Category: General

Plenty of us experience a day or week when things feel like they’re breaking up, down and apart all at the same time. Those of us working in our ’15 Cohort have felt a confluence of good things in the last week, so I want to share it.

As you know, we’re exploring Signature Strengths and setting goals by delving into who we really are. We’re using evidence-based principles and resonating experiences in our lives to make connections and set those goals. The categories for our goal-setting—connect, stay active, take notice, keep learning, give—come from tried-and-true science, too.

Two members who’d never met before, Becca and Dina*, have found a way to bring strengths and goals together, stay more active and begin a new friendship all at once. They both have strengths in the virtues of Wisdom and Humanity, but have demanding work schedules and family responsibilities and even had some serious reservations about joining our cohort because they work long days every week. Most of their personal time during evenings and weekends is reserved for errands and extra sleep. What they both realized they were missing was time to explore the creativity and social connection that play to their strengths. So they’ve set new goals to Connect, Stay Active, and Keep Learning while enhancing their virtues of Wisdom and Humanity: Becca and Dina are leaving work a little early every Thursday afternoon to attend a yoga class together.

Now, you might say to yourself, So what? People exercise with friends; what’s the special deal? It IS a big deal because lots of people don’t change their work schedules and make themselves a priority, commit to more physical activity and reach out to start new friendships. Lots of people stay in their confluence of work, work, work and never make changes.

We think they’re great. They’re embracing their personal strengths and focusing on making life more creative, rewarding and fun. They’ve discovering ways to create confluences of good things, and the whole world needs more of that.

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*names changed for privacy

Beneath the surface beats the heart of an explorer.

The January 2015 cohort includes people who make connections between their strengths and goals whether they’re working with a life coach or on their own. They’re unique in that way because most people live their lives rather aimlessly. They’re also distinctive because the work we’re doing with Strengths Survey results has proven to be exceptionally powerful.

So, we’re explorers with magical powers.

We celebrated Tessa in my blog post, Pause for Applause; here is how she’s using persistence, an underlying strength from Courage*, to get the raise she wants.

Tessa works for a web design firm in social media marketing. She worked as an intern for the firm during college, and they were so impressed with her creativity and strong work ethic that they offered her a full-time job after graduation. Now, after two years, she’s had stellar performance reviews, but she’s been waiting six weeks for a raise she was promised. Tessa has become a vital part of her work group and has expanded the company’s client base by completing projects on time and under budget. She has asked for a meeting with her supervisor and is prepared to document the details of her job performance and ask for the raise to be reflected in her next check. She intends to persist in getting the raise she’s earned.

Some people might be too uncomfortable in her position to speak out. Tessa says her diligence toward meeting project goals is what makes her valuable to her boss, so she doesn’t fear pointing out to him why she’s worthy of that raise. She is who she is.

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*Courage is one of the six universally valued virtues identified in the VIA Survey of Character Strengths. Haven’t taken it yet? Take it now: www.viacharacter.org

We proudly salute Tessa* from our January 2015 Cohort—for exceptional courage and high spirit.

Our cohort has been exploring ways to create or tweak our personal goals by identifying our strengths and values in “success threads”: re-occurring stories that have shaped our past and still resonate with our self-worth and joy. Tessa is serving us as a natural team leader, and we want to take a pause to recognize her and invite her to take a bow.

We’re targeting our Top Ten strengths from the VIA Character Survey results and using them as prompts for daily journaling. Our pledge is to set aside quiet time every day—first thing before morning routine or last thing before sleeping—to unlock those re-occurring stories and document them in a Goals Journal. Tessa has been our Standard Bearer. She writes every day without fail and gives it her all.

She has also been one of the most open participants when we meet together to share, and like a person walking the leading edge, she’s allowed other people plenty of space and a feeling of safety to feel they can also open up and be vulnerable. She’s the kind of woman who defines wholeheartedness.

There are people who walk into a room and light it up. There are people who pull up a chair and warm the whole setting. Our group dynamic has felt richer and more vibrant because of Tessa. She’s one of those people who bring light and warmth, and we’re lucky she’s one of us.

Brava, Tessa! We adore you.

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*name changed for privacy

Want to organize a cohort? Contact drmell@drmell.com

Your strengths profile has a “Top Ten”; they reveal the essence of who you are. Continue to cultivate stories that help you identify your strengths, intensify your focus and build on your successes.

Curiosity is a Top Ten strength from my profile, like my appreciation of music and poetry. My mother had insatiable curiosity and found joy in “making things,” and we spent countless hours enjoying our love of learning and crafting together. She and her two older brothers were reared by their grandmother, and my mother spent most of her childhood alone with her imagination. She made clothes for her paper dolls and taught herself to sew with cloth and do fine needlework when she was a young mother. She taught me how to make clothes and bedding for my Barbie dolls, and we shared the joy and challenge of finding a beautiful bolt of cloth or spotting a gorgeous design in a magazine and transforming a dressmaker’s form or a bare set of windows.

Curiosity is in my Top Ten, and although my mother has passed, my daughter has joined me in continuing our story and sharing our love.

My friends share my curiosity about human behavior and how we can all work together for the greater good. We esteem the best in ourselves and others and “make things” better for everyone. I surround myself with people whose grace and positivity feed my soul. My nearest and dearest believe in the power of We, and their activism for good causes and wholehearted spirits feed my soul. Like transforming cloth into function and form, my mentors and friends turn possibility into thriving communities that serve everyone beautifully and well.

My focus on 2015 and beyond is to search for opportunities I can engage my curiosity and experience more joy and deepen my sense of accomplishment. What’s your focus from your Top Ten?

Taken the VIA Survey of Character Strengths yet? Here’s the link https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/home

Begin again.

Singing and reciting poetry were pleasures my father and I shared. He spent time with me, holding me in his rocking chair in the evening, and we sang and laughed together. My daddy taught me that music and poetry are expressions of love and soulfulness, and they will be with me forever.

What memories from your childhood resonate to this day? They are the keys to revealing your strengths, and they sustain you.

For many years, I taught English and world literature at the college-level. My delight was in reading and analyzing poetry with my students, particularly with the liberal arts majors since we were kindred spirits. My classroom became a temple on our best days, and we were astonished by the imaginations of disparate people. Ancient texts from world religions, lyrical poems from the English Romantics, hard-edged poems from Americans in the ‘60s: we heard voices singing the glory and pain of the human condition or telling a story to capture a time, place or lesson learned.

Academic work made a career for me that provided some financial security, but happily, it allowed me to enjoy the essence of who I am and am becoming.

What are your touchstones? What brought you joy before you became self-conscious and worldly?

The answers will remind you who you are—and are becoming.

During a respite from positive psychology research and comment, I am working on a series of blogs about my health sabbatical.

In the spring of 2007, I was forced to leave a career I loved and students and colleagues I adored. My health collapsed, and I simply couldn’t get to work anymore. My plan was work in higher education administration until I was 70, but…what’s the expression? Life happened while I was making plans.

During these seven years–and the number seven is very telling for me (I’ll share more later)–I have explored positive psychology as a path toward restoring my vitality and re-inventing my career life. My certification as a life coach is just a small chapter of this story.

Join me as I unpack the events and choices that led me here. I can promise you won’t be bored; you might even be inspired.

Dr Mell

New scientific evidence confirms that We can control up to 75 percent of our health destiny with good lifestyle choices. You may have inherited some health challenges, such as heart disease or diabetes, but science proves that you can re-direct your genetic destiny to a great extent by making good choices about your diet, exercise, stress management and sleep. Seventy-Five Percent! That’s some serious power over health problems you assumed you were destined to suffer.

My father is living proof that better lifestyle choices weigh more heavily in your health destiny than genetics. My father and his siblings were born into poverty in the 1920s in the Deep South. Children of poverty rarely have enough to eat or see a doctor or dentist for preventive care, and that was certainly their fate. My father had two brothers who made horrible health choices as they aged, but my father ate whole foods, stayed active, kept a sunny outlook and never became addicted to cigarettes, drugs or alcohol. Sadly, my uncles died many years ago—neither one of them lived to see 50. Dad is 86 this year, in relatively good health, and has outlived both of his brothers by more than 40 years!

Of course, once you cool down your happy dance over the promise of Your 75 Percent, you may say, “Rats! I want my good health in pill form.” Listen, we all feel your pain; a quick fix is a nice idea. For the sake of activating your potential for better health, hang in there and let’s keep things positive.

Think of the improvement you can enjoy—feeling and looking better every day—by making better lifestyle choices. Let me assert another piece of science that can make your lifestyle changes even easier: ONE change in habit can set off a whole chain reaction of improvement in your health. It’s called The Keystone Habit in Charles Duhigg’s new bestseller, The Power of Habit:

Changing one habit—let’s say ‘Eating Fewer Carbs’—can create a Keystone Habit, and from the brain/body changes a Keystone Habit makes, a Cascade of Change flows naturally.

So, you can impact 75 percent of your health destiny in a positive way—without worrying that your genes rule your future health, and you can change ONE health habit and, sticking to it, can set off a cascade of improvement to re-energize and heal your body, mind and spirit. Lisa’s testimonial from The Power of Habit is a powerful illustration of how The Keystone Habit can work:

Lisa…was 34 years old, had started smoking and drinking when she was sixteen, and had struggled with obesity for most of her life. At one point, in her mid-twenties, collection agencies were hounding her to recover $10,000 in debts. An old resume listed her longest job as lasting less than a year. (Prologue)

Lisa had cultivated bad personal habits, had health challenges from poor choices in diet and physical activity, was in debt from a lack of financial discipline and had a history of job-swapping that made prospective employers distrust her persistence. So, Lisa chose ONE habit to conquer—she decided to quit smoking cigarettes—and that ONE change in habit set off a cascade of positive lifestyle changes that impacted her body, mind and spirit. After she gave up cigarettes, she breathed more freely and started walking every day; she began to choose fresher, more wholesome foods to delight her re-awakened taste buds and started to lose weight; she felt more powerful and self-confident and approached her creditors with a plan to re-structure and eliminate her debt; and she found work she loved and made a pledge to commit to it heart-and-soul. Her turn-around is nothing short of incredible.

I hope the new science about the power we have to alter our health destinies and to start a cascade of positive change are inspiring to you; they certainly are to me. In my practice, I work with people over 50 who have some troubling health and spirit challenges, and they tell me how empowering it is to know they can make small changes that yield big dividends. I hope that’s true for you, too.

Focused on seizing Your 75 Percent to feel better? On choosing ONE Keystone Habit to set off a cascade of change? Good for you! Please write, text or call me and share your experience. I’d love to join you on your journey and share it with others. I’m always rooting for your best life.

All the Best Always,

Dr Mell

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Duhigg, C (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. New York: Random House. Amazon Book Link

Today’s our Independence Day 2012 in the U.S., and we’re grateful for our republic and the common values we hold most dear. Without question, we treasure our extraordinary freedoms especially. For those of us who value positivity, every day offers a chance to celebrate personal freedom if we choose, so here are some simple steps to help you let go.

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One expert who has devoted her work to the power of personal freedom and positive psychology is Dr. Judith Orloff. She offers specific advice about being healthy and well through better habits that generate good energy. A medical doctor by training and experience, Dr. Orloff’s practice and teaching in intuition and positive energy inspire people to seek ways to use their emotional intelligence to create the professional and personal success they desire. Consider how you can use her good advice on personal freedom to create a more positive outlook.

Dr. Orloff encourages her clients to focus on the Positive Now and resist “catastrophizing” what potential crises might destroy us. She cites the physiological reaction that destroys positive energy and growth when people dwell on negative what-ifs and generate stress hormones, break the flow of happy endorphins and quash the chemicals we make in our brains that are pain-reducing.

She encourages daily meditation as a positive step toward personal freedom. She cites scientific research that shows the physiological benefits of meditating each day on a positive image and realizing a deep sense of calm throughout the body. While many people meditate morning and/or evening, she suggests her clients take mini-breaks during a personally stressful part of the day to generate more calm and well-being.

She admits to using positive self-talk for well-being and promotes its benefits to others.

This is a form of affirmation that will neutralize the tendency to focus on what is negative. For instance, if you are tired, tell yourself, ‘It’s okay to take a rest’ instead of beating yourself up over not being a super person who goes nonstop. Or say to yourself, ‘You’ve done a great job’ when you’ve done your best in a work situation or in the process of healing from an illness.

Another strategy for personal freedom is to reinforce to yourself the gratitude that you feel for what is working well in your life, instead of dwelling on what has gone wrong. This one is so powerful and so obvious, too. “Just Let Go” is the central theme: let go of negative thoughts about the past. She suggests we “always focus on the love [we] have and know the enormous value of this.”

Free yourself of unhappy thoughts or a bad mood by reaching out to help someone else. Even in small ways—listening compassionately to a troubled friend or letting someone in front of you in traffic—a simple gesture of service to someone else frees our knotted psyches and allows a surge of positive energy to re-direct our negativity or lift a dark mood. We feel better and so does The Someone we serve.

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Since I was a little girl, the word “freedom” described something powerful, almost magical to me. It still does—perhaps more now than ever before. I’m deeply grateful for having been born into a family and country that values freedom, so here’s my Holiday Salute to our righteous quest to breathe free.

Much Love and Independence, My Friend,

Dr Mell

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Orloff, M.D., J (2005). Positive energy:  10 extraordinary prescriptions for transforming fatigue, stress, and fear into vibrance, strength, and love. New York: Three Rivers Press. Amazon Book Link

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