Building Mental Toughness Positive Psychology Strategies My wife a great writer hates me writing too much. She ll shriek when she reads this, It is too long! But I just want to share my RSI touchtyping strains. Over the Christmas break I read Martin Seligman s Flourish. It is a book I would recommend all educators read, be they parents or teachers. Seligman was the founder of positive psychology. The book s title is what I believe in allowing people to flourish. What are the important elements needed to bounce positively through life? What s Tigger s secret? Optimal performance is tied to good well-being; the higher the positive morale, the better the performance. But let s consider honestly where our weird wired world is leading our global communities: SINCE 1970- Children have lost 12 hours of free time a week. Unstructured play has dropped by 25%. Unstructured outdoor activities have dropped by 50%. Time in structured sports has doubled. SINCE 1980 The amount of homework given to 6-8 year olds has tripled. Since the 1980s, the average resting heart rate of children aged 9-11 has increased by two beats per minute (bpm) for boys and one bpm for girls, with the fastest increase coming after the mid-1990s.
SINCE 1990 Between 1992 and 1997 the proportion of waking time people spent alone increased by 14% to 3 hours per day (ABS 2000) Between 1990 and 2010, the global burden for depressive disorders increased by almost 38%. TODAY The typical American family now spends 30 hours a week in front of a TV or computer. Recess has been reduced or eliminated in 40% of American elementary schools. One in four Australians aged 16 24 years had experienced some mental health disorder in the previous twelve months. In the estimates of disease burden for 2010, mental disorders account for about half of the burden in these young people. one in five adolescent boys feel extremely concerned about their weight and physique Time spent on social media networks per hour: USA = 16mins; Australia = 14mins; UK = 13mins For every hour of leisure time we spend doing outdoor recreational activities, we spend 7 hours watching television or surfing the internet. Just over half of Australian primary school children (51%) are ferried to school by car, compared with less than a third (32%) of primary school children in England 6 November 2013: Ms Holden from Woodland Trust (UK) stated that only an estimated 14% of the UK's population had "easy access to trees". "It has been calculated that 2.1bn of healthcare costs could be saved if everyone had access to green spaces. In Australia, 1 in 4 parents surveyed said their children had never climbed a tree. In Australia, 1 in 3 parents surveyed said their children had never planted or cared for a garden! TOMORROW 1 in 10 people in the world will have diabetes by 2035 TIME.com It is easy to burden people with fear. In fact, Fear is purely future-oriented it is an anxiety about what might happen. I am sorry for causing any distress, but my purpose is to lead a
school where we purposefully understand the importance of positive mindsets. Fear fences in our future. Green School has a moral message that must be heard. We must not only develop sustainability programs for the environment but we have a responsibility to set the stage for social sustainability, too. We have this opportunity to be at the cutting edge of developing programs to enrich our well-being. And we all have a responsibility as rolemodels. Framingham MA, USA, experiment more than 50 years ago surveyed health of 5000 residents. It was found proximity influences emotion. People living near happy people were happier; people living near unhappy people were unhappier, too! Helplessness damages the person. Mastery strengthens the person. As with fear, focusing on the world through pathology (looking at minimizing the toxic effects) misses the strengthening focus. Anything fixated on remedial care does only half the job correcting the deficits while failing to build strengths. This has implications on how we manage students learning as there is learned helplessness and dumbing down when we class to remedy without offering lessons that build on strengths. The steps outlined below stem directly from Martin Seligman s procedures outlined in Flourish, and were used in his team s development of a positive psychology program for use with the US Army to lessen PTSD. a) Ellis s ABCDE model C (the emotional consequences) do not stem directly from A (the adversity) but from B (your beliefs about the adversity). Adversity does not set off emotion directly. This means we can think about our thinking. b) Thinking Traps over generalizing cause us to fear the future. We start to live from a position of scarcity. Psychologists have discovered humans are very poor at affective forecasting. No matter how good we think things will be, or how bad we never accurately predict our feelings. Things are never at the level we think they will be given time. c) Icebergs we all have deeply held beliefs that lead to out-of-kilter emotional reactions: a. Identify our icebergs b. Contemplate whether this belief is meaningful c. Is this accurate in the current situation?
d. Is it overly rigid/inflexible? e. Is it useful? d) Minimise Catastrophic Thinking so we can live more happily in the moment. We are bad-weather animals. We are descended from the genes of humans who survived the ice-age, because they were concerned about what the future held, not the ones who said it will be nice weather again tomorrow. Sometimes catastrophic thinking is useful. However, more often it is paralyzing and unrealistic. Use the three step model to overcome such habits by clarifying: a. Worst case b. Best case c. Most likely case Strategies: a) Gather evidence b) Use optimism c) Put into perspective e) Hunt the Good Stuff a. Three blessings journal is a proven way of shielding us from depression. Every evening write down three things you can be grateful for. Next day discuss the details with someone. As a result of this practice, our journals should become more personal as will the discussions. f) Character Strengths Values in Action Signature Strengths. If you want to consider your character, use this free survey to find results normed against a wide audience. http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/default.aspx g) Build Strong Relationships a. There are four styles of responding to situations. i. Active Constructive (authentic, enthusiastic support) ii. Passive Constructive (understated support) iii. Passive Destructive (ignore the event, dismissive) iv. Active Destructive (Pointing out the negative aspects of an event) Nobody likes change unless they are driving it (and this is a wakeful pursuit that leads to hair-loss therapies). We can use role plays to distinguish the variations in styles and guide mind-shifts to where logic is reasonable. But when we do come up against things that are
not right or need adjustments, we do need to be assertive. Having a procedure which all parties understand can eliminate emotion and guide a positive outcome. This is the key for assertive communication. h) Assertive Communication a. Identify the issue and work to understand the situation b. Describe the situation objectively and accurately c. Express concerns d. Ask other person for their perspective and work toward acceptable change e. List the benefits that will follow when change is implemented Sorry, Sophie, for the length but I don t think you read it all anyway.