Reframing is a great way to get into problem solving and I especially enjoyed reading your take on victimization. Be an survivor and not a victim, right? What a refreshing idea!

Here’s a short story for your collection. I worked inside Cheyenne Mountain as a defense contractor quite briefly. As management practices became repressive and “macho” and people started getting told about layoffs, there was a lot of backroom talk about unionizing. Yet not one person took the idea seriously. We all assumed that the Corporate machine would crush our efforts easily.

The victim story reigned and very little action was taken to protect ourselves from the multimillion dollar company’s “right-sizing”.

One area that could be very fruitful for positive intervention in tight teams is the way people deal with trials and tribulations — limits on resources, unpleasant but necessary tasks, audits, restrictions, performance appraisals, etc.. There is an unspoken view that venting is good — people get together to complain. I find that complaining tends to reinforce the bad feeling. Sometimes it converts people who hadn’t really felt bad before. I’ve helped groups turn the complaining into reframing — putting multiple heads together to find some other way of viewing what’s going on, some way that makes them actors in their own stories, not victims, even some way that opens up new opportunities to shine. It might be helpful when managing a space team to measure how often people complain and whether they are actors or victims in their own stories.

Thoughts?
Kathryn

How are you going to tailor the exercises to boost happiness in a restrictive artificial environment like a space shuttle? Exercises that diminish loneliness, boredom, distress and boost SWB may prove key. In my personal, informal ‘action research’, I’ve observed that disputing is great for breaking up automatic thinking and building optimism, however in an environment low on entertainment and high on distress, (in my experience using your book Authentic Happiness during a military deployment) performing them seems more difficult and less effective. An unsatisfying answer might indicate that any increase in happiness, no matter how small, equals a positive change. Yet if mission success demands a much happier crew, no matter what numerical value on the AHI & CESD the psychologist-in-charge considers an appropriate benchmark, then the exercises must produce substantial happiness increases. Anything else would seem insufficient.

Secondly, what kind of positive behavior supports will ensure that the astronauts complete the exercises regularly and consistently? As with the Three Blessings (3+), apparently keeping a nightly log produces substantial SWB increases up to 6 months later. So, as with dieting, introducing a new habit may become quite challenging. Presumably the astronauts are hard-charging and highly motivated individuals, but living in a cramped space with other stressed out cosmonauts might dampen their spirits.

Finally, where are the measures for grit that might demonstrate tenacity with the exercises and will you provide the spacefarers with computer administered tests to monitor their grittiness with respect to completing the happiness exercises?