August 2008
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This issue is an interview with a colleague, John van Holsteyn. John is a psychologist who runs coaching programs for people who want to lead interesting, meaningful and engaged lives during retirement and need a helping hand to get started. His website is www.retrymentapproaches.com.au.
John recently attended the second annual Happiness and its Causes Conference in Sydney, Australia.
Justus: John, thanks for agreeing to this interview.
John: It's a pleasure.
Justus: Why don't you start with a quick overview of the conference?
John: It was an amazing event, with world-class guest speakers like the psychologist, Martin Seligman - the author of Authentic Happiness - and the neuroscientist, Richard Davidson, who presented his research on what happens in the brains of Tibetan monks when they meditate. And, of course, Australian presenters like our own neurosurgeon, Dr Charlie Teo.
Justus: What about the people who attended?
John: The 2,500 attendees looked healthy and very happy even before the conference started. I found it easy to connect with everyone, and everyone else seemed to find the same as there was so much of a buzz between sessions and in the breaks.
Justus: What were the highlights for you?
John: Well, there were information highlights and emotional highlights.
The information highlights for me were the two post-conference workshops given by Martin Seligman, whom I mentioned before, the author of Authentic Happiness and Tal Ben-Shahar from Harvard. He was most impressive - all the relevant research at his fingertips.
Both the workshops focused on Positive Psychology and both presenters gave their latest research with practical examples of how we can increase our overall happiness. What I found particularly useful in their presentations was that they extended happiness beyond the traditional emotional fuzzy feeling to include a sense of engagement and a sense of meaning.
Justus: Well, I suppose a lot of people think of happiness as a kind of emotional fuzzy feeling. As you know, I write about happiness in this ezine and how we can invite more of it into our lives. I like to unpack the notion of happiness so that readers can have something very practical to take from their reading. I've always thought of happiness as involving a range of experience, behaviours and habits that can be learned and the quality of our happiness as something that can be increased and taken to higher levels as we make a personal commitment to our own happiness and the happiness of others. So I'm very interested in what the research is finding out?
John: Positive psychology recognises at least three levels of happiness: the personal feeling good level, the social level of engagement with life and with others, and the spiritual level of finding meaning in our lives.
For example, a simple exercise to increase engagement in life is to sit down at night before you go to bed and write down three things that you are grateful for. This ritual has been shown to decrease the rate of depression in people suffering from that illness after one month. A pen and a notebook are certainly cheap interventions to treat the epidemic of depression!
Justus: I agree. A very small investment for a potentially major improvement in a feeling of personal well being and enjoyment of life.
What about the emotional highlights you mentioned?
John: My emotional highlight was the address by Steve Biddulph, the author of The Secret of Happy Children. He suggested that the two groups of children we as parents have ‘stuffed up’ most are the children under 6 and those over 12. Babies are born with the ability to focus on the carer’s face and seek social attention about 80 times a day. We need to be there for them to acknowledge this to ensure the babies’ healthy social growth.
With the older group Biddulph suggests that we introduce a sense of purpose and participation in life. They can handle the responsibility by learning that very sense of engagement that positive psychologists stress is healthy for us and which leads to longevity.
Justus: What did you learn in Sydney that you will apply to your own life?
John: I've already included the ritual I mentioned earlier of sitting down before I go to bed and writing down three things I am grateful for.
I will urge my clients to do likewise. It's so simple and effective.
Justus: Any other thoughts from the conference that you plan to share with your clients?
John: The two most important messages I took from the conference for sharing with my clients are firstly, that we can increase our happiness - without drugs - and secondly, that we can extend the life of our brain by making use of its plasticity. Both these things are really important for people as they get older.
Justus: And I would imagine that you would be actively encouraging people who are either retired or planning for retirement to adopt strategies that will increase their level of happiness and make use of what you've just referred to as the brain's plasticity.
John: Most certainly. The matter of the brain's plasticity deserves more background and explanation which I’d like to hold over for another time.
Justus: Well, hopefully we can do another interview on this. Have you a last word before we stop?
John: Every single one of the 50 or so presenters left us with an inspirational message, challenged our thinking and gave us tools to start applying change in our lives. I can’t do justice to all the contributions. The overall standard of the conference was very high. I do intend to keep on sharing the positive outcomes of this conference with my family, friends, clients and other people who want to lead an even more interesting life!
Justus: Thank you, John.
About John
John van Holsteyn walks his talk. He recently retired from a successful long-time managerial career, gained a degree in psychology and now works as a life transition coach specialising in the area of retirement.
He can be contacted through his website: www.retrymentapproaches.com.au.
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