Social-Emotional Leadership

[caption id="attachment_166" align="alignright" width="300" caption="From hearing to seeing to speaking. Assume much?"][/caption] Aim: To become more mindful of everyday language, to create meaning. Point: What we know of positive psychology is that other people matter. <roll eyes here>. Certainly, these words have been overused so much so, they’re becoming empty. Other words we use are empty, too. For example, when someone asks, “How are you?” answers like “fine” and “good” do not have significant meaning. The argument can be made that the question has no meaning either. Challenge: To be as specific as you can be when someone asks you, “How are you?”....

Last week I saw (from the first row, and in 3-D) Disney Pixar’s Up, an animated film about life, adventure, and friendship. The film certainly pulled on my heart string in a very “other-people- matter”-positive-psychology-kind-of-way. The film also speaks to this month’s PPND theme of fun. In it, a young hopeful and optimistic Carl Fredricksen becomes fascinated with a hero of his time, a world-famous aviator and explorer, Charles Muntz, who encourages imagination, creative play, and adventure.Up opens with young Carl playing “explorer make-believe” by himself. He stumbles upon a tomboy named Ellie playing a similar game. A few frames later,...

Given the GEC (global economic crisis) AND my traditionally poor management of money, I've been thinking a lot on this idea of really what's negotiable lately. I've come to one conclusion: everything. Financially: Think about it: you park your car on a lot on Eighth Avenue. You pay an astronomical $320 per month for the spot (extra, for a dang SUV!). You approach the lot manager and simply ask, with love and hope: "Is it possible to lower my monthly fee?" "I know that things are really tight these days, but I may be tempted to park closer to the river, where the...

[caption id="attachment_97" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Grandma Liz at 93!"][/caption] After getting an email from my sister Lisa this week entitled, “secret to a long life,” I’ve been wondering really, what it’s all about - for me. Then, serendipitously, I had the chance to do some action research this past weekend, which I spent in Cleveland, Ohio at my friend’s grandmother’s 93rd birthday. NINTY THREE YEARS YOUNG. Her name is Liz and let me tell you - she's a spitfire. She can hear, she can see (after recent cataract surgery, where for the first time in 88 years, she can really see), she can...

“Love is in the air, everywhere I look around Love is in the air, every sight and every sound” (lyrics by Paul Young) Love is such a strange phenomenon. We all want it. We all need it. But do we all have it?

I recently learned of a very cool definition of love: “Love is the flowing, the outpouring the rendering from the heart and soul of emotional goodness to yourself first, - - and then to others in your life.” (from the Hoffman Institute) With yourself first! Herein lies A KEY. * Do you love yourself? * * Do you really love yourself? * Love changes the brain. It’s all about...

Communitas is a ritual-building process that inspires and revitalizes while reaffirming relationships within a community, state University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. According to Anthropologist Victor Turner, building communitas is an essential step to activating a community to healthy family functioning, healthy child development, and other dimensions of well-being.  It also creates positive emotion, which according to psychologist Barbara Fredrickson and mathematician Marcial Losada, builds upward spirals for individuals and groups. Here is an example of some of the work I’ve done with my own family as an action researcher to build communitas and expand positive emotion.  As...

Enough is Enough Why does school often feel bad for kids? As a student, I often felt I wasn’t good enough: who I was and what the world expected me to be were at odds. As a result, I felt marginalized and alone at school. I felt voiceless.  Only later did I learn that feelings of “not being good enough (or smart enough, or good looking enough, or whatever enough)” were too common for school children. And then I became a teacher. Finally! On the other side of the desk. A dream I had since as long as I could remember. But there,...

Changes As we enter a new era in the American political landscape, the promise of change is in the air, as Derrick Carpenter so eloquently says. Like all promises, though, this one can lead to false expectations if we fail to recognize that lasting change has to come from within each of us, individually. It is a choice. Dave Shearon’s simple framework “to happier” helps create a positive intention: Hi, my name is Louis, I want to be happier and I’m willing to work on it. John Yeager’s piece takes this intention to will and says that while wishing is important, developing new habits...

With so much talk of mavericks last year, I have been reflecting on who really fits that bill. Is it Barack Obama for becoming the first African American president? Harvey Milk for following a civil rights dream? Was it Mother Teresa who touched the lives of people no one else wanted to help? Pope Benedict, whose visit to the US this year re-inspired many Catholics to their faith? Who are mavericks closer to home? Was it my Nana Teeney, my paternal grandmother, who graduated from New York University in 1939 as part of the first class of coed graduates? Is it...

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