Ed Batista

Happiness, Excellence and Boundaries: A Framework for Leaders (Part 3 of 3)

This is the third and final post in a series based on a workshop I developed and presented to a group of leaders in Los Angeles in June.  See Part 1 for an overview of this series' fundamental premise and a discussion of the first topic, Happiness, and Part 2 for a discussion of the second topic, Excellence.

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III. Boundaries, Not Balance

Michael Gilbert and Boundaries

Many, and perhaps most, leaders view "work-life balance" as desirable in theory but unattainable, even illusory, in practice.  But if work-life balance is an illusion, what's the practical alternative?  Michael Gilbert, a former colleague of mine at the Nonprofit Technology Network and a deeply thought-provoking writer, has explored this issue thoroughly.  From Why Work-Life Balance is a Bad Idea:

Although I am firmly allied with the mission and spirit of all the professionals and organizations who use the term "work-life balance" as something to strive for, I've come to the conclusion that it's fundamentally flawed, a dangerous trap, an all-around bad idea...

The fact is that work is a part of life, not in opposition to it. The fact is that what we all seek is joyful work-life integration, not some sort of painful detente. The fact is that work-life balance is the sad refuge of those who have decided that work is not worth saving.

Michael pursued this concept further in Good Fences: On Boundaries, Agency and Wholeness in Work Life:

In regard to this exploration of "work-life balance," what's clear in our discussion is that we have been using the word "balance" when what we really seem to mean is "boundaries."  Boundaries keep things in their place.  Balance suggests the same amount of two things on either side of a scale.  Boundaries keep one of those things from oozing past the edge of its platter and taking over the other side...

Boundaries and integration go together.  Maybe it's just the biologist in me, but it seems that good boundaries are what make integration work.  Just as functional membranes (letting the right things through and keeping the wrong things out) facilitate the healthy interaction of the cells of our bodies, so do functional personal boundaries facilitate the healthy interaction of the various parts of our lives.  Bad boundaries lead to either being overwhelmed or withdrawal. Good boundaries lead to wholeness and synergy.

Boundaries and Interpersonal Communication

A potential problem with this metaphor is that we tend to think of boundaries as features of a landscape, because that's how we encounter them when crossing a border or viewing a map.  But very few boundaries simply spring forth from the underlying geology; most of them exist because people envisioned them and took action to establish them.  In this context, boundaries are dynamics that exist in our working relationships and in our organizations.  But the boundaries we need at work aren't going to magically appear before us--we have to envision them and take action to establish them by interacting with others.  (This is particularly true for leaders, whose jobs often feel "unbounded" because there's always more to do and often no one else capable of doing it.)

Whether we know it or not, in many of our professional interactions we're trying to identify boundaries and insure that they're clearly understood and respected.  From a leader's perspective, this could mean setting limits on the demands placed on us by a more senior figure or a board of directors, or it could mean setting clear expectations with a colleague or a direct report--or (just as importantly) it could involve putting work on hold long enough to fulfill other obligations and enjoy a personal life.

Note that a common dynamic in these interactions is that we feel some frustration and anger while also feeling caring and compassion for the very same people who are making us frustrated and angry.  Learning how to express both sets of feelings together is an effective way to identify, express and sustain boundaries in our working relationships.  If we're doing work that's meaningful to us, we tend to feel caring and compassion for our colleagues--and at the same time, we also feel frustrated and angry with them on a regular basis because of the professional demands that continually pull our lives out of balance.

Standard operating procedure in most organizations is to sweep those negative feelings under the rug until they get expressed in unproductive ways (at work or elsewhere.)  That's clearly not helpful--but what's also lost in that process are the positive feelings we have for our colleagues.  Note that these oppositional feelings don't cancel each other out. The frustration and anger we might feel at our colleagues is just as real as the caring and compassion we also feel for those same people.  We have to hold on to, honor and express both sets of feelings, as contradictory as they might be.

Susan Scott and "Mineral Rights"

Susan Scott is a coach and consultant whose book Fierce Conversations outlines a process for making difficult conversations more productive that she calls "Mineral Rights," named by a participant in a workshop of hers who noted, "If you're drilling for water, it's better to drill one hundred-foot well than one hundred one-foot wells."  Scott's model suggests that most of the conversations we have are the interpersonal equivalent of one-foot wells: too shallow to uncover what’s really going on.  In contrast, Scott writes:

[A Mineral Rights conversation] interrogates reality by mining for increased clarity, improved understanding, and impetus for change... The questions asked during a Mineral Rights conversation help individuals and teams interrogate reality in such a way that they are mobilized to take potent action on tough challenges.

Here are the steps in Scott's Mineral Rights framework:

1. Identify your most pressing issue.  What is the most important thing you and I should be talking about?

2. Clarify the issue.  What's going on?  How long has this been going on?  How bad are things?

3. Determine the current impact.  How is this issue current impacting me?  What results are currently being produced for me by this situation?  How is this issue currently impacting others?  What results are currently being produced for them by this situation?  When I consider the impact on myself and others, what are my emotions?

4. Determine the future implications.  If nothing changes, what's likely to happen?  What's at stake for me relative to this issue?  What's at stake for others?  When I consider these possible outcomes, what are my emotions?

5. Examine your personal contribution to this issue.  What is my contribution to this issue?  How have I contributed to the problem?

6. Describe the ideal outcome.  When this issue is resolved, what difference will that make?  What results will I enjoy?  When this issue is resolved, what results will others enjoy?  When I imagine this resolution, what are my emotions?

7. Commit to action.  What is the most potent step I could take to move this issue toward resolution?  What's going to attempted to get in my way, and how will I get past it?  When will I take this step?

As with any multi-step conceptual framework I discuss here, I'm not recommending that you follow Scott's Mineral Rights framework in some rigid, formulaic way.  But I do recommend looking at each step in this process and considering how it might help make your own conversations about boundaries more effective.

Perhaps in your current conversations you're getting distracted or avoiding the real issues at stake, in which case you should identify your most pressing issue and clarify that issue.

Or perhaps you're discussing that issue, but only in vague and abstract terms, in which case you should determine the current impact and future implications.

Or perhaps you're talking in concrete and tangible terms, but you're not making progress toward a solution, in which case the first step is to examine (and take responsibility for) your personal contribution.

Or perhaps you and the other party are (finally!) on the same page, but you just can't reach closure, in which case you should describe the ideal outcome and then commit to action to insure accountability.

Next Steps and Questions to Consider

• Where would stronger boundaries help?
• What conversations do you need to have to establish those boundaries?
• In what ways do you expect those conversations to be difficult?
• How might the Mineral Rights framework make those conversations more productive?
• Commit to having the most important conversations you need to have over the next three weeks with these concepts in mind, and assess their impact.

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As I noted at the beginning of this 3-part series (here's Part 1 on Happiness, and here's Part 2 on Excellence), these posts are based on a workshop I developed and presented to a group of leaders in Los Angeles a few months ago.  Once again, thanks to Mike Allison for the opportunity to work with a group of leaders he's been supporting for several years, and thanks to my Stanford colleagues Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, Lisa Schwallie and Ricki Frankel for the opportunity to collaborate with them and deepen my understanding of the topics addressed here.

And many, many thanks to social psychologists Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; business thinkers Peter Drucker, Seth Godin and Michael Gilbert; and executive coach Susan Scott--their original work is the basis for this series and has made it possible for me to be of much greater service to my own clients and students, and I'm deeply grateful.

Happiness, Excellence and Boundaries: A Framework for Leaders (Part 2 of 3)

This is Part 2 in a 3-part series of posts based on a workshop I developed and presented to a group of leaders in Los Angeles in June.  Here's Part 1, on Happiness (which includes a discussion of this series' fundamental premise), and here's Part 3, on Boundaries.

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II. Excellence, Signature Strengths and Strategic Quitting

Peter Drucker and Managing Oneself

Peter Drucker was one of the 20th century's foremost organizational thinkers, and his work has had a substantial influence not only on my approach to executive coaching but also on my own personal and professional development. Drucker's brilliant essay Managing Oneself, which I discussed earlier this year, was first published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999 and highlights the importance of focusing on our strengths:

One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

I find Drucker's article a valuable resource in helping my clients and students make decisions about their careers because it encourages us to answer three challenging questions:  What are my strengths?  What do I value? and Under what conditions do I do my best work?

I believe all three questions are equally important, but at the moment I want to focus on the first.  So ask yourself: What are my strengths? Where could I improve from first-rate performance to excellence? Where should I be focusing my energy, resources and time? Just as important, where am I wasting effort trying to improve from incompetence to mediocrity?

Martin Seligman and Signature Strengths

We can begin to address these questions by returning to the work of psychologist Martin Seligman (discussed previously in Part 1 of this series) and his concept of Signature Strengths. 

In seeking to understand the components of mental health Seligman and his colleagues identified six fundamental virtues which he describes as "the core characteristics endorsed by almost all religious and philosophical traditions [which, taken together,] capture the notion of good character."  These virtues are as follows--I've added definitions from Seligman in parentheses where I find them useful:

1.Wisdom and Knowledge

2. Courage ("The open-eyed exercise of will toward…worthy ends that are not certain of attainment.")

3. Love and Humanity

4. Justice

5. Temperance ("The appropriate and moderate expression of your appetites and wants.")

6. Transcendence ("Emotional strengths that reach outside and beyond you to connect you to something larger and more permanent.")

As Seligman notes, these six virtues "are unworkably abstract for psychologists who want to build and measure these things.  Moreover, for each virtue, we can think of several ways to achieve it, and the goal of measuring and building leads us to focus on these specific routes."  So he and his colleagues also  identified 24 traits associated with happiness, meaning and fulfillment--the practical means by which we exercise the primary virtues--which he calls strengths.  These traits share three characteristics:

• Like the primary virtues, these strengths are ubiquitous, valued by almost every culture around the world.
• The 24 strengths are learnable, meaning that they're not innate and can be developed.
• Finally, the strengths are voluntary, meaning that they're not automatic reflexes and must be intentionally exercised.

Here's a list of the 24 strengths that Seligman organizes in clusters under each of the primary virtues:

Wisdom and Knowledge

1. Curiosity / Interest in the World

2. Love of Learning

3. Judgment / Critical Thinking / Open-Mindedness

4. Ingenuity / Originality / Practical Intelligence / Street Smarts

5. Social Intelligence / Personal Intelligence / Emotional Intelligence

6. Perspective

Courage

7. Valor and Bravery

8. Perseverance / Industry / Diligence

9. Integrity / Genuineness / Honesty

Humanity and Love

10. Kindness and Generosity

11. Loving and Allowing Oneself to Be Loved

Justice

12. Citizenship / Duty / Teamwork / Loyalty

13. Fairness and Equity

14. Leadership

Temperance

15. Self-Control

16. Prudence / Discretion / Caution

17. Humility and Modesty

Transcendence

18. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

19. Gratitude

20. Hope / Optimism / Future-Mindedness

21. Spirituality / Sense of Purpose / Faith / Religiousness

22. Forgiveness and Mercy

23. Playfulness and Humor

24. Zest / Passion / Enthusiasm

Most of these traits are self-explanatory, but I refer you to Seligman's book Authentic Happiness for complete definitions that help to explain why he frequently buckets multiple traits as a single "strength."

What Are My Signature Strengths?

Seligman and his colleague Christopher Peterson devised a questionnaire that allows us to determine which of these traits are most important to us, known as the VIA (Values in Action) Survey of Character Strengths.  The complete, 240-question version of this survey is available online through the VIA Institute on Character and the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, which are both associated with Seligman.  A 48-question paper version is also available in Authentic Happiness, although it actually takes more time to complete than the longer online version because you have to score it yourself.  (I've completed all three, and I find the online versions more useful.  Registration with an email address is required at both sites, but it's a simple, straightforward process, and I've never received any spam from either organization as a result.)

These surveys rank the 24 strengths in order of their importance to us, but Seligman encourages us to also assess them qualitatively in order to be able to apply them most effectively.  He writes:

Look at the list of your top five strengths.  Most of these will feel authentic to you, but one or two of them may not be the real you...

I believe each person possesses several signature strengths.  These are strengths of character that a person self-consciously owns, celebrates, and (if he or she can arrange life successfully) exercises every day in work, love, play and parenting.  Take your life of top strengths, and for each one ask if any of these criteria apply:

• A sense of ownership and authenticity ("This is the real me")
• A feeling of excitement while displaying it, particularly at first
• A rapid learning curve as the strength is first practiced
• Continuous learning of new ways to enact the strength
• A sense of yearning to find ways to use it
• A feeling of inevitability in using the strength ("Try and stop me")
• Invigoration rather than exhaustion while using the strength
• The creation and pursuit of personal projects that revolve around it
• Joy, zest, enthusiasm, even ecstasy while using it

If one or more of these apply to your top strengths [as reported by the survey], they are signature strengths... Herein is my formulation of the good life: Using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of your life to bring abundant gratification and authentic happiness.

Seth Godin and Strategic Quitting

While I find Seligman's definition of the good life useful because it supports my sense of agency in the process of attaining fulfillment and happiness, I can also find that same quality overwhelming, particularly when things aren't going well--and when I may be susceptible to feeling that a lack of fulfillment or happiness is a deficiency on my part, as if I just weren't trying hard enough.

I'm reminded of another quote from Drucker's "Managing Oneself":

[M]ost people, especially highly gifted people, do not really know where they belong until they are well past their mid-twenties.  By that time, however, they should know the answers to the three questions: What are my strengths?  How do I perform?  and, What are my values?  And then they can and should decide where they belong.

Or rather, they should be able to decide where they do not belong... [Emphasis mine]

Drucker is pushing us to recognize that there are many careers and jobs that are not a good fit with our strengths, our values or the conditions under which we do our best work--and we need to be able to close doors, limit options and move forward in order to find those places where we do fit.  Given that many of my clients and students are making or considering a career transition and are looking to expand, not limit, their options, this concept can be both scary and liberating.

But what if you know you're in the right job, in the right career, on the right path...and you're still feeling unhappy or unfulfilled?  Perhaps rather than making a BIG change, you could make some little changes.  This leads me to the concept of "strategic quitting," a term from Seth Godin's 2007 book The Dip that I first discussed a few years ago.  Godin writes:

Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.  Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want. And most people do just that.  They quit when it's painful and stick when they can't be bothered to quit...

Strategic quitting is a conscious decision you make based on the choices available to you.  If you realize you're at a dead end compared with what you could be investing in, quitting is not only a reasonable choice, it's a smart one...

Coping is what people do when they try to muddle through... The problem with coping is that it never leads to exceptional performance... All coping does is waste your time and misdirect your energy.  If the best you can do is cope, you're better off quitting.  Quitting is better than coping because quitting frees you up to excel at something else...

Quit the wrong stuff.  Stick with the right stuff.

I find Godin's framework a useful parallel to Drucker's on a smaller scale.  Where Drucker is helping us chart our life by choosing (and rejecting) careers and jobs, Godin is helping us plan our days and weeks by sticking with (and quitting) projects, responsibilities, ventures.

In both cases they're encouraging us to focus--to focus our time, energy and attention on areas where we can deliver excellence.  In my experience most of us are over-committed, spreading ourselves too thin, and failing to deliver excellence where it really counts.  We're coping, when we should be quitting.  But what Drucker and Godin are saying is that only excellence matters. Improving from incompetence to mediocrity is worse than useless, because time and effort expended in those areas are being stolen from areas where excellence is within our grasp.

I find it liberating to think along these lines, not only in my professional life but also in my personal life.  Where can I deliver excellence?  Where should I expect excellence in return?  And how can I focus my time and energy to make this as likely as possible?

This allows me to do some strategic quitting--or even better, not to start misguided efforts in the first place--and substantially increase the return on my personal investments.  And even when I can't quit outright, I'm better able to set boundaries that put projects and activities in perspective and prevent them from hogging resources (most significantly, my finite time and energy) that they don't deserve.

And the real payoff comes when I bring my signature strengths to bear on the process of strategic quitting.  By understanding not only what skills I possess but also which skills I find particularly fulfilling to exercise, and then by focusing my time, energy and attention on activities where those skills are called upon--and by quitting those activities where they're NOT called upon--I find that I experience Seligman's definition of the good life more readily and with less effort.

Next Steps and Questions to Consider

• Take the VIA Survey of Character Strengths, online at the VIA Institute on Character or the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, or on paper in Seligman's Authentic Happiness.
• What are your Signature Strengths, and which ones are most meaningful to you?
• How can you make more effective use of your strengths to deliver excellence?
• Where are you merely coping rather than succeeding?
• How do these efforts correspond with your scores on the Strengths Survey?
• What strategic quitting can you do?
• Commit to employing your three most meaningful Signature Strengths more intentionally for three weeks and assess their impact.

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Again, here's Part 1 of this 3-part series, on Happiness (which includes a discussion of the series' fundamental premise), and here's Part 3, on Boundaries.

Continued thanks to my colleagues Mike Allison, Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, Lisa Schwallie and Ricki Frankel.  And many, many thanks to Peter Drucker, Martin Seligman, and Seth Godin--their work has made it possible for me to be of much greater service to my clients and students, and I'm tremendously grateful.

Happiness, Excellence and Boundaries: A Framework for Leaders (Part 1 of 3)

This is Part 1 in a 3-part series of posts based on a workshop I developed and presented to a group of leaders in Los Angeles in June.  (Here's Part 2, on Excellence, and here's Part 3, on Boundaries.)  The underlying concepts discussed here originate with social psychologists Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi; business thinkers Peter Drucker, Seth Godin and Michael Gilbert; and executive coach Susan Scott, and I'm deeply grateful to them for their influential and important work.

Thanks to my colleague Mike Allison for the opportunity to spend time with a group of people whose growth and development he's been supporting for the past few years, and many thanks to the members of that group for welcoming me into their community.  Thanks also to my Stanford colleagues Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, Lisa Schwallie and Ricki Frankel--the five of us worked together developing what eventually became Taking Stock and Moving Forward, an elective taught by Carole to second-year students at the Graduate School of Business.  I'd already been working with the concepts touched on in these posts for several years (and in this series I often revise passages from my earlier work), but the experience of collaborating with that team was incredibly educational and furthered my understanding immensely.

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Fundamental Premise

Happiness: Organizational success starts with leaders who feel a personal sense of happiness and fulfillment.  Not all successful organizations are led by happy people, and not all unsuccessful organizations are led by unhappy people (although I suspect the correlation is higher in the latter case), but I believe that, all else being equal, happy people make better leaders, and happy leaders build better organizations.  Research shows that we have a substantial degree of control over our levels of happiness and fulfillment, and we exercise that control most effectively through small-scale, consistent intentional activities, not through large-scale changes in our life circumstances.

Excellence: Leaders cultivate excellence in our organizations by striving for it ourselves. We achieve excellence most readily by focusing on our strengths and making the most of them, not by focusing on our weaknesses and seeking to overcome them.  In order to employ this approach, we first need to identify our "signature strengths," the traits that are most meaningful to us and in which we find the most fulfillment, and then we typically need to do some "strategic quitting," letting go of certain responsibilities or tasks in order to focus on others where excellence is obtainable.

Boundaries: The demands of leadership and the dynamic nature of work today inevitably make the concept of "life/work balance" seem out of reach--but "boundaries," not "balance," should be our goal.  Good boundaries allow leaders to live an integrated life, fulfilling our organizational responsibilities while insuring that our other needs are met as well.  But we can’t establish boundaries alone—we need to collaborate and communicate with others, a process that requires us to step into difficult conversations more effectively.

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Part I. Happiness and Intentional Activities

Martin Seligman and Positive Psychology

The field of psychology has, for the most part, focused on mental illness and its causes.  These efforts have met with success—we can effectively treat and in some cases fully cure most forms of mental illness.  But a consequence of this approach is that we know relatively less about mental health and its causes.

Beginning in the late 1980s and '90s, a number of psychologists recognized this gap in our understanding and turned their attention to the study of mental health, happiness and other forms of high functioning.  Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania was a leader in this group, and he's often credited as the father of "positive psychology," as this field of research came to be known.

Here's a brief example of the type of the research conducted by positive psychologists, drawn from Seligman's 2002 book Authentic Happiness:

Fordyce Emotions Questionnaire

Question 1: In general, how happy do you usually feel?  Pick the one statement that best describes your average happiness.

10. Extremely happy (feeling ecstatic, joyous, fantastic)

9. Very happy (feeling really good, elated)

8. Pretty happy (spirits high, feeling good)

7. Mildly happy (feeling fairly good & somewhat cheerful)

6. Slightly happy (just a bit above normal)

5. Neutral (not particularly happy or unhappy)

4. Slightly unhappy (just a bit below neutral)

3. Mildly unhappy (just a bit low)

2. Pretty unhappy (somewhat "blue," spirits down)

1. Very unhappy (depressed, spirits very low)

0. Extremely unhappy (utterly depressed, completely down)

Question 2: On average, what percent of the time do you feel happy?  What percent of the time do you feel unhappy?  What percent of the time do you feel neutral (neither happy nor unhappy)?

The percentage of time I feel happy:

The percentage of time I feel unhappy:

The percentage of time I feel neutral:

Average responses from a sample of 3,050 American adults

I'm not drawing any particular conclusions from this specific set of data, but I do find it a useful introduction to the quantitative measures of happiness developed by positive psychologists, a body of research that underlies the findings discussed in the next section.

Sonja Lyubomirsky and Happiness Strategies

Update, April 2015: Note that my understanding of Lyubomirsky's research has changed substantially since I wrote the passage below in 2010. Most significantly, the graph below shows the amount of variance in happiness among individuals in Lyubomirsky's research that can be predicted by heritable traits, life circumstances, and intentional activities. It does not indicate the extent to which these sources contribute to the happiness of a given individual. See the clarifications at the top of my 2009 post on The How of Happiness for further details.

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a social psychologist who studied with Seligman, completed her Ph.D. at Stanford and now teaches at UC Riverside, where she has been researching happiness for a number of years.  Lyubomirsky's work culminated in the 2008 book The How of Happiness, which I discussed extensively in February 2009 and which includes the following graph:

This image conveys three of the most important (and surprising) findings from positive psychology research:

1. Half of our happiness is attributable to a "genetic set point" inherited from our parents and similar to other genetically influenced predispositions, such as weight.  (As the graph indicates, the other half of our happiness is attributable to a combination of life circumstances and intentional activities.)  Lyubomirsky writes:

The set point for happiness is similar to the set point for weight. Some people are blessed with skinny dispositions: Even when they're not trying, they easily maintain their weight. By contrast, others have to work extraordinarily hard to keep their weight at a desirable level, and the moment they slack off even a bit, the pounds creep back on.

So those of us with low happiness set points will have to work harder to achieve and maintain happiness, while those of us with high set points will find it easier to be happy under similar conditions.  This framework fits with our current understanding of genetics in which the question of "Nature vs. Nurture?" has been supplanted by a model in which genes we possess are turned on or off by certain behaviors and factors in our environment.

2. A surprisingly small amount of our happiness—just 10 percent—is determined by our life circumstances.  Lyubomirsky continues:

[O]nly about 10 percent of the variance in our happiness levels is explained by differences in life circumstances or situations--that is, whether we are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, beautiful or plain, married or divorced, etc. If with a magic wand we could put [a group of people] into the same set of circumstances (same house, same spouse, same place of birth, same face, same aches and pains), the differences in their happiness levels would be reduced by a measly 10 percent.

Lyubomirsky notes that this finding runs contrary to many of our efforts to obtain happiness:

One of the great ironies of our quest to become happier is that so many of us focus on changing the circumstances of our lives in the misguided hope that those changes will deliver happiness… An impressive body of research now shows that trying to be happy by changing our life situations ultimately will not work.

Why do life changes account for so little? Because of a very powerful force that psychologists call hedonic adaptation…

Human beings are remarkably adept at becoming rapidly accustomed to sensory or physiologic changes. When you walk in from the bitter cold, the warmth of the crackling fire feels heavenly at first, but you quickly get used to it and may even become overheated… This experience is labeled physiological or sensory adaptation. The same phenomenon, however, occurs with hedonic shifts--that is, relocation, marriages, job changes--that make you happier for a time, but only a short time…

Human beings adapt to favorable changes in wealth, housing, and possessions, to being beautiful or being surrounded by beauty, to good health, and even to marriage…

Although we may achieve temporary boosts in well-being by moving to new parts of the country, securing raises, or changing our appearances, such boosts are unlikely to be long-lasting. The primary reason…is that people readily and rapidly adapt to positive circumstantial changes.

The implication is that almost all efforts to increase and maintain happiness through changes in life circumstances are doomed to fail. Even the most positive changes will eventually be taken for granted as we adapt to them, and their long-term impact on our happiness will be minimal.

3. Finally, the remaining 40 percent of our happiness is determined by our behavior--intentional activities that we might call "happiness strategies." This is the core of Lyubomirsky's thesis: We can't alter our genetic set points, and changes in life circumstances don't have a lasting impact on our happiness, but we can increase and sustain our happiness through intentional activities.  She concludes:

If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effect of our set points and the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person.

Twelve Happiness Strategies

The twelve activities described by Lyubomirsky as "evidence-based happiness-increasing strategies whose practice is supported by scientific research" include:

1. Expressing Gratitude: Counting your blessings for what you have (either to a close other or privately, through contemplation or a journal) or conveying your gratitude and appreciation to one or more individuals whom you've never properly thanked.

2. Cultivating Optimism: Keeping a journal in which you imagine and write about the best possible future for yourself or practicing to look at the bright side of every situation.

3. Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparison: Using strategies (such as distraction) to cut down on how often you dwell on your problems and compare yourself with others.

4. Practicing Acts of Kindness: Doing good things for others, whether friends or strangers, either directly or anonymously, either spontaneously or planned.

5. Nurturing Social Relationships: Picking a relationship in need of strengthening and investing time and energy in healing, cultivating, affirming and enjoying it.

6. Developing Strategies for Coping: Practicing ways to endure or surmount a recent stress, hardship or trauma.

7. Learning to Forgive: Keeping a journal or writing a letter in which you work on letting go of anger and resentment toward one or more individuals who have hurt or wronged you.

8. Increasing Flow* Experiences: Increasing the number of experiences at home and work in which you "lose" yourself, which are challenging and absorbing.

9. Savoring Life's Joys: Paying close attention, taking delight, and replaying life's momentary pleasures and wonders, through thinking, writing, drawing, or sharing with another.

10. Committing to Your Goals: Picking one, two, or three significant goals that are meaningful to you and devoting time and effort to pursuing them.

11. Practicing Religion and Spirituality: Becoming more involved in your church, temple or mosque or reading and pondering spiritually themed books.

12. Taking Care of Your Body: Engaging in physical activity, meditating and smiling and laughing.

These aren't the only meaningful happiness strategies, but they're all evidenced-based and supported by the research of Lyubomirsky and her colleagues, and together they constitute a list sufficiently broad so that each one of us can find the set of activities that's right for us as an individual.

* A note on "flow": The concept of "flow" has been the primary research topic of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Cheek-sent-me-high).  When we chart our mental state during activities that present us with a varying level of challenge relative to our skill--see below--we find that when our skill is substantially higher than the challenge being posed, we become bored.  Conversely, when the challenge is substantially higher than our skill, we become anxious.  And when the two are relatively balanced, we find ourselves in a state of "flow," where we lose track of time and become fully absorbed in the activity.  This is the state we're referring to when we say we're "in a groove" or "in the zone."  While Csikszentmihalyi's research has shown a number of advantages to cultivating opportunities to experience flow, Lyubomirsky's work shows that more flow experiences result in greater happiness.

What Strategies Are Right for You?

All of the happiness strategies listed above are potential options for us, but it's essential to choose strategies that best address the sources of our unhappiness, that take greatest advantage of our strengths, talents and goals, and that can be adapted most readily to our needs and lifestyle. In determining which happiness strategies are best for us, we should consider the following factors:

"Naturalness": Some strategies simply feel "natural" to us, making it easier for us to stick with them.

Enjoyment: Some strategies provide us with intrinsic enjoyment and seem both interesting and challenging to us.

Value: We inherently value and identify with some strategies, and would practice them freely even when it's not enjoyable.

Guilt: Strategies that work best don't induce feelings of guilt, shame or anxiety.

Situation: Finally, strategies that work best aren't mandated by our immediate situation, but are more universally applicable and can be practiced in many different contexts.

The How of Happiness contains a "Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic," which Lyubomirsky developed based on the work of psychologist Ken Sheldon to help you select the strategies that are the best fit for you based on the criteria above.  Lyubomirsky offers a short online version of the diagnostic, but I find the full version much more useful, although it's a little more time-consuming to complete.  Here's a printer-friendly paper version of the diagnostic (PDF, 35 KB, requires Adobe Reader).

Note that the bulk The How of Happiness describes each of the 12 strategies in detail, including the specific activities that have the greatest impact on happiness as well as certain limitations and challenges associated with each strategy.  For a full understanding of how to implement these strategies most effectively, I highly recommend reading the complete book.

Next Steps and Questions to Consider

• Complete Lyubomirsky's "Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic" online or on paper.
• What strategies feel like the best fit for you?
• How might you implement them in your own life?
• Commit to three strategies for the next three weeks and assess their impact.

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Here's Part 2 of this 3-part series, on Excellence and here's Part 3, on Boundaries.  Again, thanks to my colleagues Mike Allison, Andrea Corney, Carole Robin, Lisa Schwallie and Ricki Frankel.  And many, many thanks to Martin Seligman, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and their colleagues--their groundbreaking research into these topics has made it possible for me to be of much greater service to my clients and students, and I'm tremendously grateful.

Photo credits: "Happiness" by babasteve.  "Excellence" by neal_mcquaid.  "Boundaries" by lemoncat1.

I Found My Heart in San Francisco

Sometimes it's just obvious why certain people touch your heart.  A former student I know is spending much of this year pursuing personal projects and traveling before starting a new job at the beginning of 2011.

This week she's returning to San Francisco to celebrate her birthday, and here's what she wrote in her invitation:

Instead of receiving birthday presents, I would love to receive your wisdom in the form of answers to two questions:
 
"If I had three months of freedom, I would. . ." and
"When you finally move to San Francisco, make sure to. . ."

She's going to cover the walls of the party site in paper and have people write (graffiti?) their responses during the party.  Wow--what a beautiful idea.

My own responses to those questions?

If I had three months of freedom...I would find a cottage up in the hills of Inverness with a quiet garden and a view of Tomales Bay.  I'd spend each morning distilling what I've written here over the years into a narrative about coaching and change and growth; I'd spend each afternoon hiking the trails of Point Reyes; and I'd spend each evening cooking with Amy and looking up at the stars.

And when you finally move to San Francisco, spend as much time as you can in all the hidden wild corners of the city: Land's End, the Presidio, Tank Hill, Grand View Park, Golden Gates Heights Park, Fort Funston, the community garden at Fort Mason, the back side of Twin Peaks, Glen Canyon and the top of Strawberry Hill in the middle of Stow Lake.  These places (and more like them) touch my own heart so deeply and are ultimately what make me most happy to live here.

Happy Birthday!

Recharged

Even the most casual reader of this site may have noticed that it's been more than 4 months since my last post.

I typically post less frequently during the Summer, but this year I really, really needed to recharge.  After the deaths of Rich Wright, my father-in-law, and Roanak Desai, a student of mine, I was emotionally and physically depleted.

And while Amy and I got a much-needed break on a trip to Point Reyes in June, 2010 wasn't finished with us yet.  Amy had a second shoulder surgery in July and her recovery has been anything but healing.  She's back at work, but is fighting chronic pain and fatigue.  (Melanie Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles has been immensely helpful.)

The past few months have been difficult on a number of levels, and I just didn't have the energy to write.  But as my colleague Andrea Corney would say, times like this are an AFOG: Another Fucking Opportunity for Growth.  And in an unusual twist for me, I've grown by just letting myself recharge.

I've been very physically active, while allowing myself to take days off without guilt.  I've eaten a lot of really good food--including a heart-stopping number of Marin Sun Farms steaks and regular visits to The Moss Room.  I spent over a week with my parents, brothers and sisters-in-law back East doing little more than eating great meals together and then exercising the next day in order to keep up with my caloric intake.  Amy and I returned to Point Reyes and fulfilled a year-long wish by staying in Hi House, a breathtaking glass-walled modernist box on stilts in the middle of a pine meadow.  I put aside my professional reading and took up a new novel--Joseph O'Neill's Netherland--for the first time in ages.

But while all that play was essential to the recharging process, I've also been involved in some deeply rewarding work.  I held a seminar for nonprofit leaders in Los Angeles on "Happiness, Excellence and Boundaries," and co-facilitated a group with Carole Robin in Stanford's Interpersonal Dynamics for High-Performing Executives program.  And I worked more closely than ever with my beloved coach Mary Ann Huckabay and (unsurprisingly) found myself doing my best work as a coach with some amazing clients, who I feel incredibly privileged to be associated with.

Most importantly, Amy and I just spent a lot of time together, coming to terms with everything we've had to deal with this year, learning when we needed to be still and when we needed to push forward.  AFOG.

I've learned not to say, "I'm ready," because, really, I might not be.  Who knows what the hell we'll face tomorrow?  But I am eager--and, finally, recharged.

"Eveready" logo courtesy of The People's Logo Page.