The One With The Gratitude Prep

Alright, so I signed up for my presentation in Positive Psychology yesterday. We are given 4 options of days and we were told to rank our top 3 choices in order. What do I always do when given this task? You may think I'd choose the last day as my top choice...and you'd be wrong. I always choose the first day. Some of you may think I'm crazy, but let me explain to you why I do this:

1. If I go on the first day, hopefully the teacher will grade a little less harshly, because I didn't have anyone to watch before planning my presentation.  I always feel like those last day people's presentations BETTER be absolutely fantastic since they had the ability to watch every single other person in the class and then plan it.
2. I am one of the biggest stress balls you'll meet. I've actually gotten a lot better, and now I give that award to my sister, but with things like this, I can't wait around for 4 class periods before making my presentation or I'll be a mess of stress for 2 weeks...and no one wants an irritable Alex.

So moral of my explanation: I'm not an over-achiever like you may think, I'm actually an under-achiever. 

You may not be surprised to know, I was the ONLY person who chose the first day as their number 1 choice. Which means, I'll probably not only be on the first day of presentations, but I'll bet I'm first on that first day. But again, that stresses me out less than thinking I have to wait 4 class periods before I present. I know, I'm a little odd. But I'm pretty sure most people reading this knew that already.

What is the presentation about, you ask? Remember when I told you guys about my top 5 strengths. Well, I had to rank those in order from 1 to 5 on which one I wanted to do a presentation over and write a paper on. My first choice was spirituality. My second choice was showing love. My third choice was gratitude. I got my third choice. Which is funny because when my teacher told us she had chosen our topics by what we ranked, she specifically said, "I believe everybody got either their first or second choices." I must have been the only one to get neither. BUT I will say, all things happen for a reason, and I'm starting to get excited that I was chosen for gratitude. I'm actually glad I didn't get my first or second choice. Thanks, Daddy God for looking out for me. :) (see, I'm being more grateful already).

Oh, something else you should know. This presentation has to be 10-12 minutes long. 10-12 MINUTES LONG. Now, I know for a lot of people that's nothing, but I'm sorry, even when I signed in front of my ASL class it was like 2 minutes long. I have to find 10-12 minutes worth of stuff to talk about, and not only that, but it actually has to be INTERESTING to the class. Because there's no way I'm getting up there and presenting a boring speech.

There are absolutely no other requirements. It's completely open to whatever I want to talk about. So I started researching a little bit today. And let me tell you, I already have some ideas cooking. :) I'm pretty excited about it. I also think for my presentation I'll bring some type of treat, because I mean let's get serious here, there is a chance my presentation will be boring, and if they are given something sweet to snack on during it...hopefully they won't remember how boring I was.

I'll share my ideas more specifically when I have a better idea of what I'm going to do.  Until next time...

Ross: So I nodded off a little.
Rachel: Nodded off!! Ross you were snoring. My father’s boat didn’t make that much noise when it hit rocks!
Ross: Come on! Forty-five minutes! Forty-five minutes the man talked about strappy backed dresses.
Rachel: Well okay, how about four hours in a freezing museum auditorium listening to Professor Pitstains and his ‘Hey everybody! Remember that thing that’s been dead for a gazillion years. Well there’s this little bone we didn’t know it had!’
Ross: First of all it’s Professor Pittain! And second of all, that little bone, proved that, that particular dinosaur had wings, but didn’t fly.
Rachel: Okay, see now, what I just heard: blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, blah-blah-blah, blah, blah.

The One With The 5 Acts of Kindness.

So our exercise 1 in Positive Psychology was due this week. I realize you don't really know what this means...so let me explain. We had to choose from a list of about 10 exercises that we would do and then write a paper over and report back in class. You were supposed to choose 2 of them, and then write only about one of them.

The first one I did that I didn't write about was called a Gratitude Diary. I was supposed to write down 3 good things that happened that day for a week. This ended up being a little harder than I thought. However, I started realizing that even focusing on the little things that were good in the day, which sometimes was the only really good thing for the day (like coming home to Noah), was actually really special. Sometimes it's easy for us to focus on the negative that happened and coming to the realization that there are a lot of small good things that happened that we never focus on helps your mood. Even just noting that you got up and made it to work on time can be seen as a good thing that day. So I encourage you all to start thinking about all of the good in your life, but I know it's not easy, and it's something that I struggle with everyday.

The exercise I did write and talk about in class was called 5 Acts of Kindness. I was encouraged to show 5 acts of kindness in 5 days. This exercise jumped out at me, because I always tend to try and do kind acts for people I love. When I'm in a relationship, I really like surprising my boyfriend with his favorite candy, etc. so I was very exciting to do this. I chose to do these five acts:

1. I brought homemade cookies to my class. I was actually scared no one would want them and/or like them, but they ended up being a hit. I am considering bring some other treat to class next week. 
2. I gave an edible arrangement to my sister and brother-in-law. They do a lot for me, like take me on AWESOME trips (countdown to Key West: 47 days), and I wanted to show them my appreciation, because I really do appreciate everything they do for me. They take good care of me. 
3. I gave my dad a birthday present even though he told us not to. I gave him a wine bottle with a picture of us on it for the label, and I took him out for lunch and actually paid for it myself. He tends to think he's only loved because he's the money-maker, and that is just so far from the truth, so I wanted to show my appreciation towards him. 
4. I gave a homeless man some cash. I'm pretty cynical when it comes to this. I don't like doing it honestly, because the chances are that cash is going to go towards alcohol or drugs. I also think they need to stop being lazy and try and find a job at McDonald's or something. BUT I decided this was the perfect act then for me, because it doesn't matter where that money goes, I did something kind and in reality it is God's money. I just prayed before that God would bring good to the money instead of bad. 
5. Finally, I did one of my favorite things. I drove to Chick-Fil-A (no that's not the favorite thing, but it is pretty damn good), and paid for the person's meal behind me in line at the drive-thru. I love doing this because it truly is an act of kindness that you aren't asking for a thank you or recognition. This one always makes me feel really good inside because I'm not doing it for me in the slightest, and if I get the chance, I like to leave a little card that has something about God's love on it so it can glorify Him, instead of me. 

So anyways, I encourage all of you to start doing more kind acts. Sometimes it's hard to not be lazy and go do them, but it really is worth it. It allowed me to focus on being kind to others instead of focusing on the negativity in my life and in return, I felt happier. So go do a good deed today, even if it's small.

Ross: Y'know what, I am gonna be happy this year. I am gonna make myself happy.
Chandler: Do you want us to leave the room, or?
Ross: Everyday I am gonna do one thing that I haven't done before. That my friends is my New Year's resolution.
Phoebe: Ooh! That's a good one! Mine is to pilot a commercial jet.
Chandler: That's good one too, Pheebs. Now all you have to do is find a planeload of people who's resolution is to plummet to their deaths.
Phoebe: Maybe your resolution is to not make fun of your friends, especially the ones who may soon be flying you to Europe for free on their own plane.
Monica: She has a better chance of sprouting wings and flying up your nose than you do of not making fun of us.
Ross: In fact, I'll bet you 50 bucks that you can't go the whole year without making fun of us. Eh, y'know what, better yet? A week.
Chandler: I'll take that bet my friend. And you know what, paying me the 50 bucks could be the "new thing you do that day!" (Ross looks at him.) And it starts right now!

The One With The Update On Noah.

So, I realized I hadn't talked about Noah in ages. And this is NOT because I love him less. If it was at all possible I love him even more than ever. He's just the most precious thing ever to walk this Earth. He seriously is my best friend. I come home to him, and he's ALWAYS excited to see me. He's just the biggest comfort in the world. If I'm having a down day, the best medicine is to cuddle with him in front of the TV. His love is endless.

He's loved living at mom and dad's. He LOVES having the backyard and a huge house to just run around in. He also loves having Mar Mar around during the day while his mommy (me) is at school or work. Thankfully he still wants to sleep with me at night. I sure hope that never changes. I sure do miss him while I'm gone. On Tuesday's, I'm gone from 8:30am-7:30pm. It kills me being away from him that long. But thank goodness he's not sitting at home alone. He's got Tessa to play with, too.

I occasionally take him on my runs in the morning. He loves it. Saturday he did 3 miles with me. Pretty sure he was POOPED by the end of that one. He's the best dog ever.

This is what we are doing right now: 

Chandler: Okay, it's um…

Joey: (interrupting him) Don't do it!

Monica: Don't do what?

Chandler: (to Joey) I have to! Okay? It's time! (Joey shrugs as if to say, "Do what you have to do") Okay, I hate dogs.

All: What?

Phoebe: Are you crazy?

Ross: Are you out of your mind?

Phoebe: Why?

Joey: Told ya. (Waves bye-bye.)

Chandler: They are needy, they are jumpy, and you can't tell what they are thinking, and that scares me a little bit.

Ross: Right, they are scary. (He jumps up, screaming) Ahh, she just ate a treat out of my hand!!!

Rachel: Wait a minute. Do you not like all dogs? I mean, not even puppies?

Chandler: (scared) Is there a puppy here?

Tag: You don't like puppies?

Chandler: (to Tag) Okay, you are new!

Joey: Look, Chandler, I told you, never tell anyone about this dog thing. It's like Ross not likin’ ice cream.

Phoebe: You don't like ice cream?

Ross: It's too cold.

The One With The Second Week Of Pos. Psyc.

So this week in Positive Psychology wasn't AS interesting as last. There were still some things worth talking about though.

First off, the discussion question that I mentioned in my last post, we talked about as a group. Just to remind you: if you and a friend made a bet as to who was going to have the better life and came together around 60 years old to decide who it was, how would you determine who had the better life? Here are some of the more interesting answers given by my classmates.

1. When you make the bet at age 17, or whatever, also make a list of 100 goals you'd like to have accomplished. Then at 60, go through them and see how many you accomplished. Whoever has the bigger percentage wins. Now I like this idea, but it obviously has a lot of flaws in it. For one, someone could put really easy things to accomplish and the other could put difficult things. It'd be like comparing apples and oranges. Another flaw is the fact that it doesn't include any of your relationships, which I think are an important part of a successful life. (some may argue against me on that one though). 
2. Another person said that they should document whether or not they were feeling positive or negative every day and take the average for the week, and whoever has the most positive weeks is the winner. I actually really disagree with this one. For one, you could NEVER prove that that person actually had a positive affect on those days he/she documented it. It doesn't prove anything. And secondly, I don't think having a positive affect the most really makes your life better. I don't know, it just doesn't seem like the end all thing to measure a successful or better life. 
3. Dr. Carlson brought up this interesting idea. There's a thing called an impact factor in psychology. It basically means the impact factor is higher the more your work is cited in other research. What if there was a way to have an impact factor on a human being? The more you are "cited" with other people, the better your life is. I think that would be one of the best ways, but obviously not possible. 

One last thing about this. This discussion question is based on an actual situation that one of my professor's friend did. The way he and his friend measured their life was by asking kids, who were the same age as they were when they made the bet, at the same school they attended, to read an essay on each one of their lives and then write down questions for them. They then met up at the school, answered questions, and had the students vote for who they thought had the better life. Apparently it was basically a tie...I'm not sure how that happened, and I'm not sure I believe it.

An interesting fact I learned this week. Apparently someone who won the lottery was asked a year after doing so, and someone who became a paraplegic a year after doing so, how happy they were and they found they were both as equally happy at that point in their lives. It just shows that we don't need money to be happy. Even if something awful happens to you, your happiness can come back, it's just a matter of how you look at the situation. However, for different situations, obviously, it takes longer to get back to that happiness set point. The hardest things that take the longest for people to rise back to their set point is widowhood and unemployment.

The last thing I want to talk about is the fact that happiness always comes back down to a set point or goes back up to a set point. You never stay extremely sad or extremely happy. So we somewhat discussed why this is. We use this thing called ordinization, which basically means that we try to make sense of events in order to speed up emotional recovery. We say things such as, "It just wasn't meant to be," "They are in a better place," or "God has a bigger and better plan." I'm not saying these things are wrong to say, by any means, but we do use them to make ourselves feel better so we don't stay in this negative emotional state forever.

It also wouldn't be good for us to stay in a constant state of emotional dysphoria or euphoria. In my notes it says it would be physiologically taxing, which I agree with. I also agree with the idea that we need to be on a more level happiness to deal with other environmental situations. However, I think the most important reason we shouldn't always be in these states is because then we no longer appreciate being really happy and we wouldn't realize when we were really bad off. Eventually, if you were constantly in a state of euphoria, that state would no longer be euphoria but your set point that you could never exceed. Or if you were constantly in a state of dysphoria, you would eventually not realize just how bad off you were and know when you need to ask for help. If that makes any sense.

Here's an interesting quote: "I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; Fortune hath not one place to hit me." - Sir Thomas Browne

The discussion question that will be discussed next week is:  Consider real life examples of "big" negative or positive life events. Think of one example that seems consistent with the "happiness set point" perspective. (i.e., the person acclimated and returned to the pre-event level of life satisfaction), and one example that seems inconsistent (i.e., the event seemed to exert a lasting effect on level of life satisfaction). What factors (e.g., individual differences among people, nature of event) seem likely to affect the applicability of happiness set point theory?

By the way, I would LOVE it if people responded to the discussion questions themselves with their own thoughts. If anyone has an example of their own, I'd love to hear it, and I could share it in class, if you didn't mind, of course. Until next week!

Joey: If you ask me, as long as you got this job, you’ve got nothing pushing you to get another one. You need the fear.
Rachel: The fear?
Chandler: He’s right, if you quit this job, you then have motivation to go after a job you really want.
Rachel: Well then how come you’re still at a job that you hate, I mean why don’t you quit and get ‘the fear’?
(Chandler and Joey both laugh)
Chandler: Because, I’m too afraid.

The One With The Five Strengths.

This semester I'm taking a class called Positive Psychology and The Good Life. It's my last writing component class and one of the optional assignments is to write a blog post every week reflecting on what was talked about (you have to have a certain amount of writing by the end of the semester). I figured this was a perfect opportunity to use my blog, since I'm trying to be better at writing more. And it should still be interesting to my readers.  In my book, it says positive psychology is the scientific study of what goes right in life, from birth to death and at all stops in between. I figured this was the perfect class to be taking, since I could be focusing on a lot of bad things. For example, my impending graduation where I have no idea what I'm doing...you know, stuff like that. I'm hoping I come out of this class a more positive person. One of those people who looks at the glass half full. An optimist. We will see if that can happen. ;) By the way, this first blog post will be the longest one, since I'm opening you all up to it and there was a lot that was covered in the first 3 class periods. Bear with me.

The first few class periods were pretty cool. The first day of class, I was thinking we would read the syllabus and then leave (like I thought with all of my other classes as well) WRONG (yes, in ASL - this I should explain real quick to my teacher since this is the first time she's seeing something like this in my blog. It's old news to my readers. I will sometimes put WRONG in my blog. In American Sign Language, when you are signing a story, and something doesn't go as planned, you sign the word for "wrong," so sometimes I incorporate ASL in my blog, because I took about 5-6 years of it and love it - anywho, moving on) we went over the syllabus and started talking about positive psych. We were asked to write about what we expected of this class, etc. We were then asked to take a survey online that would give us our top 5 strengths, which I will come back to. The second class period we watched a video of a lecture done at Southwestern, I believe, about happiness. While some parts were boring, overall it was a pretty interesting lecture. Here are a few of the parts I found interesting:

• He opened up by saying, "before we talk about how to be happy, we need to ask ourselves if we WANT to be happy." He went on to explain: is happiness really a good thing? Is it functional? Sometimes there are things that make us feel good, but really aren't functional or good. i.e. meth...but obviously being happy is a good thing. I'm also big on how powerful the mind really is. And I like to say "Do you want to be happy?" If you do, then you can be. It's all about changing your attitude. This brings me to point number dos. 
• He talked about social relationships, worldly success (monies), work success, and then he came to health. Health is such an important part of being happy. It's also a symbiotic relationship. To be happy, you need to be healthy, and to be healthy, you need to be happy. Here's an example of how health depends on happiness. If you have a cardiac event (i.e. heart attack), and after this event, you are depressed, you are 5 TIMES more likely to have a second cardiac event. 5 times people! This reminds me of the placebo effect, which is something that just fascinates me. If you are given a sugar pill to help your symptoms and you actually believe this pill will help you (not knowing it's just sugar), you're mind is more likely to alleviate those symptoms on its own. THE MIND IS AMAZING. I could go on and on about that, but I won't bore you. 
• The last point I'll talk about is the different characteristics in the different areas of life that he said happy people have. In social relationships, they are more likely to have: leadership, more friends, volunteer, more political involvement, and trust in others. Apparently, the most cheerful people make $65,000 a year. And for work success: higher supervisor ratings, organizational citizens, doing things for work place not in the job description, etc.

Ok, so really quick I have two more things left. First, I will briefly discuss what my top 5 strengths ended up being. By "strengths" it really means what you value the most in life. Here were my top 5:

1. Spirituality, sense of purpose, and faith 
2. Capacity to love and be loved 
3. Gratitude 
4. Honesty, authenticity, and genuineness 
5. Perspective (wisdom) 

I actually thought these were all SPOT on. I'm truthfully so happy that spirituality came in at number 1. I also think that my spirituality (religion) really incorporates all of the other top strengths.

Ok last thing. I'm supposed to discuss these questions in class tomorrow: What does it mean to have a good life? How do you measure happiness? The main thing she asked us to focus on was this hypothetical situation. If you and a friend decided that near the later part of your life, you would come together and discuss who's life was better; who had the happier life. What kinds of things would you measure that happiness on. "I've had the best life because..."
So I haven't really thought about this much. I'm honestly just typing as I think. I think my first/main thing I would focus on would be relationships. Not HOW MANY I had, but how meaningful they were. Friends and family. The second would be what I did with my life. Did I make a difference? Even if it were just with one person, did I help someone out? I would also focus on did I live a Godly life, overall. Did my actions bring people to know the amazing God that I know? Did I live a life God would be proud of? If the answers to those questions were yes, then I'm not sure how you could have a better life than me. I still have some work to do...

I will still end these blog posts with a quote from Friends (my favorite TV show of all time - for Dr. Carlson - that's also why all my blog posts start with "The one with..." since that's what they do for each episode in the series).

Rachel: They wanna know if I'm okay. Okay...they wanna know if I'm okay, okay, let's see. Well, let's see, the FICA guys took all my money, everyone I know is either getting married, or getting promoted, or getting pregnant, and I'm getting coffee! And it's not even for me! So if that sounds like I'm okay, okay, then you can tell them I'm okay, okay?"
Monica: Uh, Rachel has left the building, can she call back?