Reframe Language

Get them to think about some college logistics--the size of the school, geographical locations, and most importantly, what they want a school to offer them. Too many parents and their children focus on what are the best schools I can get into, whereas the concept of shelter seeking says your selection will be better when you focus on seeking schools that can offer you what you need--special help, financial assistance, nutrients that might not be available from one of the best schools you can get into. In other words, the best school a college-bound student can get into is not necessarily the right school. Shelter seeking tells you to help your son or daughter pick the right school, not necessarily the best school. Studying brochures and speaking to college advisors and college counselors are useful activities, but to help children maximize their shelter-seeking instincts, encourage them to experience, to feel the environments they are thinking of entering for the next four years of their life. More than just walking the campus and going on the morning or afternoon tour, encourage your kids to do more, such as attending a class, visiting a friend who goes to the school and spending the night, or eating meals with other students. You get the idea--you want to help your son or daughter sense the environment by getting them to see, hear, and feel the college environment he or she is considering, and this is best done by spending time in the environment, not just visiting it. It is critical for researchers to consider what are appropriate and inappropriate positive and negative outcomes. For example, although many of the dimensions of subjective well-being (eg, autonomy, personal growth, and self-acceptance) identified by Ryff and her colleagues are likely to appear as meaningful indexes of adjustment for most Westerners, it remains to be seen whether they are useful and meaningful for most Easterners. We do not doubt that some form of optimism or the absence of some form of pessimism is linked to the good life around the world, but just which forms will probably vary. If we wish to encourage well-being and help people flourish, we need more than a one-size-fits-all optimism-boosting program. Remember Chang's (1996) finding that lack of optimism--not the presence of pessimism--predicted subsequent depressive symptoms in Asian Americans. Accordingly, a culture-specific intervention consistent with Beck's (1976) cognitive framework might focus distinctly on increasing optimistic thoughts in distressed Asian American clients rather than on decreasing their pessimistic thoughts. As noted by Chang (1996), By decreasing pessimism in Asian Americans, one could conceivably take away a major source of motivation that is related to adaptive and engaged coping behaviors such as problem solving (p121). Hence, it may be particularly valuable to use interventions that focus on increasing this client group's level of optimism, whereas for European Americans, it may be more valuable to use interventions that focus on decreasing their level of pessimism. Furthermore, findings from Chang's (1996) study also suggest the need for examining the clinical significance of various combinations of high and low optimism and pessimism within individuals. Because Asians and Asian Americans may normally express elevated levels of pessimism (Chang, 1996 Lee & Seligman, 1997), it would be important to distinguish subgroups who do and do not express a concomitant level of optimism. it has helped define me as a person. It enables me to do my job well. I like to cut through the crap.

I like to boil things down to what they really are. I get that from my training. In the military, you are taught to be more than you think are. If you have any doubt, you need to wipe that right out. It's the same with your health or your body composition. You need to discard any preconceived notions you have. Wipe the slate clean. Next, interview them about their college visits, your goal being to help them clarify their feelings and thoughts about their experience. Make sure you ask them to compare and contrast the experiences of their visits, how they felt with and about the other kids, impressions of class difficulty, the college town itself. Use the sensory questions: What did you see that you liked and interested you? What did you hear your friends and other students say? How did you feel being there? Answers to these questions help your college-bound child assess whether he or she is making a smart match play. Remember, feeling interested, engaged, and joy are cues your son or daughter are entering an empowering environment. Shelter seeking for the right college environment is a timeconsuming process, but it is well worth it since the right environment helps your children grow. Mating: Love and Business Wolves are the number one predator in North America. They have a strong ecological niche, but they are rarely the love birds that inspire poets. For example, Asian Americans who express high levels of pessimism relative to European Americans, but little optimism, may be particularly vulnerable to psychological and physical problems. In contrast, it may be that some Asians, despite high expectations of negative outcomes, express a balance of negative and positive thoughts that functions adaptively for them. Because most of the conceptual models and measures of optimism and pessimism have been based on studies of Westerners (eg, European Americans), it may be useful to develop models of optimism and pessimism that are derived from an understanding of other cultural groups.

Optimism is predicated on evaluation--on given affects and emotions, as it were--and these, of course, vary dramatically across cultures. Because of the simplicity of the LOT and the ASQ, researchers may be tempted simply to translate these measures and administer them. This would be a mistake if we want to understand the many faces of flourishing. Future research, as we see it, should approach optimism and pessimism as nuanced and culturally shaped. Another important strategy for future research is to take a developmental approach. What are the origins of optimism and pessimism in different cultures? Are they differentially socialized? Start from the beginning. As if this is your first time. Here's one of my favorite stories. I once sat on the beach after a long run with a woman who told me she was not the type of person that I trained, that she was different. As if some of us are born athletes and others are not. I understood what she was getting at, but I wanted to show how her thinking (her mental approach to being fit) was holding her back. I sat down next to her and I said, That's your leg right there. I had her touch her leg. I said, Those are your quads and those are my quads. They're exactly the same. Yet, they mate for life, something that is rare among humans. Similarly, female prairie voles--those little rodents with the devoted male partners--require extensive contact with a would-be mate before they become sexually receptive. How do you select the right mate?

Nobody knows, but perhaps we can learn something from wolves and voles that increases the likelihood that we do- and that is: When it comes to selecting a mate, take your time. Compared to Mother Nature's other creatures, wolves, Mr. and Miss Canis Lupus have a long courting period. For a wolf, time is of the essence, but for them essence means spending a lot of time is essential to selecting the right mate. To select the right mate, whether it is a person, a business partner, or a company to merge with, you have to know the nutrients they provide, and if they are the nutrients that will help you grow. You have to scout. To do this effectively requires time, lots of it. Studies like this might answer a normative question of interest to positive psychology - Is the typical person an optimist, a pessimist, or expectationally neutral? Does something unusual in the course of development need to occur to impart to someone an optimistic world view? Is optimism simply the developmental default, deepwired into human beings by evolution (Tiger, 1979)? Or is pessimism the default? Or perhaps the child is a blank slate, equally able to become an optimist or a pessimist, depending on the idiosyncratic influences to which he or she is exposed throughout life? Is optimism linked to flourishing among children as it appears to be among adults? Aristotle thought that youth lacked the life experience to decide for themselves how to pursue the good life. Indeed, he believed that only elders who had lived a full life could accurately appraise whether or not they had lived a good life. As if contemporary researchers have conspired to agree with Aristotle centuries ago, the extant literature on optimism, however conceptualized, has focused largely on adults (Fischer & Leitenberg 1986). However, some preliminary findings show that children can learn to be less pessimistic and to solve their problems more effectively these skills promote greater resilience (Gilham, Reivich, Jaycox, & Seligman, 1995). My muscles are built out of the same tissues as yours are. They connect to all the same spots and do all the same things. The only difference is that I take mine out.

You haven't done that, but now you will. She had to change her point of view, and she did. Now you start to see where this article, including my guidance and philosophy, is secondary to your mindset. Are you ready to get to work? People always have these preconceived notions that they need to rid themselves of. If someone says to me, I'm fat and big-boned, I might respond: That may be what you think, but you're not thinking about your frame and how much muscle you might be able to pack onto your body. Or if someone says to me, Look, I'm rail-thin, I'll never be big, I might say, Okay, if that's true, what about how shredded you could get? In selecting a personal mate, time affords you the opportunity to uncover the true nature of the environment you might enter. Use your senses to collect the data, such as seeing how the person reacts to you in stressful situations. How does he deal with conflict and time apart? Does she support your need for alone time and time you may want to spend apart from her to be with your friends and family? This might not be apparent until you have known the person for many months, not several weeks. The same is true for perceiving certain beliefs and values, forces that might impede your growth but are not apparent in the initial shelter-seeking weeks. You might require support nutrients and, at first, this environment seems to provide it. However, a good time later, when you really need support, it is nowhere in sight. Put simply, for best mate selection, Mother Nature recommends to her sons and daughters a long engagement period. During this time, your shelter-seeking task is to relate to the environment in an intimate manner. The cultivation of resilience among children may well provide a route to the good life among adults, and we call for its further study. Some people go through life as if dragged against their will - Nothing in the world is interesting, nothing they do is meaningful. Other individuals relish almost every moment of their lives and find it permeated with meaning.