Positive Psychology has good news for expats
Build a Flourishing Life, Thrive in Tough Times on Tuesday, August 7, 2012 at 12:03PM by Trisha Carter I recently attended a workshop with Dr Barbara Fredrickson. Her work in the area of positive emotions and her broaden and build theory have been cornerstones of positive psychology.
In case you haven't heard of her research; over the past twenty years it has revealed the powerful effects of positive emotions. Those emotions such as gratitude, hope, serenity, awe, humour, love and happiness have been found to have a number of positive effects.
They increase resilience, strengthen social bonds, enhance problem solving, undo the effects of stress, and reduce own-race bias. All things critical for expats!
New research presented at the workshop described how positive emotions experienced at the beginning of a new activity made a difference in the participants continuing in that new activity. It's obvious really, and yet when we consider our work in global mobility do we consciously look to provide experiences of positive emotions in those expatriate employees and their families we are working with?
I spoke about aspects of this research as part of my "Flourishing Where You Are –Positive Psychology for Expats and Repats" presentation at the Families In Global Transitions conference in Washington in March. The sad thing was the stories I heard of international transitions where the mobility teams generated more negative emotions in the expats they were working with than positive emotions.
Anxiety, fear, stress, sadness and loss are emotions that can be part of a global move. We can counter these by building positive experiences and providing opportunities for our clients to experience hope, humour, gratitude or happiness. From the airport to the home search and the first days in the office there is much we can do to engender positive emotions.
The challenge is the relative power of negative emotions to positive emotions. Research by Fredrickson and Losada showed we need a ratio of 3 positive emotions to every 1 negative emotion experienced to function well.
I know many of you seek to do that with every expatriate you work with as we do also. In our resources on wwwcicolective.com we educate expats on these evidence-based strategies to enable them to increase their experience of positive emotions.
It could make all the difference to the success of the assignment!
Reader Comments (1)
Hello, my name is Drabuziu Taisymas Very interesting piece!! Stress is a normal response to difficult situations. We often confuse it as some form of mental pressure caused due to our own inability to deal with things. But that’s not what it is. Stress is not an action, it’s a reaction. Stress is our reaction to various external factors.
Before we get to the whole coping part, first we need to understand a few things about stress that are essential. According to me Stress is not always bad.
Stress is the body’s way of reacting to a challenge. When faced with a tough situation, there are a whole lot of reactions that the body goes through. Increased pulse rate, adrenaline boost, faster response to stimuli and among those, stress is one.
But the same stress that ‘stresses us out’, also makes us quicker and more prone to handle situations better. Stress makes us do our best. So it isn’t always a bad thing.