Science | Live Happy

Don’t Forget to Smile [Video]

Smiles are universal. Share one today! Smiles are universally human; they are built right into our DNA. Smile more often, and you might just make yourself feel happier. Watch this charming video based on real research, brought to us by Tal Ben-Shahar and our partners at Happier.TV.

Positive Psychology

The End of Bullying?

Her own harrowing experiences in middle school inspired Deborah Temkin, Ph.D., to grow up to become one of the leading researchers in the United States on bullying. She was severely bullied—both verbally and physically—and felt that her school let her down by not preventing the bad things that were happening to her. Any attempt to address the abuse was met with retaliation and isolation from her peers. Years later, while earning her doctorate in human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University, she realized that many schools just aren’t equipped or have counterproductive policies to address the issue that affects roughly one out of every four students. Being bullied, she says, gave her purpose in life, and she has made it her mission to help schools create better climates. From 2010 to 2012, she served as the policy coordinator for bullying prevention for the U.S. Department of Education and is now the director of education research for Child Trends, an independent research organization focused on improving the lives of young people. “Unfortunately, a lot of schools use the approach of just telling kids to stop bullying,” she says. “I like to compare that to the ‘Just Say No’ campaign in the ’80s and ’90s.” If such a campaign “didn’t work for drugs, it’s probably not working for bullying. We really need to think through what our approach should be.” More vulnerable kids Kids who suffer from bullying are more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and internalizing bad experiences. The constant barrage of negative behavior can have long-lasting effects on their self-worth and motivation later in life and can even lead to thoughts of suicide. Those who engage in bullying behavior have a much higher risk of ending up in the juvenile court system and eventually jail. Even the kids who are bystanders can suffer from guilt and regret from not stepping in to protect someone. Zero-tolerance rules, suspensions and expulsions have proved to be ineffective measures to combat the issue. Traditionally, schools in the United States have been measuring their success based on academics rather than the well-being of the students. But prominent positive psychologists around the world have been studying the underlying causes of bullying, and their findings are both surprising and encouraging. What’s more, their unique intervention techniques have been highly successful, showing the promise of effective, sustainable solutions for future generations of schoolchildren. Listen to our special podcast on bullying, here. Positive climate change Deborah points out that the United States doesn’t necessarily extend its high standards and accountability on reading and math scores to school climate. Her research found that when schools focus on a positive climate—for example, fostering relationships in the classroom—bullying rates go down. Another effective weapon in the arsenal is to build up students’ emotional and social skills by teaching them compassion, empathy, conflict resolution and how to express their feelings without turning to aggressive behavior. “This helps them identify both their own emotions and reaction to certain situations as well as put themselves in other people’s shoes and understand how they may be feeling,” she says. Since 2010, there has been more attention to the issue of bullying. The U.S. Department of Education awarded $38.8 million in grants to 11 states, among them Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana and South Carolina, to bolster bully and drug prevention programs, build character and maintain proper well-being within the student body. While every state now has an anti-bullying law in place, Deborah says that no two laws are alike and a lot of the behavior is open to interpretation. A 2013 report by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates a recent dip in reported bullying in the U.S. among 12- to 18-year-olds by as much as 6 percent. While this is a significant drop and a positive sign, Deborah urges caution on drawing any conclusions until the 2015 findings are released. A continued decrease could indicate that recent bullying programs may be helping. “It is hard to attribute the drop to any one thing,” she says. “Both attention and action toward bullying dramatically increased starting in 2010, and some of that drop may be attributed to the ongoing campaigns of many organizations and the federal government.” Positive psychology in the classroom Alejandro Adler, a Ph.D. candidate in positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, routinely works with governments and international organizations to help incorporate positive education techniques into their respective curricula. He says more countries are starting to adopt a new paradigm in the teaching of youth where well-being and character development are given as much attention as academic success. “A sustainable solution is creating psychological and emotional assets in the community so that people are able to grow emotionally, psychologically and socially and get rid of those deficiencies and insecurities,” he says. “Rather than punishing bullying, why not educate people so that they become aware of what is really behind bullying? It’s really a sign of weakness and insecurity, and by attacking the root cause we can sustainably get rid of bullying. We need to not only be educating for numeracy and literacy, but educating for a healthy social and emotional life.” Stopping bullying at its source Throughout his research, Alejandro has found that bullies typically lack psychological and social support, whether that is in the home or in the community. Kids who aren’t in a nourishing environment start to develop insecurities and aggressive behaviors that lead to bullying. When students, including the bullies, are taught life skills, such as leadership, resilience, empathy and mindfulness, the social environment improves. Individual insecurities will start to decrease and self-esteem and self-efficacy will increase. “Bullying is really a form of aggression and violence. It may not always be physical, but psychological violence toward others,” he says. “So we’ve seen that individuals with higher well-being are more pro-social and less violent, both physically and verbally.” Aside from building a pro-social environment, Alejandro says it is also important to take the “cool” factor away from bullies by changing the lens through which they are viewed. When bullies are aware of their sociological and psychological deficiencies, it almost becomes embarrassing for them to continue with their behavior. By using this approach to the problem, Alejandro says, it can be very effective in diminishing bullying. A new world view Alejandro and his adviser, Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, are working at a policy level with schools in at least 10 countries, including Australia, India, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines, and are starting to see preliminary positive results. In Australia, leading researcher in educational psychology and Australian Catholic University professor Herb Marsh is finding that bullying behavior diminishes when the whole school approach is used. In his presentation at the Fourth World Conference on Positive Psychology, held in June, 2015 in Orlando, Florida, he stated that where most bully interventions go wrong is when students are classified into different groups, such as: those who are bullied, those who bully and those who are bystanders. What is more likely is that students can play different roles, switching between all three. He finds that there seems to be a mutually reinforcing relationship as well as a reciprocal effect between the bullies and the victims as the two are “surprisingly similar to each other.” “Consistently, interventions should reinforce students’ high self-concepts, as they are a likely force against being a bully and being a victim. In our intervention, there are no benefits to being a bully,” he says. “It’s important, for students, teachers and parents to reinforce that bullying behavior is unacceptable so the students cannot delude themselves into thinking that socially inappropriate behaviors result in enhanced social status, and positive self-perceptions, real or imagined.” According to his findings, bullies and victims both share low self-esteem issues, suffer from depression and have trouble controlling anger—bullies externally and victims internally. Victims are more likely to reinforce bullying behavior, actively or passively, instead of empathizing with another victim. The largest group, students who are bystanders, are not as innocent as previously thought and are very important to the intervention for creating a positive school climate. By not actively taking action against bullying behavior, bystanders are passively encouraging pro-bullying behavior. This group is critical to changing the environment from pro- to anti-bullying behavior. Herb’s research team successfully implemented an intervention in its study of six schools in Australia. The intervention consisted of training teachers to treat bullying behavior appropriately, having trained consultants dedicated to bullying available at all times, and educating students and their parents. A sign of positive change In 2012, a study conducted on students ages 9 to 11 in Vancouver, British Columbia, found that when pro-social behavior was introduced into the classroom, such as performing random acts of kindness, the students who participated were actually more accepted by their peers and even saw a boost in their popularity. This led to a decrease in bullying and an increase in overall well-being. The study also suggests that having a pro-social school climate can have a ripple effect beyond the kids actually doing the good deeds, affecting the community at large. While the U.S. has yet to work with educators in the field of positive psychology, Deborah does point out that during her time with the Department of Education, there were at least discussions with international leaders and researchers across borders to better understand the best approaches to bullying behavior. Alejandro adds that with larger governments, it is harder to implement a positive education curriculum due to the bureaucratic process. “The larger the scale, the lower the impact,” he says. “There are more layers between the students and the people who design the program. The substance and quality gets diluted rather than training the teachers directly.” Why me? Aija Mayrock always thought of herself as a normal, happy kid. She was creative and loved to write poems, draw pictures and act in plays. Her home life was good, and she says she had incredible and supportive parents. So when the bullying started, Aija was baffled as to why she was being singled out. By the time she made it to the third grade, she was being bullied regularly and continued to be throughout middle and high schools. She became withdrawn and self conscious about her appearance; she stopped doing the things that made her happy, and her creativity was stifled. After years of struggling to find the answer, Aija realized she was asking the wrong question. The bullying was happening whether she liked it or not. The question now was what was she going to do about it? The answer came to her in the form of helping others, and she used the one thing that the bullies took from her: creativity. No longer a victim, nor a bystander “I decided I couldn’t be a bystander to my own bullying situation or the bullying that was happening to nearly 13 million kids a year,” Aija says. “I decided the best thing to do to help these kids was to create a book that I never had and always wanted, and so I decided to write this book and kind of give it as a gift for the next generation of kids that would be bullied.” So at 16 years old she self-published the book The Survival Guide to Bullying, only to have it picked up a month later by children’s and educational publishing giant Scholastic. In it she covers topics like communication with parents and teachers, tips on how to conquer your fears, and details her own ups and downs with bullying. She has spoken to numerous schools about the issue of bullying and has been featured in anti-bully campaigns. Many kids know who she is and even credit her with giving them the courage to move beyond their own bullying experiences. “Sometimes you have to become your own superhero, because sometimes there is no one there to save you,” she says. “I got to a point where the bullying no longer affected me, and I didn’t feel angry or sad or frustrated, I just felt great. I encourage kids to take charge of their life and get to a point where they feel free from the bullying, and maybe at that point they will begin to forgive.” Sharing hope Unlike Aija, Jaylen Arnold knew exactly why he was singled out as a target for bullies. Jaylen suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, Asperger’s syndrome and severe obsessive compulsive disorder, all diagnosed before he was 8 years old. Jaylen says kids started to notice his vocal and motor neurological ticks, and he became an obvious target. With the added stress exacerbating his condition, the decision was made to take Jaylen out of school. This didn’t sit well with Jaylen, and he felt like he was leaving his friends behind, as they were victims of bullying as well. He finally realized that that if he and so many of his friends could all be bullied, how many other kids around the world were being bullied, too? “Around that time of my life I realized that I wanted to do something,” Jaylen says. “So I went to my mom and we created the Jaylens Challenge Foundation and went around to schools and started speaking and educating kids not only on Tourette’s, but on bullying as well.” Jaylen, now 14, tours the country speaking to hundreds of thousands of kids about his life experiences and bullying. He has met countless celebrities and has even been on the Ellen show. But more importantly, he has been able to give kids hope that they, too, can survive bullying, and he has even changed some minds. He says bullies have reached out to him to say they have stopped harassing kids after listening to his story. Victims have even told him that they have stopped thinking about suicide, realizing there is hope for a more positive future. “A lot of people feel like they will never make it through because it is an intense period of life, but it’s only a temporary thing,” he says. “If you just go to an adult, if you or someone you know is being bullied, then it can stop. All you have to do is speak up. I know it can be hard at times. I was terrified to tell my parents because I thought the bullying would get worse, but I tell kids never to fear that things will get worse.” Read more: YouTube Star Stands Up to Bullying Communication is key There is only so much a school can do for your children once you drop them off. Parents must also be proactive in their kids’ lives by looking for signs, such as changes in behavior, loss of appetite and loss of sleep, and must keep the lines of communication open. A well-informed, confident and resilient child is going to be better equipped to handle a stressful and negative situation. The same goes if you suspect your child may be a bully. Teaching our kids to be less aggressive and more mindful and compassionate can help broaden a young mind to think more inclusively and less hurtfully. “One of the most preventive steps that parents can take is to start those lines of communication early before something happens,” Deborah says. “Establishing that parents are going to listen, not judge their kids and have regular conversations.” She points out the difficulty in trying to pry information out of an adolescent, but communicating consistently makes it easier when issues arise. Someone to talk to Communication is something Aija really stresses when she talks to kids and parents. She frequently hears from parents that they had no idea their kid was being bullied, and she has dedicated a whole chapter in her book about the importance of having one person to confide in. “I really regret not knowing how to talk to my parents about what was going on, and I really encourage kids to find that place where they are comfortable enough to approach their parents or loved ones or teachers,” she says. “You just don’t have to go through the bullying alone. It’s not healthy, and to have someone looking out for you and having your best interests at heart will make the complete difference. I didn’t communicate properly and I wish I had.” She hopes her book will help spur the conversation that it is OK to talk about it and there is no stigma attached to being bullied. Behavior begins at home Parents can help by reinforcing good behavior at home. Mark Dombeck, Ph.D., a cognitive behavioral therapist in Oakland, California, says that any parenting behavior that teaches polite, respectful and compassionate social behavior is going to work against bullying. Conversely, when parents teach their children to be ultra-competitive, aggressive and overly status-conscious then they are paving the way for a potential bully. “Parents can teach their kids to be more compassionate and thoughtful, correcting them when they take things for granted,” he says. “Teaching your kid to say please and thank you, at one level is a simple social lubrication behavior, but is also a social skill. But where it goes, what it points at is the idea that we need to respect the other person because of the Golden Rule.” Read more: Bullying's Ripple Effect Chris Libby is the Section Editor at Live Happy.

Positive Psychology

Put Happiness on the Calendar

With so much time and research devoted to what it takes to be happy, it would seem that pursuing happiness should be easier than ever. After all, there are books, movies, podcasts, TED Talks and websites (even this magazine!) devoted to exploring the many roads to happiness. Despite that, not everyone is finding the happiness they desperately want. Planning makes perfect The good news is, the solution may all be a matter of planning. “Pursuing positivity is a delicate art,” Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., told attendees of the International Positive Psychology Association’s Fourth World Congress in June. Barbara, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor, added that with the increasing popularity in positive psychology, more people are becoming interested in the benefits of happiness but are also judging themselves for not being as happy as they should be. The 'dark side' of happiness A 2011 study led by Iris Mauss, Ph.D., at the University of California, Berkeley, showed that people who “value happiness to the extreme” are more prone to loneliness. And more studies are emerging about the so-called dark side of happiness, in which people are putting so much pressure on themselves to be happy that they’re actually feeling pretty miserable about it. Studies show that trying to be happier can actually make people feel worse. “People are…so worried about how they feel that they are missing opportunities to feel good,” Barbara says. But a study she co-authored with Lahnna I. Catalino, Ph.D., of the University of California, San Francisco and Sara B. Algoe, Ph.D., of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that perhaps the key lies in a subtle change. Make happiness a priority The study, “Prioritizing Positivity: An Effective Approach to Pursuing Happiness?”, was published in the December 2014 issue of the journal Emotion. Barbara and her colleagues found that people who make happiness a priority, and who build their lives around activities that are designed to increase their well-being, are much more satisfied than those who merely value happiness as an end goal. “Valuing happiness to an extreme oftentimes [views] happiness as a goal to be achieved, whereas in prioritizing positivity, the emotional goods are a byproduct of the behavior,” she says. Valuing vs. prioritizing The difference, Barbara says, is in our daily mindset and approach. The person who values happiness as an end goal is more likely to set unrealistic expectations about achieving happiness, research shows. That can include creating high-pressure thought processes such as “I ought to be doing better” or “I would probably be happier if.…” Her work shows that people who prioritize positivity may have more realistic and reachable visions of what happiness looks like for them. They constantly look for ways to nurture their positive emotions and structure free time around events and activities that make them happy and make major decisions—such as what job they choose or the home they buy—based on how that decision will influence their positive emotions. Prioritizing positivity is about following what’s good, and leaning in toward it. It’s about constantly making a choice to have a positive experience.” When happiness is seen as our ultimate goal, she says, we create too many ways to fall short. “It creates the idea that happiness is an achievement at which you’re potentially failing, versus seeing these micro-moments of each day as building blocks,” she explains. “When you think about happiness in terms of smaller building blocks, you get more chances to succeed and more chances to forgive yourself when you don’t.” Change your mind, change your life Barbara says the shift from valuing happiness to prioritizing it requires little more than changing our mindset. “That’s the lever that will jumpstart the emotional attitude,” she says. Too often, we learn what we should do, and then we fail to move that knowledge out of our heads and put it into action. Choosing a mindset that appreciates the little triumphs and moments of happiness as they occur can bring about dramatic and lasting changes. Give yourself a sense of control Barbara recommends we start looking at how our day-to-day actions line us up for happiness or failure. “You can regulate by planning, by setting up situations that are going to contribute to your happiness,” she says. “That gives you more of a sense of a control over your happiness instead of responding to the situations that are happening to you every day and then analyzing if those events or circumstances are making you happy. When you do that, you potentially have the grace to just experience that situation as it occurs.” Paula Felps is the Science Editor for Live Happy.

science

Find the Sacred in Everyday Life

In our fast-paced and commodified world, we are encouraged to fly at lightning speed and to relish the latest material thing or fleeting pleasure. At the same time, the study and practice of spirituality has grown enormously in popularity and continues to receive widespread attention. Our frenzied, plugged-in lives have driven us to seek some sort of spiritual refuge or respite from the technological whirlwind. (See: the success of a meditation app like Headspace or other evidence of an increased search to slow down and unplug.) Perhaps this heightened interest in spirituality reflects a personal thirst for meaning in our lives. Many of us are seeking not only to slow down but also to find a firm footing on a more solid—and perhaps sacred—ground. The search for the sacred "Spirituality can have a positive impact on our well-being by helping us focus on what we value most in life," says Ken Pargament, a world-renowned scholar of religion. The Bowling Green State University psychologist has been studying spirituality for more than 35 years and has written several books on the subject, including Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy and The Psychology of Religion and Coping. Defined as “the search for the sacred,” spirituality enables us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, Ken says. "Sacred" refers to human perceptions on qualities often associated with the divine or higher powers: transcendence, ultimacy (essential and absolute truth), boundlessness, interconnectedness and spiritual emotions. Spirituality enhances well-being Research has shown that people who find the sacred in various spheres of life—such as relationships, work, and nature—enjoy enhanced well-being. For example, a 2010 study conducted by Ken and colleagues found that pregnant couples who viewed their marriages and pregnancies as sacred experienced increased positive emotions and were better able to overcome adversity during tough times. Similarly, research headed by Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski in 1997, then at the University of Michigan, found that people who see their work as sacred report higher levels of job satisfaction. More recently, a 2014 study by Ken and colleagues showed that sacred moments were commonly reported by mental health providers and were linked with positive outcomes for the patient, the provider and the therapeutic relationship. Patients experienced healing and growth, and providers a greater sense of meaning in their work, according to Ken. Read More: The New Prayer Finding the divine If you feel you may be missing aspects of the divine and the sacred in your own life, Ken suggests asking yourself these questions to help foster a more integrated sense of spirituality: What do you hold sacred? Do some soul-searching to identify what matters most to you. How much time are you devoting daily to your spiritual strivings? How might you find more time everyday to search for the sacred? Where do you find the sacred? There are many spiritual pathways. Some of us find the sacred in relationships, some in prayer or meditation, still others through study or action. Reflect on where you experience your deepest feelings of awe, gratitude, mystery, timelessness and love. Emotions like these provide clues about where you might find the sacred and might try to spend more of your time. How committed are you? Practice makes perfect in the spiritual realm as in other areas of life. Spiritual growth takes commitment and hard work. Prepare yourself for a long-term process and don’t be discouraged by frustrations along the way. Read more by Suzann PileggiPawelski: The Power of Passion Suzann Pileggi Pawelskiis a freelance writer specializing in the science of happiness and its effects on relationships and health.

science

The Restless Pursuit of Something Better

No one likes moving, and yet Americans like it more (or hate it less) than most. The average American relocates 11.7 times over the course of a lifetime. And although that figure is slightly down over previous decades, the fact remains that the United States is still one of the most mobile societies in the world.In addition to the bodily aches and bruises that come with putting your life in a box, psychologists point to increased levels of anxiety and stress, disorientation and loss. In some cases, moving can induce panic attacks in the face of the uncertainties that lie ahead; in others, a sense of mourning and regret for what is left behind. Why do we put ourselves through this pain? In pursuit of pleasure and happiness, of course!Always on the moveWe are, after all, a nation of immigrants. Pulling up roots in search of a better life is part our national DNA. One of the most astute observers of the young United States, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, pointed this out long ago. In a famous passage in his Democracy in America (1835–1840), he observed:In the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden and lets [rents] it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere."In Tocqueville’s view, Americans’ restless pursuit of the “shortest cut to happiness” actually led them astray, causing them to focus on imaginary futures at the expense of good lives just under their noses.How well do we know what we want?Contemporary psychologists warn us that when it comes to moving, we are often poor predictors of how happy we’ll be when we get to our new homes.The reason for this has to do with what the Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert calls “impact bias,” an inherent human tendency to exaggerate the emotional “impact” or effect of future events. Human beings, it turns out, are surprisingly bad at what Dan calls “affective forecasting”—that is, predicting how they will feel down the road.For evolutionary reasons, our brains seem to have developed in such a way as to exaggerate the emotional consequences of later events—either to motivate us by the enticing prospect of future pleasure, or to scare us so that we’ll stay out of harm’s way.The good news about all this is that negative events also seldom affect us as much as we fear. But the bad news, as Dan explains, is that “the good things that happen to us don't feel as good or last as long as we think they will.” When it comes to relocating, the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman puts it this way: “Moving to California Won’t Make You Happier.”Sometimes the grass really is greenerHowever, recent research suggests that our immigrant ancestors—and those in our own time setting out from the underdeveloped world in search of greater freedom, prosperity, and happiness—were and are often right to get up and go. They are happier for it. From better schools to better jobs to a bigger backyard or closer proximity to family, there are all kinds of good reasons to pack your bags.The trick, as Dan explains, is to talk to as many people in advance who have actually made the move that you want to make. We may be bad at predicting how happy we’ll be in the future ourselves, but those who are already there don’t suffer from impact bias: they can tell it like it is. Other peoples’ experiences, in other words, can help you calibrate for the distortion of your own fantasies and figure out whether or not it makes sense to stay put.

News & Trends

Amazon and the Problem of Modern Work Culture

I typically have to flip to the Business section of The New York Times to get to the news I can use–information about workplace culture and management practices—all relevant to my job as an organizational consultant and executive coach. Imagine my surprise to see a long feature article, “Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace,”on the front page of the Sunday paper. What could possibly be so big that it made front page news? Drones that can talk? Books that read themselves?What's the big surprise?I started reading and didn’t get it. Business review meetings that are anxiety producing? Aren’t they all? Putting in long hours and then logging onto email at night? A common practice for many, unfortunately. Employees who are put on “performance review plans”? Again, no different than countless other large corporations. As the title suggested, some people flourish in this fast paced, hard-charging environment, while others do not.A pointed rebuttalAfter reading the Times article I did a little poking around and found Nick Ciubotariu’s LinkedIn Blog debunking many of the claims against Amazon. Nick heads up Infrastructure at Amazon. His experience over the last 18-months has been quite different. And, if the over 600 comments (at the time of my writing this post) was a Gallup poll, we would find employees who have both flourished and floundered at Amazon. Before you cheer or damn Amazon, consider this one sentence that grabbed my attention:Thanks in part to its ability to extract the most from employees, Amazon is stronger than ever.”Extraction vs. InspirationClients often ask my co-author, Senia Maymin, and me, “How can I get the most out of my people?” We suggest they ask themselves a somewhat different question—one that doesn’t conjure up images of sucking every last ounce of energy out of employees, such as, “How can I get people to perform at their best?” The answer is simple. By getting them to identify, cultivate and use their strengths every day. Improving productivity using a strengths-based approach results in an energy-producing work environment where employees want to do their very best and will go that extra mile to accomplish their work and more.Negativity biasIt sounds simple enough, but in reality, focusing on strengths is very difficult for some people due to what psychologists call negativity bias. We are keen at finding fault. Many of us view the world through a deficit lens and are constantly asking questions such as: What’s missing? What isn’t right? What needs fixing? What are our gaps?From the Times article, it would appear that Amazon may be more focused on finding fault (and pointing it out immediately and vocally) than in cultivating strengths. Then again, Amazon has an amazing success record, which indicated they are doing something right.The danger here is that other companies eager to emulate Amazon’s success and looking for a quick fix may actually try to adopt some of the practices reported in the Times, even though the article was meant more as an exposé than a how-to. Amazon has been successful using the “squeeze-the-most-out-of" approach, but buyer—or job candidate—beware: Consider what work environment will bring out the best in you.Margaret H. Greenberg is an organizational consultant and executive coach, and the co-author ofProfit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business.She is also the Live Happy Positive Work columnist with Senia Maymin. For more information about Margaret, visitProfitFromThePositive.comandTheGreenbergGroup.org. Follow her on Twitter @profitbook andFacebook.com/ProfitFromThePositive.

News & Trends

Bullying’s Ripple Effect

Teenage bullies can inflict emotional and physical pain on their victims in countless ways—calling kids names on the playground, flipping books out of their arms in school hallways or flaming them in cyberspace. Researchers have long known that bullying can trigger depression in adolescents. British researchers now suggest that depression can reach at least into early adulthood. The findings have educators renewing calls for more effective programs to curb bullying and its effects.From bullying to depressionAt the University of Oxford, a team led by Professor Lucy Bowes, Ph.D., found that nearly a third of early adult depression cases could stem from bullying in teenage years. Her team also found that kids who were frequently bullied at age 13 are more than twice as likely to be depressed at 18 as those who were not bullied. Their study results were reported in The BMJ (British Medical Journal).“We had anticipated that we would find a link between peer victimization in the teenage years and clinical depression,” Lucy told Reuters. “What was surprising was the proportion of depression that might be explained by peer victimization if this really is a causal relationship—nearly 30 percent in our sample.”Read More: Teen Angst or Teen Anguish?Age 13, the most vulnerable timeHer team analyzed bullying and depression data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a long-term look at 14,500 families in the Bristol, England area. Nearly 7,000 kids reported bullying at age 13, when they were asked whether and how often they had experienced peer victimization including exclusion, rumor spreading or physical violence.At age 18, they returned to complete assessments that identified people with depression. Of the 683 teenagers who reported bullying at more than once a week over six months at age 13, 14.8 percent were depressed at age 18. Of the 1,446 teenagers bullied one to three times over six months at age 13, 7.1 percent were depressed at 18. Only 5.5 percent of young teenagers who did not experience bullying were depressed at 18.What can be done about it“There are many school-based interventions targeting bullying, but these need to be more rigorously evaluated so we can understand which are most effective at reducing bullying and support schools in implementing these,” Lucy says.In an editorial that accompanied Lucy’s research, Maria M. Ttofi, Ph.D., a University of Cambridge psychological criminology lecturer who has also studied youth victimization, says, “societies need to take measures to protect vulnerable young people…Bowes and colleagues’ work offers clear anti-bullying messages that should be endorsed by parents, school authorities and practitioners internationally.”For more on bullying and how it can be prevented, look for the October 2015 issue of Live Happy magazine.Jim Gold is a veteran journalist who divides his time between Seattle and the Bay Area.

science

Upping Your Downtime

We’ve all been there: We spend weeks and even months anticipating that dream vacation, only to return to work afterward feeling like we need a few days off. Even our weekends, which are supposed to help us relax and rejuvenate, often leave us feeling exhausted. So if downtime is supposed to make us happier and healthier, then why do so many of us feel depleted by it? “People today are doing more with less, and there are tremendous levels of burnout,” says Jamie Gruman, Ph.D., associate professor of organizational behavior at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. “People really need to figure out how to decompress in their leisure time”. Cut the cord One way to make better use of time away from the office is to actually leave it behind. People who leave work at work tend to be more satisfied with their lives and experience fewer symptoms of psychological strain than those who bring it home. What’s more, a study published in Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology found that “psychological detachment” during the weekend may even improve our job performance during the workweek. Read More: How to Be Present Still plugged in “It’s not enough to just physically leave the office,” Jamie says. “You have to mentally leave the office. Very few people do this.” Sure, you might be sitting by the pool, but your mind might still be parked at your desk. “If you’re checking your email every half hour, if you’re not turning off your head and allowing yourself to enjoy the moment, you’re psychologically attached to your obligations,” he says. Technology has made it easier than ever to check in with work, which in turn has made it that much harder to check out mentally. Jamie recommends giving high-tech the heave-ho as much as possible. That could mean turning off email notifications on your cell phone or creating an out-of-office auto-reply so you don’t feel the need to respond immediately. Even better, have two cell phones—one for work and another for personal use—allowing you to turn off the work phone on nights, weekends and vacations. Read More: Unplugged Learn to detach Of course, turning off devices is easier than turning off thoughts. If you’re the type who broods about what happened at work or worries about what might happen, you may need to change how you spend your free time. A study by Sabine Sonnentag, Ph.D., called “Psychological Detachment from Work During Leisure Time: The Benefits of Mentally Disengaging from Work,” published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, found that meaningful activities like volunteering and mindfulness practices such as meditation can help us detach from work. You’ll stand a better chance of detaching if you bring tasks to completion before clocking out, notes Sabine, a leading researcher in organizational psychology and a professor at University of Mannheim in Germany. She’s published a number of studies showing that a heavy workload and high time pressure are the strongest predictors of low detachment from work. That’s why it’s wise to take vacations during slow periods at work or on the heels of a big deadline. And, if you absolutely must do some work on evenings, weekends or a vacation, set aside a specific time for it—and don’t allow yourself to dwell on it before or afterward. Read More: 6 Steps to Mindful Meditation How long is enough? No matter how well-timed the vacation, work will likely pile up in your absence. That’s just one of the reasons Jamie and other experts recommend taking frequent short vacations instead of infrequent long ones. Less time away means less catch-up and stress when you return; shorter vacations also require less preparation, which reduces stress in the days beforehand. “It’s not the [amount of] time but the quality of the time that matters,” Jamie says. “Research shows that three-day weekends can be as replenishing as longer vacations.” In his study “Vacationers Happier, but Most Not Happier after a Vacation,” published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, Jeroen Nawijn, Ph.D., found that vacation length does not affect post-vacation happiness and confirmed previous findings that a vacation’s positive effects are short-lived. However, we can prolong our getaways’ positive effects by looking at photos, telling friends about the trip and otherwise keeping vacation memories alive, says Jeroen, a lecturer at NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. Both he and Jamie advise building in some “recovery time” between time off and returning to work. Read More: 5 Tips for an Energy Boosting Vacation Cut down on lag time “People think the way to get the most out of their vacation is to spend the most time away. It’s logical, but it’s a mistake,” Jamie says. Instead, leave time for laundry, grocery shopping and even recovering from jetlag when you return home, he says. And rather than getting home late Sunday night and going back to work Monday morning, consider coming home Saturday night—or at least early in the day on Sunday—to give yourself time to re-enter your world. Do downtime differently While relaxation is important to well-being, the way we relax could be keeping us from optimal happiness. “We’re not very creative in our downtime,” Jamie says. “We just do whatever is our habit.” He advises taking time to assess the effects of your habits. Does TV time relax you and improve your mood? If you go for a walk before you sit down to watch TV, do you feel better? Do the people you spend time with bring out the best in you? Ask yourself if there’s something you used to love doing that you aren’t doing anymore, and then start doing it again. “Doing something you enjoy is key to getting a boost out of downtime,” Jamie says. “We play a role in how happy we’re going to feel.” Read More: Tripped Up

science

Can Twitter Save Your Life?

Twitter has been linked to everything from starting social movements to making and breaking careers. A recent study finds it can also offer a window into the psychological well-being of a community and predict heart disease. A better predictor A study by Johannes Eichstaedt and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania found that Twitter was a better predictor of heart disease than traditional models, which combine 10 standard risk factors including smoking, hypertension, and obesity. The study found an increased risk of heart disease in areas of the country where high levels of negative emotion words like “anger” and “hate” were tweeted. Communities using positive-emotion language had a much lower risk. In addition, engagement, measured by words like “interested” and “excited,” emerged as a surprisingly powerful predictor of life satisfaction, says Johannes, the founding research scientist of the World Well-Being Project, a group of researchers collaborating to create new ways to measure well-being based on social media language. Watch The TED Talk on this research: An indirect effect Johannes emphasizes that the people tweeting are not the people dying. “There is essentially no overlap between the part of the population at risk from heart disease (60+) and those tweeting (median age: 32).” So what’s the connection? “It’s an indirect effect at the community level,” he says. The research illustrates what scientists have known for a long time—places matter to our well-being. Or, as Johannes explains it, “What does it feel like to live in a given neighborhood? How safe do we feel? Do we feel engaged?” Sociologists refer to such properties as “social cohesion”—something previously linked to heart disease risk but notoriously hard to measure. Social cohesion “We may have found a way to measure this subtle feature of communities,” Johannes says, adding that Twitter may provide inexpensive and accurate insight into a community’s psyche. The potential to better understand factors connected to heart health on a countywide level is promising. “You can do a live psychological risk map for different communities and help policymakers target campaigns educating people that the way they live their mental lives can kill them as well,” Johannes says. “You can then introduce interventions and measure results.“ Read more by Suzann Pileggihere: Love Well to Live Well

science

Become More Resilient in 9 Simple Steps

We may take time to think about how to be healthier, but we don’t often spend a lot of time thinking about how to become more resilient. Resilience is mental toughness. With it, you can bounce back from setbacks more quickly and find the positive in challenging circumstances. In his book, The Resiliency Advantage, the late Al Siebert, Ph.D., contends that highly resilient people are more flexible, adapt to new circumstances more quickly and "thrive in constant change.” If you want to begin to build up your resilience muscle, here are nine things you can do: 1. Change your self-talk Pay attention to the thoughts that pop up into your head. If they are critical or negative, replace them with a positive thought or two. According to positive psychology pioneer Martin Seligman, Ph.D., you can give yourself a cognitive intervention and counter negative thinking with an optimistic attitude. Treating yourself with self-compassion sometimes takes work, but when you are kind to yourself it increases your resilience because you have your own back. Treat yourself like you would a best friend. 2. Celebrate your wins If you don’t think you can do something, or your self-confidence is flagging, think of a time when you succeeded. List your wins—those times when you achieved something you didn’t think you could do. Recalling your wins restores your belief in yourself. Psychologist and author Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., says we need a three-to-one ratio of positive to negative experiences to build our resilience and flourish in life. 3. Be solid in how you see yourself One of the easiest ways to boost your self-image is to make decisions that make you feel good about who you are, according to psychologist and Ohio University professor Gary Sarver, Ph.D. With a positive self-perception, you won’t let the moods and opinions of others knock you off course. You will realize that the opinion that matters most is your own opinion of yourself. 4. Give yourself a pep talk If you repeatedly tell yourself you are strong, not only will you begin to believe it, but you also will look for ways to prove that it’s true. Most of us are a lot stronger than we think; we just have to believe it first in order to see it in our own lives. 5. Push outside your comfort zone It’s hard to believe in our fortitude if we hide within a comfort zone. Do the things that scare you a bit and watch your resilience build up. Afraid of public speaking? Try talking to a small group first. Nervous to change jobs? Just start interviewing. Afraid to have a difficult conversation? Write out what you want to say first. Fear dissipates with action. Make up your own mantra. Try … Let’s do this. Be bold. Keep moving forward. Or, forget fear. Power up big with a tiny sentence. 6. Cultivate your relationships Resilient people tend to have strong support systems with family, or they cultivate strong, supportive relationships with friends and mentors. Knowing you have people you can turn to when times get tough makes you a little tougher. 7. Boost your energy Running on empty is a quick way to deplete the positive way you feel about yourself and leave you feeling like you’ve run out of resources. What activities recharge you? Is it exercise? A day on the golf course? A coffee shop and a good book? Seeing a good movie? A hike in the woods? When you feel your best, your mental resilience stays strong. 8. Brood less If you find yourself ruminating over problems or having anxious moments, try to take a 20,000-feet perspective and realize that a lot of what we dwell on never happens or won’t matter a week from now. Try letting go of more things so you can spend your brain power thinking empowering thoughts and taking positive action steps. In Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, Daniel Goleman writes that self-awareness is "the building block of the next fundamental emotional intelligence: being able to shake off a bad mood.” 9. Sleep more Sleep makes everything better, including our resilience. When you are sleep-deprived, it’s easier to get stressed out, be more reactive, make poor decisions and feel mentally drained. Sufficient sleep (that’s about eight hours a night) boosts your mental brain power, restores mental clarity and is more likely to contribute to a positive outlook. Read more about the importance of sleep for well-being. When you feel mentally tough, you can relax into your life and pursue the life you want without limitations. You aren’t afraid of adversity or change because you know you will adapt. Resilient people are more likely to look for the positive and share the love with others.

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