Savoring is a set of skills that can be learned in order to increase the positive emotion we experience in our day-to-day existences.
Psychologists Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff published a book last year on this subject:
Bryant, F. & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
According to them, [...]
This posting is a continuation of an earlier posting on intrinsic motivation. In Ryan and Deci’s paper, Figure 1, the Self-Determination Continuum, presents a very useful model of different sorts of motivation. I’ll describe it briefly here — putting my own spin on it, I’m sure. If you want it in their [...]
Albert Bandura has an article about self-efficacy that I have read over and over again. I’ll summarize my own take-aways from it with the hopes that you’ll be interested enough to go see what he REALLY said.
Self-efficacy is a sense of personal effectiveness, a belief that I have the power through my performance to [...]
A friend of mine sees that the success of her work depends on actions taken by others — specifically others over whom she has no organizational control. She works with two different groups, one of which appears to be more motivated to participate than the other. This gives her an unusual opportunity to [...]
I’m finding it relatively easy to remember the three qualities of appropriate negative feedback:
Specific to a situation
Not personal
Offers suggestions for improvement.
What about positive feedback? Certainly I find some positive feedback more appropriate and effective than others — both as a giver and a receiver. I’d like to propose a short list that is [...]
Thinking about disciplines that help people see and express the positive made me think of Richard Gabriel’s book, Writers’ workshops & the work of making things: Patterns, poetry, and … . The book is out-of-print, so I’m delighted to find a pdf of the final typeset version online, along with information by the [...]
A friend asked me what positive psychology can tell us about marriage. When I went digging around through my notes and books, one of the things I found was Carol Dweck’s chapter, Relationships: Mindsets in Love (or Not) in her book, Mindsets: The new psychology of success.
Dweck argues that people tend to have [...]
Thanksgiving seems like a good time to share the handout that I used for a recent talk on gratitude.
Gratitude through the Lens of Positive Psychology
Positive Psychology is the rigorous study of what goes right with people, how and when they flourish, what gives them resilience, and how they achieve fulfillment and meaning.
Gratitude is …
1) [...]
