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Activity 1 and Activity 2
Two activities that I do to lift my mood are: exercise and spend time with my children. With exercise, I would say I experience being in flow as described by William Compton in An Introduction to Positive Psychology. This happens only when I run outside. If I am lifting weights or running on the treadmill in a gym I am focused but I do not have a loss of self-consciousness. When I run outside, my blood starts to pump before I even begin to run. My heart starts to race as I get closer to my starting point. When I run, my mind doesn’t wander; I am focused on every step I take and every breath I breathe. My body relaxes and unwinds. My breathing gets into rhythm with my legs. Together they set a pace that stays with me until I finish. When I am done I am exhilarated with no presence of time and I feel great.
My other activity, spending time with my children, is the most rewarding and the best way to lift my mood immediately; just to hear their voices sends my heart pitter-pattering. Listening to them tell me about their day and engaging them in conversation makes me so happy. Their presence reminds me of how grateful I am to have healthy, happy children and they are a constant reflection of love. Every moment spent with them is a blessing filled with joy and happiness.
With both of these activities there are obstacles. With running, since I feel much better when I run outside, this is difficult in the winter months. The weather doesn’t always cooperate and it gets dark before I get home from work. This is one reason for going to the gym. I still relieve stress this way and it also helps with unwinding but I would rather run outside if I can.
With spending time with my children, this activity is limited because they are in school and I am at work much of the day. Also being divorced, my children spend three days a week with their dad. So I cherish the time I do get to spend with them.
To eliminate the incessant, ongoing self-talk, I will generally self-stop. Once I realize what I am doing, and admittedly, sometimes it takes a few minutes, I will begin to change my thought process. This is not easy to do and has taken some time for me to retrain myself. One thing that I have found to help me is Jonathan Haidt’s metaphor of the rider and the elephant. Mr. Haidt began this idea in order to control his own weakness of his will. The rider represents controlled thought, and the elephant is emotion or automatic processing. The rider can’t make a change and expect the elephant to obey. The rider needs to retrain the elephant and work with the elephant to create balance. So when I start the self-talk, my rider intercepts the thought process and trains the elephant to react another way, self-stopping. I leave notes to remind me to “train the elephant.”
In the final activity, slowing the cognitive process and reducing physiological arousal, I will generally get into a hot bath, light some candles and just breathe. Sometimes I will put on soothing music. The setting becomes relaxed and calming. When I get out of the tub I am feeling warm and quiet. I do this just before I get into bed which will help me fall asleep quick.
Activity 2: Gemeinschafsgefuhl: “Do Unto Others”My philanthropic experience was helping out a friend. My friend is a very active person. She exercises everyday at her gym and also works at an elementary school. So you can see her life is full of energy. On January 14th she had surgery on her knee, which caused her to slow way down and be confined to her couch. The day after her surgery I went to her house to keep her company and to help her out. Usually she is the one taking care of others so it was hard for her to just lay there and have someone take care of her. I spent the evening helping her change her bandage, getting ice for her ice pack and just making her feel comfortable. We talked about the days when we worked together and the things that we did. It was fun. We laughed and her spirits soared. As the evening went on I noticed a physical change in her, she became relaxed and her pain seemed less intense. I think the reminiscing and the laughter had a lot to do with it. Her focus was on our conversation and not on her pain.
It made me happy to help her physically and mentally. As I left her house that night I had a smile on my face that was with me as I laid my head down on my pillow.
This experience in contrast to a “pleasurable” experience is one that stayed with me for several days, instead of just a few moments. I was happy I could help and even more so that she allowed me to take care of her. Days later I thought back to some of the things we talked about and it made me smile, once again and a feeling of warmth grew inside me. With a “pleasurable” experience it is hard to recapture the physical feelings as they were felt at the time.Susan L. Wagaman
I can relate to both your activity 1 choices. In fact, those were mine too. I too love exercising and I feel I get in the "flow" while doing it and my 6 kids are very close to my heart also. It is so great that you are naturally doing things that positive psychology says is good for lifting our mood.
Trying to stop neg. self-talk is so hard. I also find this so true. I like your choice of words..."re-training the elephant". That is sure what it seems like when you are trying to change the way think. It sounds like it is effective.
Lisa,
Your elevator ride seems to combine many of the things that are correlated with life satisfaction; it appears your running assists with your intrapersonal life (self-talk, flow, the signature strengths of self-control and persistence) and enjoying your children fills the interpersonal aspect. It makes me think about Hahn's (the founder of Outward Bound) comment that our children suffer from the "misery of unimportance." It would be interesting to see if Frederickson's broaden and build theory would apply to the positive emotion between parent and child.
I also found your comments on interpersonal engagement and the experience of pain interesting in your second exercise.
And would all you people stop taking so many candlelight baths. There's only so much wax and water in the world, you know. : )
Lisa- you raise a very point about my post. I should have explained what I do to unwind from work when I get home at night. When I decided to make the changes to my life that I described, part of what I was trying to do was to form a type of consistency to my already existing (less rigged) day-to-day routine. I find that for myself if I have certain activities that I only do once a day, at a specific time of the day, then that generally helps to put me in the state of mind I am hoping to achieve though participating in that specific activity. That being said, when I get home from work what I generally do is watch one / two episodes of whatever TV series we have rented on DVD (since I try not to watch TV at any other time during my work week this activity helps get me in a relaxed state). I’ll also have a glass of wine or some equivalent to further relax myself (much like the TV situation, since I only drink once I’m done with all my responsibilities for the day this activities signals my brain that its time to wind down). That about sums up my after work routine for a typical evening, I hope that answers your question.
I really enjoyed your post about your philanthropic experience. I think you were right when you mention how your friend’s pain seemed less severe when she was focused on your conversation rather then her pain. In the same way that our proficiency in any give task will drop by 50% when we attempt to take on something else at the same time, your fiends pain was able to be removed has her main focus due to the fact the she was now concentrated on you. Nice work.
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