleasures as activities that primarily make us feel good because of what we take in with our senses:  taste, touch, sight, and smell.  To maximize pleasure, he recommends slowing down, "savoring", concentrating on the sensations to deepen the joy they bring us.

But we don't slow down enough to savor our pleasures.  I know I'm terrible about eating food mindfully.  I rush through it, missing the opportunity to appreciate the tastes and aromas.  More than that, I miss the many other benefits of eating slowly.  As described in many books I've read (The Beck Diet Solution: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person, Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life, Flat Belly Diet!) research shows that people who eat slowly, mindfully not only enjoy it more, but they also eat less because there is more time for them to recognize that their bellies are full.

Even when I take enough time for pleasure, my overachieving nature can keep me from enjoying it fully.  I'm still trying to DO something, instead of joyfully RECEIVING something.  I'm sure I'm not alone in this.  If I meditate, I'm trying to meditate "skillfully" instead of just enjoying my breathing.  If I'm listening to music on Internet radio, and I hear a beautiful piece, within seconds I'm reading about the composer and the piece, turning what should be a pleasure into a task, the task of educating myself about music.  If I go to an art museum, I might read about the paintings before I look closely at them.  It would be better to look at a painting first, note what it does to my emotions, and walk away knowing nothing about the work.

Pleasure vs Gratification

Thinking about skiing helps me understand the difference between "pleasure" and "gratification", concepts described in the book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.

The author, based on decades of research in Positive Psychology, urges readers to fill their lives with both "pleasures" and "gratifications".  So what's the difference?  Pleasures involve more of a passive enjoyment of the senses.  Listening to music.  Enjoying the beach.  Appreciating art.  It can be more active:  sex, a massage, a hike through a beautiful forest.  But it's best taken slow, savored, drawn out to maximize the pleasure.

A gratification is something you enjoy doing, but it challenges you.  You get totally engrossed in the activity.  You have to exercise your physical, spiritual, and or intellectual "muscles" to do the activity with excellence.  It leaves you feeling very satisfied, competent, and accomplished but you might not feel any emotion in particular while it is going on because you are so "in the zone".

I think of skiing.  When I'm going down the hill, carving turns to the best of my (mediocre) ability, I'm engaged in one of my favorite "gratifications".  When I stop at the crest of a hill, before continuing my descent, and take in the splendor of snow covered mountains, sunlight and shadows on the snow, a lake in the distance, and my long, deep breaths--at this time I've switched to "pleasure".

Happiness Past, Present, and Future

Martin Seligman, in his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, talks about what makes a person happy when thinking about the past, looking ahead to the future, or engaging with the present moment.  To be happy with the past, he says we should cultivate gratitude and forgiveness.  To look forward to the future, cultivate optimism.  And to enjoy the present, focus on two different things:  pleasures and "gratifications".

Seligman defines pleasures as "delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components".  Things that feel great when you tune into them.

He defines "gratifications" as activities that are often NOT emotional, are at least not especially joyful while they are happening.  They are challenging, and you get totally "lost" in the activity as you give it all you've got.  Playing a sport.  Drawing a picture.  Entertaining an audience.  You apply your best strengths to the activity to perform with excellence.  Vince Lombardi once said, "I firmly believe than any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."  It's not always this exhausting; it's any activity that fully engages you, but it isn't simply passively enjoying sensations.

What Lombardi is describing is not pleasure.  It doesn't feel like a nice hot bath or a massage.  But it is just as important for finding happiness as pleasure.  In fact, Seligman says that--although both gratification and pleasure are important for finding happiness in the present moment, gratification is even more important.  Pleasure is more fleeting.  It is based on some kind of sensory stimulation, and it ceases as soon as the stimulation ends.  But gratification stays with you long after you "lie exhausted on the field of battle".

The Realistic Optimist

A friend commented on one of my posts regarding optimism.  She's known optimists who's hopes were not grounded in reality.  Optimism may make people happier, but what if the optimist is avoiding unpleasant truths?

When positive psychology books like Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment advocate that we cultivate optimism, they are not encouraging us to avoid the facts.  Rather, they are advocating we acknowledge negative truths, address these as needed, but spend more time dwelling on positive truths.

An 8 ounce glass with 4 ounces of water really IS half empty.  And it really IS half full.  Every moment, life is filled with more truths than you can possibly recognize all at once.  In the same situation, an optimist and a pessimist can be equally realistic, seeing things accurately, just as they are.  They both will see clearly, but they will look at different things.  The optimist will spend more time reflecting on good times past, more time savoring the joys of this moment, and more time anticipating good things to come.  The pessimist will dwell--accurately and realistically--on unfortunate truths.  The optimist will make a compelling case for being happy.  The pessimist will make a compelling case for anger or sadness.

If it's not conversation, it's yelling

We were watching "Supernanny" last night.  Don't roll your eyes!  If you ever watched that show, you'd see that "Supernanny" Jo has an amazing ability to get out of control parents and kids to stop and listen, to feel shame over what they've done, and to want nothing more than to please her.  They submit to her coaching, believing that if they follow her lead they will be better parents or better kids.

In this episode, the 10 year old daughter threw a ball hard into the face of her 13 year old sister.  It hurt.  The father yelled at her--but not that loudly, we thought, under the circumstances.  He took her to another room to talk about it.  He was visibly calmer, and wasn't shouting or calling her names, but his tone was sharp and his volume a little louder than normal conversation.

We were surprised that Jo told the father that he had "yelled" at the girl, and that he needed to control his temper.  It really didn't seem that bad to us.  The dad was understandably angry.  His voice was only slightly raised in volume.  It seemed appropriate given what the girl had done.  I would have reacted just as harshly, maybe even raised my voice a little bit MORE sharply.

It really didn't seem like a big deal, and we thought Jo was being extreme.  But I watched the episode again today in case there was something there I needed to learn.  Jo brought the girl into her room to talk to her about throwing the ball at her sister.  Jo was blunt, extremely critical, told her she was appalled at the girl's behavior, cut her no slack whatsoever.  But Jo never raised her voice.  Her voice was as calm as if she was at a tea party (she's British, if you didn't know).  And Jo's impact on the girl was a thousand times more positive han when the girl's dad had lectured her.  The girl looked ashamed and left the room to apologize to her sister.

I've seen this show often enough to respect Jo.  If Cesar Milan is the "Dog Whisperer", Jo is the "Family Whisperer", and I'd often rather deal with Cesar's aggressive pit bulldogs than the children Jo has to deal with.  I'm willing to be recalibrated.  I thought yelling meant REALLY shouting at your kids, blowing the roof off the house, or waking the neighbors.  But maybe Jo is right.  Maybe anything louder than a conversation is yelling.

Convincing the World

Sometimes I want something to happen at work, but it feels like I need to convince everyone in the world before anything can happen.  Everyone has a stake in the decision and feels they have the right to veto.  How to proceed?  If I go straight to the top of the organization chart, the people in the middle feel blindsided.  And rightly so.  The decision affects them, too.  They need to do a lot of work as a result of the decision.  Will they trust me again in the future?

I'm in this kind of situation right now.  There are two programs I've been pushing for years, sometimes working with my peers, sometimes working at higher levels with mixed results, often getting a "no" which makes it that much harder to escalate to higher levels without risking damage to relationships.

I decided to seek advice from a variety of mentors 1 to 2 levels above me in the company.  This is my interpretation of their combined wisdom and coaching:

• Ask people at the middle levels for input on my proposal.  Don't ask for a decision.
• Talk to the top leadership about my proposal.  
• Still don't ask for a decision.  
• Check for general alignment to make sure I'm on the right track
• Ask for their input on how to enroll the whole organization.  Who do they think I need to convince?  Which individuals?  Which teams?  Which meeting or group can make the final decision?
• Finally, follow leadership's recommendation on how to enroll the organization.

This is the process I'm now following.  It starts to get top leadership aligned early.  It's easy for them to say "yes" when I check for general alignment because I'm not asking for a commitment yet.  Once they start saying "yes", they're more likely to continue saying "yes".  Also, they are experts in who needs to be aligned to the decision in the organization.  From where they sit, they can see this much more clearly than I can.  Finally, if I follow the process they recommend to enroll the organization, it's hard for them to say "no" when I reach the end of that process and ask for a commitment.

Authentic Happiness website

    

Some of my recent posts have been based on the book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

The author has a website with a bunch of great surveys to measure your happiness, personal strengths, level of optimism, level of gratitude, etc.  The site also has a survey designed to assess the strengths of your children.  I've been to other websites such as the one from the Gallup organization that make you pay for similar surveys, so I think this website is a real gem.  See below for the link:

Authentic Happiness website

Blow it out of proportion

Pessimists exaggerate bad luck.  Optimists exaggerate good luck.

Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment talks about how a pessimist "catastrophizes" bad luck.  They assume the bad incident is a sign of a broad general problem that will show itself in many other ways and that it will occur often in their lives.  It's as if they take the original event and they SSSTTTRRREEETTTCCCHHH it out.  

Something very specific happened once, but they stretch it out over time by thinking, "This kind of thing happens all the time".  They then make it part of their past and of their future.  Instead of limiting the event to a problem TODAY, they've just converted it into something with a past and a future.  They now feel regret for the past and anxiety for the future.  But it's all in their mind.  The actual event is simply here and now.

They also SSSTTTRRREEETTTCCCHHH the contents of the event.  The real event involved something very specific.  But they see it as proof of a much more general problem--something that is wrong with them that will affect much of their life.

Optimists do similar stretching of events, but they exaggerate good events instead, and this makes them happier and more successful than pessimists.  They stretch a good event over time, telling themselves that similar things happen all the time.  The pessimist who thinks bad luck happens all the time generates feelings of regret for the past and anxiety for the future.  The optimist who does the same thing with good luck creates feelings of gratitude for the past and hope for the future.

Optimists also stretch the contents of good event.  They see the event as proof of a more general good thing--a strength that they have, a talent that will bring them rewards for the rest of their lives.

Common or Rare?

In the book, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, Martin Seligman describes a critical difference between pessimists and optimists (besides the fact that optimists are much happier).  It involves how these people react to good events versus bad events in their lives.

Of course, optimists and pessimists may disagree on whether the same event is good or bad.  But let's assume they agree.  Something happened to them and it was a definite setback, a loss, a misfortune.  Or something happened and there is no way to spin it except that it was a great thing:  a big raise, a new love, a beautiful day.  How do optimists and pessimists react to good events?  Bad events?

Event                        Optimist                       Pessimist 

Good event                Always happens            Rare

                                Reminds me of . . .       Unique situation

Bad event                  Rare                             Always happens

                                Unique situation             Reminds me of . . .

In his book, Seligman describes the reactions in terms of pervasiveness and permanence.  If an event is good, an optimist interprets the event as being "permanent".  They tell themselves that the good event happens a lot. They also see the event as "pervasive".  They generalize.  The event isn't just a fluke, it reflects a broad pattern in their life such as a personality trait or a skill.  Optimists react in exactly the opposite way.  If the event is good, they see it as temporary.  It's a one time thing that isn't likely to happen again.  They also think of it as being specific.  This time, in these unique circumstances, that will never occur again in a million years, something good happened.

It flip-flops again for bad events.  Pessimists think this type of event is "permanent".  It always happens.  They think it is general--that it reflects a broad issue in their lives such as a bad habit they can't break, incompetence, or a character trait.  Optimists say that the bad event is rare and is specific.  Something went wrong, but the situation was very specific.  Not likely to happen again.

A New Years Resolution

This year I want to do some things consistently once per week.  Every Sunday:

• Hold a family meeting.
• Build my social connections.  Reach out to someone outside my immediate family.
• List good things that have happened in the last week.
• Picture good things happening in coming years in one or more aspects of my life.
• Do something, however small, with my volunteer work in our neighborhood.
• Do something fun.

All this builds on things I've learned from the book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want.  But last year I was hit and miss.  In 2011, I hope to be more consistent.