Rethinking Positivity - Inside the New Science of Motivation with Gabriele Oettingen
“The solution isn’t to do away with dreaming ... Rather, it’s making the most of our fantasies by brushing them up against the very thing most of us are taught to ignore or diminish: the obstacles that stand in our way.” - Gabriele Oettingen
Professor Gabriele Oettingen tears through traditional notions of motivation and success. Her 20 years of research focus on the perils of positive thinking, and the science of how focusing on obstacles has been proven to help people achieve their goals. Gabriele is the author of more than 100 articles and book chapters on thinking about the future and the control of cognition, emotion, and behavior. She is now a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg.
In this episode we cover:
- Her WOOP framework for engineering motivation, clarity, followthrough
- Why dreaming makes you less motivated
- Why dreamers are prone to depression
- Identifying the correct obstacles in your way
You can check out her book Rethinking Positive Thinking as well as her website mywooplife.org
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Permission to Feel: Marc Brackett on findings from The Yale Center for Social Emotional Intelligence
This episode focuses on tools of emotional resilience.
I’ve met few people like Marc - he is so open and honest about his emotions that it is refreshing. It’s easy to see why. Marc Brackett, Ph.D., is the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and a professor at Yale University. His research is on the role of emotions and emotional intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, health, and both academic and workplace performance.
Marc is the lead developer of RULER, a Pre-K to high school evidence-based, whole-school approach to social and emotional learning that has been adopted by over 2,000 schools. He has published 125 scholarly articles and consults regularly with corporations like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google on integrating emotional intelligence principles into employee training and product design and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a digital emotional intelligence learning system for businesses.
You can check out his app Mood Meter App (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mood-meter-building-your-emotional/id825930113) to log and respond to your own emotional changes throughout the day.
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The Paradox of Choice - Barry Schwartz on why more is less
Having more choices is good right? Barry Schwartz thinks otherwise.
"In his 2004 book The Paradox of Choice , tackles one of the great mysteries of modern life: Why is it that societies of great abundance — where individuals are offered more freedom and choice (personal, professional, material) than ever before — are now witnessing a near-epidemic of depression? Conventional wisdom tells us that greater choice is for the greater good, but Schwartz argues the opposite: He makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today's western world is actually making us miserable. "
In this episode we explore making choices on:
- dating
- prioritization
- career
- eliminating choice
- decision making
By the end I had a practical framework for making choices in my life and tools to think less about low priorities.
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Motivation - Daniel Pink on designing routines, self-talk, and projects to increase your drive
What motivates us? How can we motivate ourselves? Our guest today is a legend in the psychology world, Dan Pink. He’s often credited for paving the paved the path for authors of other character trait oriented books, including many of the authors who have been on this podcast. And he’s so well regarded that at this point if I see an amazing education organization I just assume he’s on the board. In his groundbreaking book, "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us", Dan uses 50 years of behavioral science to overturn the conventional wisdom about human motivation and offer a more effective path to high performance.
This episode is incredibly practical and I’ve since used it as my go-to-guide for when I feel like I’m in a slump. Dan talks on how to design your habits, routines, commitments, self-talk, and projects to increase your drive.
So you want to be more motivated, this episode is for you. And, of you are a manager you may want to jump to minute (31) where Dan shares his top 5 tips for what organizations can do to increase their employee motivation.
It’s incredibly practical and will leave you with new techniques to be inspired.
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Career Story - Rob Percival - all-time bestselling iOS instructor with Unathi Chonco of Make School
Were you ever in a classroom that felt too crowded? Maybe 35 students, 50, 100? One man teaches a lot more students than that - he teaches over 320,000 students. What a headache! But not for one person.
Who is he? Rob Percival. He’s one of the best selling online instructors of all time. His uDemy iOS course has reached hundreds of thousands of students. We discuss why Rob believes his courses caught on, his teaching philosophy, the story of his career and how he hopes to change the world. This episode helped me rethink my teaching career, and how to cope with unexpected dramatic success and impact. In this episode, I’m joined with Make School student Unathi Choco.
Want to develop more willpower and empathy? Positivity Podcast gives you exercises to develop your character traits.
In this series, Positivity Dan will help you think about character development the way you think about professional development--with strategies, advice, best practices, and tools to help you grow. The series covers essential topics like Empathy (#2), Talent (#7), Honesty (#9), Meditation (#6), and Forgiveness (#5), from experts that range from academics to best-selling authors--all of whom have actionable tips to help you become a better, happier, more effective version of yourself. Think of this series as your character development consultant, aimed at helping you succeed in life. Chances are, you’ll be helping your professional career, too.
- Produced with love by Make School and Positivity Dan. Join thousands of the world's brightest computer science students at Make School (www.makeschool.com).
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