Not Good Enough? Not Smart Enough? Not Pretty Enough?

Round & Round & Round It Goes

The voices in our heads can be real buzz-kills. “I’m not whatever enough.” I should be (doing) X, I should be (doing) Y, I should be (doing) Z.

WinterSome call this voice “the gremlin” or saboteur. Others look at it is as a radio station that plays recurring tunes of self-limiting beliefs embedded into our subconscious minds.  Whatever you call it, these voices have harmful effects.  Positive psychologists sometimes suggest that it is our own, self-deprecating mind chatter which holds us in the bonds of ordinance. Our thoughts and belief systems can become our realities.

Summer   Limiting beliefs lead to procrastination and laziness, dampen and destroy dreams, and bring down morale. Successful people who exhibit high levels of grit have learned to combat these limiting beliefs by changing the hardwired thinking patterns – replacing them with more constructive and positive ones. This takes attention, intention, and will.

How Do People Stop The Voices in Their Heads?

Journal1) Journaling.  Students in seventh grade were asked to write about an important value—like being smart (or an unimportant value in the control group) for just 15-minutes several times throughout the year. The intervention improved the end-of-semester grades for the African American students and reduced the racial achievement gap by 40% in the experimental group, presumably by lowering the self-threat associated with confirming the negative “not good/smart enough” belief systems associated with stereotype vulnerability (see work by Claude Steele). Just this week, researchers noted that improvements continue through eighth grade. The students who benefited had nearly a half-point higher grade point average than struggling peers in the control group.

This middle-school intervention study was run by researchers Geoffrey Cohen (University of Colorado), Julio Garcia (Colorado), Valerie Purdie-Vaughns (Columbia University) and Nancy Apfel and Patricia Brzustoski (Yale) and focused on journaling.

2) Focusing on Mindset and Learned Optimism.  Anther answer to stopping the voices is to actively focus on your growth mindset, as Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck would suggest (see Got Grit? Start with Mindset by Emiliya Zhivotovskaya and “Brainset” – Neuroscience Examines Carol Dweck’s Theory by Nicholas Hall).  At an even more basic level, people can counter the voices by self-training themselves in learned optimism self-talk as founder of positive psychology and University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman would suggest (see Learning Optimism by Doug Turner and Is feeling better as easy as ABC? by Nicholas Hall).

Microphone3) Focusing on Positive Self Thoughts. Psychologists Shelley Taylor and David Sherman suggest in a paper last year that the processes surrounding self-enhancement and self-affirmation are the key to how psychological health is maintained, or restored, after a threat. It is also key in fueling the ability to set and maintain energy around goals.

4) Activating Hope. Believing that you have positive strengths and talents allows you to feel good about yourself, even through stressful times, because you can pull from a bank of resources that make you uniquely you. A heightened mindfulness of your general attributes may facilitate performance by boosting your sense of self-worth—what Diane McDermott and C.R. Snyder (1999) call mental willpower. This can start simply by making a list of accomplishments you have had in your life.

Specific Techniques

While you are probably way past middle school, some of your internal gremlins may have lingered in one form or another since then. Ready for them to be gone?

I work with clients all the time to change their belief systems. Just the other day I was speaking with a woman who says she wants to meet the man of her dreams. When I asked her if she thought it what possible, the silence was deafening. It all starts with the belief.

Saying “Could.” Another client of mine is going through career transition. He has all of these belief systems that tell him what he should be doing. One way to easy some of that “should” anxiety is, according to mainstream author Louise Hay, to make a list of them.  For example, “I should be making over 6 figures, I should be working in finance, I should be wearing a suit and tie to work everyday.” Then, reread the list, but this time replace “should” with “could” and then ask yourself, “So why don’t I?” Usually, the responses are “because I don’t want to” and then viola! Some of the self-inflected stress is removed and space is cleared to proceed in creating the life you most want to live.

Reframing in the Moment.  There’s also the work of Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte (The Resilience Factor) on reframing using real-time resilience. Whenever you’re in a situation where you want to feel better, you can work through some mental calisthenics, like these (see The A.P.E. Method to Get Out of a Bad Mood by Senia Maymin):

    “A more accurate way of seeing this is …” (Look for alternatives.)

    “That’s not true because…” (Look at the evidence.)

    “A more likely outcome is … and I can do … to deal with it.” (Consider the implications and perspective.)

Be bold and be daring as you experiment with your life—be open and willing to see what works best for you. And perhaps even ask your friends and coworkers for some help and accountability.

References:

Carson, R. (2003). Taming Your Gremlin (Revised Edition): A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way. Collins Living; Rev Sub edition.

Cohen GL, Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, N., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324, 400-403.

Hay, Louise, L. (1999). You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition). Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

McDermott, D. & Snyder, C.R. (1999). Making Hope Happen: A Workbook for Turning Possibilities into Reality. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications.

Reivich, K, & Shattẻ, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York: Broadway Books.

Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape the intellectual identities and performance of women and African-Americans. American Psychologist, 52, 613-629.

Taylor, S. & Sherman, D. (2008). Self enhancement and self-affirmation: The consequences of positive self thoughts for motivation and health. In Shah, J. & Gardner W. (Eds.) Handbook of Motivation Science (pp. 58-70). New York: Guilford.

 

Round & Round & Round It Goes

                                                                       ~By Louis Alloro, MAPP, M.Ed.

The voices in our heads can be real buzz-kills. “I’m not whatever enough.” I should be (doing) X, I should be (doing) Y, I should be (doing) Z.

Some call this voice “the gremlin” or saboteur. Others look at it is as a radio station that plays recurring tunes of self-limiting beliefs embedded into our subconscious minds.  Whatever you call it, these voices have harmful effects.  Positive psychologists sometimes suggest that it is our own, self-deprecating mind chatter which holds us in the bonds of ordinance. Our thoughts and belief systems can become our realities.

Limiting beliefs lead to procrastination and laziness, dampen and destroy dreams, and bring down morale. Successful people who exhibit high levels of grit have learned to combat these limiting beliefs by changing the hardwired thinking patterns – replacing them with more constructive and positive ones. This takes attention, intention, and will.

How Do People Stop The Voices in Their Heads?

1) Journaling.  Students in seventh grade were asked to write about an important value—like being smart (or an unimportant value in the control group) for just 15-minutes several times throughout the year. The intervention improved the end-of-semester grades for the African American students and reduced the racial achievement gap by 40% in the experimental group, presumably by lowering the self-threat associated with confirming the negative “not good/smart enough” belief systems associated with stereotype vulnerability (see work by Claude Steele). Just this week, researchers noted that improvements continue through eighth grade. The students who benefited had nearly a half-point higher grade point average than struggling peers in the control group.

This middle-school intervention study was run by researchers Geoffrey Cohen (University of Colorado), Julio Garcia (Colorado), Valerie Purdie-Vaughns (Columbia University) and Nancy Apfel and Patricia Brzustoski (Yale) and focused on journaling.

2) Focusing on Mindset and Learned Optimism.  Anther answer to stopping the voices is to actively focus on your growth mindset, as Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck would suggest.

At an even more basic level, people can counter the voices by self-training themselves in learned optimism self-talk as founder of positive psychology and University of Pennsylvania professor Martin Seligman would suggest.

3) Focusing on Positive Self Thoughts. Psychologists Shelley Taylor and David Sherman suggest in a paper last year that the processes surrounding self-enhancement and self-affirmation are the key to how psychological health is maintained, or restored, after a threat. It is also key in fueling the ability to set and maintain energy around goals.

4) Activating Hope. Believing that you have positive strengths and talents allows you to feel good about yourself, even through stressful times, because you can pull from a bank of resources that make you uniquely you. A heightened mindfulness of your general attributes may facilitate performance by boosting your sense of self-worth—what Diane McDermott and C.R. Snyder (1999) call mental willpower. This can start simply by making a list of accomplishments you have had in your life.

Specific Techniques

While you are probably way past middle school, some of your internal gremlins may have lingered in one form or another since then. Ready for them to be gone?

I work with clients all the time to change their belief systems. Just the other day I was speaking with a woman who says she wants to meet the man of her dreams. When I asked her if she thought it what possible, the silence was deafening. It all starts with the belief.

Saying “Could.” Another client of mine is going through career transition. He has all of these belief systems that tell him what he should be doing. One way to easy some of that “should” anxiety is, according to mainstream author Louise Hay, to make a list of them.  For example, “I should be making over 6 figures, I should be working in finance, I should be wearing a suit and tie to work everyday.” Then, reread the list, but this time replace “should” with “could” and then ask yourself, “So why don’t I?” Usually, the responses are “because I don’t want to” and then viola! Some of the self-inflected stress is removed and space is cleared to proceed in creating the life you most want to live.

Reframing in the Moment.  There’s also the work of Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte (The Resilience Factor) on reframing using real-time resilience. Whenever you’re in a situation where you want to feel better, you can work through some mental calisthenics, like these:

    “A more accurate way of seeing this is …” (Look for alternatives.)

    “That’s not true because…” (Look at the evidence.)

    “A more likely outcome is … and I can do … to deal with it.” (Consider the implications and perspective.)

Be bold and be daring as you experiment with your life—be open and willing to see what works best for you. And perhaps even ask your friends and coworkers for some help and accountability.

Originally Published on www.Pos-Psych.com

References:

Carson, R. (2003). Taming Your Gremlin (Revised Edition): A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way. Collins Living; Rev Sub edition.

Cohen GL, Garcia, J., Purdie-Vaughns, N., Apfel, N., & Brzustoski, P. (2009). Recursive processes in self-affirmation: Intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science, 324, 400-403.

Hay, Louise, L. (1999). You Can Heal Your Life (Gift Edition). Carlsbad, CA: Hay House.

McDermott, D. & Snyder, C.R. (1999). Making Hope Happen: A Workbook for Turning Possibilities into Reality. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications.

Reivich, K, & Shattẻ, A. (2002). The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life’s Hurdles. New York: Broadway Books.

Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape the intellectual identities and performance of women and African-Americans. American Psychologist, 52, 613-629.

Taylor, S. & Sherman, D. (2008). Self enhancement and self-affirmation: The consequences of positive self thoughts for motivation and health. In Shah, J. & Gardner W. (Eds.) Handbook of Motivation Science (pp. 58-70). New York: Guilford.

From Ho Hum Holidays to a Whole Lot of Fun

                                                                             ~By Louis Alloro, MAPP, M.Ed.

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 we approach Passover and Easter, perhaps you will consider the power you have at building new positive traditions within the culture of your own networks. I call this Social-Emotional Leadership, which begins with your decision to stand up for the well-being of those you love.

Ho Hum Holiday

I have had the good fortune of being born into a large, Italian family, for which I am utterly and completely grateful. With aunts, uncles, and cousins, we are thirty members strong. Traditionally, we see each other at holidays, which are always about feasting and merriment; the events are orchestrated around the plethora of food and the drink. The men of the family typically flock to the television to watch the sporting events du jour; others of us less interested in sports stay in the living room to eat and imbibe or to kibitz about the food and drink. My siblings and cousins agreed: this tradition was feeling old.

I realized the need for Social-Emotional Leadership within my own network two years ago when I saw one of the youngest members of our clan exhibiting some troubling behaviors on Easter. This young boy joined the men in the family room in a friendly betting pool that my Uncle Charlie, a patriarch of our family, organized in good fun for the baseball game. But as this young boy joined in, I noticed his physical and emotional responses to first thinking he was winning and then, through a sudden turn of events in the game, thinking he was losing these seemingly “friendly” bets. His emotional and physical reactions were quite bothersome to me; I saw him embody real excitement and then real rage almost within the same moment.

Most bothersome was that we allowed his emotional roller coaster to continue without intervention. In fact, none of the other adults seemed at all fazed by his reactions as if a pink elephant were right there in the family room and we were all navigating around it, or worse, not even noticing it at all.

The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree

But when I stood back to observe, I realized that the behaviors the boy was exhibiting were very much in line with what has been modeled for him by me and other members of our network. Compulsive behaviors (those that bring us to extremes—away from what Aristotle marks as virtue), including but not limited to gambling, are a recurring, multi-generational issue that affects our network; why would we expect a child’s reality to be any different unless we wanted it to be so?

The apple not falling far from the tree is no problem, so long as the tree is strong and deeply rooted in a nourishing bed of soil, tended to and cared for, by the hopeful gardeners who live off of it. Social-Emotional Leaders are hopeful gardeners.

A Whole Lot of Fun

So last year on Easter, I decided to act as a Social-Emotional Leader – to introduce a new custom that could be built into our tradition in addition to our traditional celebration. I invited my family’s participation in a Nintendo Wii tennis tournament. Everyone participated in the bracket—three generations–even those who were most reluctant. As teams were up to play, they got a practice round to get the feel of the Wii and then it was on to the tournament. In no time, teams were devising strategies and having real fun.

My nephew, Michael, and cousin, Tracy emerged as victors and during the final round of the tournament, the energy and excitement that came from the family room was a palpable sign that my objective was reached. As a result, interest in other indoor and outdoor games was generated that day and groups naturally formed to participate. This shows the contagious effect of positive emotion and that as social capital is built, it starts to grow exponentially.

What’s In This For YOU?

As we approach religious holidays this season, I urge you to consider what you bring to the table as a Social-Emotional Leader, should you choose to be. Put on your action researcher hat and consider what happens when you elicit positive emotion, intentionally, and how this space could help you create a new tradition for the culture of your network. My advice to you is to be creative, use your strengths, and leverage another Social-Emotional Leader or two to help you along the way.

As one of my coaches Mike Litman is fond of saying, “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going.” I’d love to hear your stories – so please email me the results of your efforts. Have fun and good luck.

Images: All images used with permission of Louis Alloro.

References:

Alloro, L.J. (2008). Shift happens: Using Social-Emotional Leadership to create positive, sustainable cultural change. University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons.

Fredrickson, B. (1998). What good are positive emotions? Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 300-319.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Losada, M. F. (2005). Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing. American Psychologist, 60, 678-686.

Gergen, K. (1999). An Invitation to Social Construction. London: Sage.

Haidt, J., Sederka, J. P., & Kesebir, S. (2007). Hive psychology, happiness and public policy. In Posner, E., and Sunstein, C. (Eds.), The Journal of Legal Studies.

Turner, V. (1995). The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures). New York: Aldine DeGruyter.

Portions of this originally published by Louis Alloro on Positive Psychology News Daily.

What is the top thing we can do to improve schools?

What are the ways in?

In 2007, McKinsey published a report titled How The World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. In the report, McKinsey looks at the top performing schools in the world, and concludes that three things differentiate the best:

1. Teacher quality

2. Teacher development

3. Ensuring that the system can deliver the best possible instruction to every child 

So, what is the #1 Top Action We Can Take?

Knowing these McKinsey results, what is the strongest lever?  What is the biggest bang for the buck?  There may be evidence that teacher development can change schools with the most impact for the most ease.  For example, Geelong Grammar School in Australia has focused on Positive Education, including as part of that the Positive Education Training Conference for teachers.

What if schools running professional development workshops – for teachers and administrators and a learning series for  students and parents – could make those strides to grow the beauty of schools and prevent possible pain to individuals?  What if these seminars were based on the research findings of positive psychology – and to include the whole system?

What if the alien form Mars could report this:

Children are enjoying some type of information.  They are smiling.  The adults are smiling.  There is a bidirectional construction of knowledge.  Everyone is learning.  Everyone is eager to return each day.

Author’s Note: If you’re reading this and thinking, “Yes! That’s what we need,” consider contacting me and my colleagues at Flourishing Schools to come and deliver workshops for your local school (or learning organization of any kind). You never know how just one phone call on your part could positively influence an entire system or community . . .

Portions of this originally published by Louis Alloro on Positive Psychology News Daily.

Enough is Enough: The Crisis in Education

Last month I attended a conference that Yale School of Management put on called Creating Levers of Change in education. NYC School Commissioner Joel Klein gave the keynote address. In it, he made three points:

1. We have a crisis in public education.

2. We don’t have to have a crisis in public education.

3. If we keep having the same dialogue, we won’t change the reality.

The difference between this education crisis and other national crises, like the threat of terrorism or the failing economy, he says, is that we’re not all in this one together. Skin color, popularity, and zip code determine the quality of education kids receive. 

I love Klein’s points – especially the third one, as it reminds me of the work of David Cooperrider who says that, “Human systems move in the direction of the questions they ask.” What questions do we ask regarding the state of our schools?  I have one:

If an alien came from Mars and dropped into a school, what would they report? That kids come, half awake, to watch adults work?

Is it no wonder that school often feels 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, much to my chagrin, I saw many students—and teachers and parents with similar plights: sad, alone, and depressed—rat-racing, getting by—not enough.

So I wonder: what answers can positive psychology offer? It is after all, the reason I was drawn to this discipline. If we can positively influence the way people think and behave, we can change the culture of schools.  

Stay tuned for more on how I think this can happen . . .

Portions of this originally published by Louis Alloro on Positive Psychology News Daily.

Building a Foundation For Well-Being: A Systematic Strengths-Based Approach

The Culver Academies –-rigorous co-educational, college-preparatory boarding schools in Indiana – are committed to integrating a systemic strengths-based approach to broadening and building character strengths and positive emotions in its academic, athletic, wellness, leadership, arts, and spiritual life programs. Providing the best “whole person” education available to its 780 high school students is accomplished through the tireless efforts of a dedicated instructional faculty and support staff that help guide students as they chart their course through adolescence to adulthood. 

With a strong commitment from Culver’s administration and its Board of Trustees, the school has ventured into a multi-year process that gradually instructs and informs students, faculty, staff, administration and parents with sustainable positive psychology strategies. To borrow the title of Robert Quinn’s book on leadership, Building the Bridge As You Walk On It; our “soft-sell” approach helps neutralize the traditional tension between process and performance by building high quality connections that bring out the best in students, faculty, staff and administrators. 

Faculty Training 

Over the past two summers, over one-half of the school’s 110 faculty members have participated in a three-day intensive seminar entitled “Building Strengths and Positive Emotions.” This program has been co-facilitated by John Yeager, Culver’s Director of the Center for Character Excellence, with Sherri Fisher and Dave Shearon.  

Faculty participants have learned

q      ways to broaden and build position emotion in themselves and their students;

q      strategies they can use with their strengths to become more optimistic and resilient; and

q      relationship-building approaches for building high quality connections at school.  

Faculty participants have identified

q      their own and student “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance and

q      developed strategies to foster a strengths-based approach in the classroom, living unit, visual and performing arts and athletic arenas in the areas of motivation, optimism, resilience and savoring.  

By learning about character strengths and ways to build and apply them, teachers can be guided to acknowledge, own, and apply their own strengths, to value their authentic selves, and to increase both their collective and self-efficacy. This information is very valuable to faculty members who can then also have a better snapshot of individual, peer and student strengths. This is very helpful in working with groups of students in all phases of school life. As one faculty participant so aptly put it, “I now think differently about how I teach.” 

Faculty Performance Review 

Currently, the Culver Academies are developing a strengths-based annual performance review (APR) for faculty. Traditionally, faculty performance evaluation has been akin to “chewing tin foil.” By instead capitalizing on faculty members’ sense of meaning and purpose in what they do at Culver, and explicitly addressing the “engagement” component of their work, faculty and administration can have a more productive discussion about areas of strengths and challenges.  

The process is approached from a “malleable” or “growth” mindset where department chairs (the middle manager evaluators)

q      capitalize on faculty areas of proficiency – through process and product praise; and

q      identify and healthfully respond to patterns of faculty adversity. 

Student Strengths and Academic, Leadership and Wellness/Athletic Programs 

Embedded in Culver’s formal leadership program, student leaders are starting to frame discussions and behavior from a strengths-based perspective by participating in an “appreciative inquiry” process. Also, they are now discussing the power of positive emotions and explanatory styles to better know themselves and others in the quest of building high-quality connections. 

Culver’s progressive and sequential four-year wellness education program provides students with an opportunity to cultivate their optimism and resilience in the areas of 

q      nutrition

q      sleep

q      physical activity and

q      stress management.  

Through the mentorship of some of their coaches, student-athletes compare and contrast their strengths as part of the team-building process.

After being habitually exposed to a strengths-based approach, Culver’s rising seniors are better prepared to  

q      declare their strengths in their college essays and

q      carry those strengths to college and beyond. 

Integrating the principles of positive psychology is helping Culver flourish by focusing on identifying, broadening, and building the unique strengths of the faculty, staff, students, and administrators. We want all Culver stakeholders to be meaning makers and culture keepers by making positive psychology sustainable in all aspects of school life.

The Power of Character Strengths and Emotions in American Literature and Culture

“The American character did not spring full-blown from the Mayflower,” but “it came out of the forests and gained new strength each time it touched a frontier.”

~Frederick Jackson Turner – “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”

               

 What defines the American identity and the American character?  Is it life, liberty and happiness?  Authentic happiness refers to an individual or a group’s acquisition of positive emotions, positive traits, and positive institutions – such as democracy, family.  An approach to character and American Literature and Culture includes an examination of the experiences of well-being, contentment and satisfaction (in the past), hope and optimism (for the future); and flow and happiness in the present.  Barbara Fredrickson’s “broaden and build” theory suggests that positive emotions, such as joy, interest, contentment, pride and love, broaden an individual’s attention, creativity, cognition, and scope of possible action.  They also build physical, intellectual and social resources over the long run.

        Nansook Park and Chris Peterson claim that “being able to put a name to what one does well is intriguing and even empowering.”  By identifying their own “signature” strengths, such as hope, wisdom, creativity, future mindedness, courage, responsibility and perseverance, students will not only better understand themselves; they will have a keener insight into the strengths of the various characters in American Literature.  Students may realize why they resonate or are conflicted with certain characters based on their own character and emotional framework.                        

       The well-being of the characters within the plots of American literature taught in high school and college can best be understood through its deconstruction into more distinct pathways to happiness: the pleasurable life, which encompasses positive emotion and pleasure; the engaged life; and the meaningful life. The pursuit of pleasure or the hedonic life involves laughing, smiling and thinking good thoughts.  It is the subjective part of positive affect and is a nutrient for overall flourishing.  Engagement or flow may be categorized as being highly engaged and totally absorbed in an activity.  The meaningful life is defined by having a sense of purpose and connecting with something larger than oneself. By examining books such as the The Crucible, The Great Gatsby, The Lone Ranger and Tonto, and Jasmine,  a student can see through a different lens, the elations, frustration, allusions, illusions, nuances and residues that emerge from each character and his/her corresponding emotions.          

        This raises some important questions in American Literature.  How have and do American’s carry and exhibit their beliefs and emotions? Why do they do what they do? What are the characteristics that determine the subjective well-being of the array of characters in the various plots and themes?

          There are many themes of hope, optimism and resilience in American literature.  Notice how the positive emotions repertoire plays with the nuances of the authors and their respective characters.  Barbara Fredrickson’s work on “broadening and building” positive emotions is a natural connection to studying literature.  For example: The action tendency of joy brings play; interest brings exploration; contentment yields savoring and integration; pride allows for dreaming big; gratitude is creative giving; elevation supports becoming better; and love yields all of the above action tendencies.        

       However, there are many counter themes of helplessness, hopelessness and despair that supports a negativity bias to a degree in American literature and culture. Although you will read how many characters face fear head on, the negative emotion of fear begets the desire to escape a situation. The tendency of expressing anger is to attack.   When one is disgusted, they tend to want to expel.  The emotion of guilt suggests a character make amends, and sadness promotes thoughts of withdrawal.

For example, here are some leading questions for some commonly used texts in high school level American Literature classes that focus on character, but through a more balanced lens:  

The Gift Outright – Frost

• Character Question:  How does Frost entertain the character strength of Hope?   (Hope includes optimism, future-mindedness, future orientation). Expecting the best in the future and working to achieve it; believing that a good future is something that can be brought about.  (VIA – Petersen and Seligman)

The Crucible – Miller

• Develop a strengths and shadow side circumplex of the main characters in The Crucible.
• How do the negative emotions of fear, anger, disgust, guilt, shade and sadness influence the power of the “hysteria” that thrives within the culture of Salem?
• Note the juxtaposition of character strengths in Proctor and Hale from the beginning to the end of the book.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Twain  

• Identify and cite actions that represent the character strengths of Huck and Tom Sawyer.  Also, identify the consonance of stregnths among Huck and Jim.
• How does Huck find these “sources of enablement” in his journey?
• Examine Huck’s coming of age through his optimism and resilience:

          ”It was a close place.  I took . . . . up [the letter I’d written to Miss Watson], and held it in my hand.  I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.  I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right then, I’ll go to hell” – and tore it up.  It was awful thoughts and awful words, but they was said.  And I let them stay said; and never thought not more about reforming.”  (Chapter 31)

The Lone Ranger and Tonto – Alexie

• What are the character strengths and shadow sides of Victor and Thomas-Builds-the-Fire?
• How do they resonate and conflict with each other?
• Identify optimism and resilience in Victor.
• Victor lives the tension between the old and the new.  Examine his experienced, remembered and anticipated memory in light of the following quote:

            “Your past is a skeleton walking one step behind you and your future is a skeleton walking one step in front of you . . . Now these skeletons are made of memories, dreams, and voices.  And they can trap you in the in-between, between touching and becoming. But they are not necessarily evil, unless you let them be. . . But no matter what  . . . keep walking.”

The Great Gatsby – Fitzgerald

• What are the shadow strengths that contribute to the decline of the American Dream
• What positive and negative emotions are portrayed in the narrative tone and the Weather?
• How does Nick’s see the “optimism” in his immediate analysis of Gatsby’s character? (Chapter III).

         ”He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may  come across four of five times in life.  It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant an then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your   favor.  It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself.” 

Self-Reliance – Emerson

• Comment how Emerson’s notion of Self-reliance has a shadow side. For example:Is there a shadow side to the “hopefulness” and  “zest and vitality” of youth?
• Comment on “their virtues are penances.  I do not wish to expiate, but to live.”

Jasmine – Mukherjee

• “There are no harmless, compassionate ways to remake oneself.” Is this a case of learned optimism or learned?
• There are different names accorded to Jasmine by different characters – how do these names reflect her different emotions?
• Deconstruct the following quote and identify Jasmine’s emotions and her compensatory character strengths. 

      “Taylor the Rescuer is on his way here.  He taught me to yank down that window shade.”

• Compare and contrast Emerson and Mukherjee’s conception of Self-Reliance.

      “Adventure, risk, transformation: the frontier is pushing indoors through uncaulked windows.  Watch me re-position the stars. I whisper to the astrologer who floats cross-legged above my kitchen stove.”

• What is the relationship between duty and desire?
• Does “Manhattan” represent authentic happiness?