While she was denied at not one art school but six, she never let it discourage her as she spent the next 10 years painting. Janet Echelman has an extraordinary career:
Echelman first set out to be an artist after graduating college. She moved to Hong Kong in 1987 to study Chinese calligraphy and brush-painting. Later she moved to Bali, Indonesia, where she collaborated with artisans to combine traditional textile methods with contemporary painting.
When she lost her bamboo house in Bali to a fire, Echelman returned to the United States and began teaching at Harvard. After seven years as an Artist-in-Residence, she returned to Asia, embarking on a Fulbright lectureship in India.
Ed X is offering a free online course about Hapiness taught by Greater Good Society fellows:
The Science of Happiness
Starts September 9, 2014 – Register Now!
An unprecedented free online course exploring the roots of a happy, meaningful life. Co-taught by the GGSC’s Dacher Keltner andEmiliana Simon-Thomas
“The Science of Happiness” is a free, eight-week online course that explores the roots of a happy and meaningful life. Students will engage with some of the most provocative and practical lessons from this science, discovering how cutting-edge research can be applied to their own lives.
Created by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, the course zeroes in on a fundamental finding from positive psychology: that happiness is inextricably linked to having strong social ties and contributing to something bigger than yourself—the greater good. Students will learn about the cross-disciplinary research supporting this view, spanning the fields of psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and beyond.
What’s more, “The Science of Happiness” will offer students practical strategies for nurturing their own happiness. Research suggests that up to 40 percent of happiness depends on our habits and activities. So each week, students will learn a new research-tested practice that fosters social and emotional well-being—and the course will help them track their progress along the way.
The course will include:
Short videos featuring the co-instructors and guest lectures from top experts on the science of happiness;
Articles and other readings that make the science accessible and understandable to non-academics;
Weekly “happiness practices”—real-world exercises that students can try on their own, all based on research linking these practices to greater happiness;
Tests, quizzes, polls, and a weekly “emotion check-in” that help students gauge their happiness and track their progress over time;
Discussion boards where students can share ideas with one another and submit questions to their instructors.
People often equate shy with introversion. Jung defined introversion as an “attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents” (focus on one’s inner psychic activity); and extraversion as “an attitude type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object”, (the outside world). Wikipedia distinguishes shyness from introversion: “professor of psychology Bernardo J. Carducci, introverts choose to avoid social situations because they derive no reward from them or may find surplus sensory input overwhelming, whereas shy people may fear such situations.” A more complete discussion can be found on Susan Cain’s Quiet Website:
Shyness and introversion are not the same thing. Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, and introversion is a preference for quiet, minimally stimulating environments. Some psychologists map the two tendencies on vertical and horizontal axes, with the introvert-extrovert spectrum on the horizontal axis, and the anxious-stable spectrum on the vertical. With this model, you end up with four quadrants of personality types: calm extroverts, anxious (or impulsive) extroverts, calm introverts, and anxious introverts.
This chart below, from The Thought Catalogue, provides a handy cheat card not just between shyness and introversion, but also extroversion and obnoxiousness (Yes that is the word they use).
Coursera offers a free four week course entitled Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms led by David Levine, founder of KIPP schools and leading proponent of Strengths based education. His course includes interviews with some big names from positive pscyhology.
Coursera offers a free four week course entitled Teaching Character and Creating Positive Classrooms led by David Levine, founder of KIPP schools and leading proponent of Strengths based education. His course includes interviews with some big names from positive pscyhology.
Everyone says it is Denmark. Well by everyone, we specifcally mean the World Happiness Report. Then again, Gallup does not share such enthusiasm placing the land of Lego much lower down–they land 36 places behind The Philipinnes. Jetpac concurs. They exminaed smailes on instagram and concluded the happiest country to be Brazil. Denmark ranked 87th. Phillipines came in 8th. The Happy Planet Index has NONE of the above even in their top 10 with Costa Rica placing first. Like College rankings, it all comes back to to what you count.
ALl good, but it missing a key aspect, so I got thinking but the core of happiness: Authenticity, Accepting and Appreciating
Authenticity
Living true to yourself is the heart of being yourself. Many people love ee cummings take on self: “
“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
But they miss where the whole passage comes from: He was responding to you young person asking for advice on becoming a poet:
A real human is somebody who feels and who expresses his or her feelings. This may sound easy. It isn’t.
A lot of people think or believe or know what they feel—but that’s thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling. And being real is feeling—not just knowing or believing or thinking.
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but it’s very difficult to learn to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody – but – yourself.
To be nobody – but -yourself– in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else–means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
As for communicating nobody-but-yourself to others, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t real can possibly imagine. Why?
Because nothing is quite as easy as just being just like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time–and whenever we do it, we are not real.
If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve loved just once with a nobody-but-yourself heart, you”ll be very lucky indeed.
And so my advice to all young people who wish to become real is: do something easy, like dreaming of freedom–unless you’re ready to commit yourself to feel and work and fight till you die.
But where to begin? Who is this you? Start with your strengths. There are mutiple of instruments to help you idnetify them. Two are free right now:
The Buddhist have a very strong notion of accepting things as they are. Tara Brach explains this in some detail in her talk:
Our capacity to accept this life is key to our freedom, yet there are many misconceptions about acceptance: People wonder, if acceptance makes us a doormat in relationships? Isn’t acceptance akin to resignation? Doesn’t it make us passive when what is needed is action? This talk explores some of the misunderstandings about acceptance and offers teachings on the nature of genuine and liberating acceptance.
Actor Thandie Newton covers one aspect of acceptance by telling the story of finding her “otherness” — first, as a child growing up in two distinct cultures, and then as an actor playing with many different selves.
Vunerability Researcher Brené Brown, whose earlier talk on vulnerability became a viral hit, explores what can happen when people confront their shame head-on.
Writer Andrew Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents — asking them: What’s the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?
Appreciating
There has been a growing body of work focusing on mindfulness and gratitude. Like the great philospher sang: Slow down, you move too fast.
Get involved: Let it Ripple Productions invite syou to join 750 like minded groups in premiering their 8 minute science of character. In addition to free customized versions of the film, Let it Ripple and partners like Common Sense Media will offer a list of films,games, and apps to strength particular character strengths, a free curriculum, a character strengths survey, and resource guide.
This film was inspired by the work of: Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth, David Levin, Paul Tough, Dominic Randolph, Neal Mayerson, Adele Diamond, Clifford Nass, The Bezos Family Foundation, The Character Lab, The VIA Institute on Character, and many more. – See more at: http://letitripple.org/character/#sthash.k4saP05c.dpuf
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Bravey open us to possibility, possibility that we might experience joy, contentment, and gratitude or what Barbara Fredrickson calls her Broaden and Build Theory. Bravey overcomes our own vunerability. TED has many great talks on bravery, but the best is Brene Brown on Vunerability:
Marucs Buckingham has been instrumental in the development of strengths movement from the earliest days. He wrote the original Now, Discover Your Strengths. He left Gallup to start his own company and launched his own version of the strengthsfinder, STANDOUT.
Now, folks who follow the Lean In Blog, get to take the Standout strengths assessment for free.
The Marcus Buckingham Company is providing free strength assessments to Lean In users. After you watch the lecture, visit standout.tmbc.com/leanin and enter the code LEANIN00 to take the test and discover your strengths.
Leanin.org is inspired by and founded by Cheryl Sandberg, who also wrote the book. They aspire to:
The book Lean In is focused on encouraging women to pursue their ambitions, and changing the conversation from what we can’t do to what we can do. LeanIn.Org is the next chapter.
More about Lean In at the end of the post. As for StandOut, here is how bookoutlines summarizes it:
This assessment measures you across 9 archetypal Strengths Roles, and determines your top two. These are the roles which reflect your natural strengths, and if pursued, will give you a natural advantage in your career.
Each Role contains the following advice: * Phrases to describe your edge * How to make an immediate impact * How to take your performance to the next level * What to watch out for
The book also contains more specific advice based on your combination of top two roles: * Which careers fit your strengths combination * How you can win as a leader * How you can win as a manager * How you can win in sales * How you can win in client service
The 9 StandOut Strengths Roles are:
1) Advisor You are a practical, concrete thinkier who is at your most powerful when reacting to and solving other people’s problems
2) Connector You are a catalyst. Your power lies in your craving to bring two people or ideas together to make something bigger and better than it is now.
3) Creator You make sense of the world–pulling it apart, seeing a better configuration, and creating it.
4) Equalizer You are a levelheaded person whose power comes from keeping the world in balance, ethically and practically.
5) Influencer You engage people directly and persuade them to act. Your power is your persuasion.
6) Pioneer You see the world as a friendly place where around every corner good things will happen. Your power comes from your optimism in the face of uncertainty.
7) Provider You sense other people’s feelings, and you feel compelled to recognize those feelings, give them a voice, and act on them.
8) Stimulator You are the host of other people’s emotions. You feel responsible for them, for turning them around, for elevating them.
9) Teacher You are thrilled by the potential you see in each person. Your power comes from learning how to unleash it.
The way the strengths assessment works is that you are presented with a slightly stressful stimulation and a set of choices. You then have 45 seconds to make your choice. The time limit helps ensure that your answers reflect your instincts, and the choices are filled with trigger words that appeal to specific strengths roles. The result is complete strengths profile that doesn’t depend on self-assessment, and isn’t vulnerable to being gamed.
What’s more, “The Science of Happiness” will offer students practical strategies for nurturing their own happiness. Research suggests that up to 40 percent of happiness depends on our habits and activities. So each week, students will learn a new research-tested practice that fosters social and emotional well-being—and the course will help them track their progress along the way.
