by Tracy Bevan | December, 2024 | Tracy Bevan
You can listen to the audio version if you prefer I often get asked what is Positive Psychology actually about? My go to response; rather than trying to ‘fix the bad’, Positive Psychology focuses on the good, building on that to make the most of our personal resources. This is what I help people do and it is an excellent strategy for creating a more positive mindset, a mindset that focuses on ability and skills rather than the areas where we feel we fall short. Of course Positive Psychology was developed to benefit us not only at the individual level but the organisational and societal level too. So how does this approach of ‘building on the good’ play out in the workplace? To answer that, let’s look at some of the key pillars of Positive Psychology in turn. Strengths Identifying employees’ strengths is a great starting place for building positive teams. Employees are expected to meet the specifications of their job description but what about additional skills and talents they could be bringing to the table? If we ignore these we miss out on individual abilities and interests that have the potential to add much to the business as well being a source of satisfaction and motivation to the employee. Because, when we play to our strengths, work is easier and less stressful. Whilst tasks outside our comfort zone will generate stress, even once they are practiced, and will slip to the bottom of our to do lists when we are busy. Tapping into an individual’s natural abilities builds confidence and, if there is potential to specialise with...
by Tracy Bevan | October, 2024 | Life, Tracy Bevan
Balance doesn’t come easy, at least not to me, and just when you think you have things on an even keel, life happens! The pulls on our time and attention shift and evolve. Becoming self-employed this year has highlighted this for me. I no longer have a contract with set work hours, annual leave quotas or sick leave and carers leave allowances. So I find I am in need of a new balance, one that I have to create myself. Knowing the ideal isn’t easy, but we can recognise when we are veering off course; The feeling of being ‘stressed’ doesn’t lessen after a stressful event has passed. We feel frazzled, short-tempered, tired. Our good routines around sleep, food and exercise go out the window. We lose our ‘mojo’ and the fun seems to have seeped out of life. When you start to feel like this, getting through the essentials of life is all you have energy for. Keeping all your balls in the air becomes harder and harder! What Works For You? Finding Your Equilibrium When you don’t have a good work-life balance, it can feel like one area of life is taking over the other. It becomes overwhelming trying to meet all the roles we, and others, expect of us. The downtime we allow ourselves for relaxation and fun are often the first casualties. It’s more complicated than ‘work’ and ‘life’ though. We fulfil many roles inside and outside of work. We are parent, partner, carer, volunteer, friend, manager, employee, mentor, colleague. And then there is time for hobbies, keeping healthy or simply doing nothing, just...
by Tracy Bevan | August, 2024 | Tracy Bevan
Ever felt that bone-tired exhaustion after a long day dealing with customers or supporting a family member in crisis? The emotional effort we exert with these tasks can be as draining as a full body workout but because it is ‘invisible’ we may not recognise the effort involved or give ourselves the time to recover. Emotional, mental and physical effort sap our energy and need replenishing in different ways. We know the post-workout tiredness of physical effort and the brain fog after the mental effort of a long training course but what is emotional effort? Emotional Effort Study of emotional effort, or ‘emotional labour’ (Hochschild, 1983) began in those public-facing work roles, where you might need to hold back and manage your own emotions in order to present a calm or neutral front. It happens outside the workplace too, wherever one person is meeting the needs of another emotional effort is at play. Managing your family, and supporting friends; these things take an emotional toll that we don’t always account for. But What If It’s My Job? In caring roles or emergency services, being a stable, calm and resilient presence for a distressed member of the public can be rewarding work. And at home, supporting our children as they learn to negotiate life is a crucial part of parenting. Suppressing your own needs and emotions is fine for a limited time, as long as we recognise it, understand why we are doing it and take time afterwards to decompress. We need to replenish this part of us or we can end up in emotional burnout or compassion fatigue. Emotional...
by Tracy Bevan | June, 2024 | Tracy Bevan
I know, not what you might expect from a positive psychologist but sometimes we need to step back to get a broader perspective. Whilst I love that the science of wellbeing has become increasingly mainstream, this does leave it at risk of over-simplification which can easily sink into generic concepts that don’t help, or worse, might have a negative impact. Listen to the audio version of this article Life Is For Living Not For Hacking Quick fixes and concepts broken down to three basic steps is the bread and butter of social media and the self-help industry but when something is stripped to the bone the meat is quickly lost. Positive emotions are subtle and hard to grasp. When we push towards them they bob away from us like an inflatable ball on the water. When we actively strive for happiness it can, ironically, move further out of reach because we focus so much on what we lack that it becomes even more front and centre to us. What Gives Meaning and Purpose Is As Individual As We Are Happiness is not a one size fits all commodity. Yes, there are generalities like ‘getting outdoors will boost endorphins’. Most of us will derive some benefit from being out in nature, but the greater magic lies in our personal preferences; the way we, as individuals, most enjoy experiencing the outdoors. For some, feel good vibes will be best taken from a restful afternoon reading in the garden, another will want the thrill of hanging from a rockface, and there are a myriad of options in between. Knowing your signature...
by Tracy Bevan | April, 2024 | Tracy Bevan
This week I left my job. Something most of us have done at some point, but this time it wasn’t just the job I was saying goodbye to. I left my role as a housing professional after 25 years, and it has taken time to get my head around that! I knew I was nervous to leave behind the world of employment with its safety net of a regular salary and associated benefits, but beyond those practical considerations, there was a deeper concern at play. One that was more enmeshed in my vision of who I was. Listen to the audio version of this article Identity Personal identity is how we see ourselves. We create this sense of self from a complicated set of interrelated physical, psychological, and interpersonal characteristics which sit within the social environments that we are born, grow and live in. We each belong to many overlapping groups, like our ethnicity or religion, and we adopt roles from our society and culture1. These factors weave together to create a unique mosaic that we call ‘ourself’. This identity lends us a coherent sense of self over time. As we develop we start to collect stories about who we are, our values, what we want to achieve and what society expects of us. The more aware we are of these components the easier it is to make choices that align to our likes and dislikes. When we know what motivates us and what we stand for we can be consistent in these guiding principles. This in turn promotes better relationships, both with ourselves and with others, because we...
by Tracy Bevan | February, 2024 | Tracy Bevan
The ethics of working with clients who are mentally unwell is a hot topic in the world of positive psychology and coaching. It can seem a grey space, especially as clients aren’t always aware of the differences between counselling, psychology, therapy or coaching or the range of modalities used, from talking to hypnotherapy, EFT to somatic bodywork. It can be difficult for clients to sift through the options and find what is right for them. So how do we support clients to understand what we do? And if we feel we are not the right person to help, where is our responsibility in that? Coaching might attract clients with a variety of needs, and because it is often a shorter term investment with less stigma attached, it might be seen as a more accessible option. Where too does positive psychology sit in this? What role does it have to play in ill-health when its initial remit was, as Peterson (2008) tells us, to build on the good in life, rather than repair the bad. You may wish to listen to the audio version of this article Ethical Considerations Navigating this uncertainty is our responsibility as practitioners. We need to understand and acknowledge where we are comfortable to go with our clients, and when we are moving into territory that is out of our remit, maybe taking on a role better filled by another professional. This shouldn’t be seen as a failure, the client simply needs a different set of skills. These discussions with clients must take place prior to the work starting and again at the contracting stage...
