Category Archives: Health

Arts, Health, Psychology

Resilience: Focus on Your Strengths

EMBRACING YOUR STRENGTHS

MANY people base their self-worth on external factors such as what others think of them or what job they do. As a result, their confidence is extremely unstable – an “off” remark or by having a bad day can cause their self-esteem to plummet. The key to resilience is to base your sense of self-worth on who you authentically are.

One way of doing this is to identify and focus on your unique strengths. Think of a time when you did something you were proud of. Now think about the strengths, skills, and talents you used to make this happen.

These are your signature strengths. Know that you carry these with you wherever you go. You can deploy these strengths whenever you are faced with a challenge, such as moving home, starting a new relationship or changing career. Embracing your strengths will give you confidence in your ability to handle any challenge that comes your way.

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Government, Health, Japan, Society

Tokyo Olympics: Can the Games still go ahead?

OLYMPIC GAMES

IN ten weeks, the rescheduled Olympic Games are set to get underway. Yet, as the days count down, the opposition grows. A state of emergency in Japan’s capital city has been extended until the end of the month, with citizens there increasingly angry and hostile towards staging what they believe will be a “superspreader” event.

The plans of the organisers appear foolhardy rather than foolproof, with the playbooks of coronavirus protocols raising more questions than answers – the greatest of them being: Can the Olympics really go ahead?

Many residents in Tokyo have expressed disquiet and feel their views have been neglected by organisers. They have said it is a “recipe for disaster” if the Games go ahead and feel scared for their fellow citizens as the virus remains virulent and extremely dangerous.

While comprehensive playbooks have been published for athletes, officials and media, volunteers have received just a two-page pamphlet encouraging them to wear masks, use hand sanitiser and stay socially distanced.

Volunteers and residents are not expected to be subjected to the same level of coronavirus testing as other participants and will not be deemed as being in the “bubble”, so will be able to use public transport and visit restaurants and bars.

There is a firm belief that there is a significant risk for volunteers who have contact with people in the Olympic bubble, then go home to their families on public transport, who could very well be the ones who are contributing to this superspreader event.

From a moral standpoint, it is inconceivable that the Games should be held during a global pandemic, wasting money when so many people in the world are still dying.

What is really worrying the Japanese public is that little more than two per cent of the population have received the vaccine so far. Alarm bells are ringing that the Olympics are taking a priority over the vaccination programme.

A recent opinion poll showed 72 per cent of Japanese citizens want the Games to be cancelled or postponed again. Meanwhile, an online petition headlined, “Stop Tokyo Olympics”, has garnered more than 300,000 signatures since it launched last week.

Expert opinion

Professor Kentaro Iwata, who heads the division of infectious diseases at Kobe University Hospital, said: “This is not the right time and place to hold the Olympic Games. Some nations such as India are completely out of control. Many lives of people are at stake. Putting it altogether, this is not the right time to celebrate a huge human sport activity.”

Professor Iwata shot to prominence at the start of the pandemic when he boarded the coronavirus-hit Diamond Princess cruise ship and posted a YouTube video highlighting the poor infection control measures. Now he is similarly critical of the measures in place for Tokyo 2020.

“The measures are fairly sufficient to protect the athletes but the security of the surrounding people – such as coaches, drivers, media – are not really guaranteed under these measures,” says Iwata, who believes all spectators should be banned from the Games, not just those from overseas.

It recently emerged that Tokyo 2020 organisers had asked for 500 extra nurses to leave their hospitals and volunteer at the Games, with 10,000 medical professionals needed at the event overall.

Professor Iwata added: “They are trying to hold the Games and not minding the health of people because of the financial incentives.”

Holding the Games could set back the global fight against Covid-19. A risk of new variants of concern emerging and of infections being taken back to other countries should be of real concern, and particularly what happens after the Olympics.

Team GB athletes

Team GB’s top talent seemingly have no such concerns about how secure their bubble might be.

Olympic champion swimmer Adam Peaty says, “You are only as safe as your own behaviour… I don’t think it’s any different from being here. It’s about trusting the organisers but really it comes down to your own behaviour and making sure you are doing everything possible to not get Covid-19.”

Athletes will not have to quarantine when they arrive in Tokyo, but they will have daily coronavirus tests. They must wear masks except when eating, drinking, sleeping, training, or competing, and their movement will be restricted to their accommodation, training and competition venues.

Team GB have asked the Government if their athletes can receive both doses of the vaccine before they go to Japan, but they also have the option of using Pfizer jabs donated to the International Olympic Committee.

Team GB insists they are a very conditioned team in terms of Covid mitigation and have said they have every confidence that all 370 Team GB athletes will be on the start line fit and well and 100 per cent ready to compete.

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Health, Psychology, Research, Science

Positive Psychology: Happiness

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

ONE of the criticisms often levelled at positive psychology is that it’s all about the “big H”: happiness. Some may argue that happiness is a frivolous topic and certainly not one worthy of serious scientific endeavour. Yet, when you start digging deeper, it becomes clear that happiness is not at all straightforward. In fact, it’s a pretty complex concept. This article explores some of the components of happiness (or well-being as it’s often called), how they’re measured and why they matter.

. Previously About ‘Positive Psychology’

Probably the simplest way to get a handle on happiness is to divide it initially into two basic components:

. Hedonic well-being

. Eudaimonic well-being

The distinction between these two aspects of happiness dates to the ancient Greek philosophers Aristippus (c. 435–356 BCE), who championed hedonism, and Aristotle (384–322 BCE), who advocated eudaimonism.

According to Aristippus, the goal of life is to maximise pleasure and minimise displeasure or pain. In positive psychology hedonic well-being is often used to refer to the happiness you get from feeling pleasure in the moment; it is the variety of happiness which usually springs to mind when you’re asked what happiness is. It is, though, typically short-lived. We must keep topping up our reserves in order to maintain its effects. One of the problems with defining happiness solely in terms of sensory pleasure is that, paradoxically, some human desires, even if they are pleasure-producing in the short term, are not good for you in the long term.

And what about eudaimonic well-being? If happiness can ever have a serious side, this is certainly it. As suggested, some people believe that pleasure on its own isn’t sufficient to describe the totality of human well-being. According to Aristotle, merely pursuing pleasure is vulgar; he advocated eudaimonism because he believed that true happiness is found in doing what is worth doing, not in just having a good time. Eudaimonic well-being is a broad term used by positive psychologists to refer to the happiness we gain from having meaning and purpose in our lives, fulfilling our potential and feeling that we are part of something bigger than ourselves.

But even eudaimonic well-being is not problem-free. Some psychologists dislike its moral overtones; they argue that it isn’t psychology’s job to prescribe what is good for people. And, as a matter of fact, eudaimonic well-being may not provide any pleasurable feelings at all: it may involve considerable personal hardship and effort over the longer term. Yet, it is suggested that eudaimonia leads to greater life satisfaction than pure pleasure alone (Huta, V., Park, N., Peterson, C. & Seligman, M. [2003]).

In practice, positive psychologists do not agree on the definition of eudaimonic well-being – terms which include “self-actualisation”, “personal expressiveness”, “meaning”, “personal growth”, and “engagement and flow”. Nor do they agree on how it should be measured, and often the term eudaimonic well-being is used as a catch-all for any type of happiness that isn’t hedonic. But even if we’re not yet sure how to define eudaimonic well-being, most people would acknowledge that there’s more to true happiness than a game or round of 9-hole golf at the weekend. Psychology research concurs with this: a recent study of over 13,000 people suggests that pursuing engagement or meaning is more strongly related to well-being than pursuing pleasure (Schueller, S. M., & Seligman, M. P. [2010]).

Another area of disagreement for positive psychologists is whether happiness is a subjective or an objective phenomenon. Some definitions of eudaimonic well-being suggest that there is an objective standard against which people’s lives can be judged. On the other hand, there are psychologists who insist that happiness is a subjective phenomenon. They argue that it can only be measured by asking people to rate their own happiness. This leads us to another definition of happiness often used in positive psychology – Subjective Well-Being (SWB) – which is expressed in the following formula:

Satisfaction with Life + Positive Emotion – Negative Emotion

In simple terms this means that subjective happiness consists of three elements, one cognitive (or evaluative) and two affective.

Using Subjective Well-Being as the measure suggests that to increase our level of happiness overall, we should focus on minimising our negative mood and maximising our life satisfaction and positive mood.

. A positive psychology model of well-being

In his most recent book, Flourish, Martin Seligman, one of the founding fathers of the positive psychology movement, describes his new theory of well-being. His model (PERMA), which consists of five separate elements, draws on aspects of both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being:

P (Positive emotion) is exactly what it says – the experience of positive mood and feelings which are uplifting. Psychologists use various types of questionnaire which can be used to measure positive (and negative) emotional states.

E (Engagement) or ‘flow’ as it’s often called, refers to the well-being you get from being totally absorbed in the task in hand, so much so that you lose track of time and feel completely at one with what you’re doing. When sports people talk about “being in the zone”, they’re referring to their experience of flow. Flow is usually measured by asking people to reflect back on their day and record flow experiences or by having them carry an electronic beeper which randomly prompts them to think about and record what they’re doing at that moment in time.

R (Relationships) are included in Seligman’s model because research suggests that good, caring and supportive interpersonal connections are essential to your well-being at any age in life.

M (Meaning) is important because it provides both a stable foundation and a sense of direction in life. Pursuing meaningful activities has been found to be more strongly related to happiness than pursuing pleasurable ones. There are many different measures of meaning, although it’s still a relatively under-researched area. The Sources of Meaning and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (SoMe) measures 26 different sources, including self-transcendence (such as spirituality), self-actualisation (such as challenge and knowledge), order (such as tradition and holding on to values), and well-being and caring for others (such as community and love).

A (Accomplishment) is the latest psychological component in Seligman’s well-being model. It’s another broad category which includes everything from achievement, success and mastery at the highest level possible to progress towards goals and competence.

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