Optimism: A Key Ingredient in Happiness , And Optimism Is A Style Of Thinking That Can Be Taught

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I consider myself an optimist.  Now I think it is portant to clarify what I mean by this b/c it doesn’t  mean my life is perfect.   Rather Optimism is the belief that things will turn out well.   And get this, this is my favorite part, it is the expectation that good things will come your way and IMPORTANTLY that you have the ability to control/influence the direction of your life.  It’s about having goals, and setting plans to achieve, and to course correct as needed. 

This thinking helped me so much at the time of my miscarriage, it helps me everyday; it makes the bad days less bad and good days great! 

Want to learn more about becoming and optimist?  or teaching these skills to your children?  husband?  mother-in-law?   Well you could study all about positive psychology, or you could check out the cool work being done by the team at Fishful Thinking (and to be honest, I did work a little on this project a few years ago – it was the most rewarding work, and I consider it a privledge to have been a part of it).  I use a lot of this with my 4 yr old son, and my husband, and myself, and … 

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Parents with children 4-12 years old: Emotional awareness is a building block of a healthy emotional life. Build your child’s emotional awareness through this simple, fun activity

Click here to learn more about fishful thinking…

More hope today…  kids and hope.  Helping kids know/identify and express their feelings.  This is something I do with my 4 yr old.  It really helps…  when he can identify and express what he is feeling we can enjoy what we are doing and avoid meltdowns (well most of the time).  Take a look below… let me know what you think.

What is Emotional Awareness:  it is the ability to identify and describe what you are feeling and to know what others are feeling.

Why is Emotional Awareness important:  it is a building block of a healthy emotional life. The more aware your child is of his feelings and the more comfortable he becomes with the full range of feelings that people experience, the easier it will be for him to connect with others. The ability to control one’s emotions when they are too strong and getting in the way of coping is improved by emotional awareness.

These activities can be done with all children (by using more complex emotions for older kids).  Check it out…  it is definitely worth a click!

 

Do you have kids 4-12 years old? Learn The Mental and Physical Benefits Of Being Optimistic

Did you know that there are mental and phyical benefits of being optimistic?  And that optimism can be learned?  So if we give our children (and ourselves) skills to learn, practice and build our optimism skills we can lead a happier, healthier life…  That sounds pretty good to me. 

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And if you like this work around optimism as much as I do, click here to learn more about getting involved and being an ambassador…  it is fun, and I feel like I am doing something good for my family and myself!

 

Parents of children 4-12 years old: How resilient is your child?

Following my previous post (scroll down to see if you haven’t) on hope, optimism, and kids.   Below is a Resilience Quiz – about how your child copes with life’s ups and downs  –  and given the state of the world today, isn’t this something we all could use?  Questions around subjects like, ” how to handle a fight with your best friend”, “how to stick to a difficult task while managing frustration”, and “how to handle your team losing the big game” will provide insight on how resilient your child is and how you can help (if/when needed).

Resilience Quiz

How resilient is your child? Find out with this short quiz, developed by Dr. Karen Reivich. Each time you answer a question, you will get a resilience tip from Dr. Reivich, with suggestions for how you can use a situation to help improve your child’s resilience.  Click here.  Let me know what you think.

If you want to get involved, become an ambassador, and/or if you want to learn more:

PS:  I know these banners look the same, but they take you to slightly different places.

 

Parents of kids 4-12: Learn About Optimism and Helping Your Children

Every once in a while, I post something that I find so interesting, I just have to share it…  this is one of those times.  While this is usually a blog about hope and miscarriage, please indulge me this one time and check out this entry about hope and kids.  (Well to be honest, I find this so cool, I will likely post more about it.) 

There are studies on kids and resilancy and optimism.  Did you know that optimism can be learned like other skills?  I find that amazing and wonderful!  That optimistic kids do better, and they are happier.  And isn’t that what we all want for our kids – to be happy and healthy?

If you really like it too, think about becoming an ambassador.  Now I think I will have to find a way to subtly share this with my mother-in-law.

Fishful Thinking is a resource for parents to help teach their kids how to handle the ups and downs of life, approach situations with an optimistic attitude and develop confidence to reach their full potential. The program was developed in partnership with Dr. Karen Reivich, psychologist in the field of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and mother of four. With Fishful Thinking, we believe that parents can learn to positively affect their children’s development, transform parenting frustrations into parenting successes and share more joy and happiness with their families.

http://www.fishfulthinking.com/

 

 

There are lots of ways to get involved. And for those who are interested in getting more involved,  they are looking for parents with kids 4-12, who are well connected and enthusiastic to get involved by becoming a Fishful Thinking Ambassador. If you’re interested, great! Or, please pass this onto someone that you think might be interested in helping us. Ambassadors are given the tools (activities, videos, etc.) to spread the word throughout their networks and can compete for prizes and incentives. Ambassadors can do as little or as much as they want or are comfortable with. To become an Ambassador, sign up here. It’s a quick, two step process.   

www.repnation.com/fishfulthinking

 

My miscarriage story: I am an ob/gyn, a mom, a miscarriage survivor, a breast cancer survivor and an eternal optimist

From a recent contact to Our Hope Place:

I am also a member of the pregnancy loss sisterhood.  I lost twins in the second tri-mester and had another early loss before my daughter was born.  The first one was especially hard because I had two good friend due around the same time (1 within a day, the other was 3 months later).  In addition, I was running a clinic for pregnant teens at the time.  It was crazy!

I am forever an optimist.  I expect to be sitting on the beach at 80, perky silicone breasts and all!  Even when I was diagnosed (with breast cancer), I did not assume the worst.  I assumed it would be no big deal, that I would beat it, and beat it quickly.  Not quite the actual story.   I am still in treatment and maybe forever.   But it is OK as long as I am around to live it!

-Melissa

 

Note from Our Hope Place (Sharon):  Melissa you are so strong and helping so many –  I plan to visit you on that beach and toast the wonderful lives we will have lived – bring pictures of your grand kids – I will do the same!

 

Finding Happiness After Miscarriage – Step 2 of 6 – Optimism is a skill set that can be learned; a muscle that needs exercising

As I previously posed, right now I have 6 ideas/steps that helped me find happiness after my miscarriage:

1.  Adopting an optimistic view.

2.  Optimism is a skill set that can be learned; a muscle that needs exercising.

3.  Even though you don’t understand why things are happening, know that “the universe is unfolding as it should”.  (Reflects a poem called Desiderata)

4.  God (what ever you perceive him/her to be) only gives you as much as you can handle…  and I am strong (I might be tired of being strong, but I am strong and I can handle and learn and thrive).

5.  Moving forward is a choice – let’s get going – embracing is good.

6. I believe in the power of positive thinking!

Because I don’t really think blogs should be so long (and this one is already getting there), I will write about each step over the next few days (ok, might be 2 weeks – well see.)

2:  Optimism is a skill set that can be learned; a muscle that needs exercising.  

That’s right, optimism can be learned, like anything else, say like learning to play the violin.  And it takes practice, so that people will want to hear you play vs. make the dog howl.  It is about having goals and plans to achieve them.  It is about altering plans when life doesn’t go as expected (and it rarely does).

There have been all kinds of studies on this – there are people who dedicate their lives to this work…  your brain gets used to working a certain way.  You need to train it to work in an optimistic way…  you need to practice.  

Focusing on the positive it key…  some examples:

- When I had my miscarriage I didn’t think I would ever be happy again, really.  Then my friend helped me out.  She too knew the devastation of miscarriage.  She talked to me, she listened, she answered questions, and she gave me a special bracelet.  I wore it everyday to remind me of hope.  Hope inspired by my friend, if she could have it, then maybe I could to.  I used the bracelet everyday, when I needed something positive to focus on, something to help me stop thinking of how say I really was.  And you know what happened.  It worked, I grieved, and I moved on.  Optimism got me through!

- When my son was just over 6 months old, I woke up one morning with terrible pain from my ribs to my hips, all around.  I couldn’t really pin point it, but there was a stabbing pain by my right kidney.  My husband drove us to the drs office, who sent me to the hospital with what he thought was appendicitis.  When I was in the emergency room, an intern, oh did I mention this happened in July?  Never go to the ER in July if you can avoid it.  So this intern, who had been at the hospital for maybe 5 minutes, comes in and asks me how much do I feel.  I say it feels like stage 2 back labor.  He replies, “what does that mean, I haven’t had that rotation”.  Right.  Then he moves my leg, and pronounces, right, not an appendix issue, rather you have intestinal cancer or Krones (spelling?) Disease.  I looked at my little son, then at my husband, and said, “get him out of here, and get me a real doctor.  Well it turns out it was my appendix, it was removed and is well.  It took almost 23 hrs at the hospital for them to figure it out.  When all was done, I called my parents, and they said, we are glad you are well…  then interestingly, they said, wow you could use a break…  I was thinking I had already had a break…  when you are faced with cancer, Krones, or your appendix, heck, I won the lottery.  

- Another example, I was flying recently.  We were delayed, the flight was crowded, …  the person behind me in line was complaining quite a bit.  Then he said to me, “that was the worst flight ever.  Wasn’t it?  That was the worst.”  I looked at him and said, “No I don’t think that was the worst flight ever.  The worst flight crashes.”  And he looked at me in disbelief, then said, “your right”.  Perspective.  I was happy we had landed, I was going to meet friends for a fun weekend.  

So ask yourself, what is the good here?  How will this lead to something positive?  Find the joy, even if it is a little thing, find the joy in what you are doing in life.  I try to find joy in each day,…  it could be a bird chirping, the sun setting, a great presentation, the way my husband looks at me, or just about anything my son does.   

I really think my optimistic attitude has helped me out!  I think my skills have improved during the most difficult time in my life, and help me now.  In life there will always be obstacles, it is how we handle them that matters.  And wouldn’t you rather go through life with a smile?

 

Finding Happiness After Miscarriage – Step 1 of 6 – Adopting an optimistic view

Devastated…  I was devastated when I had my miscarriage…  I have learned a lot since then…  recently I was thinking about what helped…  think I will dedicated the next few blog entries to this idea.  Right now I have 6 ideas/steps that helped me find happiness after my miscarriage:

1.  Adopting an optimistic view.

2.  Optimism is a skill set that can be learned; a muscle that needs exercising.

3.  Even though you don’t understand why things are happening, know that “the universe is unfolding as it should”.  (Reflects a poem called Desiderata)

4.  God (what ever you perceive him/her to be) only gives you as much as you can handle…  and I am strong (I might be tired of being strong, but I am strong and I can handle and learn and thrive).

5.  Moving forward is a choice – let’s get going – embracing is good.

6. I believe in the power of positive thinking!

Because I don’t really think blogs should be so long (and this one is already getting there), I will write about each step over the next few days (ok, might be 2 weeks – well see.)

1. Adopting an optimistic view.  I have learned a lot about optimism.  I remember going to an interview, the interviewer, soon to be my manager, asked me, “are you optimistic”.  Huh?  Then I said, “yes, I am optimistic, I can’t imaging a world without optimism, that would be a world without hope, without possibilities”.  That is true.  That is what I believe in my core.  

I have run into this time and time again…

- Have you been to Pikes Market in Seattle?  There is a store there, where they look like they are having a great time selling, oh, and throwing fish.  Some smart marketing/HR/business people turned this into a motivating book/video/way of thinking… it is called fish, and while I don’t remember it all, I do remember one thing, much of your happiness is about choice.  They even say in this work, you need to choose where you will go each day, and you need to choose to be happy.  Think of all the drama we could avoid if chose each day, rather than let the world happen to us.

- I also believe in looking for the silver lining…  when something happens, I make myself think what do I think about that, and where is the good in this…  albeit, sometimes this is difficult when something particularly annoying happens, but I try.

- I know that people with optimistic views are happier, achieve more…  lots of good things, why wouldn’t I want to do this?

- I know that being optimistic doesn’t mean that everything is great all the time.  Everyone’s life has obstacles to over come.  Optimism is about having goals and plans to achieve them.  It is about course correcting/changing when things don’t happen as planned (because really, what does go as planned – wouldn’t be writing about this if things happened as I planned – wouldn’t know anything about miscarriage if things went as planned…)

- It is exhausting being unhappy.  I know some people that thrive on drama…  EVERYTHING is cause for drama.  I get exhausted listening, and I have to sort through a lot to really understand what is/if there is an issue or if they are just complaining because that is what they like to do.

So what does this all have to do with miscarriage — it is about finding happiness after miscarriage.  After crying in the shower everyday for 4 months, after wearing my  (http://www.OurHopePlace.com) bracelet everyday – using it as a distraction and a way to force positive thinking and practicing my optimism skills, I started to move forward.  I can vividly recall the day the “world turned back on”.  And that is how it felt.  I suddenly noticed the sun, the birds singing, and that my special bracelet was pretty.  The world seemed to be in color again…  

I hope you find color in your world (when you are ready)…

More to come over the next few entries…