Peter Drucker, often called the founder of modern business management, was famous for suggesting that when we focus more on strengths, our weaknesses become irrelevant.   Robert Biswas-Diener, one of our favorite positive psychologists, has a really great take on this idea.  He says that it isn’t that we should ignore our weaknesses, and at times we may actually have to address them if they are getting in our way, but not at the expense of focusing on our strengths.  Developing our strengths is what energizes and propels us forward.

Those of you who know us-who have attended one of our workshops or trainings-know that we love mandalas.  Big mandalas, small mandalas, coloring mandalas, all kinds of mandalas!  Although in some ways mandalas are nothing more than a circle drawn on a piece of paper, there is something compelling about that simple form.   Mandalas have been called “sacred circles” and are believed to represent the cycle of life, balance, and unity.  They have been used in different cultures for centuries for healing and centering.  

We at CWW are blessed with a very specific signature strength-Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence.  One might assume that everyone is endowed with this quality.  And yes most people do have visual preferences-evident in the colors they choose to paint their rooms, the way they arrange their living space, the particular flair they have in their style of clothing, the people they choose as their mates, etc.  They might also be appreciative of “excellence”-the outstanding contributions others make to the world. 

We just went to a Psychodrama conference in Phoenix and were inspired by some strategies that they use to help people to take action in their lives.  Psychodrama is a field that uses role playing and techniques from the world of drama and stage to help people gain more insight into themselves and to bring about positive changes in their lives.    

Rebecca recently had her hands full transporting her cat, Don Juan, from DC to Tucson. The trip was an absurd comedy of errors. She recounted the day as follows:

We recently got a historic snow storm here on the East Coast.  In the Washington DC area, we are still digging out, and the kids have been home from school for a week.  However, Gioia still had to get to work.  She was scheduled to do an outdoor challenge group, a structured trust building exercise held outside. Mother Nature had already made it pretty “challenging” just to get to work, and now the challenge course-along with everything else-was under two feet of snow.

The New Year is upon us!  Many of us are carrying over into 2016 resolutions we’d like to have accomplished in 2015.  We may have had firm intentions at the start of last year to follow through, but got distracted or lost focus as the year progressed.

We have recently been using masks in our work. Although they’re often used in art therapy, we were both conflicted about what they represent. Are they meant to hide or protect some aspect of ourselves? Do they reflect what we show to the world and obscure our “true” selves. Or do they help us uncover and discover parts of ourselves? In keeping with our efforts to find positive reframes for the way we approach our work, we decided that we could use them to highlight and celebrate some empowering aspect of ourselves.

Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.  Perception is a tricky little creature.  We know that what we “see”, what we think is “reality”, is susceptible to all sorts of biochemical mechanisms.  What seems clearly obvious to some may be completely invisible to others.  What we “see” may also change dramatically when something shifts our perception.

Sleeping well has always been one of my super strengths.  I’m just really good at it, and I often feel that most of my best creative ideas are formed when I’m snoozing away.  Rebecca, on the other hand, has often struggled to get a good night’s sleep.

If you could be like anyone, who would you be and why? We used to pose this question on the inpatient units, just as a conversational warm up with patients.   Some answers were predictable-Oprah, Jesus, George Clooney, Denzel Washington, or Princess Diana.  Some people wanted to be famous and gifted, like Tiger Woods or Elvis or notorious and talented, like Amy Winehouse or Tupac Shakur. Others still wished they had some sort of genius, like Einstein or Washington Carver. A small subset of folks were inspired by a significant caretaker in their lives like their mother or uncle, or a teacher.

When we work with caregivers and therapists, we often find that when they bring up meaning in life as an aspect of happiness that their eyes really light up. Just last month, as we spoke to the staff of Maryland’s Child Advocacy Center, we knew we were seeing deeply committed people whose character strengths included kindness, compassion and a desire for justice. Feeling as if they made a difference energized these folks, who clearly had a deep sense that their lives were mission-driven. One child worker told of racing across a field to catch up to a run-away child, her heart beating in her chest and mud covering her shoes.

Seems pretty straightforward–we assume we know what our values are, right?!  But when we propose this activity in our workshops and groups, it often draws a blank at first.  This may be partly because too many of us our values are so inherent to our understanding of life that we see them as fundamental truths about reality not as personal preferences.  It can also be disorienting when we realize that others might identify with completely different values. This is a variation of the confirmation bias–we tend to overestimate the similarities we share with others and to assume that others would think and behave the way we would.

Gioia and I were talking about ways to manage burn out and got intrigued by the evocative nature of that descriptor–burn out. The expression evokes all sorts of visual images: a flame sputtering and then extinguishing, a light bulb crackling on and off and finally going dark, the embers of a once glowing fire fading under a pile of cooling ashes, gaseous fumes gradually dissipating until they evaporate and disappear, a dying spark.