Coaching for Happiness: The Science of Positive Psychology - Yannick Jacob

[Applause] Thank You Zoe hi everybody it's nice to see some familiar faces I've been teaching autonomous since 2015 when I met Nick and he wanted to give away the existential coaching and then I had pitched him we can do something about positive psychology because the meeting points between positive psychology and coaching they are plentiful and they're powerful and they have not really been explored to an extent that it's really established so it's a really interesting time to be involved because their science is only twenty years old which is nothing in science terms so it's a lovely field there's so much research coming out and I am taking that angle because I've done the MSC in positive applied positive psychology in 2008 so they just had started cohort two and I kind of slipped into it because well I wanted to to study positive psychology had heard about it there was an undergraduate Jule and then the module leader I've asked hey there's this one masters in the world in in Pennsylvania under Seligman and she said yeah that's another one now here with me and I'm like okay I've got to do that then so that's how I got into positive psychology and then moved into the any might region and it's just an amazing community so for those of you who are just checking it out do stay talk to people because you know these guys are amazing and these kind of events they really bring a community together and I haven't seen that at any other school just in the way that you guys are doing it so pick up positive psychology coaching for happiness happiness is quite a fuzzy term so I'm gonna be referring to it just for simplicity sake there's all sorts of different kinds of well-being and that's really kind of what I want to guide you through tonight and I'm gonna say a little bit more about what's up there so a little bit about why happiness at all why should we care about happiness why me what can I tell you about that why coaching why coach such a good pathway of framework or process to actually facilitate increases in well-being and happiness and then what is coaching just to kind of give it a frame because there's such a broad range and you'll find out why that mattress as we go through it and then very importantly well what is happiness because if we don't understand what it is and the multi-faceted construct and there's so many if you ask 20 people what happiness is you probably get 20 different answers and if you ask 20 people would love is you get similarly range of answers so it's important that we kind of understand it in the first place so that we develop a language to actually figure out what does a client mean when they say I want to be happier you know I don't I want to be more satisfied with my life you know what what language do we have and what's the theory behind it what's the science behind it then how can this look like in practice there's a multitude of ways and there's no way I'm gonna get through all of the bullet points I've made in the end but I want to at least give you a little bit of a glimpse of a few bits and pieces of how it could be applied in the coaching room and also how you could apply it to yourself and then how you can learn more I always put a bunch of resources and further reading I do like books I like reading but there's also very long YouTube playlists all about positive psychology coaching so I am yeah there's a few slides I'm happy to give you the slides afterwards I'm sure we distribute that but I'm sure we can figure it out so that's at the end but first of all maybe just take a moment and then turn to your neighbor or to your neighbors and just take a minute or two to talk about these questions what do you want out of life what are your clients after and what do you want most for your loved ones and they might or might not be the same so I just wanted you to do you guys to kind of get in the mindset of what we're chasing [Music] I'm gonna take part in your conversation is that okay okay thank you very much everybody if you could come back into the room with your mind and I know it's all quite exciting and I love the the energy and bus every time every time you drop happiness into a room and get people talking about it exactly this happens nobody wants to stop talking about it I wasted lots of time talking about happiness but none of this is wasted that's the thing you know it is quite exciting and it is quite positive when we start bringing something into the room that we really enjoy and that invokes positive emotions it's actually when we when we do that for people and we we consciously ask questions around positive things or about happiness or well-being there's actually a lot of research behind that that's really good for the coaching room because people tend to be more creative when they in when they are induced happy states you know they're more present they in science terms we say it broadens our thought action repertoire so a bit more more on that later but we can use that strategically that's why often in coaching it's really useful when we say tell me about your ideal life you know or let's tell me about your dream or your vision or like the most positive life that you could imagine you know tell me something tell me when you were at your best tell me something good about yourself you know we invoke positive emotions just by asking those questions and it gets people into a creative state so we can we can use those things um have you noticed differences between these three questions where they're the same do you want different things for yourself then your clients come for did you notice something different you want for your kids or siblings or friends that you want for yourself we just throw a few things up a few things that you want it or clients want it or you want for other people just so we grasp some of the elements of happiness purpose very good what else what's that variety say bit more yeah novelty yeah I'm a blessing in the curse right yeah it's very true what else independence mm-hmm authenticity living in accordance with your values it beliefs right balance came up from Karl that was that was really cool what else health anything else it was unusual maybe so you hear what you kind of expect it cool so my proposition is whatever we're after ultimately in the end if you keep asking the question and if you had that what would that do for you and if you had a million pounds what would that do for you and if you had good health or would that do for you or if you've had that car or that friend or that job you know what usually clients often come for I think the ultimate goal the end goal is always some form of happiness and well-being so I'm gonna leave that there I put that into your head so we're going to revisit that later after we went through those well-being theories and given what you've just discussed with with each other I'm interested whether there's anything there that isn't covered by those theories you know whether there is some room for it because then we're all going to be thinking about what happiness actually means and science is not the only thing you know there could be stuff that isn't in the theories but it's actually relevant you know you mentioned balance it isn't necessarily in the theories as a term but maybe it'll come in there so I want you to get you thinking about this kind of stuff so I came into positive psychology in 2008 and I realized through studying it that I've always kind of been quite upbeat and quite happy for at least as long as I can think I think my mom might think differently about it apparently we had some fights or something but I've heard like as I was learning about positive psychology I realized why I think I was quite happy and full of positive emotions for so long there was a lot of things a lot of strategies a lot of aha moments in terms of ah the conditions of my life are like this that impacts my well-being or I have this habit or I do this on a regular basis and I think that really impacts my levels of well-being so that was that was really quite insightful and I I grew up in a family I feel quite privileged in the family that I grew up in because I actually had time to think about this kind of stuff and what happened after I turned 30 I felt an increasing urge to kind of give something back with all of that thinking in education that they had a time to actually do so that's why I'm teaching a lot more and I'm writing and I'm working with a lot of coaches because I love the generative effect that this has because you can work with one person and it will affect them and the people in perhaps their family or the workplace but if you work with the coach you know all of you are going to literally change dozens of lives a year sometimes a month sometimes a day you know in the generative effect that it has on the world I think is incredible so it's it's truly meaningful to me and I came into positive psychology explored all of that space then as Zoe mentioned I went into existential coaching because I figured well a lot of positive psychologists actually way too positive for my taste I needed somebody to acknowledge and appreciate that life very often is really hard it's challenging you know there's a lot of stuff that happens it impacts you there's a lot of anxiety because we're human beings in the world with other people and that just like people get bored and some people are nasty and we have all of these things that we bring from our childhood I needed somebody to acknowledge that it's so much more useful than I had ever to identify your strengths or create purpose or start with the end in mind you know work solution-focused but we can't just ignore the stuff that isn't working well so I just want to kind of to put that in there and balance is important to me integration is important to me and you'll hear probably an existential edge to my narrative but what I want to do today I give you a little bit of a word at the end about the next wave of positive psychology that includes more of the darker sides of life but that's how I came in here with and I must say it's a real joy to work with clients from that paradigm because as I mentioned you start with what's right with you not what's wrong with you and for some people it's a it's a real awakening because they're so stuck in in it's going to see a coach you're going to see a friend going to see a therapist going to see a family member and just kind of talk about all the things that are wrong and if you then break that cycle and you just ask what's right with them you know what what are they what are they good at you know what are they proud of what are they what are they doing well what went well in the last 24 hours you know tell me three things that went well today you know it's it for some people it really gets them out of their paradigm and it has a huge effect on clients so if you start coaching work like that it's a joy you know because you start with joy you get people to imagine their best self and then they can chase that you know and there's lots of evidence-based approaches and interventions and exercises that we can actually do with that there's a lot more to me but I don't really think that I mean as coaches we know a relationship is important the more the better our relationship is the more you learn but I'll skip the story because we have limited time and I have a lot to tell you about and I like theory so let's move on there is a recent podcast where somebody interviewed me about my journey into positive psychology so if you want to know more you'll you'll find that so why happiness well it feels good you know that's a pretty obvious one and actually we know now I mentioned the broaden and build theory of Barbara Rickson we know it can undo negative emotions you know positive and negative I always have a bit of a query with because it's not necessarily negative when something feels uncomfortable but let's for the sake of simplicity just group them into a pleasant and unpleasant emotions positive and negative yep so we can tune into for example we can tune into gratitude at any moment in our lives no matter what's happening as long as you're breathing you can be absolutely amazed that you're breathing you know I can channel an immense amount of gratitude just that I can stand on two legs and not fall over it's it's incredible when you think about all the processes that need to be in place in the human body for you to keep balance you know for you to breathe for your heart to pump blood into your brain it's an incredible organ the the the pure fact that we're able to think and are able to be self-aware that we're able to think about ourselves and into the future and project into the future a better version of ourselves and then trace it it's incredible so anytime we that's a really good reminder to just be grateful for that you know and then there's potentially a million other things that we can be grateful for we can channel that at any moment and it's going to undo a range of negative emotions just like that just by focusing on it so that's pretty useful there's good research happy people are more productive likeable active healthy friendly helpful resilient and creative and that's one study looking at a bunch of other studies so there's 20 years of research looking into what's right with people and what that actually leads to so if you judge yourself as quite happy you also found to be more of these that's quite amazing you experience more meaning in life when you're happier there's good research in favor of applying strengths working with character strength and gratitude and optimism and forgiveness and kindness and humor in coaching practice robert Biswas Dena am i've show you I'm going to show book later on he was one of the first people who wrote about it academically and it's really useful to draw in the evidence from empirical research which is what positive psychology really contributed as a science getting the empirical research done so that we can be reasonably confident that there's links you know not necessarily causal but we can research that stuff and that's really really useful because now we can say oh wait there's actually there's something there and we can prove it with numbers you know we can actually measure some reliably measure somebody's level of likability or health or resilience or creativity you know some of these measures are more accurate than others you know we're still we're still figuring stuff out but we have twenty thirty years of good data so happiness is pretty useful we got to be a bit careful that we don't pressurize people as feeling too happy because the first wave of research came out and then there was this this this wave of people that said oh but you have to be happy because it's so good for you you're gonna earn more money you're gonna have better relationships you're gonna be more productive more career why wouldn't you be happy you know just practice some gratitude and then people who are actually feeling quite depressed at the moment there will not have a good reaction to that they're actually going to be more depressed when they're being faced with that kind of thing like just go for walk in the woods and be mindful it's gonna be so good for you it's like it but I can't even form a positive thought you know leave me alone so again I want to make that distinction this is really really useful but it's not a panacea but the research is there and it suggests that there's powerful forces at work I think coaching is a fantastic framework to help people increase their levels of happiness to figure out what happiness actually means to them subjectively you know because there's many factors and some of them are going to be more important to you than others so developing a language to do that and giving people the space not to be judged you know if somebody says well money is gonna make me happy you might know from the research that maybe money is just a means to an end and maybe money is not gonna make you happy but if somebody tells you that as coaches we have the skills not to say no that's not true no you're wrong but as coaches we have the skill to say tell me more and exploring that and then perhaps gently pointing out in their narrative when something contradicts itself or perhaps like oh can you tell me about a time when money made you really happy and then you might arrive or that person might arrive at the conclusion it wasn't the money it was the holiday that the money bought or the connections that the money bought or the freedom or the autonomy of the safety or the security so as coaches we have that skill that's why I think coaching is particularly important when we help people create more happiness traditionally coaching was about performance you know and the paradigm was that more performance leads to more success leads to more wealth but there's that lead to happiness and many of you here just because of the of the ethos of animals will know that's not really it but if you've ever worked in an organization you know that the coaching for performance paradigm is still very much alive and kicking so John Whitmore wrote coaching for performance that was the book about coaching since 1992 for a very long time and is still very much applied so I think we are in a quite a cool bubble and in the wave of coaching that is going outside and beyond the coaching for performance paradigm and includes transformation and includes happiness and includes spiritual coaching or all of these other elements that go beyond mere performance I think that's a really good development but money we now have you know we have data since 1930s this goes to 2000 that shows as happiness goes as income goes up happiness this stays relatively stable you know this is GDP happiness and life satisfaction again GDP goes up and life satisfaction and happiness this is in the u.s. between 70s and 2012 stays pretty much stable he is happiness and GDP again up to 2016 a bit more fluctuation but generally it stays pretty stable while GDP is going up so it's not the money so if money doesn't make us happy what does and I've heard a lot of really good things already but this is where we are in the midst of the theoretical foundation the science of positive psychology looking at okay so what's right with people how could we actually study it because up until 1999 when Martin Seligman then president of the of the American Psychological Association he said well that's not being researched we throw money at research when there's a problem and we fix problems and we go back to zero there's a world between zero and plus ten and we're not really researching it we're not really looking at it scientifically there's some evidence but like we need to do much much more of that so he initiated that in only 1999 there's various definitions of what it does and well actually before I go there he said well this is a science you know this is a science that's looking at what's right with people and what resources we can build on rather than fixing what's wrong we can build on what's already right and it is a science first and foremost so we've always had a couple of students joining the positive psychology course it's a master's of science and then you have people that they want to study positive thinking and the secret and there's a lot to it but it's not scientific and it's really useful to produce science you know and now there's actually we can see why stuff like the secret and why positive affirmations what is what are the elements of that that that are working you know beyond the marketing you know what are the elements are actually working what could we do more of how could we draw that stuff into programs and interventions but first and foremost it's a science we look at data we gather data we analyze it and then we create theories on that you know and then we have hypotheses we test them and we falsify them and if something's not falsifiable it's not science so that's really useful and sometimes I think it's easy to forget given that positive psychology has been rapidly growing and so popular that many many journalists would take a search finding that oh there's a correlation between chocolate and you know happiness and then it says chocolate makes you happy you know and I get simplified and this I mean you know how often this time stuff works but at the courts of science and I think that's important positive psychologists haven't reinvented the wheel but offering new perspectives on old ideas offering that empirical data so it gets a lot more sophisticated because the beautiful thing about science is that somebody in London can write up a research study and somebody in Botswana can read it it all follows the same approach it follows the same language it's not it's written in a way that it's as precise as possible that's why it's so horrible to read because you know you want to be precise with your language you don't want to use emotional language you don't want to tell stories because you know they're there they are subjective and they're individual you want to gather data sets together and write in a language that everybody can read outside of the cultural context of where it's written you know that's why the language is so incredibly dry and not enjoyable to read but so incredibly important because that's how science works I can do a study here somebody in Japan will replicate it because I wrote exactly how I'm doing stuff and if they do exactly what I did and they get the same results there's something there potentially you know if 50 scientists do the same thing using the same method and they get the same results we got some solid results so just a word on science I'm a sucker for science I really like the approach it certainly got limitations it's not everything but it's really useful as a piece of information that can help us create knowledge so a gable in height looked at a bunch of different definitions of positive psychology and I said positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people groups and institutions so not just individuals also groups also institutions flourishing and optimal functioning the processes that contribute to it it's the study of the conditions and processes so there's a lot in there if you just take a moment to take that in they think hard and these definitions go through processes it's useful to just keep in mind what we're actually talking about it if we apply that kind of stuff then you know we can apply positive psychology is the application of the research so that we can facilitate optimal functioning so here we bring the science in to help people be happier basically and perform better and function better that's important that there's two camps generally the ones that create the knowledge the academics with the dry language and the people who apply the knowledge that's the coaches that's the practitioners that's the teachers and sometimes they're the same and often they're different but I think it's really useful for you if you're not a scientist and you're already getting a bit bored by the science language you know you can use that stuff but it's helpful to understand the foundations of where it's coming from so that you can keep being critical because people will throw evidence based around as a term very very loosely and there's there's evidence that stronger and there's evidence that is I wouldn't really call evidence but like if you want to have one case study and then you say that's evidence technically I guess it's true and we can argue the case but there's a scientific understanding of what evidence-based is and then there's evidence-based as it's like to be used by people who want to sell programs so it's useful in science they teach you to develop a critical approach and I think it's useful for everybody to approach things that are put out there as solutions critically just because there's no evidence and science doesn't mean it doesn't work for your client or it doesn't work for you but it's useful to be aware of that that just because it works for ten people might not mean that it works for everybody just because it works for me doesn't mean it's gonna work for my client I just keep that in mind here's a couple of of the areas that positive psychologists look at and have studied so character strengths positive emotions generally well-being and happiness and the theories the pillars that are involved in it will be gonna get today a lot of assessments and psychometrics measurements came out of this questionnaires stuff that isn't just 10 questions about like oh how much is this you but they go through a process sometimes years to come up with accurate psychometric tests to really measure a specific construct you know that can be really useful particularly when you work in organizations or if you just want to help somebody measure their progress and monitor how much they've moved you know if client comes in and says I want to be happier there's a bunch of different well-being measures out there from 80 questions to one question and you say how happy are you one to ten you know I well I'm a six so happy do you want to be well I want to be at nine great then you have something to work with and they know they get the return on investment at the end so it's really useful positive psychology has produced a lot of these psychometric tests and assessments you might have heard of growth mindset fixed mindset you know there's a lot we can do that stuff that transforms whole people you know if they just switch and sometimes it really happens quite suddenly that they're all of a sudden see something from a completely different perspective and they're like wow so that can really change a lot self-regulation discipline one of the Holy Grails of psychology positive psychologists have looked at that engagement motivation flow States so evidence-based interventions I mentioned but also it's a bunch of other things from creativity wisdom a positive aging self esteem and respect positive groups organizations hope optimism there's a huge area of research that positive psychologists look at and many of them are relevant for coaches depending what kind of coach you are so how to use coaching to increase happiness I want to pause here for a second and just get you to think about what coaching is because there's a range of different definitions everybody seems to have their own I just wanted to give you a chance drew can I can I have a show of hands and don't worry I won't call you out but who has a sentence or two to describe what coaching is or what your coaching is so like four or five out of where fifty that scent tends to be my my experience I've been asking that a lot at conferences and and lecture halls and ten percent this is much better than I usually see which is astonishing to me in a pic because we can all talk about it for a few minutes right and kind of tell somebody what coaching is and isn't but to really think about what are the elements of coaching that makes it different that makes it not therapy or not mentoring or not consulting so this is something that I came across when I did my dissertation back in the day where you have the client is expert USDA expert asking questions or giving answers and he is coaching are there a little bit overlap with facilitator you know far away far away from a consultant which is interesting because a lot of coaches I think are consultants and a lot of consultants use coaching skills quite heavily therapist is quite up here asking questions but you're the expert and I really hope that it's going to give a lot of people a bit of discomfort right now because it certainly gave me some I revised it a little bit and because I talked a lot of coaches and I work with a lot of coaches and it seems to be more like this it really is there is no regulation which is the beauty of an unregulated profession is you can do whatever you want and still call it coaching and there will be coaches who will hate you for it because their coaching is here or their coaching is there and they really want to protect that space and they say if you talk about coaching as consulting then that hurts my brand because if then I say I'm a coach some people might think I'm a consultant and I'm not you know I'm a facilitator of learning I'm not a trainer I don't give advice I don't make suggestions you know but if a coach comes to me and says look I I am doing that quite regularly and it's not so much about what I call it but it's about what do I introduce it as if somebody tells me I'm a coach and I'm gonna give you lots of advice I'm gonna throw lots of suggestions at you and there might be a really helpful process I just would like to know before we start you know so I don't spend money on something that I don't want that's why the contracting is so incredibly important you know I stopped hating on all the terminology and when you signs background then it's really easy to get caught up in terminology but really what's most important is that you frame it in the beginning and you tell people what it is and what it isn't what I can and what I can't do for you you know and if you put it here that's fine if you put it here that's fine I mean there's some I have some issues with some of that stuff I really disagree if somebody really does therapy work I had a clod somebody in a training who said I worked with a with a coach with a life coach who helped me through my trauma of thinking I should have not existed and we went right into my childhood in the first session and we you know reprocessed everything and I'm like that that's therapy but it helped immensely that coach did fantastic work I think they should have called themselves a therapist but maybe there's a regulation thing you know I don't know I think it was in America so but like Fair Play I think coaching can be anything because it's unregulated but please tell your clients what you do and what you don't do you know so they can make an informed decision then it's ethical you know that's the beauty of an unregulated profession but don't assume that people know what you mean when you say coach because they might think you're a consultant or your manager or you mentor your professional friend I think this is helpful just to kind of as a concept of thinking about the coaching space my natural hair era is probably here in confronting exploring but sometimes I sit there and I support sometimes I give a lot of advice depending on what we contract it together so I think a good coach they might move all over the place depending on what's necessary what's appropriate and what's most needed but it's completely fine if you say I never give advice you know but it's useful to kind of think about this this is from de Haan so who you ask how your coach is what I often tell students you know and I'm making these points because I think it's important that you can use positive psychology and you can facilitate happiness and well-being no matter what kind of coach you are you might be super telly and fifty years of teaching experience have just made you into a person with lots of good advice and you have read all the literature and you have lots of good interventions and you give homework you know that's gonna facilitate well-being I'm not sure if your coach in my eyes but it really doesn't matter that much so anybody can anybody no matter of your style anybody can facilitate well-being but only if you understand what happiness actually is so what is it we've had a few things flown around an early concept was satisfaction with life so very simple on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied are you with your life the there put a letter there because at Dina the research in the 80s they actually went around the world and ask people that question with a picture of a letter and said if you were on top of the letter your life would be close to ideal and if you have the bottom of the letter you're really not satisfied with it at all that gives you a really valid measure of how satisfied somebody is with their life you know you can compare that among different countries that's how these studies come across and come up of who's the happiest country and it's meaningful and it's valid and it's useful doesn't really capture happiness right I just wanted to say this is a very simple these are the five questions that they that they used beyond the ladder in a different study in most ways my life was close to my ideal the conditions of my life are excellent I'm satisfied with my life and so far I've gotten the important things I want in life and if you could live my life if I could live my life over I would change almost nothing they capture something right but there's more to happiness so unless somebody very mentally agree so like no that's it that's totally it that's exactly what I mean when I say I want to be happy you know I would I would definitely want all of that but I think there's more to it so subjective well-being Deena said well that satisfaction with life what we've just talked about plus positive effect good feelings in simple terms minus negative effect - uncomfortable feelings again and goes a little bit further it's like it brings the kind of feeling element in because here there's not really any immediate or emotional states involved it's just a general satisfaction with life so here we in choosing emotions which i think is really important you know because you can be generally quite satisfied with all of the conditions in your life but still you feel a bit depressed so it adds another element to it so that's generally two different areas of happiness hedonism feeling good and eudaimonia living a life of meaning being very satisfied living in accordance with your values you mentioned authenticity you know transcendence personal development reaching long-term goals they're not really captured in hedonism but either one or the other is not really complete I mean I've had very long conversation with with a pure headedness there was a very very long time ago and I was amazed because that person was basically saying well I'm gonna do all the drugs I'm gonna drink all day and like I'm gonna party it very very hard and if I die with 30 that's fine and I'm like whoa that's that's going against a lot of things that I believe in but I like I I questioned it and I in the end I had to respect that this person's gonna live their life that way you know I do think that they probably would regret it at some point when they wanted to live a little bit longer and they just destroyed their body and their mind but at that point if somebody makes that decision it's like ah yeah I can see why you call yourself happy perhaps much happier than somebody who works very hard at a job at the moment for a positive outcome in ten years time but you know there's two elements I can't really say that somebody is happier than the other person because if you live a life of meaning but every day you're working really hard but you go to bed with a smile because you know you're doing the right thing with your life you know it's a very different way of being in the world but both could call themselves happy so if somebody comes to you and says I want to be happier think about what that means which which part is it self-determination theory it's been quite a major step it's a theory of motivation essentially but it it identified three major factors that contribute to well-being which are autonomy which we already mentioned it's the ability to do what you want to a large degree its competence being able to have the skills to deal with whatever your environment is we need a different set of skills for example to live in in Soho London then we need in the Amazonian jungle a hunting for food you know you need weapons and a different skill set for hunting food or plants then you hunt for money and so you know it's a very different skill set so but if you don't have the skills to deal with your environment then it's going to impact your own servation and your well-being and relatedness bigge you know the relationships we have with other people has been shown as one of the most important factors in somebody's well-being with social animals we connect you know and it doesn't matter if we love many many friends or just have a very few that we're really really close with you know it's not the quantity of our relationships it's the quality of our relationships so when I'm coaching in the beginning I would always get a sense for somebody's social world you know somebody's connection with other people you know it doesn't have to be they can never speak to their family but have the most amazing friends they don't need to have kids to have a lot of positive relationships in their life where people learn from them you know they don't need lots of friends and go out all the time you can be a super introvert and spend most of your time on your own but once a month you see your best friend and you talk for eight hours you know that's that's the same level the same quality of positive relationships because that's again it's subjective really useful so here you see the positive relationships this is my for me my favorite theory of well-being you see positive relationships autonomy and environmental mastery which is more or less competence you have three more self-acceptance which I'm sure a lot of you will have seen in the coaching room as one of the major issues or obstacles to to happiness a sense of personal growth means change movement you know going feeling like you're going forward you're getting bigger and getting bigger might mean earning less money doing something more meaningful you know it might mean having less friends but better relationships with them you know so growth is not the kind of capitalistic we always have to grow until we burst even you know if that's not growth growth means that you have a personal sense of movement of change and purpose purpose in life a sense that you're living a meaningful existence this is Martin Seligman's perma probably now the most popular theory of well-being which again has a lot of the areas already that we've that we've seen positive emotions feeling good we have seen relationships we've seen meaning achievement a sense of accomplishment it's interesting because it's kind of linked to growth as well but it makes it very visible why people work why people chase goals you know why does it feel so good when we have a to-do list and we tick stuff off you know if we set a year-long goal and then we reach it that gives us a real sense of achievement that that movie was Will Smith the pursuit of happiness I was so mad at that movie and sorry spoiler has spoilers ahead as anybody has anyone not seen it is it okay if I spoil it a little it culminates it culminates in that moment when he achieves what he set out to do and he said that that's happiness that moment no it's not a moment it's so much more but that is arguably a really important aspect of happiness that's why so many people they they come to a coach that said the goal they achieve it they feel really good you know and then they adapt to it because that's what we people do you know it's a blessing and the curse we adapt to good things and bad things you know it's really useful or really annoying because we achieve a goal and then we adapt to it and then we need another goal so we can keep going like that for a while but it arguably makes us happy if every day we set a goal for that evening and then we reach it fantastic existence it's just you need to keep setting goals which can get a bit exhausting but it's there and engagement finding flow you know being being involved in your life that's one of the factors that has been this has been shown to have the most impact on longevity you know people who are engaged in life they live longer and that's that's quite fantastic and there's a lot of things we can do to increase our level of engagement somebody then added a solid age for health because that's the one that kept coming our physical health vitality it's really important without that it's really difficult to be happy you know and partly it's incompetence you know in that environmental mastery because if you don't have the physical ability to do stuff it really will act on your skill set to deal with your environment but that's really useful to know and this one got recently out only 2016 you might have seen Maslow's hierarchy of needs this is kind of by the way muscle never talked about the pyramid that cannot be found in any of his literature fun fact but it starts with survival skills you know that that health aspect you know if you're not surviving you gets difficult to be happy if you don't feel safe if you don't feel secure it's difficult to be happy you know then next stage would be again life improvement you need some skills for that you know and this theory outlines certain sets of skills which makes it really useful for coaching because you can learn life improvement skills you know you can learn self development skills you can learn social skills and you can learn work skills so this is all learn about and as coaches we can help people to develop it so really useful to kind of if we put that up for a client and say hey what's going right in your life you know if you look at that and how are you on these you can even have them score them one to ten or just have a conversation around it if you don't like scoring or working with with tools or assessment you could you don't need to show this the way that in coaching it often works at least for me is I look at this I go into a practice room with a try it and it is really clunky and I keep looking at my cheat sheet and then at some point you internalize these questions and you make a mental note and at some point it feels like a normal conversation that you're having but really you are assessing people against a model of well-being and if somebody comes to you and says I don't feel good or I want to be happier or I'm not so satisfied with my life I want to change something you have the language and the models in your head to have that conversation which then feels like a normal conversation but actually you're doing a lot of work and having these things in your mind can can help you be aware of what what I am what are you not telling me what am I not hearing you know if you think about this stuff in those breaks or in the back of your mind I have I have to have had a client who told me a bunch of things about his emotional states what he was thinking and like his spiritual angle and his belief system but I had never heard him say anything about other people you know I think at once and mentioned in passing he mentioned he had a wife but like we were talking for 45 minutes and I had not heard anything about other people so that made me curious not that they'd had bad relationships but it makes me curious so it opens an angle for inquiry for you as a coach so let's revisit that I tried to capture as many as possible I really like that balance think oh I'm I'm not sure where I put that in but I think I think there might be that there might be up up to something is there something that you don't see here something that you've talked about in the beginning that clients come to you for or that you want yourself or that you would want for your loved ones they're something that isn't quite captured or where we could we could make a connection perhaps yes please it's not some kind of some kind of unmet need could you give me an example yeah and that that need that tells me well there could be an achievement that they want to be met or like a sense of growth something that they're not having it could be one of those needs to survive or feel secure or feel connected you know so I think a lot of them are connected to needs and that's what we can get really curious about what that need is and how it's connected thank you for that yes self-love when you see self acceptance which I didn't put here great yes I mean self-love is so much more than self acceptance but I think there is no self love without self acceptance right and what's that quote about if you fall in love with yourself is the start of the most wonderful lifelong love relationship or something so I think relationships go beyond relationships with other people it's also the relationship with yourself you know so if you can develop actual love you know there's gratitude in there there's kindness in there you know this self-acceptance in there very very meaningful you know if you allow that to happen so yeah I love that but you're only as happy as happy child [Music] yeah you're only as happy as your least happy child yeah relationships right and there is no closer relationship than the one to your kids you know I think I don't have kids yet you know I'm thinking about them a lot now so it's as if they were almost there because they're already influencing me but like I've seen a lot change in my life just not when kids stop becoming an intellectual concept of yes that's gonna happen at some point - I can picture them because I can see the partner and I can see what an integration of us two would look like if they get raised it's like oh my god that the energy that that releases is both exciting and extremely scary but talking about achievement it really helped me a lot kids there's so much by the way a kid statistically don't make you happier [Music] they have intense moments of joy where there's nothing happier in the whole world but you also worry a lot you know so statistically on average it actually balances out but that's where the numbers get a bit to number II because kids meaning relationships autonomy ooh big impact on autonomy growth for sure achievement every day I guess safety again something you will be constantly worried about but if your kids grow older at some point I can take care of you if you've you know I mean some people fall out and it's really that's really sad but a lot of times kids will take care of their parents up into old age you know that sense of security and safety that's like having that family around you then it's intense I'm married into a Mexican family and the relationships the structures are incredible I can see how how how the family is this integral part to a latin-american person you know and they just give you so much it's like I mean I'm German and like I see if I don't talk to my mom for two three weeks it's fine I I hope to black to believe that it's fine for her also but like certainly if she's not calling me 15 times if she can't get a hold of me in the 10 minutes and I get I get called by my wife's mom a lot more than by my mom and usually because she wants to talk to her because you know she couldn't reach her for five minutes or so and because she was just doing something but the the the sense of belonging that you get is fantastic it's so valuable and I think it really impacts on somebody's happiness they teach you stuff you know you're engaged you're very engaged when you have kids you know you're gonna be super in the zone a lot of your days you know just like part of it is just a pure exhaustion I think and you just don't have any mindset left or anything else but like if you start playing with a kit you get lost you don't think about work you know if they start asking you questions and you explain the world to a toddler you know that's you're not gonna think about anything else you're gonna be so in the zone and only doing that and there's good research that is really affecting your levels of well-being quite quite significantly not while you and flow but when you come out of it now it's a wonderful state to come out of because in the state you don't really feel anything you're not really aware of anything okay so what does it look like in practice cool excellent there's no tested models there's no unified theory there's no rules and there's very few guidelines in academia so I've been teaching on the on a master's in applied positive psychology and coaching psychology it's not a master's in positive psychology coaching because nobody really knows what that is yet you know there are some books and again I'm gonna tell you about some of them later there are some models but science moves relatively slowly and given that coaching is different depending on who you are as a coach then given that it's so unregulated it's really difficult to study it because what has helped right now is that the series of questions you were asking or the homework you were giving or the intervention that you've done or is it the relationship that you as a unique human being had with that unique human being in front of you you know because I'm a relationship first kind of coach you know the Hans relational coaching is featured here and I I think and I also know from the science that exists the relationship is them the main driving factor not just in therapy but also in coaching you know you can do fantastic work not having a particularly good relationship you know it works there's valuable but if you have the relationship and nothing else it's already valuable you know people already being moved just because they connected in an authentic way with another human being and they've listened you know you don't have to do anything if you're just being with somebody for six sessions and you just show up as a human being and you're interested in them that can really move people so that's that's the essence but then on top of that there's a bunch of things we can do lots of interventions the processes you know grow toolkit all of these are series of questions and taking somebody through a process coaching is a managed conversation you know that's part of what I believe coaching is you know you you take somebody through a process depending on what they came for and there's lots of really good processes so if you get the relationship right then you can introduce a lot of positive psychology knowledge into your coaching in many different ways but because it's so dependent on the relationship it's hard to study so we'll need a few more decades to really have something emerge you know there's really good processes and some of them I want to introduce but they're all possibilities so I what I what I do when I teach positive psychology for coaches which is not positive psychology coaching is I want to teach you about positive psychology so that you can take what you think will work for you and integrate it into the way that you already coach yeah make sense so this was Tina I mentioned Robert earlier really good poke positive psychology a practicing positive psychology coaching he says while you're working with strength you're working with assessment and you're harnessing positivity so you bring a really positive vibe you know you break you create a positivity atmosphere you know and that might be a strategic joke you crack at the beginning you know because you're invoking positive emotions and we had that in the beginning start questioning in a way that people are in a positive mood and they're gonna be more creative you know you can use assessments to monitor people's progress assessments are a really good way to open up a conversation about who they are who they are do a strength assessment with somebody and you'll find out what their values are in the conversation that follows you know and there's lots of free tests out there and I put them in them and the research section as well so he's working a lot with strength and a lot of coaches actually do with strengthen off a few coaches who always would always start the first session with a strength assessment because strengths are so linked to values and to beliefs and what you naturally good at and the theory is quite solid that if we do something we're naturally good at then you know we're more productive we're actually gonna enjoy work because work is not so much perceived as work anymore because we're already really good at it so many people are in jobs where they're not using their strengths and then perhaps they can use their strengths in a different way doing the things differently in their job if they have that movement sometimes people leave their jobs because they realize actually other things I enjoy so much more ask people about their hobbies ask people about the things where money doesn't motivate them and you probably find out what their strengths are you know because if it's something that is naturally enjoyable and you do it for intrinsic motivation not because of an external reason you know you're gonna get to somewhere really valuable because if they can do more of that or if they could even monetize it and then create the security or buy more of the conditions and processes that create more happiness you know it's a really good entry point so that's why it's in this model and positive interventions I'm gonna tell you a little bit more about what's out there evidence based but if you just google positive interventions or positive psychology interventions you'll come to a multitude of stuff that you can actually do you know and have you like if somebody wants to get into mindfulness there's there's evidence-based mindfulness programs out there there's a lot of crap then there's a lot of really good programs you know it's like yoga like some yoga is the real deal and some yoga is just basically stretchy aerobics you know I've saw a gin tonic yoga session I mean it sounds appealing I've had I don't think it has much to do with yoga as such as it would be a practiced where it came from what's that well he you get quite mindful after the right amount of glasses so the basic tenants of positive psychology coaching under business Dena is humans have an innate drive to grow you know in a drive to grow to change to overcome that's in us when we're born we explore the world you know yes thoughtless can get scared but usually if they have learned that they've learned to get scared you don't see a baby that doesn't crawl everywhere you know and if my brother has two kids now and like this this this little man once you started walking with just you would stand them on the table he would just start running it's like but there's an abyss don't you see the abyss as I go wonder what it's like to fall down the abyss you know we have that innate drive to learn and then we unlearn it with time which is really sad to me but like in coaching it's really useful to read and reactivate that or explore what kept people who could hold them back from learning usually it's some sort of getting hurt in the past they I don't want to do it anymore you know it's like oh I stopped I stopped falling in love because it's too painful you know you can actually stop yourself from living a really good life you know I'm not gonna open myself up and make myself vulnerable anymore because I'm gonna get hurt if I've learned that I can shut myself down you know I'm not gonna get all the benefits from positive relationships but I'm also not gonna get hurt you know what kind of life you want to live I think that's a choice but we have that innate drive in us to test boundaries and limits at some point we can choose to not do that anymore and driven live rather flat but safe focusing on strengths is a powerful or more powerful it's as powerful or more powerful than focusing on weaknesses to achieve success not saying you should never talk about any weaknesses or any mistakes you've made or anything that you're not good at to improve it you know it's really useful to improve some things that you need talking about life skills for example or survival skills or any of the skills in the survive and thrive theory we can learn those skills and it's useful but focusing on what you already good at and doing that more or differently is s or more powerful and there's good research on that now Ryan emic is one of this the the main guy in strength theory and it just released a book on interventions I really recommended positivity whether in the form of emotions our hope is a powerful resource for facilitating change and achieving success and you know that when a client comes to you that sense of investing in yourself to work with the coach that sense of hope that your life will change or at least has the potential to change if you instill that kind of Hope in somebody just by believing in them you don't need to know whether they're guaranteed to get the outcome that they came for but if they feel the hope that there's potential and you exude that atmosphere of I think you can do anything you know or I think you can do this that you came here for you know I'm not necessarily a fan of anybody can do anything they want because I think there's limits to what human beings can achieve depending on all sorts of different factors but if somebody comes to me my consultations are quite long because I want to dig into what they're here for and who they are and if I believe that they can achieve what they want and what they came for which very most of the time I do believe because most of the time it's not out of the ballpark you know it's not unrealistic you know if somebody really wants to make a million five I think they can if they really apply themselves question is what do they what are they willing to sacrifice but I believe in the potential and I think that's a very very powerful thing to give them that kind of hope be real but exude that energy and people will pick up on it that's part of positive psychology coaching as described here pay attention to both positive and negative aspects you know you need to pay attention to both you can't just ignore the negative there's the sales nutter called grant cardone that I've actually learned quite a bit from but he's also crazy I can recommend it with a kilo of salt but look into some of this stuff it really it's really interesting but like he has a sign in his office says nope no negativity allowed can-do attitude and that has a seductive vibe to it you know if somebody comes to you and it's like you can do absolutely I do anything for you it's not a problem with a sorted out you know it's very attractive but if somebody comes to you for coaching it's nicer to only coach the positives but actually we need to pay attention to both you know we need some balance Oh every time I say balance are gonna look at karna Carly the balance guy from now on very important it's scientifically derived knowledge and assessments they give us a unique ways of understanding clients and coaching so a positive psychology coach in my opinion should always be informed by science and keep up to date with the science you know there's so much that changes there's a there's a theory called the three-to-one positivity ratio was based long story short it was based on not good science you know there was a data set and there was something dodgy happening it wasn't analyzed right or maybe something else but like it kept debunked thoroughly you know it's but it's still being taught because it's so simple and it's so simplicity is attractive you know but like things change in science and that's a good thing you know you you don't try to protect and hold on to knowledge just because it's simple and nice and it works for you you know that's not how science works so there's actually good ways and one of them I mention later of actually keeping up to date with a science if you read an abstract which is a 150 200 words you get all the knowledge from a scientific article that could be 10 or 20 or 100 pages long you know so you can actually get through new knowledge quite quickly if you start to read it into a little bit and you bear a little bit of the dry language you know there's also good blog posts positive psychology calm my friend SEF Fontaine Pennock really really good block I put the link in the back as well he's got good writers you know I trust the platform of doing good writing there are people they are informed you know so if you know your sources then you can actually filter out the good science and leave the crap in the Daily Mail behind that's that good colleague of mine Tim Lomas I had an article in The Daily Mail about his book and it was a decent article so oh yeah I mentioned positive psychology to come here's how it could look like if you were to structure it because I know there's at least some of you will be quite keen on a very structured process I'm very big picture I'm very open and I like that space because you just allow what happens to happen and then you work with it but also it takes it's very complicated it's a very complex process and sometimes you just only have a few sessions you know what there's a limited budget or maybe you just like structured approaches or maybe your client loves to know what's gonna happen to them this is amazing get your client info contact data session 1 explore values and set goals as a bunch of exercises you can use for that you know then explore their strengths have them do a strength assessment between session one and session to come in talk about it find out what their values are what their strengths are what the card that could work with it what they're already doing you know in relation to the goal obviously always session three behavioral change lots of different ways that we can very actively change behavior in order to change thoughts and emotion you know it's a really that's there's so much out there that we can use not necessarily from positive psychology everything because behavior change has been a thing for forever but a lot of data has come through positive psychology about certain interventions you know then what are the obstacles how could you cope with them how could you work through them you know work on positive emotions how can you build them into the process and then you evaluate what's happened and how far you've moved and you talk about how you could maintain those changes in the future you know I it gives me the creeps to look at that and imagine me working like that but I'm sure there's a bunch of you and there it's like oh yeah this is really good I could see myself doing that you know and there's there's more info on that but I think it's part of their their paid program but I I wanted to put it out there just as an example of yes it could also be very structured possible applications techniques you can if you just listen to well-being and I do that in in my trainings a lot it's just like listen to somebody for four or five minutes talk about anything and you start listening to what makes them happy you can Minh it between the lines or very often it's very obvious you know what do they enjoy if you ask a specific questions tell me about a time when your life was awesome you know tell me about a time when you felt really engaged in life then they start telling you a lot of stuff and you can start listening to all of these elements and pillars that we've heard across the different theories you know and then maybe you start being really curious about some of them more clarifying use your coaching skills but that's really useful just start learning to listen to well-being you can do that when you watch TV you know or when you watch a movie or when you listen to anybody talk just try to spot over the next week what elements of well-being come up lettering goals I mentioned that earlier if you had that promotion what would it give you you know oh I could buy the car if you had the car what would it give you up like that neighbor would finally talk to me about cars what would that give you our sense of connection or a sense of self-worth or like a sense of security or whatever might come out of it let er find out what the ultimate goal is again if you can do that in Paris you can do that in next try it I recommend getting practice clients no matter if you've been coaching for years you know I always have a few clients I try to have at least one ongoing that I work with for very little and say oh I'm gonna experiment with some stuff you know you can always do that and think it's useful try the stand stuff out we're just in the next coaching training working with strength strength spotting strength interview tell me about the time you were at your best you know tell me about a time when you've achieved something that you were really proud of you know and then listen to the story you know there's a bunch of questions around that that you can ask but you're gonna hear about somebody strengths and we don't have time to get into the whole strengths model and what are the different strengths are and the research behind it but like there's a lot of stuff that you can do with it coaching for flow and engagement there's there's nine conditions for flow following me Hyde Csikszentmihalyi and I'd love to have somebody just try to spell that learn and there's nine conditions and you can have coaching conversations to create them you know the main one is a balance of skills and challenge you know if you have a lot of skills you need a high challenge in order to not be bored you know if you have a high challenge you need high skills in order not to be anxious so if you have that balance you in the flow channel and if you have that balance it's much more likely you're going to be engaged not bored not anxious but engaged there's a lot of other factors that play into getting into flow or increasing engagement so there's a lot we can do through coaching to raise those levels learned optimism we can actually learn to be more optimistic and optimistic not necessarily as I always have the best outlook on the future you know it's gonna be fine and everybody's going to be alright but the dispositional optimism that coming from Seligman at Peterson who said being positive about what's happened in the past and what's happening now how do we make sense of things you know if I've failed an exam I might say oh I'm an idiot and I'm stupid and I'm never gonna be anything and I'm always gonna fail math you know just in no good you could also say well that exam was pretty hard actually it was the teacher who doesn't like me and gave me one that was particularly hard and I could also say well I might not be good at math but you know I'm really good at English and sports and other stuff you know so I can kind of explain something that is bad or negative in a positive way you know there's also downsides to that because for example of something really good happens somebody might say oh that was just luck instead of I did this I can be really proud of this so again there's not one of those that is always preferable but we can work with that kind of stuff you know and as a coach we can ask very specific questions what was your part in that achievement you know if somebody's very pessimistic about their achievements about positive things you know sounds like you made that happen you know what what what what does he family say about that or they all super proud just like oh you think you have a reason to be proud you know so there's lots of ways that we can work with learned optimism in explanatory style and sometimes it's the positive thinking but that has a lot of other connotations which again for a scientist is like because it's not just about thinking positive you know that can actually really really detrimental but what we want to do is develop an explanatory style that could be counted or constructive thinking you know there's a lot of cognitive behavioral stuff we can work a lot with our thoughts you know you could call that positive thinking but not in the way that maybe L or cosmopolitan would do but in science you would have other terminology there's a large overlap you know that's why a lot of that stuff really really works but finding out why exactly that works that's where we get into when we when we look at that stuff in more depth lots of interventions homework you know there's so much there has been generated by positive psychologists to say you can do this in a structured way I can give you a sheet of paper and you can be happier you know instructions on how to do it and what the process is so that you can raise your levels of well-being post-traumatic growth mindsets we talked about lots of measurement tools we talked about that positive existential mindset embracing challenge and anxiety as something that makes life worth living you know there's a lot we can talk about that we can start challenging so there's more to positive psychology than just working with what's Pleasant and nice we can learn resilience skills mindfulness and meditation is a big part of the research and positive psychology I know the CPD at animus is quite this comes probably up most often when I work with clients particularly very high stress clients you know very successful very lots of pressure on them you know being in charge of where your attention goes it's probably the most important skill that we can learn in our lives you know that solves so many things and we can learn it through getting building meditation habits here's a couple of interventions we don't have that much time if you want more of these come to the training because I'm gonna go through each of these in details expressing gratitude and we talked about that earlier be kind random acts of kindness you know so many things we can do right start journaling it's brilliant you know not everybody's thing but like it really works there's a lot of research get into an exercise habit you know there's an ideal self exercise what who could I be in the future write yourself a letter from future you having built the almost ideal life you know write your obituary and what all the people would talk about you know when you when you have died or when you're close to your death imagine you're on your deathbed and looking back at your life having lifted really well you know what comes up for you this can really give you a lot of insight into how you want to live and what's important to you these are the two books on I got a pitch mine obviously these are the two books that leave me and pony hoof is what my what my my grandma often said there's some German searching by their laughter life is not a it's not a pony pony how do you translate it like a pony farm yeah life's not a pony farm it's not always nice you know it's pretty hard and tough and my colleagues from UEL are former colleagues have acknowledged that and looking at the other side of human existence and existential coaching the way that I see it is inherently positive and a lot of the second wave of positive psychology includes these existential elements so I think that's really important that we don't ignore all of what's difficult and challenging about life and we can learn I know we can learn to embrace it as the stuff that makes life worth living you know because the stories that people tell that they're proud of they're usually about overcoming challenge you know beating anxiety having having a renewed obstacle in front of them and going through it overcoming it you know the dark periods in our lives are usually the stuff that we tell with a sense of ownership and we took responsibility for our lives and we went through it and we kept going and we achieved and we had success you know there's no movie where everything yeah maybe there is some words like there's no movie that I would enjoy watching that's just nice you know we need some story arc and we need somebody who's who's dealing with death or decisions dilemmas or paradox or difficult relationships so in conclusion everybody is tracing some form of happiness and if you if you still don't quite on that please to talk to me because I'm I'm quite open about that and I would really like to be challenged so that that would be amazing if you if you think like now I don't think I don't think this yeah anyway talk to me everybody's chasing some form of happiness is the point that I wanted to make according to all of these theories happy is more than just positive emotions happiness has many facets and many pillars happiness is subjective you know to some some things are more important than the other pillars coaches have many ways to facilitate happiness and increase well-being regardless of your style happiness coaching can work across that variety you know and there's so many processes intervention so many things that we can use and build into the way that we coach and happiness doesn't mean you're always feeling good so here a couple of resources have one talk you through them check them out I'll put the the slides gonna be in a presentation I'll make it downloadable and redistribute it these are the couple of the books there's not many books this one you can download on the Animus site that i've written and this is the new the new one came out this year it's fantastic it gives you a huge overview of about a lot of stuff I mentioned positive this was Dina's book and these two are also full of good ideas but these are actually all the books that are written about positive psychology coaching there are no others that's the course and I think Zoe has a few things to say about that but like if you want to dive into more depth I'm doing two days in August and would be amazing to see you there if you wanted to learn more and dive deeper we have two days where we try some of that stuff out take it for a spin triads and go in a lot more depth on some of the stuff that we didn't have time for today and now talk to each other through supervision reflection conversation we learn coaching is a conversation so I'm gonna be at the bar the more we talk to each other the longer we talk to each other the more interesting conversations we have and if you want to talk to me after that because you might need to see your kids and be a bit anxious or extremely happy you can talk to me anytime you want my doors are almost always open as I often say thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: Animas Centre for Coaching

Views: 5,099

Rating: 4.9642859 out of 5

Keywords: coaching, life coaching, positive psychology, psychology, lecture, transformational coaching, personal development

Id: OJq2KIi67kk

Length: 79min 59sec (4799 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019