by Monique Zahavi | January, 2021 | Culture, Monique Zahavi, Positive Psychology
Whatever the reason for uprooting from the land where you were born and bred, whether it is for financial reasons, a change of scenery, for career progression or to escape persecution, relocating to another country impacts every aspect of life. My MAPP research (Zahavi, 2020) looked at the lived experiences of single Anglo women over fifty, as new immigrants to Israel. Having had careers and families, I was curious about how my participants would manage the cultural change alone and what the experience would mean to them. They all described a journey which was challenging, frustrating, but also deeply rewarding in terms of personal growth. Following in my participants’ footsteps I was especially fascinated by the experiences of the women I interviewed, as I had always planned to make this journey for myself. After years of talking and dreaming about it, in July 2020, in a face mask and visor and with copious amounts of Covid-19 resistant alcogel, this is what I did. Aside from relocating during a global pandemic, when nothing is as we would expect it to be, not one aspect of life; work, relationships or social integration has gone as planned. So here I am, in this land of Middle Eastern heat, hummus and blue skies, in my early fifties, learning a whole new way of being. Acculturation can be a bumpy but beautiful ride Kalervo Oberg’s (1958) study describes four stages of the process of acculturation: the honeymoon phase, culture shock, adjustment, and adaption. The initial honeymoon period is a time full of wonder and joy at falling in love with new surroundings, people, food,...
by Andrew Machon | April, 2017 | Culture
I cannot get the picture of President Trump pointing his finger at members of the press and stating ‘You are fake news’ out of my mind. And the accompanying news report, stating that statistics show that people are unable to differentiate between fake and real news. Now, let pause and discern ourselves from whatever we may feel about Trump and consider how ‘Fake News’ may speak to us. This has preoccupied my thinking and my response in honouring and cherishing human nature in all its perfect imperfection – is I am not surprised this term has power and place. My chosen image is a photograph I stole from autumn. You cannot tell at first what it is, is it the wrong way up or not. This makes me think about self – for what is fake and what is true? To answer this question way may need to turn our thinking inside out. The At the heart of the human condition is a dilemma. We think we know who we are, but in truth self is an emergent concept – and who and how we are changes with the the degree to which we are able to open our bandwidth of awareness. Self can never be fully described in factual terms – more we are mystery unto ourselves. If we take an immediate and differentiating view of self – we will recognise that we commonly face the world through a partial self and the journey of life is to discover our wholeness. This mask that we wear is the self to which we default. And from this standpoint and...
by Lynn Soots | September, 2016 | Community, Culture
Reflections of gratitude I recently spent a month in The Philippines which brought the depth of gratitude I have for the country that I was born and raised in, to a whole new level. I have actively been practising gratitude in the form of a daily gratitude journal – writing down the three best things of the day and acknowledging why they are so good and why I’m so grateful for these things occurring – for almost two years now. This has been a large contributing factor in the ongoing process to re-train the neural pathways in my own brain which enabled me to successfully overcome many years of depression and mental health challenges several years ago. This activity in itself encompasses great power, however combined with real life altering and first hand experiences, this activity then becomes dramatically enhanced. It is one thing to be vaguely aware of the poverty in this world and quite another to experience it firsthand. There were several significant activities that occurred for me during this time that have raised my conscious awareness and consequently my expression of gratitude to new heights. Number one being that for the very first time in my life, for 10 days whilst attending a Vipassana (silent) meditation program in the middle of nowhere, several hours outside of Manila, I did not have access to hot water. On top of this for many hours every day there was no access to running water – hot or cold – at all. For me, coming from Australia, where even during a major drought season several years ago, lack of water...
by Bryony Shaw | June, 2016 | Bryony Shaw, Culture
The recently published Word Happiness Report 2016 reported that the top five happiest counties in the world were Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Finland. It also reported that when taking continents as a whole, there was a difference between the happiness scores of individualistic and collectivist cultures. Individualistic cultures are typically Western cultures whose focus is on personal attainment and collectivist cultures are mainly Eastern cultures where the focus is on group and community goals. Difference The report found that North America, Australia and New Zealand were the most happy with a mean happiness score of 7.125 and Western Europe had a score of 6.575, while South East Asia had a mean score of 5.363 and East Asia’s score was 5.288. On the face of it, this suggests that people in individualistic cultures are happier than those in collectivist cultures. But is this really the case? Personal pursuit of happiness In individualistic cultures happiness is often viewed as a personal pursuit that the individual should follow. Each person has a right to happiness and it is up to them to follow this. Of course there is a dark side to this, it implies that if you are not happy it is no one’s fault but your own. Social happiness Contrastingly in collectivist cultures, happiness is associated with social bonds and social responsibility. Happiness is a shared concept not a personal one. Personal emotions of joy and bliss are not focused on, instead the focus is on the person’s role in the community. Different types of happiness Broadly speaking it can be argued that this distinction mirrors the difference between...
by Lynn Soots | March, 2016 | Culture, Education, Positive Psychology, Relationships, self-development
I was seeing my friend after many weeks. She’d been away in Kashmir, visiting a Hindu shrine. I knew she’d had a bad experience and I feared it had something to do with the ongoing Hindi-Muslim riots in the region. Little did I guess… A Journey to remember She said that she too had worried about the riots prior to the pilgrimage. But once there, what struck her immediately was the fact that all the porters were Muslim men, who transported the Hindu pilgrims on pony backs or carried them on “palkis”, or palanquins, up the long and arduous trek. She looked everywhere for signs of religious animosity that was reported daily, but found none. She rationalized it by considering the monetary benefits for the porters and stayed on guard for subtle signs of hostility. What happened on the return trek would change her views forever. As they made the dangerous ride back, she and her group got caught in a terrible landslide. The entire ground before them split apart and she desperately watched half her group, including her parents, suddenly disappear from sight. She and a few others were left alone, save for the porters who carried them, injured and distraught. Beautiful surprises along the way These men were their saviors from that moment on. They tended to their cuts and bruises, dried their wet clothes in the frigid cold, cooked them meals from their own meager supplies, and sat guard at night so the distressed pilgrims could get a few hours of sleep. But what touched them the most were the words of comfort these men provided...
by Lesley Lyle | February, 2016 | Culture, Positive Psychology
Mapuche culture transcends and makes us remember the meaning of happiness Two years ago I was in a remote place called Cole Cole, which is located 25 kms of the Chiloé national park (173 km away from Castro). I was there for more than a month doing trails and long walks for an ethnographic study. It was hard for me to get pencil and paper in this place, without mentioning the 4 hours I needed to cross a forest in the hope of getting a ride from a fisherman truck or some macheros to give me a ride to a place with internet access in order to pass my writings from paper to digital. The central idea was to learn about the relationship that exists between the Mapuche culture and some specific aspects of Positive Psychology, hope, optimism and flow from the experience of living with the inhabitants of the Island of Chiloé, the huilliche (southern folks), a southern branch of the Mapuches that share common culture. The culture When talking about culture it is necessary to understand that this is characterized by the beliefs, customs, practices and ways of being that a group of individuals share, which gives them a feeling of belonging and an identity. Currently some native people live some processes of acculturation, which means they’re adopting a part of the prevailing or dominating group which in this case would be the Creole culture. It is worth mentioning that in the XVII century the Jesuits took care of evangelizing the natives of Chiloé- which are currently producing urban environments processes of acculturation. This is worse because some urban Mapuche are losing their...
