Tag: #Articles

“People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed.”

Carol Dweck

Accomplishment is an element of well-being. Deep absorption in an activity brings achievement.

Achieving your goals in life brings happiness. The winning habit can be a motivation, a pleasurable feeling, and a source of happiness. When one looks back at one’s life, he feels happy about his achievements.

Setting and achieving goals enhances happiness. The goals you seek to achieve may not be lofty ones but the ones that you value. When you achieve them with your efforts, you can cherish the memories forever.

Children can maximize achievement with self-discipline. It is the queen of all the virtues, the strength that enables the rest of the strengths. An extreme trait of self-discipline is grit.

Grit

Grit is the combination of very high persistence and high passion for an objective. That is why extraordinary achievement is very rare. But one can always set goals for oneself and have the satisfaction of achieving them.

Grit is defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Components of grit include self-regulation, discipline, and sacrificing short-term results for long-term gain.

Natural talent and intelligence are important components of success, but commitment, perseverance, and regulated effort also play crucial roles.

Seligman provides an example of a piano player who practices for thousands of hours prior to becoming world class. He or she may be born with musical talent, but without frequent practice and effort natural potential would not result in world class ability.

Positive accomplishment is defined as the development of individual potential through striving for and achieving meaningful outcomes. Positive accomplishment involves the capacity to work towards meaningful goals, the motivation to persist despite challenges and setbacks, and the achievement of competence and success in important life domains.

Institute of Positive Education

“There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields true glory.”

Francis Drake

A meaningful life

“They only live who live for others.”

Swami Vivekananda

Meaning, or purpose, is an important element of happiness and well-being. You cannot imagine a life of authentic happiness without meaning, or connection to something larger than life.

We derive meaning by developing the best within us and serving something beyond ourselves.

It is our duty to take care of our body and mind. Equally important is the welfare of all other beings around us.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The best way to find your self is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

Martin Seligman defines a “meaningful life” in these words:

“The meaningful life consists in belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self, and humanity creates all the positive institutions to allow this: religion, political party, being green, the Boy Scouts, or the family.”

Finding Meaning in Work

We spend a large part of our life working. We are talking of work in a broader context – work in the office or a factory, working as a student (study), raising children and single parenting, working in the fields, and milking cows.

In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow, or deep engagement, at work.

Thomas Carlyle wrote, “Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

When asked for his recipe for happiness, Sigmund Freud gave a very short but sensible answer, “work and love.”

It is true that if one finds flow in work, and in relations with other people, one is well on the way toward improving the quality of life.

In Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, once people have satisfied their physical needs, such as food and safety, they move on to needs for love and then esteem, which is earned mostly through one’s work.

People approach their work in one of the three ways: as a job, career, or calling.

Jonathan Haidt describes them, “If you see work as a job, you do it only for money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.

“If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige. The pursuit of these goals energizes you and you sometimes take work home with you because you want to get the job done properly. Yet, at times, you wonder why you work so hard.

“If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling – you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you.”

Csikszentmihalyi observes, “Occasionally cultures evolve in such a way as to make every day productive chores as close to flow activities as possible. There are groups in which both work and family life are challenging, yet harmoniously integrated.

“The most striking feature of such places is that those who live there seldom distinguish work from free time. It could be said that they work sixteen hours a day each day, but then it could also be argued that they never work.”

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “One can live magnificently in this world if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.”

Finding Meaning in Life

“That is happiness – to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

Willa Cather

Researchers believe that a genuine sense of meaning in life must be rooted in a person’s own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Blindly embracing someone else’s sense of meaning won’t bring about happiness and growth.

Life is more meaningful when you are pursuing goals that are harmonious and within reach – for example, when you have the time, the ability, and the energy to devote to your most important goals, whether those goals involve rearing children or developing as a writer.

“We all have a journey to make in our lives, in search of our meaning or ‘song’: finding our path, if a human one, will make us happy. Not finding it, makes for an aimless life.”

Anthony Seldon

Creativity – in the arts, humanities, and sciences and even in self-discovery – can impart a sense of meaning.

Religion, spirituality, and faith have been developed as pathways leading to creating meaning in life.

You can choose a life built around increasing knowledge, learning, teaching, educating your children, science, literature, journalism, and so many more opportunities.

One can carve a life around increasing one’s power through technology, engineering, construction, health services, or manufacturing.

You can contribute your services for increasing goodness through the law, policing, firefighting, religion, ethics, politics, national service, or charity.

Either find work that is meaningful or find something meaningful in your work.

Serve the humans who are suffering and need healing. Prevent cruelty to animals. Be instrumental in educating of the poor.

Take care of the girl child in the developing countries. Rescue child labourers from bondage. Feed those who are hungry and starving.

Teach yoga and meditation to the ailing and those suffering from trauma. Give them a healing touch.

Create awareness about sustainable development, green technologies, and environmental resources management.

“Practicing compassion, caring for others, and sharing their problems, lays the foundation for a meaningful life, not only at the level of the individual, family or community, but also for humanity as a whole.”

Dalai Lama

Positive Emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Aristotle

Happiness means different things to different persons. For some, it is a feeling of cheerfulness and merriment. For others, it may be calm and inner peace. Some gain happiness by buying a new mobile phone or car, others derive happiness in giving and compassion. One feels happy racing a bike at high speed and another by sitting still in a tranquil forest.

What actually is happiness and what it is not?

Happiness is the experience of joy. One may jump and shout to express joy, but it could also be a quiet feeling of contentment and inner peace.

Thich Nhat Hanh is absolutely right when he says, “Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”

You feel happy when you are deeply involved in your hobby, when you have been kind to someone, or when you have achieved something worthwhile.

Making someone happy, makes you happy too. Dalai Lama says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.’

No one else can make us happy or unhappy. We are responsible for the happiness or unhappiness we experience. We can all make ourselves happier.

Anthony Seldon has some good advice for us, “The still and the harmonious mind is happy and joyful; the unhappy, disturbed, or violent mind is never still. Mindfulness, contemplation, meditation, and prayer are pathways to greater stillness.”

Kindness and goodness make us happier: selfishness and unkindness make us unhappy now or in the longer term.

Happiness is the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.

According to Matthieu Ricard, “Happiness is a deep sense of flourishing, not a mere pleasurable feeling or fleeting emotion but an optimal state of being.”

What happiness is not

One must also understand what happiness is not.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance.

“It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but rather on how we interpret them.

“Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person.

“People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any one of us can come to being happy.”

“Happiness does not come automatically. It is not a gift that good fortune bestows upon us and a reversal of fortunes takes back. It depends on us alone.

“One does not become happy overnight, but with patient labour, day after day. Happiness is constructed, and that requires effort and time. In order to become happy, we have to learn how to change ourselves.”

Luca & Francesco Cavalli-Sforza

Well-Being

Martin Seligman, known as the father of positive psychology, developed the ‘PERMA’ model, which identifies the five things necessary for wellbeing – positive emotion (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M) and achievement (A).

Well-being is a construct, and happiness is a thing. Just as weather is a construct of temperature, humidity, wind speed, barometric pressure, and some other factors; well-being is a construct of five factors, as under.

The five elements of well-being are:

• positive emotion,
• engagement,
• relationships,
• meaning,
• and accomplishment.

Positive Emotion includes the feelings of joy, excitement, contentment, hope, and warmth. There may be positive emotions relating to the past, present or future.

Engagement denotes deep involvement in a task or activity. One does not experience the passing of time. One experiences flow in sports, music, and singing but one may also experience it in work, reading a book, or in a good conversation.

We feel happy when we are among family and friends. The quality and depth of relationships in one’s life make it rich.

Meaning is connecting to something larger than life. 

One strives for achievements in life. They are a source of happiness for us.

Each of these elements contributes to well-being. The good news is that each one of the above may be cultivated and developed to enhance the level of well-being.

“If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias in his garden, or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi Desert.”

Walter Beran Wolfe

Positive Psychology and Positive Education

The Science of happiness and well-being

“Psychological wealth includes life satisfaction, the feeling that life is full of meaning, a sense of engagement in interesting activities, the pursuit of important goals, the experience of positive emotional feelings, and a sense of spirituality that connects people to things larger than themselves.”

Edward Deiner

Schools teach history, geography, science, maths, and grammar. Parents desire their children to do well in life and flourish. Children want to play freely and explore their dreams. Where do all these lines meet?

Positive Psychology, the science of happiness, and Positive Education, the combination of traditional education with the study of well-being, provide us an answer to this question.

Positive Psychology is the modern science of happiness and well-being. It provides a new understanding of happiness and well-being and how to achieve them.

It dispels myths and wrong notions about happiness and suggests evidence-based happiness-enhancing strategies from which one may choose activities suitable for oneself.

The science of positive psychology seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the “good life.”

Positive psychology has three pillars:

• First is the study of positive emotions like gratitude, joy, and hope. 
• Second is the study of the positive traits, foremost among them the strengths and virtues, but also the ‘abilities’ such as intelligence and athleticism.
• Third is the study of positive institutions, such as democracy, strong families, and free enquiry, that support the virtues, which in turn support the positive emotions.

Positive Education

“All young people need to learn workplace skills, which has been the subject matter of the education system in place for two hundred years. In addition, we can now teach the skills of well-being – of how to have more positive emotion, more meaning, better relationships, and more positive accomplishment.”

Martin Seligman

Positive Education is the combination of traditional education with the study of happiness and well-being.

It is an approach to education that blends academic learning with character and well-being.

It is preparing students with life skills, such as, grit, optimism, resilience, growth mindset, engagement, and mindfulness, amongst others.

Positive education pairs traditional schooling with positive psychology interventions to improve well-being.

Positive Education focuses on specific skills that assist students to strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance personal resilience, promote mindfulness and encourage a healthy lifestyle.

It brings together the science of Positive Psychology with best practice teaching to encourage and support individuals, schools and communities to flourish.

We refer to flourishing as a combination of ‘feeling good and doing good’.

Institute of Positive Education

According to Anthony Seldon, “Positive Education is preparing students for the tests of life, not just a life of tests. Well-being should be at the heart of education – not the periphery.”

The concept has support from a range of prominent psychologists and practising teachers. The idea is the wellbeing of students enhances learning and develops them as good citizens.

Intelligence and Character

• Angela Duckworth says, “Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education. Character education is made up of three things:
• strengths of heart (give to, and receive, from others),
• strengths of mind (think, imagine, create),
• and strengths of will (self-control, choice, grit).”

“Successful painters, dancers, poets, novelists, physicists, biologists, and psychologists seem to have crafted lives for themselves around a consuming passion. These are admirable lives, desirable lives, the sort that many young people dream of having when they look to these people as role models.”

Jonathan Haidt

Please click on the following links to read previously published posts “Positive Education” 👉

English Literature – Articles ☆ Positive Education # 01: Fundamentals of happiness and well-being for children and their parents ☆ Shri Jagat Singh Bisht ☆

Description

Do you wish to prepare your child with life skills, such as, grit, optimism, resilience, growth mindset, engagement, and mindfulness? A combination of traditional education with the study of happiness and well-being can be of great help in this regard.

Children and parents can flourish in life with the help of happiness activities that may be easily practised. The concepts are derived from Positive Psychology, the modern science of happiness and well-being, and Positive Education, an approach to education that blends academic learning with character and well-being.

Positive Education focuses on specific skills that assist students to strengthen their relationships, build positive emotions, enhance personal resilience, promote mindfulness, and encourage a healthy lifestyle. The concept has support from a range of prominent psychologists and practising teachers.

There are books for children and there are books for the grown-ups. This one is for both of them – the children and their parents. The book may also be used for implementing positive education in schools.

Fundamentals of happiness and well-being for children and their parents

“There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.”

J Krishnamurti

This is a book describing the fundamentals of happiness and well-being for children and their parents. It is to be read individually as well as collectively by them so as to have a true understanding of happiness and how to flourish in life.

Usually, there are books for children, and there are books for the grown-ups. This book is different. It is for both of them – the children and their parents. Each one reads and understands from his/her own perspective and then there is friendly sharing of learning amongst them for better understanding. It creates joy and bonding. The effects on long-term happiness and well-being of the family are deep rooted and robust.

The concepts are derived from Positive Psychology – the modern science of happiness and well-being – and Positive Education – an approach to education that blends academic learning with character and well-being.

All parents want the best for their children, they want their child to be happy and flourish. However, finding the right education for their child can be a challenge.

The Geelong Grammar School in Victoria, Australia, in consultation with world experts in positive psychology, developed a model for positive education to complement traditional learning.

It is essentially an applied framework comprising six domains:

• positive emotions,
• positive engagement,
• positive relationships,
• positive purpose,
• positive accomplishment,
• and positive health.

Each of these six domains are explained and elaborated in the book. The emphasis is on how to cultivate each one of these practically and enhance happiness and well-being.

A good school doesn’t just aim for its students to achieve their academic potential. It also aims to develop them as caring, responsible, and ultimately productive members of society.

Positive education curriculum has been implemented with good results in schools in Australia, USA and Germany. Widespread support is necessary for the success of the positive education movement.

This book may also be used as a well-being primer by teachers and educators for implementing positive education in their schools. It will enable the students to develop an understanding of authentic happiness and flourish in life.

“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”

Voltaire