Applied Podcast

• Applied Positive Psychology – Finding Strength in Human Potential
• The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology
• Positive Thinking Is Great, But It Needs This Extra Plus

• Applied Positive Psychology Graduate Certificate
• Psychology B.S.
• Industrial/Organizational Psychology

Beren (00:00):
Welcome to the Applied Podcast. I’m Beren Goguen and I’m joined today by Zach Mercurio. Zach is an instructor in CSU Organizational Learning Performance and Change Master’s program, and also teaches courses in the applied Positive Psychology graduate certificate program. In addition to teaching and public speaking, Zach has also consulted for more than a hundred organizations on topics of meaningful work, mattering, purposeful leadership, and positive organizational psychology. Some of Zach’s clients have included the US Army, JP Morgan Chase, American Express, Hewlett Packard, and the National Parks Service. Zach, thanks for being here.

Zach (00:41):
Thanks, Beren. I’m excited.

Beren (00:43):
We’ll just jump in with the first question. So my understanding of psychology is a big field and there are different types of psychology. So you have some people that study the brain and cognition and kind of the brain science than you have people who study more of human behavior and there’s different subfields. So can you briefly explain applied positive psychology

Zach (01:04):
And

Beren (01:04):
How that differs from other fields?

Zach (01:06):
Positive psychology is the study of what’s best about human beings and often most psychological disciplines prior to positive psychology. Being named a field in 1998 by Marty Seligman, who’s really the founding psychologist of positive psychology, we’ve studied what’s wrong with people and then we’ve studied how to prevent those things from happening. Most psychology up to when positive psychology was founded, was founded on this idea of how do we prevent a disease? It’s called a disease model of functioning versus how do we understand what creates flourishing, what are the best aspects of the human being, and how do we develop those from a proactive instead of reactive preventative standpoint? The way I think about it is if you were to learn golf, would you spend all your time studying someone who stinks at golf and try to figure out how not to stink at golf, or would you spend your time focusing on somebody who is flourishing in golf and is an expert in golf and learn how to do those things?

(02:19):
It’s natural. Yet the way we’ve treated human beings and the way we’ve studied psychology for so many years is we’ve studied disease and how do we make sure people don’t get diseased? And what we leave out of that is human possibility, human potential, the things that make humans great, their strengths, their virtues, the emotions they feel when a human being has purpose, what happens and how do you develop that? And so now we’re on this trajectory where we’re studying what contributes to human flourishing and what are practices to realize that in everyday life, work, school, education.

Beren (02:57):
So it’s kind of flipping psychology the way it’s been done in the past and taking a completely different approach.

Zach (03:03):
Sure, instead of a problems based approach, it’s a possibilities approach. Instead of a deficit based approach, it’s a what’s good approach, what are our strengths? For example, in organizations that I work with, it’s instead of asking the question, what went wrong, what would it look like if everything was going right and how do we pursue that? For example, if you have a team that’s not collaborating, most people say, Hey, my team lacks collaboration. Instead of involving the team and saying, what would optimal collaboration look like and what do we need to get there? It’s completely different. You don’t get very good data when you say, why isn’t my team collaborating? You get great data to improve when you say, how can I create an optimal environment that manifests collaboration regularly? And you involve people in that. That’s just one example of right now, if you’re listening a question, you can just reframe. It’s called appreciative inquiry, and it’s just asking an affirmative question. For example, if you’re a parent, instead of saying, why does my kid keep watching his tablet ask, what are the conditions I can create where my kid wouldn’t need to watch a tablet?

(04:16):
And what you’re doing is when you ask questions like that, when you make that shift, you’re unlocking the positive resources you need to move forward to have a productive and positive response. There’s also a misconception about the word positive in positive psychology, which is important for listeners to understand. A lot of people have heard of toxic positivity. This is when someone says to you, oh, don’t worry. Everything’s great.

Beren (04:37):
It

Zach (04:37):
Doesn’t matter. All the things that are happening in your life, everything’s great. That’s not what positive means in positive psychology. It’s the response to what’s happening in a positive and productive way. So things can be really bad and we can name it, it’s good to name it these difficult things, challenging things are happening to us, but the difference went from a positive psychological approach is what are the unique strengths? I have to respond to this and how am I going to respond and what’s possible in terms of how I respond? And that’s what characterizes a positive in positive psychology, the lens through which we interpret react to respond to our environment in ways that use and liberate what’s best about us as people.

Beren (05:22):
That’s really interesting. So at our office, we’ve done some things called Clifton Strengths. I believe it’s a strengths-based tool where everyone evaluates their strengths and finds out where people are strong, and then everyone shares and collaborates about that to learn more about how everyone works and what everyone’s good at, and then talk about ways of utilizing that and tapping into that more. So that kind of sounds like a similar area.

Zach (05:55):
It is, right? So let’s take your team leader or your leader, the traditional psychological approach, inaction by a leader. They may not be naming it as that’s the approach, but the traditional approach is, how do I get my people to be better? How do I get my people to perform better? How do I get my people to stop doing X, Y, Z instead of how do I reveal and nurture what’s best in people? One of the interventions that you described is helping people to really realize, learn and believe in their strengths. Research finds it correlates and predicts overall wellbeing, flourishing, thriving in work. It’s crucial for motivation, crucial for meaningfulness in work. There are numerous studies, strengths-based work is really powerful, but why is it powerful? Why does that work? Well, when somebody can see and name their strength, it helps them develop self-belief and that self-belief is critical and it helps them develop not only self-belief that I have strengths, but, and that I am good. I’m a worthy person, and that is so important to do. Anything else in an organization is that sense of worthiness that I matter. If someone doesn’t believe that they matter, it’s easy for nothing to matter,

Beren (07:10):
Right?

Zach (07:12):
So if you’re a leader, don’t expect anything to matter to someone who doesn’t first believe that they matter. I mean, mattering is the central concept in positive psychology that it may be the ultimate concept, really, because mattering has to come first. If someone doesn’t believe that they matter, it’s hard for anything to matter. People won’t care about anything until they feel cared for.

(07:31):
And helping someone realize their strengths helps them feel cared for, it also helps them believe that they matter, develop. And so that’s a really important intervention. There’s Clifton strengths. There’s also via Strengths, which is another one you can access for free online if you’re listening. We also cover that in one of our courses, our positive organizations and leadership courses where you can take that, get an inventory of your strengths, and hopefully find ways to use them. I will say this though, A lot of organizations do strengths work, but just having an awareness of your strengths doesn’t really do much. Using them does. So one of the things we teach in our programs is how do you create an environment if you’re a leader, a parent, a teacher, a coach, where you are allowing people opportunities to use their strengths regularly,

Beren (08:21):
And

Zach (08:21):
That’s where you get powerful outcomes.

Beren (08:26):
That makes a lot of

Zach (08:26):
Sense. So I’m glad you brought up that example. It’s a great intervention anybody can just use right now.

Beren (08:30):
Yeah. What about education? How does this play into education?

Zach (08:34):
I’ll go back to the workplace again just because where a lot of my research is, if you don’t mind.

Beren (08:40):
Sure.

Zach (08:40):
And one of the things that I think is important is that environment does two things for human behavior. It either makes a behavior possible or it determines that a behavior will occur. So something that’s really important about how positive psychology is in the workplace is, especially for leaders or for somebody, anybody who has responsibility or influence over anybody, is that you’re partially responsible for the environment you create. So does your environment create the opportunity for people to use what’s best about them? Does your environment make it possible for people to use their strengths to experience meaningfulness, to experience positive emotions? I think that’s the big question that we answer in the program, is the strategies to do that for other people, especially in my work with positive organizations and leadership in education, most of the way we educate people is from a deficit model.

Beren (09:36):
Really

Zach (09:37):
Think about it. You get a grade, an arbitrary letter grade on whether you achieve something or you don’t achieve something. You are always not quite there yet until you get a good score on an assessment or get into a good college, or you make it past your pre-req for your X, Y, Z degree, or you get that job with a starting salary, or our educational system is set up on this process of you’re not quite good enough yet versus helping people first realize what’s good about who they already are and using those things to drive their education. So the movement in positive education like positive workplaces is to help students first realize what’s best about them.

Beren (10:27):
Not that they’re not a

Zach (10:29):
Student

Beren (10:29):
Yet,

Zach (10:30):
You’re really bad at reading. Instead of that is, oh, you’re a really great visual learner. You look learning in pictures. It’s a massively different paradigm, right? Because if you want somebody to become who they can be, you have to reveal what’s best about who they are. You can also work on behavioral change, but behavioral change without somebody believing in their strengths to make that behavioral change is really a fool’s errand.

Beren (10:59):
We’ve

Zach (10:59):
Been doing it for a century, and so positive education is really powerful. It’s also helping people understand what’s the meaning of what they’re doing. For example, there’s research out there that shows that students, when they’re asked to do rote math problems like learning the multiplication tables, if they have a transcendent purpose, which means if they can say how they think, learning that math project will help them make an impact on someone else or help them be better in the future, that they have higher GPAs and they learn the math problems faster than those who don’t.

Beren (11:38):
Here’s why you want to learn this, and here’s how it would help you

Zach (11:42):
In architecture, you, it is form follows function, right? You have to understand the function of something before you build something. Yet the way we’ve developed human beings has been backwards. We tell people to create their career pathway, to pick their major, to create their resume, to pick. My kid was in preschool last year and he was already being tracked into STEM career STEM day. We ask people, we get children to determine the form of their life before they deeply understand their function, why they are, what their purpose is, what kind of impact they want to make, what are their unique gifts? What are their unique strengths? What’s good about who they are? Developing that self-belief, that sense of mattering, that knowing how they’re already valued. 46% of US school children and an Education week survey said they didn’t feel valued by their school. About 50% of people in a survey of over 66,000 people from education week, sixth grade through 12th grade said they didn’t think their teacher would notice if they were absent. Really? So what does that lend to? Right? Again, if someone doesn’t believe that they matter, it’s easy for nothing to matter. You have conduct issues, performance issues, positive education is all about revealing what’s best in people and creating environments for them to unlock that potential.

Beren (12:58):
So what does that look like in a more practical way, if let’s say someone’s a teacher and they want to start implementing some of these strategies in the classroom, maybe it’s not necessarily something that’s come down from leadership in the school, but they could start doing some small things. What’s something that they could do to go into this?

Zach (13:19):
Yeah. One thing I think you can do is make sure that, and name and repeatedly recognize each student’s individual strengths, and then give them, when they’re struggling with an assignment, ask them questions like, Hey, which one of your strengths could you use more on this? Instead of, well, I need you to go home and really work on this more. You’re not good at it yet. Which of your strengths could you use more on it? Find that if a student, for example, has a strength of ideating and they’re a good brainstormer, they can come up with a whole different set of ideas for some things, but they’re having trouble reading, something you could say to them is, Hey, you’re really good at ideation. Let’s sit down and brainstorm ways in which you might be able to better remember what you’re reading in these stories.

(14:11):
So then you’re using their strength on a task. They’re more likely to experience that task better. Or if you’re giving assignments, this actually relates back to the workplace, but there’s some really great research on what predicts a meaningful task in work. And there are three elements. Significance is people have to know how it benefits others or what the impact is on it of the task. The second is identity, which means people have to know what the task identifies with. So what is the task necessary for? What’s the bigger outcome, downstream outcome? And then third is people have to know how they can use their strengths to do it. So if you’re a teacher, anytime you give a task or an assignment, make sure first people understand the significance of the task. Hey, we’re we’re going to work on writing paragraphs first because have you ever read a paragraph a story or had your parent read a paragraph to you and you really got excited about it? That level of excitement that can come through reading is powerful. Kids are like, yeah, and learning. These paragraphs are necessary to read whole books and write a book. Anybody want to write a book someday? Yeah. Cool. And oh, hey, you’re a great ideator. You are really good at putting together a lot of different complex things. I’ve seen you do that when you work on Legos in the corner. I want you to use that during this task. Oh, by the way, it’s reading time at 11.

(15:41):
Instead of saying, Hey, we need you to get this assignment done by Friday. Go home and get this done. Here’s why it matters. Here’s why it’s necessary. Here’s how you can use your unique strengths to do it.

Beren (15:52):
Right.

Zach (15:52):
Can I ask one more thing? This is also in the workplace too. Anytime you say good job or thank you, go one step further and show people the difference that they make and how they make it. If a child does something really good or employee does something great, instead of just saying, Hey, thanks, good job. Go one step further. Describe when and where it happened, whatever you’re thanking them for. Name the specific behaviors and describe the strengths that they used. And then most importantly, describe the impact that it had

Beren (16:22):
On

Zach (16:22):
You or others. Those two things. I mean, if we just started communicating tasks and assignments and what we’re doing that way, if we just started thanking people and saying, good job, by showing them the difference that they make, I mean that can really start developing that self-belief, that sense of mattering.

Beren (16:39):
So you’re getting away from with education, it’s not just this arbitrary assignment, why you’re doing this. There is a reason, and it’s not just because it’s on the test or it’s part of a curriculum. You’re kind of explaining the meaning behind it

Zach (16:57):
And

Beren (16:57):
Reinforcing the benefit of learning that as opposed to pass a standardized test or something like that.

Zach (17:05):
And young people really get it. In first grade, I went and talked to my kid’s first grade class about meaningful work. Now, what’s meaningful work, meaningful work is having that sow that mentality. It’s really knowing the significance of whatever it is that you’re doing. Everything that we do as human beings, no matter what job we have, has an impact on other human beings. The same is true in a first grade classroom. And so what I asked them is I said, what’s a job that you don’t like doing? And one of the little girls said, I don’t like being quiet during reading time.

Beren (17:37):
Which

Zach (17:38):
Yeah, if you’re just told by an adult to be quiet, when’s the last time you wanted to do something because someone else told you to do it? Never. Right. So I just asked her, and this is an example of job crafting your perspective of a task that you can’t see the meaning of. I just asked her, I said, Hey, what would happen to a person, one of your classmates if you weren’t quiet? She said, oh, well, I guess they wouldn’t be able to focus on their reading. I go, so don’t think about it as being quiet. Think about it as helping people focus on their reading. And she was like, oh, yeah. And they all started talking about things they don’t like, but then the impact it had on other people,

Beren (18:14):
Light bulb kind of went off.

Zach (18:16):
That’s meaningfulness. That’s a key pillar of positive psychology, meaning positive emotions, positive relationships, and so you’re taking

Beren (18:26):
Something, it would be the same outcome, but you’re reframing the way you’re going about it to make it more of a positive thing, which opens

Zach (18:35):
People

Beren (18:35):
Up more because when you talk too much about negatives, consequences, or you’re not doing what I want, people tend to shut down. Would you say?

Zach (18:44):
Yeah. Barbara Frederickson did a lot of research and positive psychology on emotions. The negative emotions like fear, anger, frustration, those really evolved to help us survive. They help us avoid dying when we were developing as human beings, our brain, the little part of our brain called the amygdala that produces that annoying stress hormone that gets us stressed out and worked up because it thinks we’re literally going to be speared by another hominid. When you get an email that stresses you out, your brain doesn’t know the difference. So when we experience negative emotions, our body goes into survival mode. Our cardiovascular system starts increasing, our breathing starts increasing, and then try to make a decision in that state. Think about the last great decision you made when you were afraid,

Beren (19:35):
Right? Not going to make good decisions, probably.

Zach (19:38):
It’s not that negative emotions are bad at all. We have to accept those, be able to name the negative emotions, but it’s creating space between the stimulus and the response, being able to take some breaths and then respond in a way that is positive and productive. And so when you scare a kid into trying to perform well on a test, you’re actually decreasing their biological psychological ability to perform.

Beren (20:07):
Right? It’s having the reverse effect

Zach (20:09):
Essentially. Yeah. That’s why when a coach is yelling at a kid to improve, you rarely see that kid go out and improve. But when a coach says, Hey, let me show you what could be different, and let me show you when you make those changes, here’s what your teammate will be able to do or our team will be able to accomplish. It’s like you study the New England Patriots, that whole do your job mentality. It doesn that doesn’t work just by chance. That’s positive psychology. You are a part of something bigger. Your role is indispensable to the bigger group, and it’s about putting service to others above yourself and you become better. That’s positive psychology.

Beren (20:49):
Interesting. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So the coach that’s yelling is he might get a short term, they might right away pick up the pace, but the long-term is not going to pan out.

Zach (21:00):
Yeah. Fear will motivate someone for a week or a month. Meaningfulness will motivate someone for a life. And the same thing in work. When A C E O says, we have to get lean and mean. We have to just get through this. How many times have you been really inspired to just get through something instead of, Hey, who needs us to get through this? Remember when we’ve gotten through this strengths that we use to make it through, we have those strengths. I need everybody to use their strength and I’m going to help you do that.

Beren (21:31):
Right? Really good stuff for people who are trying to be better leaders.

Zach (21:37):
Yeah,

Beren (21:37):
Better educators. What other

Zach (21:40):
Fields

Beren (21:40):
Might benefit from this besides, so we’ve mentioned sports, obviously education, workplace, home

Zach (21:49):
As being a human, a field. I think just being a general functioning person. So for example, you mentioned that this is about reframing things as positive. I would actually disagree. I would say that we’re reframing things back to how they actually are

Beren (22:07):
The reality.

Zach (22:08):
We’ve reframed things as negative as human beings to try to get people to perform better, try to make more money, try to all of that short-term stuff. But for example, the kid who’s being quiet, is it really reframing to say that you’re being quiet so you can help someone read? No. That’s the whole reason why you would be quiet in the first place. I think we’re returning back to what’s real. Some people say, some of the things you say are cliche, and I say, great, because if it’s cliche, that means it’s probably true. Name a cliche, that’s not true. And so

Beren (22:40):
I think that we’re actually positive psychology is going back to who we are,

Zach (22:44):
And it’s a principle of life itself. If I took a time-lapse of a sunflower, we’re in Colorado right now, it’s August. Sunflowers are blooming. You would see the sunflower following the sun. That’s the principle of heliotropism where an organism is attracted to positive regenerative energy and away from negative extracting energy. The same is true with human beings. We’re organisms. We are drawn towards positive regenerative energy and away from negative extractive energy. And I would say that as a human, as an individual, there are some things that you can do that can be really powerful, whether it’s focusing on positive emotions like gratitude. There’s been a lot of research on gratitude journaling. Now, I have to be honest with you, I’m not a great journaler, but even just thinking about gratitude, journaling can make you

Beren (23:32):
Feel like

Zach (23:33):
Better thinking about something you’re thankful for, and writing it down. There’s a lot of research on awe right now. The new science of awe, being able to go and really just soak in a sunset. One thing you can do as a person is just commit to watching every sunset from wherever you are where there’s a plain window and just really think about it. Describe the colors to yourself,

Beren (23:56):
Probably unplug a little bit from the technology,

Zach (23:58):
Even just for five minutes or so. Positive emotions are huge. Another thing that you can do is positive meaning. So sow that mentality, right? I’m doing this so that what I have this meeting Monday morning meeting at eight, sow that what? And you’ll find that when you think about that sow, that you’ll find that there’s purpose wherever you are, and that’s really powerful. You can also ask yourself better questions instead of, what do I have to do today? How is what I’m going to do today going to impact others? Instead of how am I going to get through this meeting? You could ask, how can I use my strengths to impact the people in this meeting? So

Beren (24:34):
This sounds very similar to mindfulness, which is kind of a buzz word recently in the past few years. Do you think that there’s similarities or

Zach (24:44):
Is

Beren (24:44):
That more of a simplified version of what you’re talking about?

Zach (24:48):
I would say mindfulness. Mindfulness is not as well studied in the literature as some of these other things that I’ve been talking about, like positive emotions, positive meaning, positive relationships. But there is some initial data that mindfulness can increase the experience of positive emotions, which so I talked about when we experienced a negative emotion, it narrows our attention to survival. Well, research finds that when we experience positive emotions like gratitude, our awareness actually opens up, our attention opens up. It’s called a broaden and build theory. We can broaden our attention and build the resources we need to keep going when we experience positive emotions. So I would imagine there’s links to that, right? There’s probably links to you have to create the time and space to experience and see meaning where you are. If you’re just going through the motions, you have no space to be able to really stop and think, why am I doing this? What’s the purpose of this? So I’d imagine there are certainly links there, but I would imagine that a lot of the outcomes of mindfulness are positive psychological phenomenon that we’ve been talking about

(25:55):
Because the other component we haven’t talked about is positive relationships. So there’s a flourishing triangle in positive psychology, positive meaning we’ve talked a little bit about that, positive emotions, we’ve talked about that. And then positive relationships, whether it’s just high quality connections that we’re having right now in this conversation, or if it’s having relationships where you’re respectfully engaging with each other, there’s some humor, there’s some play in those friendships. You’re doing something non-instrumental with each other at work. You’re being able to just hang out and joke around with somebody. Those things are really important as human beings

Beren (26:33):
Getting to know people

Zach (26:34):
Beyond

Beren (26:35):
The day-to-day work

Zach (26:36):
Tasks. So that’s another thing that we can do. I think we’ve become with the data on loneliness, isolation, the data on being forgotten, the data on people feeling undervalued. I think this is a moment where increasing positive meaning, positive relationships, positive emotion is more needed than ever. I mean, I think this skill that we’re talking about and this podcast of enacting positive psychology wherever you are, is the skill needed to meet the challenges that we’re seeing.

Beren (27:08):
There’s a lot of discussion about polarization and there’s a lot of things that play into that, but just the way that people

Zach (27:16):
Live now

Beren (27:17):
Is increasing people’s isolation and people are feeling less connected with their communities. And this is just a very simple summary of what I’ve been reading, but a lot of that has to do just with modern society, with how things operate. Now with technology, there’s a lot of factors that go into it. It sounds like this way of thinking could be one possible, maybe not solve everything, but help move things in the other way.

Zach (27:44):
Yeah, I think that my take on it is what’s happening is there’s two things going on. One, there’s a lot of false positives out there in terms of positive energy. The dopamine hit you get from scrolling when you get that on that post, or even things like when you see a sports team win, those are dopamine hits. They’re false positives. And what I mean by that is that they give you the feeling that things are good momentarily, but then as we know, when you go pursue a dopamine rush, it always goes away. It’s like when you eat a big cookie and then

Beren (28:20):
You

Zach (28:20):
Feel great eating the cookie, but half an hour later you never feel like great. You’re never like, man, I’m really glad

Beren (28:26):
Pint of ice cream.

Zach (28:27):
Maybe Rick, I’m really glad I had that pint of ice cream. So we have a lot of people pursuing pleasure right now, and pleasure is different than purpose. What’s purposeful is not always pleasurable.

Beren (28:41):
So it’s short-term return versus long-term.

Zach (28:44):
And what’s positive from a positive psychological standpoint is not always pleasurable. And pleasure is that short-term feeling of, ah, this feels good. What’s positive is that long-term stable regeneration of energy that comes from things like meaningfulness, from gratitude, from awe. It lingers the results of positive psychology. Flourishing is a lingering state. It’s stable over time, whereas happiness, for example, and pleasure go up and down depending on what you’re doing. A lot of people are living in a rollercoaster of pleasure, not pleasure or pleasure, not pleasure. It’s like when people say, oh, if I just get to the weekend, then I’ll be rested. It’s astounding how many people live for two sevens of their lives, or if I just get through this day, then everything will be great if I could just get through this meeting. Right? In psychology, there’s a phenomenal called destination addiction. If I just get to the thing, then I’ll be happy.

Beren (29:40):
And there’s always another destination.

Zach (29:41):
There’s always another destination. If I just get to retirement, well, guess what? You’re going to have health challenges. And do you have the positive resources to respond productively and positively to those health challenges? Right? That’s the stabilizing force of what we’re talking about,

Beren (29:55):
Being able to live more in the moment, focus with less on the next thing,

Zach (29:59):
Right? When things are going back, can you find a way to see a positive emotion in it? Can find a way to just, do you have the skills to discern the meaning in it? Do you have positive relationships to lean on versus do you go to your phone and find something that makes you feel good for a minute? Do you eat a cookie? Right? If you really think about what’s going on, I think it’s a dearth of some of these concepts that we’ve been talking about. The second thing I would say though is that people are going to places that make them feel significant. We’ll go all the way back to the beginning. The feeling of mattering is so fundamental. When you were born as a human being, the first thing that you did was you actually tilted your head upward and grasped for someone to value you. You sought it to matter to someone else for your survival before you sought to eat food.

(30:48):
And that never goes away. So that survival instinct to matter, to have a caring relationship, I think people are finding are not experiencing mattering in places like their workplaces, their classrooms, their families, even their communities. And so if a political candidate or a subreddit thread offers you that false feeling of significance, humans are going to go there. And then what happens is we divide, and I think more than ever, people are competing for the significance. They’re not getting in their everyday lives. A key way to restore that I think, is to make sure everybody feels noticed, affirmed that needed in all aspects of life, schools, sports teams, a family life, workplaces where people spend a third of their waking life, and a lot of those things that mattering is an outcome of a lot of the concepts we’ve been talking about.

Beren (31:43):
Is there a story that you could tell us about how applied positive psychology made a real impact?

Zach (31:52):
Yeah, I mean, it actually, it’s a story I tell all the time, and I’m going to tell it again because someone at Colorado State University, her name is Ellen, she’s an environmental technician in one of the residence halls. She was actually one of the first interviews I did for my PhD work on what makes work meaningful. And we’re talking about custodians who are often in invisible places, night shifts, their work isn’t always seen. A lot of people walk right by and don’t make eye contact. So it’s a really difficult job. And I asked all the custodians, I said, I asked them, what’s the most meaningful part of your job? And Ellen said to me, verbatim, she said, it’s all meaningful when I go into the bathroom on a Monday morning to clean it after the weekend in a university hall, she goes, I say to myself, I’m cleaning this bathroom so that these kids don’t get sick. During her breaks, she crochets winter hats for all of the students in her residence hall. And I asked her why. And she goes, well, if I go to my car in the winter and I just see one student wearing one of these hats, I’m reminded of why my job exists.

Beren (32:56):
Wow.

Zach (32:57):
She’s been at the university for over 20 years. I mean, people remember her. I tell that story in other states and people who went to C S U remember her. There’s a big difference between her and someone who’s just there to get their paycheck on Friday or get through to the weekend, or I wish I could have done something more. Why am I doing just this job? And you imagine that Ellen and that other person, they both face a stressful situation. Who’s going to respond better? The person with the so that or the person who just needs to get through it. Ellen didn’t know that she was enacting positive psychology, but what she was enacting was crafting her job as meaningful,

Beren (33:30):
Seeing

Zach (33:31):
The inherent impact in the job. She realized that there’s no other reason for her job existing except for taking care of those students in that residence hall. So I would say she went back to the actual framing of her work, and that’s a strategy called job crafting, where you can cognitively craft your job and see the meaning in it by thinking about its impact on other people.

Beren (33:58):
That’s a great story. And so I imagine her fulfillment in that job was higher,

Zach (34:05):
Not only higher. She messaged me on Facebook and she said, Zach, I want to meet with you because I’ve been seeing some things with the students that I think can be better. And then she said she wanted to be a speaker as well and tell her story. So we actually met. And sometimes you could be tempted to listen to this and hear her story and say, wow, she’s inspiring. There’s just some people like that. I would argue, no, there are skills that she actually enacts that allows her to see the world that way that you can learn too.

Beren (34:37):
Anyone can learn,

Zach (34:37):
Anyone can learn.

Beren (34:39):
How would you coach or mentor someone who says, well, I’m just more of a behind the scenes person. I’m not a front and center outgoing individual. Someone who’s more introverted, let’s say, and is struggling with that.

Zach (34:57):
Well, I study this stuff and I’m an introvert. I’ve taken every scale possible. You don’t seem like an introvert, right? I am an introvert, but you’re talking to me about something that interests me.

(35:08):
So what I would coach that person to do is to really think about what strengths they have. Don’t label themselves by being an introvert so that you’re missing something. See, that’s a traditional psychological approach. How can you get, I’m not going to coach you to be more like an extrovert. You don’t need to be. What you need to do is you need to find and believe that you have unique strengths as an introvert, that you’re underutilizing because you live in a world dominated by extroverts that tell you those strengths aren’t valid. So I would ask them a couple questions. What do you love doing every day? Not what you wish you loved doing, but what do you love doing? I love deeply thinking, say maybe you love deeply thinking. A lot of these positive psychological components are very reliant on deeply thinking. I would ask them, I was like, yeah, think about if you’re behind the scenes, think about what would happen if you didn’t show up what that impact would be. Think about that. Try to map that out. Or I would say when you create a positive relationship with somebody and you feel like you’re really in flow, because introverts also tend to one or two people, they get into a conversation that just is really flowing deeply. Whereas that doesn’t happen as much for extroverts. But I would say, Hey, when that’s happening, what’s going on? What are you talking about? How can you find more relationships where you’re able to talk about those things?

(36:32):
That’s called relational crafting. It’s part of job crafting, but find relationships. But the first thing I would say is that there’s no deficit. Introversion is a trait. It’s a personality trait, and

Beren (36:46):
There’s

Zach (36:46):
A lot of unique strengths that come along with it.

Beren (36:50):
And it’s not like a black and white thing. You’re either this or you’re that. It’s more of a spectrum, I imagine.

Zach (36:56):
Nobody asks me the question, Hey, how would you coach an extrovert in managing daily life?

Beren (37:04):
Although they likely need coaching in a different way.

Zach (37:06):
Oh, I know. I coach many of them.

Beren (37:08):
Some people may be a little too extroverted. Exactly.

Zach (37:11):
Yeah. And they don’t take time to process and think, and they’re always going on to the next thing. So I think that, again, it goes back to, and this is an application for coaching, strengths-based coaching,

Beren (37:23):
That

Zach (37:23):
Initial question I just asked, what do you love doing? What are you good at every day? Instead of how can you be more extroverted? Or when you tell an introvert you need to start networking more. You really need to put yourself out there, introvert. That’s not where they get their energy is putting themselves out there. They get their energy from something else. If you’re a coach, a leader, a supervisor, a teacher, and someone’s introverted, you need to find out where they get their energy and create many possible experiences where they could experience that in your classroom, in your organization, in your family. Not tell them that that’s a wrong energy source.

Beren (38:00):
Right?

Zach (38:01):
That’s traditional psychology. The former is positive psychology.

Beren (38:06):
That’s really interesting. So final question for you. What’s one big takeaway or concept that our listeners could apply right away if they’re like, I just need one thing. What’s the one thing I should try to do?

Zach (38:21):
I think in the final analysis of the human condition, I think the crux of everything, and this is a non-scientific answer. This is my belief based on the science that I see. I think the crux of human flourishing is positive meaning. And positive meaning. Experiencing my life and my work as positive, purposeful, and significant is critical. And what comes before experiencing meaningfulness is experiencing mattering. So I’m actually not going to give you a tip to do for yourself. I’m going to give you a tip to do for other people, is to commit to making sure that people around you are shown by you, the evidence of their significance, whether it’s to FedEx driver, knowing their last name, whether it’s the barista actually calling them the name that’s on their name tag. When you order your coffee or tea or whatever, whether it’s that employee whose family was struggling, you ask them how they’re doing, knowing your team’s strengths, showing people how they’re relied on.

(39:26):
So make sure people feel noticed, affirmed, and needed around you. I think one of the most powerful five words you could use for right now is if it wasn’t for you. So go tell someone on your team in your classroom, your sports team, in your family, in the community, just, Hey, if it wasn’t for you, this wouldn’t be possible. Because when people experience meaninglessness, they experience incoherence in life. Meaning is coherence when things make sense and when people experience things not making sense, they go try to make it make sense. And usually that results in either acts of withdrawal, isolating, leaving quiet, quitting unquote is just an act of withdrawal. It’s inevitable, it quiet. Quitting, for example, was an inevitable response to anti-matter. It’s a withdrawal response or they act out in desperation, whether that’s gossiping, complaining, blaming, or whether that’s acts of violence. Hey, look at me, I do matter. Feelings of invisibility either result in acts of desperation or acts of withdrawal. So I think one of the most important things we can do in our organizations, in our society and our families to make sure everyone around us feels noticed, affirmed and needed, say, if it wasn’t for you, to somebody today that can help at least prompt their mind to remember that they have significance, that there’s positive meaning in their life, which is the crux of everything else.

Beren (40:57):
It’s resonating with me, for sure.

Zach (40:58):
Yeah.

Beren (41:00):
It’s so often to just overlook that or we’re all in such a hurry. It’s easy to just not do that or take an extra few seconds to really,

Zach (41:10):
Yeah, or it’s common sense. What’s common sense is not always common practice. And one of the things, I’m the nicest person in the world when I’m walking my dog, I think of all the people I should thank, all the calls I should make, and then I get back to my office and I have this to-do list. But why don’t those things make it on my to-do list? Why don’t the things that actually matter make on there? We put off kindness for responding to emails.

Beren (41:36):
If everyone just put one

Zach (41:39):
Item

Beren (41:40):
A day or a week even and actually did it, the world would be a brighter place probably.

Zach (41:46):
Yeah. And it goes back to that little human being, just being born searching for to matter. Well, then you

Beren (41:52):
Think about the people who really make an impact. The people who are considered to be inspirational are the people that do that. That’s a strength of theirs, is exactly what you’re saying. They’re the people that uplift everyone around them, the people that have the most respect. And it comes naturally to some people. Probably not most people though.

Zach (42:13):
Yeah.

Beren (42:13):
For me, that’s something I have to work on a little bit more, but it’s something I would aspire to.

Zach (42:20):
And I think that’s the bigger question is what are you aspiring to? And too many people are aspiring for popularity and not enough people are aspiring for impact. Go on LinkedIn. When’s the last time you saw somebody post? I remembered someone’s full name today. But those are the very things that are going to leave a legacy, not your big product launch.

Beren (42:43):
Yeah, totally. Well, Zach, it’s great talking to you.

Zach (42:46):
Yeah, thanks Beren. Thanks for having me. Absolutely.

Beren (42:49):
Hopefully have you back.

Zach (42:50):
Yeah, I’d love to be back.