Welcome to Making Change Happen in 2015′
Welcome to my first post, I‘m glad you could make it. The purpose of this forum is to discuss topics to do with improving our lives – moving that dial from negative or neutral to the more positive end of the continuum.
Topics raised may relate directly to the “Science of Happiness” course, but other interesting questions may also arise, either as a result of discussions or through independent reflection.
Moving the dial on that continuum in the right direction has to do with making change happen. But lasting change is something many of us find difficult to accomplish.
In my Science of Happiness courses most people take a keen interest in the topic, but do little between sessions. “Lack of time’ is an often-quoted reason.
This, and the often-expressed wish to do some more ongoing work, motivated me to make a change myself and finally start this new course – a course over 6 months aimed at “making change happen”. While the introductory course focused on new content with little personal work, this one will have more emphasis on completing tasks in a supportive environment.
As you might remember from the course, your chances of achieving your goals are increased if your goals are specific, and based on personal values. You can further add to this by thinking of possible barriers and how you will overcome them – nasty things like anxiety, lack of energy, forgetfulness and ‘games’ your mind is playing with itself.
While that is easily said, it’s not so easy to clearly identify these nasties, or to think of good ways of addressing them. The group, and this forum, can provide a supportive environment both in camaraderie and in great ideas. It can also provide a time and place where you can focus on that metaphorical trip up the mountain.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Hi Christoph, Summary of what to do is much appreciated. I am not sure if I completely understand the concept of “Values”. I think of values as something that is important to me, like honesty, committment, kindness. I am having trouble putting those works into the diagram you drew, showing a path to the top of a mountain and goals to get one there. My notes also say that a “Value” is a chosen direction.
If I chose, say “to be fit”, how would I articulate that so as to make it a value? Could it be, I want to spend time each day doing physical exercise which will benefit my well being.
The same with getting to 5p.m. and not thinking that I will die if I don’t have a glass of wine. Could I say, my value,i.e. direction is that I want to get to 5.00p.m. eadh day and still be in control of my life?
I know you said there was a forum on line to discuss this sort of thing but my computer skills are basic and sending you an email is best for me.
Cheers. I L
Dear IL, thank you for your question!
Firstly, regarding your question about “Values”: Your understanding of Values as a ‘chosen direction’ and examples of ‘honesty, kindness,…” are quite spot on. I assume your key query here is about how to translate these into ‘goals’ or ‘actions’.
Well, taking ‘kindness’ as an example, – you could sit on the couch and think of ‘kindness’ as something you hold dear, – or you could think you are already having a life where kindness features strongly (and congratulations), so other than keep doing what you are doing now you are out of ideas, – or you could think “Kindness really matters a lot to me, – I want to express this a lot more”.
If the latter, – then it might help to think along the lines of different aspects of your life, – family, friends, community, – and you might get some ideas how you can specifically be more kind in each of these areas of your life. You could brainstorm a number of things you could do: writing kind letters to friends you haven’t seen for a while, – making some unexpected surprise for a friend, – saying more kind words every day to people you meet in your neighbourhood etc. etc. Some of these you can do each week, – some might seem a bit out of reach and they are long term goals of patterns you might want to develop.
Moving on to your next example: “Fitness”. Well, ‘fitness’ itself is a value. It might not be a core value, it might be that you want to be ‘fit’ because you value health or longevity etc. Either way, let’s go with “fitness’ for now. So if you have a life where fitness features largely, then as you say, doing ‘physical exercise’ would be a goal. However, in that form that ‘s a rather poorly formulated goal. you could look at different aspects of fitness, e.g. how long it takes you at the moment to walk x km, – then have a goal of doing this in such and such time, and have weekly activities you do to work towards this larger goal.
Example wine: this is a bit more difficult. If it is about ‘control’, – sure that might be what you value here. From memory you might also value to ‘stay calm and relaxed’ in life, or to have “inner calm” or whatever words you might chose. This might need more reflection to find out what the true value is you want to bring to this situation.
I hope all of this makes a bit more sense. And I hope you keep asking if there is more to clarify 🙂
Christoph
I appreciated the question and reply that reinforced what I was thinking about values. I now have a clearer idea about finding the underlying values of my goals.
And it’s good to see the ball is kicked off and rolling in this blog!
I agree, IL’s comment and Christoph’s reply confirmed where my thinking was heading regarding values. For me this course is about putting values into action by identifying specific things I want to do and identifying how these behaviours align with my values.
I’ve also been reflecting on how values are nuanced and how they might come into conflict with one another – perhaps valuing honesty, alongside telling ‘white lies’ so as not to hurt another person, is an example of this…
I’ve been reflecting on how ‘good’ / ‘bad’ can be ascribed to values. For example, my sense is that in NZ society honesty would generally be seen as a ‘good’ value to have and greed would be seen as a ‘bad’ value to have.
Also, I was reminded of Christoph’s point about diffusion when I listened to Bruce Sheridan on the radio yesterday morning – he was talking about creativity and seemed to value expansive thinking http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday
Bruce Sheridan: psychology of creativity ( 35′ 00″ )
09:05 Chair of Cinema Art + Science at Columbia College Chicago, and North American regional Chair of CILECT, the world organisation of film and media schools. He is the fourth Creative Fellow for the University of Auckland’s Creative Thinking Project, delivering a series of lectures.