Dear Friends of Balancing Act,
If I asked you what makes lawyers successful, you''d probably think I was setting up one of those ever-circling lawyer jokes. Not so. I'd just be testing your answer against the findings of a study I conducted this summer to complete my Master of Applied Positive Psychology degree at the University of Pennsylvania. What I found may pleasantly surprise you and inform the work you do.
Along that line - and just in time to help us survive the nightly pre-election news blasts and ads - is a hopeful new book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.
And finally, to add a bit of brain science to all this positivity is a video shared by one of my classmates called "The Love Competition" about what happens when you spend five minutes in an MRI machine loving someone as hard as you can.
(If that's not enough to raise your positivity level, you could try a Zumba class - and become the devotee that I did not, as reported in my latest column.)
Positively yours,
Pat
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Gratitude + Kindness = Lawyer Success
 Lawyers unfortunately have high rates of depression and career dissatisfaction - a situation positive psychologists have attributed to the fact that law is a profession that benefits from negative thinking, or looking for the pitfalls in order to protect clients. Both men and women lawyers as a group typically use head (analytical) strengths more than heart (feeling) strengths.
Since positive psychology is all about studying what's going well with people, I decided to study some women lawyers who had been named to the Super Lawyers directory, test them for their top strengths, and find out how they used them in their practices.
The super-achievers I studied unexpectedly had a predominance of heart strengths, with the top two being gratitude and kindness. They offered compelling examples of how they used these strengths to help integrate their personal and professional lives and work with clients.
I won't offer up all the details here - the whole report is about 70 pages. But if you think their strategies might apply to your own efforts at life balance, feel free to contact me for the one-page summary or (especially if you suffer from insomnia), the whole enchilada. |
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Cheer Up! It's Better Than You Think
 I didn't judge this book by its cover. Honest. Even though I'm a sucker for books wrapped in aluminum foil and even duct tape, I think what's between the covers of this one has value.
Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think is an intriguing analysis of how technology can provide the key to a better tomorrow through clean water and energy, nutritious food, affordable housing, and better education and medical care. The authors, a scientist/consultant and journalist, predict these technological developments will lead to world-wide wellness in the next 25 years, with noticeable change in 10.
If you're intrigued but in a hurry, check out the executive summary for a quicker dose of techno-optimism.
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First Annual Love Competition
Knowing that strong positive emotions like love can affect our neuro-chemical brain activity, a California film director decided to host a competition to see who would have the strongest brain response when contestants spent five minutes in an MRI machine, loving someone as hard as they could.
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Partnering with the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, he not only pictured and measured their brain activity but also interviewed contestants about how they felt about the intense loving experience. Who won? And was there a way in which the "loser" actually the winner? If you stay till the end (about 15 inspiring minutes), you'll get to hear contestant Marilyn Pells' comment about the important gift she had received from her husband of 50 years - my personal favorite comment.
Copyright 2012 Pat Snyder
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Although my study focused on how women lawyers use the strengths of gratitude and kindness to succeed in their practices, those and other heart strengths can work in other fields as well.
For future publications, I'm looking for specific examples of how you've used strengths such as gratitude, kindness, emotional intelligence, enthusiasm and forgiveness to make things go better at work. Please contact me to share your story!
Here's what I'd like to know:
A time you used a heart strength;
How it worked for you;
Any advice you'd give to others using it;
Whether you'd like your identity kept confidential.
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LEASH LAW NO. 44: Long Distance Grand Advice 
Whether it's a long-distance grandchild or a grandpet, here's a suggested vocabulary: Wow! He's Brilliant! Trust Your Own Good Judgment! as opposed to But don't you think.... If I were you.... Not to worry you, but... I'm no scientist, but I'm thinking there's a correlation between grandparent vocabulry and frequency of invitations. Just guessing. This is one of 74 leash laws offered in Pat's book, The Dog Ate My Planner: Tales and Tips from an Overbooked Life.  |
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