Is Positivity A Panacea Or Pollyannish?
Are you a glass-half-empty or half-full sort of person? Is one better than the other? Regardless, what has psychology uncovered about the best path through life? If you’re wondering about any of these things, today’s Eye of Power episode is for you!
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Is Positivity A Panacea Or Pollyannish?
I've learned I've been engaged in a field of psychology that has its special name. I'm not a psychologist. My work is perhaps adjacent to what we think of as traditional accredited psychology. As a consultant in the field of maximizing talent and elevating culture and organizations, I work with groups of people. I also work one-on-one to help individuals manifest more of their power.
I've been trained and certified in a wide variety of psychometric tools. I've used them to help individuals affect desired changes. Much of the work I do lines up with what's come to be known as the field of positive psychology. The assumptions of this approach turn away from seeing humans as pure functions of their DNA coding as shaped by the rather random life experiences they happen to have.
Positive Psychology: We're building a community of people who are building lives closer to what each person considers ideal.
Instead, positive psychologists embrace the idea that we have the power to live a better life by working on our character. Sounds sensible to me. That's exactly what we're doing with the Eye of Power model. We're building a community of people who are building lives closer to what each person considers. Ideal. Though the specifics can represent a wide spectrum, that means we all work through whatever barriers keep us from preferable outcomes. What we're doing is perhaps therapeutic, but it isn't therapy.
In cases where someone is debilitated with overwhelming emotional energy, they are encouraged to seek support from knowledgeable licensed professionals who are adept at dealing with such crises. What we do with the Eye of Power are the incremental daily actions that like compound interest over time result in dramatic differences in life circumstances. For most, their efforts are directed to a specific objective such as enhancing their career, bettering relationships, or dealing with some inflection point in life such as the birth of a child, the end of a marriage, or transitioning into retirement.
The professional path I'm on has so far had a couple of such inflection points. I've had strategic partnerships begin and end. The creation of the Eye of Power is another such example. Since I can remember, I've been interested in the human condition and what we might do as individuals and as communities to improve our lot in life.
I suppose my disposition naturally points me in the direction of optimism. Before I learned about the literature of the field of positive psychology, my perception was we have it within our power to change our lot in life. I saw so many examples of people doing this. It seemed obvious. In the environment of exploding neuroscience wherein we learn more and more about the workings of the brain, the picture has clouded. What remains clear is we humans have some degree of autonomy, but the extent to which this operates is not a simple question to answer. Regardless, we have an important relationship with our ability to make choices, evidence mounts that we humans need our sense of autonomy.
Positive psychology emerged from the work of mid-20th-century psychologists known to practice what is called humanistic psychology. One of the bigger names is Abraham Maslow and his well-known Hierarchy of Needs. Another is Erich Fromm, who identified a more distinct and refined set of eight needs, namely transcendence, rootedness, sense of identity, frame of orientation, excitation, stimulation, unity, and effectiveness.
A third is Carl Rogers, who identified the importance of creating cultures where people are welcomed to be integrated in the way we describe as authentic and accepted for being so. Their insights may strike us as obvious now, but they swim against much of what remains in many organizational cultures. There remains work for us to do.
Humanistic psychology acknowledges spiritual aspiration as a part of the psyche. In other words, it recognizes that we have an innate drive for purpose and meaning in our lives. The resulting scientific approaches in turn revolved from earlier work, notably Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory and B.F. Skinner's Behaviorism. This doesn't mean there was homogeneity between the viewpoints of these influencers.
Skinner who was working in the middle 50 years of the 20th century believed free will to be an illusion. Freud, like the bulk of the psychological field in his wake, was primarily occupied with how things go wrong with us. As in all fields of study contributions that prove useful tend to gain traction and linger, but it takes time for the implications of insights to reverberate into everyday paradigms and resultant behaviors. Again, we're working to integrate these lessons.
Positive psychology was officially born in 1998 when Martin Seligman, as President of the American Psychological Association, chose it as the theme of his term. Practitioners moved away from dealing with maladies and more to unlocking potential. It's not meant to replace more traditional forms of psychology, but rather expand it.
As I said, I didn't know my work was part of an official movement. I suppose I've just been influenced by their findings. Positive psychologists like Ellen Langer and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pointed to ways we can feel more fulfilled. Langer's Arden House study famously linked our power, our ability to make choices to longevity. Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow to describe high-performing states.
Such researchers point out ways we can tip the scales of our experience in a happier direction. Seems good but does it represent the most effective approach? There is a dual nature to everything to believe that there is a path in this world where suffering is banished is to believe in utopia. As far as I can tell, this is a naive belief. Throughout history, there have been grand plans to build a better society. They not only miss that lofty mark, but they also inevitably devolve into something nearly the opposite.
Utopia is not a goal that comports with human nature. If we were ever to realistically approach it as a goal, we would have to jettison much of what it is we think of as human. We are beings who struggle to reduce suffering and find meaning. Without strife, what does it mean to accomplish something? Without resistance, how do we build strength? Likewise, if we're so focused on positivity, what might we overlook as a countervailing force?
Utopia is not a goal that comports with human nature. If we were ever to realistically approach it as a goal, we would have to jettison much of what it is we think of as human.
Critics of positive psychology point to two traps. One is the denial of the real. Wearing rose-colored glasses to see only what we wish to see. In the Eye of Power, we call this confusion, 1 of the 4 corruptions that keep us from our full power. The other is simple pain aversion, a critique we also discuss in the Eye of Power community.
In the model, we describe four quadrants, one of which is called the pain quadrant. This is the area wherein we take action regarding ourselves. It's so named because pain circumscribes the extent to which we're typically willing to take action regardless of the expected benefits. It's not an impermeable boundary. We have different thresholds, tolerances, and willingness levels when it comes to pain. This, along with the fact that there are different types of pain, clouds the picture of what we're about to explore together.
When we think of pain, it doesn't conjure a positive image. This is no surprise. We don't like pain because it hurts. Thank you, Captain Obvious. To understand the true nature of pain, look at what happens when it's missing. There are rare but dramatic examples of people who lose their ability to feel pain. Awesome you might think, but it doesn't work out well. Such people end up losing all their fingers and toes, if not something even more vital.
Pain, it turns out, protects us. It's simply our body's way of communicating the presence of blocked energy and sounding the alarm for us to pay attention. When we disrespect pain by either ignoring it or altering our behavior so that we never feel the pain that's about as possible as utopia. Pain ends up drawing a boundary around us through which we dare not pass. That's why it's a great idea to intentionally push our comfort zone, for instance.
When we wish to build strength, endurance, or flexibility, we must push through pain. I'm sure positive psychologists know this and respect this. I mention these things because they're common traps that hold people in place. It prevents them from reaching their full heights. As a result, people live less healthily than they could, less fulfilled than they could. For those who reject this status, the Eye of Power is home because it's tough to push through pain, especially when others around you don't want you to.
When we wish to build strength, endurance, or flexibility, we must push through pain.
Now, we need others who want us to be the best of us. That's a challenge because not everyone is up for that. This is what the Eye of Power community is helping to change. We provide a place where people can get the support they need. How is your relationship with pain? Does it hold you back in any way? Do you tend to look at the positive things in your life and ignore the negative? Maybe it's the other way around. Some of us dwell on what's wrong and overlook the positive, but let me ask you this. How is your support network? Do you have people around you who actively help you with the incremental, disciplined actions that lead you to continual improvement? If these things are lacking, I urge you to reach out. It's time to give the world the full version of you. Let's go.