Positive Psychology : The Greatest Hits - Comfort PitJon Brooks / Positive Psychology: The Greatest Hits / 4 we can achieve anything, the more books there will be written for those…

Jon Brooks / Positive Psychology: The Greatest Hits / 1


From Jon Brooks:POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY : THE GREATEST HITS

I wrote Positive Psychology: The Greatest Hits to create a free guide that would help people like you become more productive, happier, creative and healthier. You are welcome to share it with anyone you think it would benefit.

Many of the principles in this guide, I learnt from Dr. Tal-Ben Shahar’s Harvard Lectures, he’s one of the leading teachers in positive psychology. I dedicate this guide to him, and thank him for inspiring me to become the change I wish to see in the world.

For more ideas on how to improve your self efficacy, master your creative process and simplify your health and fitness, you can visit ComfortPit.com or join my free newsletter at:http://comfortpit.com/free-updates

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Chapter 1Destructive Emotions

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

—Reinhold Niebuhr

The Golden Rule of Self-Improvement

The famous 18th Century psychologist William James came up with the following formula:

James believed that when we expect more from ourselves than we manage to achieve, we end up feeling very bad.*

In support of this view, the best-selling philosopher Alain De Botton made the observation in his TED talk on the philosophy of success1 that in the majority self-help isles in bookstores today, there are two main categories:

1) Books that tell you that you can achieve anything.2) Books that tell you how to cope with low self-esteem.

De Botton believes that these two types of self-help books are deeply correlated and that the more books there are telling us


we can achieve anything, the more books there will be written for those… who don’t.

According to sociologist Emile Durkheim more people commit suicide in meritocratic Western societies like America and the United Kingdom than anywhere else in the world.2

Now, I assume you’re reading this because you want to be a better person. Perhaps you want to be happier, smarter, more productive, and healthier. I know I do. And that’s what this guide is all about…

But I can tell you right now, the principles in this guide will not work for you, or anyone else, if you do not obey the first and most important commandment of positive psychology.

And that is:

“Thou must give thyself the permission to be human.”

You see, self-help is a double edged sword. On one hand it can really help us. It can teach us how our minds and bodies work, and direct us in improving them.

But it can also, as we’ve seen from William James’s equation, cause us untold grief when our expectations don’t match our achievements.


And who expects more from themselves than somebody who’s spent hundreds of hours studying how to achieve more than the average person?

When you study how to become happier, more motivated, and passionate and you wake up one day feeling none of the above, the tendency is to try and suppress the negativity.

This is a terrible idea.

You see, when we don’t give ourselves permission to be human and experience our full myriad of negative emotions - the good and the bad- we prevent ourselves from experiencing the full myriad of positive emotions.

When we get good at suppressing our negative emotions we inadvertently get good at suppressing the positive ones.

Just like a Botox injection for the soul.

Ironic Mental Processing

“Don’t think of a white bear.”

Psychologist Daniel Wegner and colleagues performed a series of experiments in which participants tried to actively suppress thoughts3 by being told things like, ‘don’t think of a white bear.’


What they found was that asking someone to suppress a thought gave them high rates of intrusive thoughts about the topic they were trying to suppress.

The more they tried not to think about it, the more they did.

The only way to reverse the intensity was to simply accept the thought; then it weakens and dissipates. Buddhists have been telling us this for years, now we’ve got the science to support their claims. (More on buddhism later).

How to Suffer Successfully

Psychologist John Medina in his book Brain Rules for Babies explains that one of the keys to bringing up well behaved, happy children is to never judge their emotions, only their behaviour.

If your child is angry, that’s absolutely fine. If they throw a plate at the wall, that’s not fine. See the logic?

Children are just little versions of us. There is nothing wrong with feeling anger. What we do when we’re angry needs to be moderated, but no feelings by themselves are bad.

Harvard’s lecturer on positive psychology, Dr. Tal-Ben Shahar explains:

“Painful emotions are as much a part of human nature as the law of gravity is to physical nature and yet we accept the latter and reject the former. And we pay a very high price for it.”


But negative emotions are not just important to embrace so that we can feel happiness. Philosophers have long known that, often times, suffering is necessary for success.

Think of most of the typical things people would list as things that would improve their life.

Losing weight, getting into a relationship, having children, starting a business, writing a novel, etc. All of these will require an innate level of suffering and uncomfortableness before the goal is reached.

German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a big fan of suffering:

“If you are unwilling to endure your own suffering even for an hour, and continually forestall all possible misfortune, if you regard as deserving of annihilation, any suffering and pain generally as evil, as detestable, and as blots on existence, well, you have then, besides your religion of compassion, yet another religion in your heart (and this is perhaps the mother of the former)- the religion of comfortableness. Ah, how little you know of the happiness of man, you comfortable and good-natured ones! For happiness and misfortune are brother and sister, and twins, who grow tall together, or, as with you, remain small together!”

This is not to say that you should passively resign to negative emotions. No, you actively resign and take he appropriate course of action.


“I feel depressed right now. That’s okay, feeling depressed is part of life. What can I do? Maybe I’ll call a friend or watch a movie.”

So just remember, the effectiveness of the rest of this guide rests on the foundation of giving yourself the permission to be human.

Allow your happiness and unhappiness to grow tall together. Or as Nietzsche forewarns, they’ll remain small together.

*William James’ model of self-esteem doesn’t take into account our self-esteem ‘set-point,’ or how learning to cope with bad emotions is just as important as taking actions that give us positive ones. In the context of this chapter, however, his formula is valid.


Chapter 2Stress Kills Productivity

“I can do the work of a year in 9 months, but not in 12” — J. P. Morgan

Ever year a survey called The National College Health Assessment is carried out nationwide. Year after year roughly 45% of students report being depressed to the point that it’s difficult to function and 80% percent feel overwhelmed.4

Not exactly American Pie 2.

While we’re learning more and more about depression is, something strange seems to be happening. We are getting more and more depressed, and at younger ages.

In the 1960s the average age for the onset of depression was 29. In 2013 the average age for the onset of depression was 14.

The self-help movement which tells us ‘you can do anything,’ as I explained in chapter one, could be partly responsible for lowering our self-esteem. It turns out it could also, indirectly, be making us more depressed.

Never before have people been so obsessed with the concept of ‘productivity.’ Doing more in less time, so we can do more in the time we save seems like a wonderful idea. And it is, if you don’t mind being depressed.


When we have too much to do we feel stressed, and overtime, if this stress persists, it leads to depression.

But not just depression. Stress also weakens our immune system. Very often after a very stressful situation at work or at school we become sick. And people also lose their levels of creativity as a result of stress. Thinking narrowly as opposed to broadly.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, the real way to create sustaining productivity is to do less rather than more. To simplify.

Professor Daniel Kahneman from Princeton, a nobel prize winner in economics, conducted a study wanting to understand the emotional experiences of women (the results apply as much to men).

He measured women’s emotional experiences when they were at work, when they were having lunch, when they were with their romantic partners, when they were with their children, when they were shopping, working, leisure, etc.

What Kahneman found, to everyone’s surprise, was that these women did not particularly enjoy spending time with their children.5

They probed further and discovered that it wasn’t the fact that these women did not love their kids. For most of these women their children were the most meaningful part of their lives…


It was that these women were not really with their kids.

They were physically present but at the same time they were on the phone or doing email, or thinking about what they did earlier or what they have to do later.

So while they were physically present, they were not really there. They may have enjoyed talking to their friends or doing emails or spending time with their children but when all of these things came together, it was too much of a good thing. Quantity affects quality.

“Think about the following analogy. Think about your favourite piece of music. You’re listening to Whitney Houston’s I will always Love you. And then you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and you give it a straight 10. And then you listen to your second most favourite piece of music. The chorus piece from Beethoven’s ninth and once again you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and it’s a 9.5. And then for maximal effect, you play them together. And what do you get? A 19.5 right? No, not a 10, not even a 5. It’s noise! That’s modern life for you.”

— Dr. Tal-Ben Shahar, positive psychologist

The golden mantra of productivity:

“100% Attention = 100% Performance.”

The days of multitasking are dead. If you’re still not convinced, check out these two studies:


Distractions Make You Dumb

In a study conducted in University of London found that people who had their email on while doing work that required concentration lost an equivalent 10 IQ points. If you haven’t slept for 36 hours, you’ve been up all night, that’s 10 IQ points. If you smoke marijuana, you lose 4 IQ points.6

The Power Of Doing Less

Leslie Perlow, professor at Harvard Business School showed that knowledge workers who took as little as an hour and a half a day of focus time (time without distractions) not only were happier at work, but were more creative and productive overall that those who worked regular hours. 7

The Stress Solution

The heading of this section is a little misleading because stress isn’t really the problem. Stress is often good for us.

Lifting weights causes us stress and as a result it makes us stronger. Getting out of our comfort pits causes us stress too and that makes us more confident and resilient.

Stress is not the problem. Lack of recovery is the problem.


The problems come when we lift weights without taking a break. Or work hard without getting sufficient sleep. Input is just as important as output. Expansion just as important as contraction.

Successful people experience stress, but they recover.

What we need to do is make recovery ritualised. We need to plan our to-not do lists, as much as our to-do lists.

Ritualised Recovery

There are three levels of recovery that we need to pay particular attention too:

1) Micro - 15 minutes

Focus time as we’ve seen is more beneficial for productivity and overall wellbeing. Studies also show that when we’re learning a skill, taking breaks accelerates the process.

2) Mezzo - sleep, or day off

Sleep is a great investment. It makes you more productive, and more creative. People who take a day off often get more done overall.

3) Macro - week/months off


As J.P Morgan said “I can do the work of a year in 9 months, but not in 12.” When we work at something for a long time, even if we enjoy it, we get sick of it and crave escape. By taking systematic holidays you’ll not only flush the stress out of your system, you’ll also start to focus more on what you like about your work, that what you don’t.

Ritualise your recovery, turn off your email, and avoid multitasking. You’ll get more done, in less time and you’ll be happier.


Chapter 3Mindfulness Meditation

If I had to limit my advice on healthier living to just one tip, it would be simply to learn how to breathe correctly.

— Andrew Weil, MD

Meditation has been around for thousands of years, but for most of that time it’s been practiced mainly by monks in spiritual settings.

Over the last few decades, however, scientists have started to discover that meditation is one of the most powerful interventions for anxiety and depression we have.

The Meditator’s Brain

Thanks to modern technology such as the EEG and MRI scanners, scientists are now able to take an in-depth analysis of the brains of people who have been meditating for decades.

In one such study, they took the right hand men of the Dalai Lama and examined the ratio of their left to right prefrontal cortex activity.

People who have more activation on the left side of their prefrontal cortex tend to be happier, while those with more activation on their right side tend to be more broody and depressed.


If you look at a bell curve, most people fall somewhere in the middle. When they looked at the meditators, they were quite literally off the chart.

The monks had an extremely high ratio between their left and right prefrontal cortex activity. They had extreme susceptibility to positive emotions and extreme resilience in the face of negative emotions.8

Did I Startle You?

With the same group of meditators, they also studied what’s called the startle response. When there is a loud bang we flinch. Even marksman in the military who shoot guns everyday still flinch slightly when their gun goes off. Impossible to suppress… or so they thought.

They brought in these meditators and asked them to stay completely calm. Then they startled them. They didn’t flinch. This was the first time in recorded history when someone was able suppress the startle response.9

What Does this mean?

“Given that the larger someones startle, the more intensely that person tends to experience upsetting emotions, Oser’s performance [the meditator] had tantalising implications suggesting a remarkable level of emotional equanimity.”

— Daniel Goleman, Social Pyshcologist


This is great. But does that mean I have to become a monk to reap the same benefits?

No.

8 Weeks To Enlightenment

Researchers Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richie Davidson brought in a group of people who were interested in mediation.10 They randomly divided them into two groups:

1) First group: received 8 weeks of meditation for 45 minutes every day.

2) The second: waited 8 weeks for a their meditation course to begin.

After just 8 weeks, these were the results:

• The group that meditated had a significant decrease in anxiety and an increase in positive emotions.

• They scanned their brains and found that the meditators brains had literally changed. They had a much higher left-to-right prefrontal cortex ratio.

• They injected the participants with cold bacteria. The ones that had been meditating recovered much faster than those who did not. Meditation improved their immune system.


“One of the take home messages of our study is that you do not have to be a buddhist monk and move to the himalayas in order to benefit from these kinds of very powerful meditation practices. It can be done in the workplace, in a regular life and one’s brain will actually change in response to it. One’s immune system will actually change in response to it.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

How To Meditate

Getting started with meditation can be a little overwhelming.

Not only is it hard for the western people to relate to eastern philosophy, there are so many options…

Yoga, sitting mediation, mantra meditation, prayer, tai chi, binaural beats, body scanning, walking meditation, eating meditation… and hundreds more.

The truth is meditation isn’t complicated. It’s really all the same thing served up in different packages.

Let’s simplify and look at the three components that are common to nearly all forms of meditation:

1) One pointedness. Focusing on one thing.

2) Deep breathing. Breathing from the belly.

3) Non-judgmental. There is no good or bad meditation.


Meditation is about focusing your attention, breathing properly and giving yourself the permission to be human.

You can turn practically anything into a meditative practice. Sitting and focusing on your breath; listening to music with one pointedness; even doing chores.

I personally like to keep things simple. I set a timer on my phone for twenty minutes, sit down in a quiet room and try to keep my attention on my breath. It wonders off, but that’s okay. There’s no good or bad meditation. I bring my attention back when I think to. I think of it like hygiene for the mind.


Chapter 4Mind-Body Connection

“Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed.” — Francis bacon

Over the last few decades there has been an explosion of research in the area of physical exercise and well-being. Psychologists are realising how important it is to think about the body when trying to prevent depression.

Runner’s High

Michael Babyak and his colleagues at Duke Medical School conducted a study on the effectiveness of exercise as an intervention for depression.11

He took a group of 156 patients with major depression. Many had insomnia, eating disorders, and suicidal thoughts. He randomly divided them into three groups and administered the following treatments:

1) First group: 30 minutes of low intensity exercise three times per week

2) Second group: standard psychiatric medication.

3) Third group: both exercise and medication.


The results of this experiment were shocking in two ways. After four months of treatment, 60% of the patients showed improvement. However, there were no significant differences in the recovery rates between the groups. Exercise worked just as well as medication.

If that wasn't enough, another six months after the study Babyak did a follow-up to see the relapse rates. Out of the 60% of recovered patients, this is what they found:

1) 38% of the medication only group relapsed.

2) 31% of the medication and exercise group relapsed.

3) Only 9% of the exercise only group relapsed back into depression.

Not only does exercise work as well as medication, it lasts longer.

There are thousands of studies showing the effects of exercise to be extremely beneficial for our physical and psychological health. It could be the most important, yet undervalued, treatment to prevent depression along with meditation.

Exercise Makes You Smarter and Kinder

Harvard psychologist John Ratey in his book Spark talks about the research done on exercise. He found that when schools introduced regular daily exercise of 30-45 minutes. The pupils showed a huge drop in obesity. From 30% average to 3%.12


Their academic performance also improved significantly. And if that wasn’t enough, the exercise significantly reduced bullying and levels of violence in schools.

How much are we trying to improve performance and decrease bullying and yet her we have an intervention.

“We know for instance if you’re middle aged and you haven’t been exercising. If you begin exercising 30-40 minutes a day for four to five days a week you can cut back cognitive decline by 10-15 years. Even if you haven’t begun yet.”

— John Ratey

Its not that exercising is like taking an anti depressant. It’s that not exercising is like taking a depressant. We weren’t meant to be sedentary. We were designed to walk 8 − 12 miles per day. As Francis Bacon once said, “Nature to be commanded, must be obeyed.”


Chapter 5Focusing On The Positive

“Reflect on your present blessings, on which every man has many, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

—Charles Dickens

“You don’t know how much something means to you, until it’s gone.” Everyone has felt the reality of this message at some point in their lives.

On a hot day when we’re desperately thirsty, water seems to us the nicest drink in the world. When we’ve been up all night without sleep, what better place is there than bed? And when we leave home, we begin to miss it and focus on all of the positives that we took for granted when we were there.

Lots of terminally ill patients often say things like, “For the first time I actually feel alive.” The realisation that everything is coming to an end makes them truly appreciate a flower, or a breath or the smile of a loved one, that ordinarily the might have missed amongst the emails and to-do lists.

One of the most powerful yet simple positive psychology principles is simply focusing on the positive. Not in some motivated positive thinking kind of way. But just to simply pay thanks and actively show gratitude for the positive things we have in out lives.


Count Your Blessings

One of the best-known studies in the field of focusing on the positive was conducted by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, from the Universities of California and Miami, respectively.13

They brought in a group of people and randomly divided them into four subgroups. Every night before going each group was asked to write down a list of at least 5 things relating to a predetermined subject the researchers gave them.

This is how the groups were divided:

1) The first group wrote about things they were grateful for.

2) The second group wrote down hassles and annoyances.

3) The third group wrote things they were better at than others.

4) The fourth group was a control. They wrote anything.

After the study they looked at how happy they were, how opportunistic, how motivated to achieve their goals, how healthy and how generous.

The group that performed the worst were the ones that wrote at least 5 hassles.


The group that wrote down at least 5 things they were grateful for were scored significantly higher than any of the other groups.

The act of writing down 5 things that they were grateful for didn’t just improve their mental health, but their physical health too.

By writing down your blessings regularly and turning it into a habit, you’ll naturally start to become more grateful in everyday life. You mind will be primed to think about the positive, in the same way a depressed person’s mind is primed to think of the negative.

The key to this exercise is to always approach it with freshness. If you start taking the gratitude exercise for granted, it will not work. i.e. If you write down a nice meal you’ve eaten, really try and remember your sensation when you were eating it.


Positive Psychology Habit Checklist

✓ Give yourself the permission to be human and embrace your full range of human emotions.

✓ Ritualise your recovery on the micro, mezzo and macro levels.

✓ Stop multitasking. Start paying your full attention to one thing at a time. Think ‘focus time.’

✓ Set aside 10-20 minutes a day to meditate. Focus on your breath. Make the decision to learn more about it.

✓ Start exercising. Join a gym and do cardio or weight lifting. Try and exercise at least twice per week for 30 minutes as a minimum.

✓ Count your blessings. Write down at least 5 things you’re grateful for every night.


The Next Step

Many of the things I’ve talked about are common sense. We know that it’s important to give others the permission to be human and to take time to recover.

We know how good we feel after we go for a walk or a run. We know that we feel great when we take in a deep breath. And we know how important it is not to take for granted important things.

But as Tal-Ben Shahar says, like many others before him:

“Common sense is not that common. Especially when it comes to application.”

By reading this guide you have achieved nothing. The only way this guide is of any use to anybody, is in it’s application.

Don’t message me thanking me for this guide. Message me telling me what you’re going to do with it to change your life.

If you have questions, you can always contact me at http://comfortpit.com

I don’t have all the right answers, but I’m doing my best to find pearls of wisdom in information age, just like you.

Stay positive,Jon Brooks

http://comfortpit.com

http://comfortpit.com


1 Alain De Botton, TED Talk: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY2 Suicide (1897), Exerpt from Robert Alun Jones. Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works: http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/suicide.html3 Ironic Processes of Mental Control, Daniel M. Wegner: http://www.danwegner.net/pdfs/Wegner%20Ironic%20Processes%201994.pdf4 National Alliance on Mental Illness, statistics: http://www.nami.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Find_Support/NAMI_on_Campus1/Learn_About_The_Issue/Learn_About_The_Issue.htm5 New York Times, Parents Are Happy, but Tired: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/08/survey-says-parents-are-happy-but-tired/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=06 New Sc ient i s t : In fo-Man ia dents IQ more than mar i juana: h t tp:/ /www.newsc ien t i s t . com/ar t i c l e /dn7298- in foman ia -den ts - i q -more- than-marijuana.html#.U3jSosbUblc7 Leslie A. Perlow, The time famine: Toward a sociology of work time: http://www.interruptions.net/literature/Perlow-ASQ99.pdf8 Psychology Today, Daniel Goleman, Retrain Your Stressed out Brain: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-brain-and-emotional-intelligence/201106/retrain-your-stressed-out-brain9 Meditation and the startle response: a case study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2250649810 Jon Kabat-Zinn and Richard Davidson, Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation: http://www.mindingthebedside.com/wp-content/files_mf/alterationsinbrainandimmunefunctionproducedbymindfulnessmeditation1.pdf11 Duke Today, Study: Exercise Has Long-Lasting Effect on Depression: https://today.duke.edu/2000/09/exercise922.html12 John Ratey, Sparking Life, Optimize your brain function with exercise: http://www.sparkinglife.org13 Emmons, McCullough, Count Blessings Not Burdens: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/GratitudePDFs/6Emmons-BlessingsBurdens.pdf

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Positive Psychology : The Greatest Hits - Comfort PitJon Brooks / Positive Psychology: The Greatest Hits / 4 we can achieve anything, the more books there will be written for those…