"Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground." Rumi
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Edison
“The genius of Tulku Urgyen was that he could point out the nature of mind with precision and matter-of-factness of teaching a person how to thread a needle and could get an ordinary meditator like me to recognize that consciousness is intrinsically free of self ... I came to Tulku Urgyen yearning for the experience of self-transcendence, and in a few minutes he showed me I had no self to transcend ... Tulku Urgyen simply handed me the ability to cut through the illusion of the self directly, even in ordinary states of consciousness. This instruction was, without question, the most important thing I have ever been explicitly taught by another human being. It has given me a way to escape the usual tides of psychological suffering - fear, anger, shame - in an instant.
” - Sam Harris
Courage. Approach & avoidance. Protection & risk. Building courage. What is wisdom. Importance. ‘Prevalence’. Implication. Character. Character strengths. Use.
"To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man" Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet"
I have been writing a series of blog posts about character strengths - most recently "Twelve practical suggestions for exploring our character strengths (12): building up specific strengths exercise". In today's post I give a personal example of using this building exercise with the character strengths of kindness and hope.
More to follow ...
(this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
In June I went to the biennial European Conference on Positive Psychology running this year in Angers, France. I've blogged about this meeting - see, for example "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" and "European Positive Psychology conference: better 2nd day - culture, use of strengths, education & passion". It's been said that if you go to a conference and come away with one good idea and one good contact, then you're doing well.
(this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
(this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
(this blog post is downloadable as a Word doc and as a PDF file)
I wrote yesterday about the "European Positive Psychology conference: 1st day - a disappointing start & caution on over-selling mindfulness" ... but today's conference presentations rapidly kicked my doubts about being here into touch. We started with a couple of fine keynotes ... Claudia Senik on "The cultural dimension of happiness" and Willibald Ruch on "Character strengths: Unresolved issues, new frontiers". Both talks were excellent.
I wrote a post a few days ago entitled "Resource activation: using clients' own strengths in psychotherapy and counseling - background (1st post)" giving some of the research basis for suggesting this territory is very relevant for therapists who are pushing to help their clients more effectively. In order to follow up these ideas further I bought the short 'how to do it' 70 or so page book by Fluckiger, Wusten, Zinbarg & Wampold.
