Weed Dancing

A five-year-old daughter is helping her father weed the garden. But it?s a child?s definition of ?help?: she throws weeds in the air, dances and sings. The father yells at her and she walks away, returning a few minutes later saying ?Daddy, I want to talk to you. Do you remember before my fifth birthday? From when I was three until when I was five I was a whiner. I whined every day. On my fifth birthday, I decided I wasn?t going to whine anymore. That was the hardest thing I?ve ever done. And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.? This anecdote features in (the father) Dr Martin Seligman?s book ?Authentic Happiness? (see more details in Resources under Books) and in an article by Luke Collins in this month?s www.afrboss.com.au magazine. Seligman is 63 now and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. That moment with his five-year old forever altered him. The three things which struck him were:

1. He was a grouch. He had lived his life around using critical intelligence to find out everything that was wrong with everything anyone had said to him. It occurred to him that any success he had in life might have been in spite of those things.

2. Any corporation, therapy, child-rearing or endeavour that has as the base of its program correcting errors, the best it can ever get to is zero. Zero errors. But when we lie awake at night, we?re usually thinking about how to go from plus two to plus five, not from minus eight to minus three.

3. Psychology itself was unbalanced and half-baked; it was only about the negative side of life and how to undo it (i.e. ?lie down on the couch and tell me your problems?). What?s needed is a science and a practice of creating the enabling conditions of life, not just undoing the disabling conditions of life.

To find out whether you are doing enough dancing and singing while you are weeding you can register for free on Seligman?s website http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu and take a test to track your happiness.

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