Improved Lives

Boost Your Personal Growth by Learning a New Language

02Jul08

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Being from an officially bilingual country (Canada), I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn a new language, but I never really saw the point. English is common in so many places of the world, taking the time to learn a new language always seemed like a lot of effort for very little payoff.

This new study on the personalities of bilingual people, however, has me convinced that I should give a second language another try.

Researchers David Luna from Baruch College, New York, US, and Torsten Ringberg and Laura Peracchio from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US, found that women classified themselves and others as more assertive when they spoke Spanish than when they spoke English.

“In the Spanish-language sessions, informants perceived females as more self-sufficient and extroverted,” they say.

For example, one person saw the main character in the Spanish version of a commercial as a risk-taking, independent woman, but as hopeless, lonely, and confused in the English version.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t go in to a great deal of detail on how and why the personality change happens, but I have a few theories.

How language can change your personality

I think there are two probable reasons for how language can cause this personality change to occur:

I’m guessing that the change has something to do with the environment you learn the language in and the environment you use the language in. For example, in the study the researchers showed that Spanish women were assertive when they spoke Spanish. So where would they be speaking Spanish the most? At home probably, where they probably have family that they have to be assertive with.
Another possibility is the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis speculates that language influences how we understand and behave in the world around us. So language is like a lens that filters our experiences with the world. What this means is that someone who speaks Japanese will interact with and see the world differently than someone who speaks English. (I should mention that while most researchers accept that language does have some influence on how we see the world and interact with it, it is not clear how powerful that influence is)

So take French as an example. The way the French language is structured (I’ve been told) allows for much more intricate and nuanced conversation to take place. So a person that speaks both English and French might be more conversational, more outgoing, or more extroverted while speaking French.

What language would you learn?

I think I may take up French. It’s the other official language here in Canada, it’s one of the official languages of the UN, and the conversational image really appeals to me.

Further Reading:
-How Switching Language can Change your Personality at New Scientist

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Eight Steps Toward a More Satisfying Life

30Jun08

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This is a great list of tips on how to make life more satisfying from one of my favorite new positive psychologists, Sonja Lyubomirsky.

There aren’t a lot of surprises here, in fact I’ve touched on most of the things Sonja mentions in this list. But it’s good to see all these tips for creating a more satisfying life in a nice concise place like this.

One thing from the article that did really surprise me though was this:

In his extensive work on adaptation, Edward Diener has found two life events that seem to knock people lastingly below their happiness set point: loss of a spouse and loss of a job. It takes five to eight years for a widow to regain her previous sense of well-being. Similarly, the effects of a job loss linger long after the individual has returned to the work force.

I was surprised to see job-loss on there with losing a spouse. I certainly wouldn’t think to equate the two.

So Lyubomirsky’s list of tips for creating a more satisfying life is as follows:

Count your blessings - One way to do this is a “gratitude journal” in which you write down three to five things for which you are currently thankful-from the mundane (your peonies are in bloom) to the magnificent (a child’s first steps). Do this once a week, say, on Sunday night. Keep it fresh by varying your entries as much as possible.
Practice acts of kindness - These should be both random (let that harried mom go ahead of you in the checkout line) and systematic (bring Sunday supper to an elderly neighbor). Being kind to others, whether friends or strangers, triggers a cascade of positive effects-it makes you feel generous ad capable, gives you a greater sense of connection with others and wins you smiles, approval and reciprocated kindness-all happiness boosters.
Savor life’s joys - Pay close attention to momentary pleasures and wonders. Focus on the sweetness of a ripe strawberry or the warmth of the sun when you step out from the shade. Some psychologists suggest taking “mental photographs” of pleasurable moments to review in less happy times.
Thank a mentor - If there’s someone whom you owe a debt of gratitude for guiding you at one of life’s crossroads, don’t wait to express your appreciation-in detail and, if possible, in person.
Learn to forgive - Let go of anger and resentment by writing a letter of forgiveness to a person who has hurt or wronged you. Inability to forgive is associated with persistent rumination or dwelling on revenge, while forgiving allows you to move on.
Invest time and energy in friends and family - Where you live, how much money you make, your job title and even your health have surprisingly small effects on your satisfaction with life. The biggest factor appears to be strong personal relationships.
Take care of your body - Getting plenty of sleep, exercising, stretching, smiling and laughing can all enhance your mood in the short term. Practiced regularly, they can help make your daily life more satisfying.
Develop strategies for coping with stress and hardships - There is no avoiding hard times. Religious faith has been shown to help people cope, but so do the secular beliefs enshrined in axioms like “this too shall pass” and “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. The trick is that you have to believe them.

Taking care of my body is one I’ve really been focusing on lately (along with the #1, the gratitude journal) and I’ve noticed some definite improvements in my general attitude.

Related to that, one thing I notice about lists like this is that it’s kind of overwhelming to see all these things you should be doing to enhance your satisfaction with life. My suggestion is to pick one or two that really appeal to you and focus on them. Don’t get overwhelmed and give up, start small!

Further Reading:
- You can read the whole article, which is an excellent one, here (page 1) and here (page 2) - It’s scanned from the actual magazine it appeared in, but is still very readable.

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Brad Blanton and the Radical Honesty Movement

28Jun08

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Today I’ve got another inspirational person story, although to tell you the truth I’m not sure how many more of these I’m going to be able to do as it seems that living life well isn’t grounds for becoming famous, and so I’m running out of material. Anyway…

Most of us treasure honesty and the trust that it brings, but really, how honest are we?

This post is about Dr. Brad Blanton and his Radical Honesty movement. As an introduction, here’s A.J. Jacobs from Esquire magazine:

Here’s the truth about why I’m writing this article:

I want to fulfill my contract with my boss. I want to avoid getting fired. I want all the attractive women I knew in high school and college to read it. I want them to be amazed and impressed and feel a vague regret over their decision not to have sex with me, and maybe if I get divorced or become a widower, I can have sex with them someday at a reunion. I want Hollywood to buy my article and turn it into a movie, even though they kind of already made the movie ten years ago with Jim Carrey. I want to get congratulatory e-mails and job offers that I can politely decline. Or accept if they’re really good. Then get a generous counteroffer from my boss.

To be totally honest, I was sorry I mentioned this idea to my boss about three seconds after I opened my mouth. Because I knew the article would be a pain in the ass to pull off. Dammit. I should have let my colleague Tom Chiarella write it. But I didn’t want to seem lazy.

What I mentioned to my boss was this: a movement called Radical Honesty.

The movement was founded by a sixty-six-year-old Virginia-based psychotherapist named Brad Blanton. He says everybody would be happier if we just stopped lying. Tell the truth, all the time. This would be radical enough — a world without fibs — but Blanton goes further. He says we should toss out the filters between our brains and our mouths. If you think it, say it. Confess to your boss your secret plans to start your own company. If you’re having fantasies about your wife’s sister, Blanton says to tell your wife and tell her sister. It’s the only path to authentic relationships. It’s the only way to smash through modernity’s soul-deadening alienation. Oversharing? No such thing.

Radical Honesty sounds thrilling and fun in a very radical sort of way, and to a degree it is:

In his book, Blanton talks about the thrill of total candor, the Space Mountain-worthy adrenaline rush you get from breaking taboos. As he writes, “You learn to like the excitement of mild, ongoing risk taking.”

Is Radical Honesty practical though?

It certainly qualifies as personal growth, but to me, personal growth must be practical or it simply isn’t useful. I really love the idea of being honest all the time, of just turning off the filter and letting it all come out. I think though that I would be fired and would alienate all my friends and room mates within a week if I was honest all the time like Blanton describes.

So no, for the average person Radical Honesty doesn’t seem practical.

But there is still a lesson to be learned here

Part of the lesson that Blanton is trying to get across with Radical Honesty is that we have to be more honest with ourselves. We buffer ourselves from the truth when we lie to ourselves but for anyone looking for personal growth the truth is exactly what is needed. Anything less than the truth limits our potential personal growth.

I think that we could all do with a little more honesty in our social lives as well. One of the more useful things you can do to facilitate personal growth is shake up your personal life. When you step out of your routine or take a chance and do something provocative you create new interactions and new opportunities in your life.

For example, Blanton uses his Radical Honesty approach to pick up women, and according to him it works. That may not be a very virtuous application of Radical Honesty but I think it demonstrates its potential quite well.

By being honest to both himself (by acknowledging his desire for companionship and sex) and the women he is approaching he creates opportunities and interactions in his life that did not previously exist.

Lastly, I highly encourage you to go over to the Esquire site and read A.J. Jacobs article on Radical Honesty entititled I Think You’re Fat, it’s well written, informative, and absolutely hilarious.

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How to Make a Personal Growth Lesson Stick

25Jun08

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I would like you to think about how many personal growth articles you have read. Now add to that all the videos you’ve watched, and all the books you’ve bought, and all the other personal growth lessons you’ve learned from anywhere and everywhere.

Now think about how many of those personal growth lessons really stuck with you and are still with you today.

I’m guessing that the number of personal growth lessons you wanted to apply to your life is a lot bigger than the number of personal growth lessons you actually did apply to your life.

Getting personal growth lessons to stick is a lot harder than learning about them, but there is a way to make it more likely that they will stick.

A lesson from Tal Ben-Shahar

I came across this trick while watching a video of Tal Ben-Shahar lecturing to his positive psychology class at Harvard. Tal tells a story about how at one point he was giving positive psychology talks to various groups across the country and he was curious about how many of the people attending his talks were actually taking the personal growth lessons he was describing and applying them to their lives.

To test this, Tal, being a psychologist, created an experiment. He went back after a few months and talked to people who had attended his talks and he asked them if they had applied any of the personal growth lessons he had talked about.

What he found was that the ones who had gotten the personal growth lessons to stick were the ones who had gone out and made changes in their lives right after the talk.

The people who had the most success changing their lives were the ones who did it right away.

“I’ll do it tomorrow” is the enemy

It turns out that when you hear about some really great personal growth lesson, the quicker you apply the lesson the more likely it is to stick. If you wait even a day, your excitement and your enthusiasm start to fade and it’s not long before that great personal growth lesson is nothing but a distant memory.

So if you want your personal growth lessons to stick don’t put them on the back burner. Don’t tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow, or you’ll do it when you’re in the right frame of mind, or you’ll do it when it’s more convenient.

Don’t wait, make changes happen now!

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How You can Participate in Real Positive Psychology Studies

23Jun08

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Some of the studies I’ve talked about on this blog have been really fascinating, and I’ve wished more than once that I could have had the opportunity to participate in some of them.

Well, now I can, and so can you!

I can’t believe I didn’t catch on to this sooner, but one of the big positive psychology websites out there actually has a list of studies being done that can be participated in over the internet by anyone. I haven’t signed up for them yet (I’m going to sign up for all of them) but I imagine they don’t take too much time to do, and they’re sure to give you something to think about.

One of the best things about these though is that you can actually request the results of the study once it’s over. So not only can you participate, you can learn about the study you were participating in too!

I for one am really excited about this, and I can’t wait to participate in these. I believe very strongly that science and research can teach us a lot about ourselves and about personal growth, and there’s no better way to learn something than by doing it.

In particular though, I would like to challenge all the people out there who never seem to have the motivation or the time to bother with personal growth to sign up for one of these. It probably wont take much time to participate and I have a hunch that learning about how the study you participated in affected you, even at an unconscious level, might make you realize that even small little things can make a big difference in your life.

Currently there are four studies open for participation, and I will be posting about it when new ones become available. The four are:

Domain-Specific Self-Control Study - Self-control is generally assumed to be a global trait that is stable across domains. For example, someone who has high self-control with food should also demonstrate high self-control with alcohol, finances, work, and other domains as well. However, some people seem to be high in self-control in some domains and low in others. In this study, you can help us understand the domain-specificity of self-control.
Friendship and Well-Being Study - Few studies have looked at the relationship between friendship patterns and well-being among adults. In this study, you can help us understand how the friendship patterns people have relate to their well-being.
Grit Study - Grit is a particular orientation to long-term goals. In this 10-minute study, you can help us understand how grit relates to other personality traits such as extraversion and openness to experience.
Thoughts People Have Study - This survey is about topics that people think about, and the way they feel when doing so. We will ask you about certain topics and would like to hear about your experience. Your candid responses will help us understand this often neglected part of people’s lives.

To participate in these studies, go here.

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A Crucial Lesson From J.K. Rowling

21Jun08

Last week I talked about the importance of inspirational people and their stories, and I want to do that again today.

Most, if not all of you have heard of J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series. I’m sure most of you have also heard of the almost fairytale circumstances under which she rode the fame of her books out of extreme poverty.

Rowling was the recent Harvard commencement speaker and in her speech she elaborates beautifully on the life lessons she learned from several different facets of her life. The part I found most interesting though was the lessons she had learned from failure.

I’m a big fan of failure, I think it’s an invaluable part of life. I think success feels good, but failure teaches us something. Rowling takes that and makes it personal, she talks about how she lost everything and hit rock bottom, and how all that loss gave her the freedom to pursue the things she really wanted.

I think that’s a poignant lesson. We tend to insulate ourselves with cheap entertainment and a million little distractions, but strip it all away and what are you left with?

So here is Rowling’s Harvard commencement address. She takes a minute or two to get going but it’s well worth it, she really is an inspirational person with an inspirational story.

J.K. Rowling Harvard Commencement Address Part 1 of 2

J.K. Rowling Harvard Commencement Address Part 2 of 2

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What Neuroplasticity can Teach us About Personal Growth

18Jun08

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I’ve been reading a lot about sleep lately (which has some really amazing personal growth potential I think, but that’s a whole other post) and one of the topics that I see coming up again and again is neuroplasticity.

Now I know brain science stuff doesn’t seem like it would have that much to do with personal growth or positive psychology or any of the other topics covered here on Improved Lives, but it does. In fact, without neuroplasticity personal growth probably wouldn’t work at all.

A Quick History Lesson

Up until 15 or 20 years ago the general consensus was that your brain grew and developed all through childhood and into the teens and maybe a tiny bit in the early twenties, and then it stopped. It was kind of like cement: it was easily manipulated at first, but as time passed it became harder and harder to shape, until eventually it was simply impossible.

What neuroscientists have discovered, however, is that they were completely wrong. The brain can and does change up until the day you die.

What Neuroplasticity Means for Personal Growth

Neuroplasticity is quite simply the thing that makes personal growth possible. We talk about making changes in our lives and evolving into better versions of ourselves but neuroplasticity is the thing that actually makes it happen. And the most interesting part is that it only works if you put consistent effort into it. Your brain will only rewire itself, or in other words you will only achieve personal growth, if you put consistent effort into it.

To explain how neuroplasticity works to rewire the brain I am going to use a metaphor I heard from Tal Ben-Shahar, a positive psychology researcher and lecturer at Harvard and a personal hero of mine.

Tal explains that building new connections in the brain is a bit like building a river. When you do something like introduce a new habit in to your life, like meditating for instance, the new connections in the brain that are created as a result of that start out as just a little trickle, a tiny little stream.

As you practice and reinforce the habit, the connections in your brain get more established and our metaphorical stream gets more water and a deeper, more permanent stream bed.

Eventually, once your new habit has become completely integrated in to who you are, the stream is a river, with huge amounts of water and a river bed that is almost impossible to get rid of.

This means the new connections in your brain are firm and established, like the river, and even if the water stops flowing, the river bed will remain there for a long time, should you ever choose to send some more water down it again.

That is, in a nut shell, how neuroplasticity works. It gradually reshapes the brain. It doesn’t happen over night, it takes a long time. But if you stick it out, if you keep trying to change and you keep building that stream in to a river you will become the person you want to be.

Further Reading:
- Brain Plasticity at Wikipedia

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How Personal Growth can Help You Age Well

16Jun08

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Through the grapevine I heard about this wonderful book (I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds very good) that came out recently on aging well, which showed that living the kind of happy, fulfilled life that I talk about here at Improved Lives will, in combination with a few other things, predict health and longevity 30 or more years in to the future.

The book, which is called Aging Well: Surprising Guideposts to a Happier Life from the Landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development, is based on a research study done at Harvard that recruited 800 participants as teenagers and followed them for their entire lives!

They, found, amazingly enough, that aging well is NOT predicted by:

Your gene pool
Your cholesterol level
Your stress level
Your parents’ social class, marriage success, IQ, etc.
Your childhood temperament
Your degree of positive affect and social ease

Instead, aging well is predicted by a mixture of 6 lifestyle qualities and 4 personality traits. The 6 lifestyle qualities are:

Never smoking or stopping young
Adaptive coping (turning lemons into lemonade)
No alcohol abuse
A stable marriage
12+ years of education
Not being overweight and getting some regular exercise

Pretty easy right? There’s nothing drastically hard on that list and I think a lot of us are probably already living that lifestyle. The only one I’m missing is the marriage, ladies……?

The 4 personality traits that predict aging well are:

Hope and Optimism - A future orientation and the ability to plan positively
Gratitude and Forgiveness - The capacity for both
Empathy - The ability to see the world through the eyes of another
Kindness and Social Intelligence - The desire to do things with and for other people

Again, these aren’t personality traits that are drastically hard to achieve and maintain. I would say that in my personal growth ‘career’ I’ve made a great deal of progress in all 4 of these areas, and I’m betting a lot of you could say that too.

If you want to see a few exercises you can do in your daily life to help promote these personality traits, take a look at this post.

I think the biggest thing you can do though is to be mindful of yourself and what you’re doing and actively try to embrace these traits in your daily life. Remember that to truly adopt these traits means making them a part of who you are, whether they’re convenient in the moment or not.

Further Reading:
- The Happy-Well: Positive Psychology Tips for Living Well and Longer by Sherri Fisher - This is a great article and has convinced me to give this book a try.

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What You Need to Know About Money

15Jun08

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“Wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.” - Aristotle

Aristotle was exactly right, but it seems as if we haven’t really learned his lesson in the more than 2000 years since he was around.

Lets be clear, money is a token. Green paper does not have any value in and of itself, it is simply a medium between us and the things we want.

Now this is obvious and most people would consider it common sense, but this study called Medium Maximization found that we value the tokens (money) just like we value the things the tokens get us.

The researchers did an experiment to test what effect, if any, tokens would have on the decision making process of participants:

The researchers set up a situation similar to one that a lot of people have probably experienced. They gave people the option of two rewards, and reward #2 was only slightly better than reward #1, but the tokens needed to achieve reward #2 were significantly more than the tokens needed to achieve reward #1. The researchers found that the significantly larger amount of tokens available for reward #2 actually helped convince people to take it instead of reward #1.

This is very similar to a situation most of us encounter in the job world. Most of us would gladly take a job that required a lot more effort and rewarded us with a lot more tokens (money), despite the fact that our happiness level would probably increase very little. In fact, spending all that time and effort collecting tokens might even distract us from the things that make us happy, which would make us less happy in the end.

So the research shows that we are, unfortunately, naturally inclined to want to collect money, regardless of whether or not we know what to do with that money when we get it. And our society reinforces this inclination: we are lead to believe we need to collect money, and to a certain extent we do. We need it because it is between us and the things we want, not simply because it is worth collecting.

The lesson here is that you must set goals and put your money to work.

Don’t collect money because it seems like the right thing to do, rather set goals for your money. What are the things you want? What are the experiences you want to have? Make enough money to get those things and then get them!

Further Reading:
- Medium Maximization (pdf) by Christopher K Hsee, Fang Yu, Jiao Zhang, and Yan Zhang

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The Power of Inspirational People and Their Stories

13Jun08

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I find that one of the most effective tools for achieving personal growth is finding out about inspirational people and their stories. Hearing about a person who has broken the mold and created their own amazing path in life never fails to make me re-examine my own life and realize how I could be doing the same.

I wasn’t sure if I should post this kind of stuff though, as those stories wouldn’t quite be in line with the theme of this blog, which is how to use psychology for personal growth. Recently, however, I came across this survey by a couple of positive psychology researchers that changed my mind.

The two researchers did an internet poll of almost 1500 adults interested in positive psychology (which is the personal growth version of psychology) and asked them what they wanted to know about positive psychology. They found that what most people wanted was:

compelling case examples of actual people who lived life well, who embodied the strengths of character that we have been studying with quantitative methods.

I think that’s an excellent way to approach it. Inspirational stories are often centered around people who have done great things in business, made a lot of money, or accomplished an impressive list of things. It’s much less often that we hear about people who have lived their lives well, and embodied the values that lead not to a successful life, but to a happy life. (Of course the two are by no means mutually exclusive, you can be both happy and successful)

So I’m going to try and make Fridays Inspirational People and Stories Day. What I hope to do is tell you about people who are actually out there living the kind of of happy life we would all like to be living.

And as this is Friday, the first inspirational person profile starts right now. I hope it’s as inspiring to you as it was to me.

A marvelous example of what it means to live well: Carnegie Mellon Computer Science Professor Randy Pausch, whose “last lecture” is all over the Internet (e.g.. www.randypausch.com) [Or the bottom of this post]. Lots of universities, including my own, feature an annual “last lecture” in which award-winning teachers are asked to imagine that they are near death and to convey their final thoughts to students. I hope we all have the decency to retire the title, because now there is but one last lecture, the one by Professor Pausch.

In case you have been living under a rock, at the time of the lecture and at the time of my writing, he is dying, the victim of an aggressive pancreatic cancer. His last lecture was not maudlin, not saccharine, not filled with false bravado. It was simply wonderful. Five minutes into my watching, I forgot that he was dying. What captivated me was how he was living.

I watched his last lecture wearing many hats. As a teacher, I was inspired. As a lecturer, I was filled with admiration. As a human being, I was proud.

Watch it yourself. No summary I could offer would do it justice.

I completely agree, no summary would do it justice. The video is about his life and what he has accomplished but what really stands out is how he lived that life.

Randy Pausch is a truly inspiring person and his last lecture captures that perfectly. It’s long (1:16:27) but it has over 2 million views on YouTube, and with good reason. If you watch the whole thing you wont be disappointed.