Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside. She received her B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University. Her research - on the possibility of permanently increasing happiness -- has been honored with a Science of Generosity grant, a John Templeton Foundation grant, a Templeton Positive Psychology Prize, and a million-dollar grant from NIMH.

Lyubomirsky's 2008 book, The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want (Penguin Press) has been translated into 19 languages, and her most recent book, The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn't, What Shouldn't Make You Happy, but Does, was released in January, 2013.

She gave this talk at UC San Diego a few days ago.

The Science and Practice of Happiness Across the Lifespan - Research on Aging

Published on Apr 4, 2014


What makes people happy? Is happiness a good thing? How can we make people happier still? Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, examines happiness and how we can use our minds as well as coping tools better handle life's challenges. Series: "Stein Institute for Research on Aging" [4/2014]

Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness (Emily Nauman at Greater Good)

This is a brief but useful article from the Greater Good Science Center (UC Berkeley) on using mindfulness to deal with inner critic, although they frame it more in terms of self-esteem.

I would suggest using mindfulness directly in the inner critic by learning to identify its voice, its criticisms, and then be curious about the reasons the critic might be acting this way. What does it want? What are its needs? How is it trying to serve you?

And that last question is crucial - when we begin to understand that all of our "parts," including (and maybe especially) the inner critic, came into existence to help us in some way, then our relationship with them can shift from adversarial to cooperative.

Feeling Self-Critical? Try Mindfulness

New research shows that mindfulness may help us to stop comparing ourselves to other people

By Emily Nauman | March 9, 2014


Our Mindful Mondays series provides ongoing coverage of the exploding field of mindfulness research. Dan Archer
Many of us feel great about ourselves when we focus on how much success we’ve had in comparison to others. But what happens when we don’t succeed? Self-esteem sinks. 

New research shows that developing mindfulness skills may help us build secure self-esteem—that is, self-esteem that endures regardless of our success in comparison to those around us.

Christopher Pepping and his colleagues at Griffith University in Australia conducted two studies to demonstrate that mindfulness skills help enhance self-esteem.

In the first study, the researchers administered questionnaires to undergraduate students in an introductory psychology course to measure their mindfulness skills and their self-esteem. The researchers anticipated that four aspects of mindfulness would predict higher self-esteem:

• Labeling internal experiences with words, which might prevent people from getting consumed by self-critical thoughts and emotions;
• Bringing a non-judgmental attitude toward thoughts and emotions, which could help individuals have a neutral, accepting attitude toward the self;
• Sustaining attention on the present moment, which could help people avoid becoming caught up in self-critical thoughts that relate to events from the past or future;
• Letting thoughts and emotions enter and leave awareness without reacting to them.

The results, published in The Journal of Positive Psychology, support the researchers’ predictions: students with these mindfulness skills indeed had higher self-esteem. However, this study did not clarify whether mindfulness causes self-esteem, or whether those with mindfulness also had higher self-esteem because of some other factor.

In order to find out if mindfulness directly causes higher self-esteem, the researchers conducted a second study. They instructed half of the participants to complete a 15-minute mindfulness meditation that focused on the sensation of their breath. The other half of participants read a 15-minute story about Venus fly-trap plants. All of the participants completed questionnaires that assessed their level of self-esteem and mindfulness both before and after they completed the 15-minute task.

Consistent with the researchers’ predictions, those that participated in the mindfulness meditation had higher scores in mindfulness and in self-esteem after meditating, while there was no change in these dimensions for those that read the Venus fly-trap plant story.

Because the only difference between the two groups was whether or not they participated in a mindfulness exercise, these results suggest that mindfulness directly causes enhanced self-esteem.

The authors write that because the effects of the mindfulness exercise on self-esteem in this study were temporary, future research should examine if mindfulness interventions can lead to long-term changes in self-esteem.

However, these findings are promising. The authors write, “Mindfulness may be a useful way to address the underlying processes associated with low self-esteem, without temporarily bolstering positive views of oneself by focusing on achievement or other transient factors. In brief, mindfulness may assist individuals to experience a more secure form of high self-esteem.”

About The Author

Emily Nauman is a GGSC research assistant. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College with a double major in Psychology and French, and has previously worked as a research assistant in Oberlin’s Psycholinguistics lab and Boston University’s Eating Disorders Program.

Related Articles

• What is Mindfulness?
• Why Self-Compassion Trumps Self-Esteem
• How Does Mindfulness Help Cultivate Self-Compassion?
• Can Mindfulness Foster a Healthy Body Image?
• Fostering Optimism and Confidence
• Better Eating through Mindfulness
• Five Ways to Make Mindfulness More Manly
• Does Mindfulness Make You More Compassionate?
• Can Mindfulness Help People Cope with Discrimination?
• No One Can Take Mindfulness Away from You

Corey Keyes is the co-author, with Jonathan Haidt, Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived (2002, Kindle edition), co-editor of Well-Being: Positive Development Across the Life Course (2013), and editor of Mental Well-Being: International Contributions to the Study of Positive Mental Health (2012), among other books. He gave this talk at Emory University.

Living the Good Life: Positive Psychology and Flourishing

Published on Feb 27, 2014


In this first talk of "The Good Life" speaker series, Corey Keyes, Professor of Sociology, addresses "Positive Psychology and Flourishing" (Feb. 25, 2014).

Prof. Keyes was a member of a MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development, a co-chair of the first Positive Psychology Summit in 1999, and a member of the 2007 National Academies of Science Keck Futures Initiative on The Future of Human Healthspan: Demography, Evolution, Medicine, and Bioengineering. He is a senior fellow at Emory University's Center for the Study of Law and Religion and its multidisciplinary five-year project—Pursuit of Happiness—funded in part by the Templeton Foundation. His research centers on illuminating the two-continua model of mental health and illness—showing how the absence of mental illness does not translate into the presence of "flourishing" mental health and revealing that the biological and psychosocial causes of true health are often distinct processes from those now understood as the causes of illness. This work is being applied to better understanding resilience and prevention of mental illness and informs the growing approach called predictive health care, which seeks to apply novel responses to correct early deviations from true health to maintain health and limit disease and illness.

The Good Life Speaker Series seeks to facilitate a meaningful exchange of ideas on how to lead the "good life," based on Socrates' concept of Eudaemonia. We aim to attract speakers whose experiences and knowledge provide distinctive and challenging understandings on how to lead such a life. Our goal in doing so is that an audience, comprised primarily of students, can benefit from their wisdom as they move forward constructing their own personal version of the good life.

Posttraumatic Growth - When Trauma Leads to Transformation

Post-traumatic growth refers to positive psychological change experienced as a result of the struggle with highly challenging life circumstances. These sets of circumstances represent significant challenges to the adaptive resources of the individual and pose significant challenges to individuals' way of understanding the world and their place in it. Posttraumatic growth is not simply a return to baseline from a period of suffering; instead it is an experience of improvement that for some persons is deeply meaningful. [Wikipedia]

This article from Stephen Joseph's Psychology Today blog, What Doesn't Kill Us, offers a brief overview of posttraumatic growth. I have also included a list of books and papers by the original researchers of this phenomenon, Richard Tedeshi and Lawrence Calhoun.

Posttraumatic Growth

The subversion of suffering

Published on February 8, 2014 by Stephen Joseph, Ph.D. in What Doesn't Kill Us

‘Suffering is universal: you attempt to subvert it so that it does not have a destructive, negative effect. You turn it around so that it becomes a creative, positive force.’ Those are the words of Terry Waite who survived four years in solitary confinement, chained, beaten and subject to mock execution.

Interest in how trauma can be a catalyst for positive changes began to take hold during the mid 1990’s when the term posttraumatic growth was introduced by two pioneering scholars Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun.

The term posttraumatic growth proved to be popular and has since developed into one of the flagship topics for positive psychology.

In my book What Doesn't Kill Us: The New Psychology of Posttraumatic Growth (2013), I describe how after experiencing a traumatic event, people often report three ways in which their psychological functioning increases:

1. Relationships are enhanced in some way. For example, people describe that they come to value their friends and family more, feel an increased sense of compassion for others and a longing for more intimate relationships.

2. People change their views of themselves in some way. For example, developing in wisdom, personal strength and gratitude, perhaps coupled with a greater acceptance of their vulnerabilities and limitations.

3. People describe changes in their life philosophy. For example, finding a fresh appreciation for each new day and re-evaluating their understanding of what really matters in life, becoming less materialistic and more able to live in the present.

Importantly, and this just can’t be emphasized enough, this does not mean that trauma is not also destructive and distressing. No one welcomes adversity. But the research evidence shows us that over time people can find benefits in their struggle with adversity. Indeed, across a large number of studies of people who have experienced a wide range of negative events, estimates are that between 30 and 70% typically report some form of positive change

We can all use this knowledge to help us cope when adversity does strike, be it bereavement, accident or illness. We can seek to live more wisely in the aftermath of adversity and as the opening quote says, subvert suffering.

To find out more about my book on posttraumatic growth: http://www.profstephenjoseph.com

For even more information on postttraumatic growth, go to the source,

Richard G. Tedeschi, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at UNC Charlotte and a licensed psychologist. He received his B.A. in psychology from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Ohio University, and completed his clinical psychology internship at the UNC School of Medicine. He is consultant to the American Psychological Association on trauma and resilience, and is a fellow of the division of trauma psychology. He is past president of the North Carolina Psychological Association.

Lawrence G. Calhoun, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at UNC Charlotte and a licensed clinical psychologist. Although his parents were North American, he was born and raised in Brazil. He is one of the pioneers in the study of posttraumatic growth and is author of several books. His most recent book, with Richard Tedeschi, is Posttraumatic Growth in Clinical Practice.

Books:

• Trauma and Transformation: Growing in the Aftermath of Suffering (1995)
• Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis (1998)
• The Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice (2006)
• Posttraumatic Growth in Clinical Practice (2012)

Papers:

• The Foundations of Postraumatic Growth: New Considerations
• Posttraumatic Growth: Conceptual Foundations and Empirical Evidence
• Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth in Psychotherapy
• A Correlational Test of the Relationship Between Posttraumatic Growth, Religion, and Cognitive Processing
• Helping Bereaved Parents
• Examining posttraumatic growth among Japanese university students
• The Core Beliefs Inventory
• A Short Form of the PTGI

Interesting talk on the efforts to define the "genome" of the flow state, a concept first introduced by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) and expanded on in Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life (1997).

The Genome of FLOW: Jamie Wheal at TEDxVeniceBeach

Published on Dec 26, 2013


Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. Jamie Wheal of the FLOW Genome Project has decoded the genome of FLOW and presents its amazing potential to enhance human performance across a plethora of disciplines.

"Profit from the Positive" - Margaret Greenberg & Senia Maymin | Talks at Google

Margaret Greenberg & Senia Maymin stopped by Talks at Google to promote their new book, Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business. Their book translates scientific research on positive psychology into practical tools we can apply to how we manage ourselves, how we lead, and how we influence our colleagues. Sounds interesting.

Margaret Greenberg & Senia Maymin, "Profit from the Positive" | Talks at Google

Published on Oct 21, 2013


Think back to a moment when you got a piece of really good news.

You felt unstoppable, productive, elated.

Now imagine that feeling at work. Imagine bringing that positivity to your teams and unlocking new heights of productivity and satisfaction.

Join us for translation of scientific research on positive psychology into practical tools we can apply to how we manage ourselves, how we lead, and how we influence our colleagues.

Margaret H. Greenberg and Senia Maymin, Ph.D., will discuss their new book, Profit from the Positive: Proven Leadership Strategies to Boost Productivity and Transform Your Business (McGraw-Hill).

In this session, the authors will share memorable tools that are ingeniously fast and simple. You will walk out saying, "Why didn't I know this before?"

• Introduction by Mary Kate Stimmler of Pi Lab
• Hosted by Debbie Newhouse and Dolores Bernardo
• Authors@Google and Google Manager Programs

~ "Greenberg and Maymin--pioneers in the application of Positive Psychology to organizations--have built an exciting and important bridge...." — Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take

Our Genes Show that Not All Happiness Is Created Equal

According to a new study out of UCLA and UNC, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, people who have high levels of eudaimonic well-being (often translated as "human flourishing," the kind of happiness sourced in a deep sense of life purpose and meaning) had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and higher expression levels of antiviral and antibody genes.

On the other hand, people with relatively high levels of hedonic well-being (the type of happiness that comes from consumption and self-gratification, "think most celebrities") actually showed just the opposite.

Interestingly, “people with high levels of hedonic well-being didn’t feel any worse than those with high levels of eudaimonic well-being.” So both groups feel happy and positive, but at the genomic level, it was a whole different story.

For more information on the health benefits of eudaimonic well-being, please see: Lee, E., & Carey, T. (2013, Winter). Eudaimonic well-being as a core concept of positive functioning. MindPad, 17-20.

The whole study is available online, through PNAS, details below this summary.

Not All Happiness Is Created Equally, and Genes Show It

By RICK NAUERT PHD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on July 31, 2013

Provocative new research suggests happiness or positive psychology can affect your genetic makeup.

However, not all happiness is the same, and different types of happiness may have significantly different effects as the body responds in a unique manner to dissimilar forms of positive psychology.

Researchers from UCLA and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered people who have high levels of what is known as eudaimonic well-being — the kind of happiness that comes from having a deep sense of purpose and meaning in life (think Mother Teresa) — showed very favorable gene expression profiles in their immune cells.

That is, the “do-gooders” had low levels of inflammatory gene expression and strong expression of antiviral and antibody genes.

However, people who had relatively high levels of hedonic well-being — the type of happiness that comes from consummatory self-gratification (think most celebrities) — actually showed just the opposite.

The “feel-gooders” had an adverse expression profile involving high inflammation and low antiviral and antibody gene expression.

Steven Cole, Ph.D., a UCLA professor of medicine, and first author Barbara L. Fredrickson at UNC report their findings in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Cole and Frederickson have been examining how the human genome responds to stress, misery, fear and all kinds of negative psychology for more than a decade.

In this study, though, the researchers asked how the human genome might respond to positive psychology. Is it just the opposite of stress and misery, or does positive well-being activate a different kind of gene expression program?

The researchers examined the biological implications of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being through the lens of the human genome, the system of some 21,000 genes that has evolved fundamentally to help humans survive and be well.

Previous studies had found that circulating immune cells show a systematic shift in baseline gene expression profiles during extended periods of stress, threat or uncertainty.

Known as conserved transcriptional response to adversity, or CTRA, this shift is characterized by an increased expression of genes involved in inflammation and a decreased expression of genes involved in antiviral responses.

This response, Cole noted, likely evolved to help the immune system counter the changing patterns of microbial threat that were ancestrally associated with changing socio-environmental conditions. These threats included bacterial infection from wounds caused by social conflict and an increased risk of viral infection associated with social contact.

“But in contemporary society and our very different environment, chronic activation by social or symbolic threats can promote inflammation and cause cardiovascular, neurodegenerative and other diseases and can impair resistance to viral infections,” said Cole, the senior author of the research.

In the present study, the researchers drew blood samples from 80 healthy adults who were assessed for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, as well as potentially confounding negative psychological and behavioral factors.

The team used the CTRA gene-expression profile to map the potentially distinct biological effects of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being.

Researchers discovered that although those with eudaimonic well-being showed favorable gene expression profiles in their immune cells and those with hedonic well-being showed an adverse gene expression profile, “people with high levels of hedonic well-being didn’t feel any worse than those with high levels of eudaimonic well-being.”

“Both seemed to have the same high levels of positive emotion. However, their genomes were responding very differently even though their emotional states were similarly positive,” said Cole.

“What this study tells us is that doing good and feeling good have very different effects on the human genome, even though they generate similar levels of positive emotion,” he said.

“Apparently, the human genome is much more sensitive to different ways of achieving happiness than are conscious minds.”

Source: UCLA

Here are the abstract and citation, with a link to the full article.

A functional genomic perspective on human well-being

Barbara L. Fredrickson, Karen M. Grewen, Kimberly A. Coffey, Sara B. Algoe, Ann M. Firestine, Jesusa M. G. Arevalo, Jeffrey Ma, and Steven W. Cole

Abstract

To identify molecular mechanisms underlying the prospective health advantages associated with psychological well-being, we analyzed leukocyte basal gene expression profiles in 80 healthy adults who were assessed for hedonic and eudaimonic well-being, as well as potentially confounded negative psychological and behavioral factors. Hedonic and eudaimonic well-being showed similar affective correlates but highly divergent transcriptome profiles. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells from people with high levels of hedonic well-being showed up-regulated expression of a stress-related conserved transcriptional response to adversity (CTRA) involving increased expression of proinflammatory genes and decreased expression of genes involved in antibody synthesis and type I IFN response. In contrast, high levels of eudaimonic well-being were associated with CTRA down-regulation. Promoter-based bioinformatics implicated distinct patterns of transcription factor activity in structuring the observed differences in gene expression associated with eudaimonic well-being (reduced NF-κB and AP-1 signaling and increased IRF and STAT signaling). Transcript origin analysis identified monocytes, plasmacytoid dendritic cells, and B lymphocytes as primary cellular mediators of these dynamics. The finding that hedonic and eudaimonic well-being engage distinct gene regulatory programs despite their similar effects on total well-being and depressive symptoms implies that the human genome may be more sensitive to qualitative variations in well-being than are our conscious affective experiences.

Full Citation:

Fredrickson, BL, Grewen, KM, Coffey, KA, Algoe, SB, Firestine, AM, Arevalo, JMG, Ma, J, and Cole, SW. (2013, Jul 29). A functional genomic perspective on human well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1305419110