【哈佛积极心理学笔记】第12讲 写日记

第12讲 写日记

1. preparation
2. incubation (take a break, need some rest time)
3. evaluation
4. elaboration

JP Morgan’s quote, I can do a year’s work in 9 months but not in 12"

a simple technique of intervation: journaling

Postive emotions and painful emotions flow through the same pipeline, if we stop sth which is painful, we were very often indirectly inadvertently also suppressing the positive emotions. Whereas here when they open up and allow these emotions to flow through them, they are essentially opening up a clogged channel, a clogged channel throught which emotions painful as well as positive emotions normally flow and experience higher levels of happiness. They were more opne, more generous as we saw also when you do the gratutude exercise.

man benefit more than woman because the lack of back support

why? opinion from Pennebaker

1. positive emotion. When you replaying it, you are fortifying the neural pathways. You reply it, you image it again and you make it more likely to happen again.
   That’s the self reinforcing nature of change.

negative emotion. Not just the painful emotions, the reason it helps is because of tension.
ironic processing, Daniel Wagner’s work from here.

This is the whole idea of suppression or repression.

2. coherence
   They made sense out of something that prehaps before that was senseless. In other words they created a story around their experiences. Because we can hold it, we can grasp it because it has a sense of coherence. I can deal with it, I can handle it.

“An artifact of an ambiguous and unpredictable world is the anxiety of not attaining completion and not understanding a simple cause and effect explanation for traumatic disturbances. Alas, we naturally search for meaning and completion of events. It gives us a sense of control and predictability over our lives.”

Aaron Antonovsky, came up with the notion of Salutogenesis, an alternative to the Pathogentic model, then came up with the notion of the sense of coherence:
People have sense of coherence about their lives, three components:

1. sense of comprehensibility:
   I understand the world, it make sense to me.
2. sense of manageability:
   I can deal with it.
3. sense of meaningfulness:
   This (some painful thing) was not in vain

To quote Pennebaker and to quote Antonovsky:
“A sense of coherence: A global orientation that expresses the extent to which one has a pervasive enduring though dynamic feeling of confidence. That one, the stimuli deriving from one’s internal and external enviroments in the course of living are structured, predictable and explicable. Two, the resources are available to one to meet the demands posed by these stimuli. And three, these demands are challenges worthy of investment and engagement.”

This is what journal does to a great extent.

Change is not easy. It is hard. It takes time. The process itself is extremely, potentially, extremely rewarding. Sometimes difficult. Potentially, very rewarding. The journey as well as the destination.

Goal setting

procrastinate v.拖延

Quite simply, people who set goals are generally controlling for other things more successful.
Also goals contribute to preformance and well-being because they strengthen our resilience.

Nietzche once wrote that if we have a “what for”, every “how” becomes possible.

Our minds does not like when there is an inconsistency between what is inside and what is outside. It wants there to be a match.
If I believe in a goal and I declare a goal, the outside is likely to match that.

present a goal - we co-create a reality.

It’s not thinking about is it possible or is it not possible. It’s rather how can I get over this wall. This questions opens up opportunities.

Necessity is the mother of inventions. If we ask the right questions, it opens up opportunities.

Words create the world.
Words have power. They have meaning, especially when the words are meaningful to us. When the goals we declare are meaningful to us, they are much more likely to come true.

etymological 词源学 metaphysical 理念

We need that goal, this outcome, this future orientation so that we can enjoy the present more.
The key is to learn to enjoy the process and one of the roles of goals is to liberate us so that we can enjoy the process. Goals are means toward the present end, which is taking a lot of goal theory and turning it around.

“Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain, nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain. Happiness it the experience of climbing toward the peak”. It is about having a destination in mind, and then let it go and enjoy the process.

The key is to have the goal, the key is to have the commitment to whatever it is that I’m doing.
Because when commitment it, that’s when we can enjoy the journey.

David Watson, in The handbook of positive psychology, “Contemporary research emphasizes that it is the process of striving after goals rather than goal attainment per se, that is crucial for happiness and positive affectivity”

Gwendolyn Brooks: Live not for battles won. Live not for the end of the song. Live for the along.

And the thing to keep in mind is that it doesn’t matter what I choose, what direction I’m going. If I choose something that is self-concordant, that is aligned with my personal goals and mission, I will lead a spiritual life.

Life is too short to do what I have to do, it’s barely enought to do what I want to do. And the sooner we start that want-to, the better.

Sometimes, we need to delay gratification. The danger is that we enter this delayed gratidication state for our entire lives. And that becomes the retrace path.

daffodil 黄水仙 fertilizing daffodils

So carpe diem. Do what you want.