Vicarious Resilience
Vicarious Resilience
4 Exercises to Help You Thrive
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In this episode, you will learn 4 exercises that can help move you from be well, to thriving. They are easy to learn, and you can start them today!
If you are interested in finding out what your signature strengths are,this the link to the website viacharacter.org
If you would like to comment on my podcast or if you live in the White Rock/ South Surrey, British Columbia area, and are interested in a counselling session with me, you can reach me at dannettercc@gmail.com, check out my website at http://dannette.ca or find me on Psychology Today.
Welcome to another episode of vicarious resilience, where you can learn specific skills to help you face difficult struggles, or just daily life. I'm your host, Dannette Hoenisch. I'm a Registered Clinical Counselor. Vicarious Resilience is about learning the skills that have worked for others, and trying to use them for ourselves. It's also about sharing what works for us, so we can help others.
Unknown Speaker :In his 1991 book, learned optimism Seligman takes his own idea of learned helplessness and flips it on it's head. He figured that if you can learn to be helpless, you can also learn to be optimistic.
Unknown Speaker :There's a lot of current information that shows that when someone is an optimist it positively affects their health, even if they have precursors that have negative health experiences. When Seligman looked at the difference between an optimist, and a pessimist. He saw that there was an attribution style that was different in each of them. When discussing an adverse situation, the pessimist has statements like: " I'll never get this.", " I'm stupid.", " It's always my fault." Their beliefs are permanent, they're pervasive, and they're personal. They're permanent because they believe that it doesn't matter what they do, it will be happening forever.
Unknown Speaker :It's pervasive because they believe that it's an internal trait. It's just part of who they are. And it's personal because they believe that it's all their fault. And that other factors don't play into it. The optimist, however, believes that situations are not permanent that things can change that situations change and people's abilities can change over time, the optimist doesn't see an adverse situation as a trait of theirs. They see the other factors that play into it, so it isn't personal people who believe themselves stupid, rather than uneducated, don't take action to improve their mind. If someone has the mindset that they can change, they will because seeing the ability to change is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you believe you cannot change, then you won't.
Unknown Speaker :Today, I'd like to go over four exercises in positive psychology that can help you focus on having a positive mindset.
Unknown Speaker :Positive Psychology, helps people move from unwell, to well, and it helps them move from well to thriving. Positive Psychology uses positive interventions that are done with intention. The first of our four exercises, we're going to learn today is called The Three Blessings Exercise. To make this exercise, truly successful, you should practice it for at least a month. So if you focus on at least Monday to Friday, then by the end of the month, you'll have created a positive habit that will help you see the world in a positive light.
Unknown Speaker :If you currently express love to your partner to your kids to yourself by keeping a nice house by putting food on the table by making sure that you tell your family members that you love them and maybe you hug them.
Unknown Speaker :So in this exercise, you don't stop doing those things, but maybe you add to it, and you add to it by expressing love by delivering additional food to the food bank or calling a friend and telling them the things that you love about them, or spending time thinking about the qualities about yourself that you love and expressing self love or self compassion. The idea is to focus on building our strengths, rather than focusing on our weaknesses, you use a new strength, every day for one week. Studies have shown that people who have completed this exercise, have shown a greater sense of well being, happiness, and lower levels of depression for up to six months later, the character strengths that you most identify with today may not be the same ones that you identified the most with, say, a year ago, because they change and shift as we grow and mature and as different things are happening in our life. To better understand which character strengths you most identify with, or to find out what we call your signature strengths, you can go to via character.org. That's viacharacter.org. You can learn more about the character strengths, and take a quiz to find out which are your signature strengths. I decided to take this quiz. And my signature strengths, the ones that are core to who I am and came naturally to me currently, include: love, creativity, honesty, kindness, and humor.
Unknown Speaker :Research shows that people who apply Character Strengths can not just improve their life, but thrive by living a strength based life, we can use our signature strengths to really give us a sense of mastery and to help us grow the lower strengths as well by pairing them together.
Unknown Speaker :The third exercise that I'd like to go over is called savoring. It's about deepening and prolonging positive experiences. As humans, we can have a negativity bias that focuses on the things that are broken that need to be fixed. And we don't pay as much attention to the positives, we just let the positives go. Savoring means that we are deliberately prolonging the positive experiences. And those positive experiences can be in the past by reminiscing about past positive experiences, by looking at old photos, telling remember when stories or listening to music that brings up certain memories. We can savor the present moment, by enjoying a sunset, or the smell of moisture in the air, or tasting something pleasurable like a really well made meal or tastingking some time. We can also save her future events by anticipating positive experiences. Upcoming vacations plans with friends or with family.
Unknown Speaker :The final exercise that I'd like to share with you today is called a gratitude visit. The idea is that you think of someone that you should thank. Someone who's been helpful, or thoughtful or kind, write a letter to that person, including the details of how they helped you and the impact that it had arranged to meet them and read them the letter, then give it to them as a gift.
Unknown Speaker :This brings us to the end of another episode of vicarious resilience. If you're enjoying the podcast, go ahead and click subscribe so you never miss an episode. If you'd like to contact me about the podcast, or if you live in the White Rock, BC area, and would like to book a counseling session, feel free to email me at dannettercc@gmail.com, that is dannettercc@gmail.com. You can also find me on the Psychology Today website under Find a Therapist or my website, dannette.ca. All these links are found in the liner notes.
Unknown Speaker :Each individual doesn't need to figure these skills out for themselves. Let's add to each other's toolbox.
Unknown Speaker :In today's episode
Unknown Speaker :we're going to talk about positive psychology. Dr. Martin Seligman, one of the founding members of positive psychology, wrote a book called learned optimism in 1991. So this isn't really new information, but it is good information to know many years earlier. Dr Seligman discovered that when people feel that they cannot affect their environment, they develop what he calls learned helplessness. The idea behind it is when people feel that it doesn't matter what they do, they can't be successful. Then they stopped trying.
Unknown Speaker :I'm your host, Dannette Hoenisch. Thanks for listening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai