Positive interventions are one of the building blocks for the application of positive psychology in our day-to-day lives. In this course taught by Dr. James Pawelski, we explore positive interventions through theory, research and practice. We provide learners the basic tools for using and measuring positive psychology in professional or personal contexts. Suggested prerequisite: Positive Psychology: Martin E. P. Seligman’s Visionary Science.
4.2 Choosing Life Goals
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Del curso dictado por University of Pennsylvania
Positive Psychology: Applications and Interventions
563 calificaciones
University of Pennsylvania
563 calificaciones
Curso 2 de 5 en SpecializationFoundations of Positive Psychology
Conoce a los instructores
James Pawelski, Ph.D.Director of Education and Senior Scholar
Positive Psychology Center
Let's begin our discussion of increasing our well-being through goal setting
by talking about how to choose life goals.
Chances are you've heard of how to create SMART goals, right?
According to George Doran's helpful advice, we should make our goals SMART
where SMART is an acronym standing for Specific, Measurable,
Assignable, to a particular person who will be responsible for
them, Realistic and Time-Related, having a specific deadline.
This is no doubt great advice for creating strategic plans or
even choosing the tactical steps for achieving those plans.
But it's not as obviously helpful when choosing our life goals.
These broad goals have more to do with the purpose of our lives and with the overall
mission that strategic plans and tactical steps can help us move toward.
Without having at least some idea of our life goals,
it can be tough to decide on the strategies and tactics for achieving them.
It can be hard to know what direction to give to our efforts.
So how should we go about choosing our life goals?
In the past, society has laid out fairly clear pathways to success in the workplace
by presenting specific professional and career trajectories.
And parents often had a huge influence on which of those pathways
their children chose.
To varying degrees this is still the case today, but many of us find ourselves in
worlds with increasing amounts of freedom and multiplying opportunities.
And at the same time parents seem less likely to tell us to be a doctor or
a lawyer and more likely to tell us to follow our passion and
do something we love.
But that is easier said than done and it is certainly been a challenge for
me in my life.
When I was in school, I remember thinking that if only I knew
what my life purpose was, I would be happy to throw myself completely into it but
which of my many interests should I follow?
I liked lots of different subjects, and was pretty good at a variety of them.
I remember envying classmates who were outstanding in one subject even if,
or perhaps, especially if they didn't do so
well in others because that would make it obvious what pathway they should choose.
There was one classmate in particular who was so good at playing the clarinet
that our band director called him Wolfgang after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
It was clear that he should follow music as his profession and,
indeed, this is what he did.
Well, if there wasn't one area that I was obviously outstanding in,
maybe one day I would have an epiphany.
A certain revelation that would incontrovertibly point me toward
the direction I should take.
Alas, I'm still waiting.
In her book, Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance,
Angela Duckworth, my colleague at the Positive Psychology Center,
gives what I think is great advice
to those like me who never got the lightning bolt
telling us what to do with our lives.
In fact, she says experiences like these lightning bolt ones
are actually more myth than reality.
Although there are people who point to early experiences as indicative of their
life path
in virtually all of those cases those early experiences
could have been the catalyst for several different career paths, and
those same people often had a variety of other experiences which were no doubt
just as strong, and could have led them in very different directions.
Indeed, this is what I found in my own experience.
It's important for
older folks to have a strong narrative to support their life choices.
But those narratives typically come after the choices have been made,
and not before.
When I was a young child, my family lived in Mexico.
And my parents liked to tell the story of the year I got a chalkboard for Christmas.
I then invited my classmates over to our house to teach them English.
This clearly was an indication that I would grow up to be a teacher,
which I have.
Yet, if I had chosen a different profession,
no doubt my parents would remember other stories from my childhood
that would foreshadow that career decision.
More specifically, as I look back on my life now, I can see the formative power
a specific college experience has had on me.
As a STEM major, I was impressed by the power and
precision of the courses I took in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
I loved doing a page of calculus and arriving at the solution.
X equals 2, I would look up the answer in the back of a textbook and be thrilled
that I had arrived at the right solution.
I also found myself taking lots of classes in the humanities
because I valued the meaningful questions asked in courses in philosophy,
religion, literature and history.
I remember being in literature class as we discussed key questions of human existence
thinking: I really wish there were an answer key in the back of the book.
Since then, it has become my life's mission to bring together the power and
precision of STEM with the meaning of the humanities.
When I first met Martin Seligman back in the year 2000,
I discussed with him my interest in bringing together the scientific power of
positive psychology with the meaning of the humanities.
And ten years later, when my wife Suzie and I were on our honeymoon, and
she asked me what I most wanted to do in life.
I told her it was develop the positive humanities.
So now I can state my professional life goal as, helping individuals and
communities thrive through the creative integration
of the science of well-being and the culture of human flourishing.
I'm pleased to have this life goal and to be able to state it clearly and
succinctly.
But this has been a long time coming.
There were years, decades of my life,
when I could not have stated my life goals in this way.
In fact, when I graduated with my PhD in Philosophy,
the field of positive psychology had not even been created yet.
So if you don't yet have your life goals clearly developed,
please don't be discouraged when you hear people like me stating ours.
Chances are it has taken us a long time to get to this point of clarity in our lives.
And the story, no doubt, could have taken a lot of different directions.
So what can you do to develop your own life goals if you don't yet
have them clearly in mind.
I think Duckworth's advice is excellent.
She says it's important not just to follow your passion, but to foster it.
With Duckworth, I don't believe passion is just something you're born with or
that usually emerges naturally over the course of your childhood.
Or that hits you like a bolt of lightning in your adolescence.
At least for most of us it is something we have to foster.
Duckworth says we can do so by cultivating our interests.
And she gives three specific steps for doing that.
The first step, she says, is discovering.
She recommends asking yourself questions like the following.
What do I like to think about?
Where does my mind wander?
What do I really care about?
What matters most to me?
How do I enjoy spending my time?
And in contrast, what do I find absolutely unbearable?
If you're unsure what your natural interests are anymore, she suggests,
why don't you think back to what you might have answered as a teenager?
As this is when our professional interests often start to emerge.
Once you have some answers to these questions,
she says, it's time to experiment.
Try out various of these activities and see what happens to your interest in them.
Duckworth's second step is development.
Once you know what your interests are, it's time to develop them.
This means spending time engaging with them.
Getting a deeper understanding of how and why you connect with them.
Hanging out with others who share your interests.
And finding a mentor who can give you good advice.
This will help your interest grow and Mature, along with your knowledge and
expertise in these areas.
The third and final step Duckworth recommends is deepening.
Once you've become adept in a particular area,
you may feel like it has lost its initial interest for you.
And you may have an urge to try something new.
If, instead, you focus on ways of enjoying the nuances of an activity or
field that only a master can appreciate, then you may have fostered your
passion to the point that it can provide you with life goals.
Let's pause here for an assignment to help you think about your own passions and
life goals.
Then, we'll explore some more evidence based advice,
for choosing goals to support well being.
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