 So this is what we'll do, so we have an hour and a half and we're here to talk about appreciative inquiry and appreciative living. So I will quickly introduce myself, we'll introduce the topic of positive psychology and introduce appreciative inquiry and then appreciative living. And then we'll take a little break, do an exercise, I'll share a little bit of the theory, the principles of appreciative living and then again at the end I want to make it a little interactive and really what I hope for you to walk away tonight is really to understand the concepts, so what are all these different fields, how they can be used but also walk away with some practical tips and even some practice and some things you can put in place or practice by yourself right away. So myself, so my name is Alex Arnold, I'm from Montpelier, I live right here and I'm a coach for shy, introverted and highly sensitive women. I have a background in travel, I also do some accounting on the side and I'm an administrator for a non-profit that promotes appreciative inquiry and kind of a broader field of social constructions. So that's where I'm at and I've been leading workshops like that for about four years now and I'm really passionate about it, it was a switch of career for me, I just graduated with a master's in organizational psychology so that's where I was introduced to this work and I've been doing it since then. So and just to get to know each other a little bit I will ask you to share your name and just very briefly one funny thing that happened to you today. Yeah my name is Kylie Briggs, I'm a wildlife biologist and I guess the funny thing that happened to me today was actually a funny thing that happened to one of our friends and we found out through me that Jason, apparently his great-great grandmother is from or was from the town of Woodbury and we were able to trace back his family history and his personal four generations over about half an hour. It's just got a fun silly thing that wasn't part of my plan. I'm Jamie and I work in an animal shelter and I guess one funny thing that happened to me today is we got in a new litter of kittens and we gave them some balloons to play with and they were popping them and had a really good time. They weren't scared of popping them? No, kittens aren't scared of anything so they get older. My name is Jeff, I'm a book editor and I can't think of anything funny today. I'm Kelly and I live here in Montpelier and I have an old lady cat so she hasn't played for many years but I do take her outside each day. She wants to go outside for ten minutes of supervised activity and she recently treated Chipmunk and so I bought her this little toy. They call it a fox this week but it looks like a Chipmunk and so she just goes crazy on it inside and it's really funny to watch that her privatiousness don't play like that, it's very funny. My name is Matt, I live in Waterbury and I'm a hospitality new front desk and reservations worker and the hotel we're getting ready for a Christmas celebration Santa's coming next week. Fire truck and whatnot and a lot of the staff is going to be wearing costume Christmas. I'm getting in the spirit of things but that's the day one of the, Kosti and the girls, one of her costume came in and she was displaying it and suddenly the general name had come out and it was kind of a funny thing. What costume did she have? Well there's going to be several I guess between all of them but the one that she was done kind of like a snowman, funny but confusing. Sort of a comical moment. Great, so we can get started with just a little bit of background about psychology first. Psychology, the way you think about it is probably as the science or the field that studies mental illness or disorder and essentially what people struggle with. So that's where it comes from and about 20 years ago someone by the name of Martin Seligman introduced a very new idea at the time and he wanted to study instead of studying what doesn't work with people he wanted to study what does work with people and his idea very specifically was that if you look at health on a continuum there's sickness, the absence of sickness but then there's also another end to the continuum that we don't talk about very much and don't think about often. So his goal was to study what makes people thrive and really understand the criteria and the factors that help people really perform at their best. So that was a bit of a revolution in the field and it took a while, it shook a little bit what was happening there and it really took hold so it really gave momentum it's a well-developed, well-researched field right now it's kind of spreading in education in organizations, so it's used in many different ways so we're far past just seeing psychology as in a medical field. So that's kind of the broad umbrella if you think about it that way and an appreciative inquiry falls under the positive psychology principles and it's more specifically used in organizations and it's a change methodology you can see it as a philosophy, a way of life a methodology, a step-by-step process it's all of these things so appreciative inquiry revolves around two things and it's appreciations so appreciative can mean two things it can mean appreciating being grateful for something but it can also mean appreciating in value so growing in value and an inquiry will talk about it it's a lot about the questions that we ask ourselves, that we ask others so the way this field started is also fairly new that was in the 80s and it was someone named David Cooper Ryder if you read anything about appreciative inquiry it's really his name that comes up as the founder of this movement and the same thing happened he was a doctoral student in business and studying organizations that face problems and how they fix them and problem-solving methods and he noticed as he was interviewing different people for his research he noticed how people were just so bogged down and just the way they presented themselves the way they talked and their body language they were just so hopeless and had a lot of how to fix those problems and so he started shifting his questions as well because he noticed that when people told talked about something that did work it really shifted their attitude shifted and they became more energized and enthusiastic and hopeful so he decided to study that and really dig deeper into what makes organizations work and so that's how it parallels the field of positive psychology and so that again really took hold in the field and it's being used around the world from very small-scale projects to very unique-based projects to really large-scale projects for example the BBC Hewlett-Packard Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is a big player in helping develop appreciative inquiry the U.S. Navy has used it the Environmental Protection Agency and the United Nations has used appreciative inquiry for some projects and in 1999 David Cooper Ryder met with His Holiness the Dalai Lama to talk about how appreciative inquiry could be used to bring people together and talk about differences in religion so you can see it's a wide, wide range of applications and it's still barely new with the 80s so in terms of how long this has been around and how quickly something like that spreads when it's such a new idea so it's still mostly applied in groups and organizations, community and not so much at the individual level and that's kind of where I get excited about is taking all these concepts and really making them workable for all of us in everyday life so as a side note there's a center for appreciative inquiry the David Cooper Ryder Center for Appreciative Inquiry that opened in 2014 just a few years ago and it's part of Shemplin College and it's still a school of business and it's the first in the world the only one in the world that's really dedicated to promoting the ideas and supporting research and practitioners in this field so it's kind of a cool thing that it's right in our backyard and the reach is very far so and so the last person I want to introduce she's the author of one book in particular that I use a lot in workshops and you can look at those later on so this is one of them so she's someone who was so fascinated by this concept that also wanted to apply it to her own life and since then she's been writing books and doing workshops and really helping people to learn about that so a lot of the material and the exercises and things today are based on her ideas as well and the reason she wanted to do that is because she suffered from depression and started using this concept and really practicing these methods and she talks about how much of a difference it made for her so how she felt really in love with those ideas so any questions so far okay so what I guess I want to say a word about why it matters and why it's important and why it has been popular and you're probably all familiar with the fight or flight response so when we get stressed and we shut down and our instincts take over and we fight or retreat we lose the ability to think rationally so there are some the frontal cortex the frontal part of the brain that is not able to make those rational decisions anymore so what we found in this field is that the opposite is also happening so when we experience positive emotions then the opposite happens and our brain functions literally broaden so we become more cooperative more creative more patient lots and lots of benefits so this is really a key idea in positive psychology that there's something that we can control and by creating those positive emotions we can trigger positive physiological benefits so that's the opposite of the fight or flight if you think about really shutting down and really opening up those are kind of the two two differences and when we talk about positive emotions we don't need we certainly don't pretend to be happy, go lucky and everything's great all the time so that's really not what this is about it's about identifying what positive emotions are and learning more about them very very quick to be able to name negative emotions examples of what are negative emotions that come to mind sadness, anger and others apathy or shame shame, frustration lots of them what about positive emotions what do you think of positive emotions for happiness anything that comes to mind satisfaction okay like approving my point so we don't have much of a vocabulary when it comes to expressing of positive emotions because we're wired that way it's instinctive, it's evolutionary so we recognize threats and we recognize changes and we know it doesn't feel right so we're able to name these things relatively easily so some positive emotions I'll give you some examples joy gratitude serenity interest hope pride amusement inspiration examples of positive emotions and sometimes we don't think about interest being a positive emotion but it does, these have been studied and that's why there's this list of course there are many more but specifically these have been studied and we know that being interested in something is good for us so it's good to be able to learn to recognize these and then we can trigger them, we can find ways to create those emotions when we want to feel better so the next thing is for us to do something together that was really just a brief introduction but I want us to start practicing so 5 I'm going to give you some papers and we're going to work I guess in pairs do you mind if I break you up since you came to I was saying you know each other and so maybe if you just interact with someone else so if you don't mind maybe you can sit on this side and I'll give you a piece of paper here or maybe the two of you and then actually I need one per person oops thank you I'll let you take one per person so what you're going to do is something about experiencing what it's like to take a different perspective on a situation so this exercise is called the flip and it's essentially thinking of a problem so you start thinking of a situation or a problem that you have, something you struggle with just keep it small start small and as you get better at that you can take your bigger problems and do this with and we're going to talk about it afterwards so better to do something you're comfortable talking about so I'm going to ask you to take this piece of paper and write down a really short statement about what that problem is you know what it's not working for example I'm tired all the time so just short and simple and then what you'll do is give a piece of paper to your partner and you'll go around rotate so you now have the other person's statement so that's usually the problem now we want to flip the problem so we're going to turn it around and we're not ignoring it we're just going to rephrase the problem into what we want instead or what this person would want instead so if my problem is I'm tired all the time then just the opposite of that is well I'm rested all the time and then we'll take it to a second step which is really taking that statement and making it a little more exciting, a little more inspiring so what does it mean to be rested all the time why is it important to me what's the outcome of that so this could become I get up and have plenty of energy all day to do the activities and I'll get a good job do a good job at work and still have energy left for my kids in the evening something like that so you get the idea it's really making it bigger and more exciting so I'll give you some time you can go ahead and start by writing your problem on your piece of paper it's short and simple and this is what you don't want anymore exchange it with your partner you don't know this oh ok, yes yeah so we'll do it once let's rotate this way we can do that and then we can rotate again so we're supposed to come up with something that's the opposite yeah so the first step is really trying to write the exact opposite of the problem so you're reframing this is a positive reframing you can flip the paper as well that's symbolic because it's called the flip and you're flipping the problem I guess that's flippery you can put it in the back or the arm over so you're kind of rephrasing your problem and this is, you know, there's no right or wrong answer we're really just playing with words and word crafting so just whatever comes up you don't know the person's situation and all of the details so just offer whatever comes to mind and try to think of how you could make this a little more appealing what does it really mean to that person do you think? why is it important to solve this problem or what would happen if they did solve that problem and try to write a longer sentence that's about maybe that's what they're really looking for I think you're done you can switch it one more time so you shouldn't have yours back you should still have another person so you were reading you already did it once you were reading someone else's problem statement and you flipped it around so now you should have a sheet with another person's problem thing I read this and now what am I supposed to be doing with them? so you're going to give it back when we finish up and give it back to the person and then we'll talk about it am I supposed to write something on this? oh yes on one side you have the problem statement and then on the other side you would write the opposite of the problem statement it's already done so you're doing it again just offering another suggestion yes group of three you're adding to it if you have anything now to the original person who wrote that problem statement anyone be willing to share what are you noticing? I'll share I wrote my problem as fixating on an outcome focus on the next step with the outcome in mind as we go also focus on specific steps to reach the desired outcome so my statement was my neighbors often park directly blocking the mailboxes and some suggestions for I can always access my mailbox easily and picking up my mail is an important ritual in my day as it connects to people and events and the second one I can ask people not to park there for sit something up so they can't block the boxes or can it come back later okay great thank you anyone else? I put off work because I'm not sure I can do a good job and then I have to rush to finish a project I'm eager to get started on all my projects and other things I have a lot of confidence in my ability to do my job I'm very motivated to do my job well and the quality of my work matters a lot to me thank you so how, what did you notice like how does it feel to read your initial problem statement and do you notice any difference when you read the other suggestions I do absolutely because I have the baggage it's not like a new problem so I have that baggage with me and that same old perspective and so looking at it and a different perspective and just embracing that I think is uplifting is anyone thinking of maybe new things you might try or any new ideas that I'm having those statements well I went from putting off work because I'm not sure I can do a good job and then the last one I'm very motivated to do my job well and the quality of my work matters a lot to me and the quality of the work does matter which is why I'm not not being sure of that so in order to fix it I've got to figure out how to be more sure of myself so but I don't have the answer there good point yeah this is really just a drop in the bucket so it's really a starting point and the starting point what we believe in this work and what the whole appreciative inquiry philosophy is about is that if you start from a positive place so with a positive goal in mind then you're much more likely to find solutions and to find creative solutions and to think outside the box and to be motivated to take action to solve the problem when we think about our problems so we talked about the fight-or-flight response and even though it's not a dramatic response we're still kind of stuck in our problems and then we start analyzing well who's really the problem and who's fault is it and what exactly is the problem you know and we really still have our attention on the problem so the idea here is to not ignore it but acknowledge it's there but also acknowledge that there's another way to phrase it so instead of saying this is what I don't want so I don't want my neighbors parking in front of a mailbox and what you do want is I want to access my mail easily so when you have this goal that's more positive it's a positive reframe of your goal now you can work towards it if it's your neighbor parking in front of the driveway well a lot of the problem is attached to the neighbor and so how do you change your neighbor so it's really a first step to a bigger process but the idea is that if we're able to shift that language then it shifts how we feel and it makes us more creative more capable of finding the solutions so what I'll repeat it and probably will repeat it a few times it's really it's easy to hear this as you're just putting on rose-colored glasses and pretending that everything's perfect and it really is not there's much more to it than that so I do want that to be clear and also some objections that we hear a lot in this work is that well some situations are just too bad they're just too awful to try to do this flip and to frame it in a positive light it's just not going to happen so it's helpful to take a step back and kind of think of our biases too and how what is appropriate what is considered appropriate so maybe we feel like it's not appropriate to phrase it differently because if someone is suffering or if there's a tragedy of course you don't want to be the person who pretends everything's fine so it's a skill and it's something that you learn but even in really tragic difficult situations there's usually something that can be learned there's something to be grateful about so there usually is something we can build on something that can help us shift our perspective so that we can lift ourselves up and we can start facing the real issues instead of being so hopeless because we're kind of stuck with this feeling of hopelessness that comes from only seeing what's not working so an example is just watching the news how do you feel when you watch the news super enthusiastic about changing the world right? so that's kind of what it does we watch the news and we're so hopeless that we feel stuck all we want to do is curl up and not leave the house and we feel like it's so big and so insurmountable that we're frozen but if we can shift that if we can start seeing some aspects of something that we want then that's kind of being selfish really because you're giving yourself the tools that you need to be able to be more active, more proactive and to make more of a difference so if you can see it that way shifting from the this is selfish to do that this is what's going to make me more engaged and it's going to make me want to take action so any other thoughts about the exercise or in general those ideas? okay I don't know, it's kind of engaging to try to think of problems using positive language just interesting so there are some guiding principles in appreciative inquiry and I'll go through them sorry if it's a little long a lot of information but some handouts I can give out at the end so you don't have to remember anything I'm hoping that by giving you those five guiding principles you'll get little tidbits of how can you do this more of this, there's this exercise but there are also some other practices that you can do so don't worry too much about what the principles are called it's really about the idea that instruction is principle and that's really what we practiced so according to this principle we create our world and we create our reality based on our language and it's really our words create words I'm sorry our words create worlds so whatever language we use is already making an impact in how we see the reality so the idea here is to be more intentional about the language that we use and even in everyday conversation as we practice we become better at that we capture ourselves using negative language and we we're able to do that more in the moment and that has already an impact in how a conversation might go or how a situation might develop so the idea is in all of this work I would really encourage you to try very very small so it's not you don't have to learn the new language at first anyway so it's really about maybe one word that you may choose differently that could make a difference and so if you think about two lines of dominoes in a V shape if you change a word, if you change the first one you can end up in very different situations so that's really the idea whether it's a gesture it's eye contact, it's a smile so it's not just the words, it's just how we behave and how we show up in the world and a tiny shift in ourselves can really lead to different outcomes the next one is called the poetic principle and it's the idea that like a poem the world can be interpreted in many ways and it really depends on where we put our attention so the key is that what we focus on grows and to illustrate that you've probably all experienced something called the frequency illusion so let's say you decided to adopt a dog or buy a new car and all of a sudden you see dogs everywhere and you feel like everyone's driving that one car that you decided to buy has anyone experienced something like that all of a sudden you notice something that was always there but you never saw it so it's not a coincidence when something is not important to us it's not on our agenda to adopt a dog or buy a car then our brain filters a lot of that information out so we can't take in all the stimulation that we're exposed to all day long so we have those filters that are very helpful but that means we control them too so if we decide if we make a decision to adopt a dog and in our brain we notice the dogs because that's now something important to us so if we can be deliberate about what we want to focus on then we can again give ourselves a tool to notice more of what we do want so for example if you're thinking of a person you're having a hard time with so it's easy to think of our next conversation or next interaction oh this is going to be difficult again and this is going to happen again and this is going to feel again so we have all these experiences that are accumulating and we approach a person or a situation with this in mind so according to the poetic principle we can change that and if we decide everyone has something good in themselves we may not see it in the situation that we interact with them but what if we think about that person in a different situation maybe it's a colleague and maybe you think about them as a parent or as a community member so you can try to envision that person in a different setting, in a different situation so you're digging a little bit to find something good about that person that you can focus on so that the next time you see them and you interact with them you go in with already you're already more open to noticing what's good about them so it's going to make the conversation a lot more pleasant and probably better than if you had gone in with the same old negative ideas and that leads us to the next one so it's called the simultaneity principle and it's about questions questions that we ask ourselves all day long and a lot of times we don't notice because if we're on autopilot then this just happens subconsciously so if you think about it a lot of the decisions that we make a lot of the actions we take are the answer to a question that we ask ourselves so an example is if you if you're brushing in the morning and you're trying to pick your clothes or trying to pick what to eat for breakfast answering the question is it raining, is it cold do I need something formal, informal what am I going to do today so you have all these questions going in your head without really noticing but that's going to lead you to the decision on what to wear or the decision on what to eat so if you change your questions you can change the decisions you can change the answer and change the decision that you're going to make so it's kind of like playing with your property and if you pause from time to time during your day you can ask yourself what was the question behind that what I just said or what I just did or if you're at a restaurant and you're just ordered a burger and fries what is the question behind that do I want to eat something healthy do I want to eat something satisfying what's going to feel the best now or what has the most calories now whatever it is you can kind of reflect on it and if you're more intentional about these questions if you catch those questions you can reframe them just like we did in this exercise you can reframe your questions so that the next time you go to a restaurant or your next time choose what to eat for breakfast you already have that new question in your mind and you can use it to make a better decision so instead of asking yourself I want to eat something really quickly so I can get out the door in the morning if the next time you have the question well I want to get out the door quickly but what's going to make me feel healthy and energized for the next few hours so you see kind of the shift and let's see the next one it's called the anticipatory principle so we talked about the questions and the words how those can be tweaked so we also have lots of images in our mind so you probably heard images are more powerful than words and visualization is well known to be used by athletes to improve their performance so the idea here is not that new it's just why don't we use this every day and encouraging visualization and a certain way to do visualization can really help you kind of move towards what you really want so the little exercise or the little practice here is I'm going to ask you not to think about a blue elephant and what are you thinking about so it's really that simple it's the fact that our brains are not able to register the not or don't so the negative part of the statement so you can imagine it with a cross on it you can say don't think about it but it's going to be on your mind so the language you have going on in your mind is so crucial in what's the images you're going to have in your mind and in what's going to happen in reality so instead of trying not to think about something you want to find this other thing the alternative that you do want again back to our exercises from what the problem we don't want to what do we want instead and it's always about that what do I want what do I want what do I really want instead and it's harder than we think to find that answer because we're so used to you know complaining and what do you think the things that we don't want and we want to get rid of that or fix this or change this and change that so it's not something that comes that easily at the beginning to know because we need actually need to be clear about what we want and that's hard to do sometimes so the idea with visualization is to be as clear as possible and it doesn't have to take a long time it can be five minutes if you're envisioning a meeting that you have that day or a conversation a project anything anything that you have going on and you can really pretend to make a movie so imagine you have a camera and you're zooming in, zooming out you want something really colorful something black and white something is more important to you so it's very nice and something else is in the background and blurry so you know you can kind of play with the images that you have in your mind to bring out what's important to you and what you want so if you imagine a conversation it's also helpful to use all your senses so you're not only imagining the words that are exchanged but you're imagining what am I hearing at that moment or what will I be hearing since you're envisioning the way they all go what are other senses what am I putting my hand on the other person's shoulder or so any touch, physical touch or other sensations so really try to get a very very clear feeling for that experience and so having that having done that, prepared for that experience you've already almost lived it once in that positive way that ideal way now in reality it won't be exactly the way you envisioned it of course but you're already going in with that with an openness about the experience being better than it would have been without that so that's also helpful to set intentions the better we are at setting intentions in advance the less likely we are to be spontaneous and make bad decisions in the moment because we're influenced in many ways so thinking about it in advance can be really helpful too the last one is the positivity principle and it kind of comes across all the other ones but it's the idea that we truly believe that there is a positive core that there are strengths and talents and goodness in everyone and every situation and it's just a matter of are we willing to see it and are we trying to find it and to see it and if we do a lot of different outcomes can come of that so we're trying to create positive spiral so if we can find a small positive emotion and it leads to another one and to another one and so it really grows which is the opposite of being stressed or being negatively impacted by something and really getting stuck when we just go down that spiral and feeling worse and worse so we're trying to take control and find a small thing to reverse that and use momentum so we've talked about using words to do that, we can use questions to do that, we can use images and this is all to really come up with to notice what's already there so that's also an important idea is that we're not we're not faking it, we're not pretending that this person is wonderful when we were having a really hard time dealing with them we want to be very authentic and very true about noticing those good things whether it's a person or a situation so that's definitely a key to making this work too so any thoughts any comments questions? I listen to it in my mind comparing it to mindfulness and I don't know if it hasn't been brought up but that's what comes to mind is the more that you're aware of something or that you're able to stop before you take action and it seems that similar to this except it's adding in to be positive or to aim to be positive I mean I see a lot of value in it and I don't know if you have any thoughts on it in relation with mindfulness I think they're definitely related and my answer would be that they come from different places just the history of where this comes from is from an organization development perspective so in the business world I think the language was more I don't want to say practical but maybe mindfulness is not a word that is quite made it into that into that field but the idea certainly is very very similar is to learn to be more mindful it's just not labeled and well I say that and really this I would say is true about appreciative inquiry although in appreciative living so when it comes to like personal practices you start seeing it more when it's more in books that are for organization or business oriented in the broader field of positive psychology it's all about mindfulness there's so much about mindfulness so it's kind of the key to a lot of these concepts yes for sure I realize they never offered you to go back to your original place sorry I didn't mean to separate you forever I got the apple same I keep talking about that I got that same that was your opportunity if you wanted to have another little bit to go so rather than focusing on how I don't have the sider I should focus on how I would like it to be handed to me how can I get that sider I would facilitate the sider getting over here maybe we could all work on it together yeah look at that let's see how it works already it's really funny actually because this work is done a lot in groups some would say it's even more powerful, more effective when you do it in groups and it's exactly why it just perfectly illustrated it because when you think of a problem another person can see it differently but then when you start looking at solutions or goals as a group everyone has a different idea of what the goal should be if everyone is on the same page about what the general idea is if people are on board then it's like everyone is feeling good and there's so much creativity and partnership and collaboration happening and so that's how it happens it becomes spontaneous as opposed to let's get a group together and study the problem of that sider not being here and what are we going to do about that problem it's really a problem that so you can have a group really bogged down with a problem to fix or you can try to liven things up by bringing in some positive emotion allowing it and then get a little more participation and energy into the topic so I was going to I was going to ask for a volunteer and what I would do is some sort of an interview so a one-on-one conversation with other people listening and trying to integrate some of that and how this could apply in a conversation again I'm not suggesting that you'll walk out of here and it's really a working progress for everyone I think it's a lifelong journey to learn to practice these things but sometimes to take the time and listen to a conversation or have a conversation and paying attention to the words or the questions or the ideas of how this could be put into practice so I don't know if anyone is willing to be that person You're pointing to me? Gee, I guess I had a point at that Only because you sound like you really wanted to work on your problem earlier so It's Jeff, right? Yeah Thank you, Jeff Please step In this work very often people do appreciative interviews and so let's say in an organization or in a group you bring people together to go through this process so appreciative inquiry is also about a step-by-step process I won't get into it but maybe through the conversation you'll notice a little bit how we're moving from one thing to another and I lost my train of thought so yes, the appreciative interview so the idea I'll talk about it after let's just talk and then we can comment and you can tell me what you noticed and so for the others I really want you to not focus so much on the content or on the topic that we're discussing but on how we're discussing it so Jeff what is it that you'd like to talk about? I'm trying to organize my work so I'm more productive because there's a lot of books and there's a lot of rules there's a lot of grammar there's all these different rules this sentence has to be this way so there's a style guide with all the rules and when I get a book I'll go over the style guide over and over and kind of worry that I don't remember everything so then when I'm reading the book very carefully I'll feel like I'm missing stuff and I know that I do a good job I get rehired and stuff but when I get a book in I start reading over the style guide and putting off starting and then I often wind up having a deadline and I often wind up pushing the deadline because I dragged my feet in the beginning so that was on my mind because I just turned in a project yesterday and I had to brush the last two days like eight or ten hours a day so that was what I was trying to think about so it sounds like you have this book editing projects that require very thorough reading and editing and because you're afraid of maybe missing something and so that leads you to maybe put it aside and procrastinate and wait until the last minute to approach them is that sound about right? yeah and so so could you tell me again what is it that you would want how would you describe what you would want instead of the way you're feeling or the way you're approaching this project I would want myself to feel confident that I know what I'm doing in that second guess and feel like I need to study more it's like a study thing for a test almost like when you're in school that I study enough for this and I really know it's material but I'm worried about doing well on the test or doing well with the book and I don't want the people at the publisher to say oh you didn't do that so I'm just feeling more confident with myself I've been doing it for years and years but I still feel so your goal is to feel more confident about your ability to edit those books and improve myself and I just heard you say that you've been doing it for a long time it sounds like you're very experienced and you also mentioned that you know what you're doing and you know what to look for and you have repeated repeat clients can you tell me more about that about some of the feedback that you get from your history in this type of work history I've been doing writing and editing for since early mid 80s different things done medical edited medical journals written reviews music reviews and things for papers additive paper so I really know what I'm doing I'm starting book project I feel like I need to go back and study again so would you is there a situation that comes to mind like a one example like a specific example that you could tell me about where you feel like you really did a good job and you were very satisfied in the project when you turned it in it's really an example of a success story that you had with this work well specifically I've been doing the book editing for like 10 years but I don't really get a lot of feedback I turn them in and they say thank you and you know they'll contact me again but I really don't know what people think of specific jobs just the fact that they hire me again but they never say oh you did a really good job on that book about pyramids or something so they're probably part of it and I really don't I haven't thought about that but I really don't get specific feedback what does it tell you that they don't contact you right away well if they don't contact me they don't have a problem with it okay that's good news so tell me more about like is there one project that comes to mind that you felt good about like how did you approach it how did you do it I don't know they're all pretty much the same there's books that I enjoy reading and there's some that just drive me nuts because they don't even make sense there's a lot of problems well usually because I do all sorts of like history and some strange new age topics and stuff but it's all non-fiction so I got a chance last year to do a spy thriller fiction story and that was really different because it's all made up so you really have to keep track of all the characters and stuff that really don't exist and you know write down a lot of stuff and I found lots of things that the mystery guy didn't do right so that made me feel good that I was able to catch the stuff and I did get feedback on that one the editor said he really likes your work and you caught a lot of stuff and then the next one he did just a couple months ago they asked me to do it again so sounds like that went really well for you and got some feedback it's really interesting because it's a spy thriller not something about how they love the pyramids so it sounds like some topics are definitely more interesting to you than others but now I think about it I do get good feedback what are some topics that you are interested in like so these were like the pyramids or what are some other topics that you like I like music I like biographies and things and I don't really get lots of those so I've been trying to get different clients and things and I got the fiction guy so maybe I need to try harder to get things that I like what do you really value about yourself what do you think are your strengths that allowed you to complete that project so well I know language I like to read I've always liked to read so I'm good at editing because I know how the sentences and books and things are put together and I like the details I might obsess about them and feel like I'm not good about it but I like doing the detail oriented stuff and finding not mistakes but finding things that need to be fixed and worked on to make better so I really like doing the work so so you just told me a story that sounds like very successful and lots of great things about it from having feedback to being reading that you really enjoyed and what if you imagine your ideals imagine you have a magic wand and you wake up tomorrow and you have this great project landing on your desk and you're really thrilled about it so tell me about that what does that look like just imagine your best possible project that's coming to you tomorrow you know I'd like something about popular culture like music or movies or something I don't know it's hard to imagine yeah well let's try to and if you feel comfortable you can close your eyes but I'm just bringing this idea of visualization or imagining how would it be great to have this and if you imagine your habit so could you tell me your day tomorrow and how it would go if that happened as if it was happening right now like that makes sense well for something I really wanted to do I would probably look forward to it and not put it off and I would just jump into it because I wanted to do it and what does that mean what do you do how do you get started on a project like that I get you know computer file on it the whole book on it so I scan through it to see what the chapters are and how it's organized and things and see if there's stuff that I need to figure out or look up and try to do that and start it I guess so it sounds like you're motivated and ready to jump right in nothing is stopping you nothing is distracting you are there anyone is there anyone involved in those projects like anyone you interact with or when you are working on a project at home so I'll get an email from somebody at the publisher and we'll email back and forth but quite often it's people I never even talked to I don't know what they look like we'll email and stuff so that makes it hard to feel connected people in New York City or something it's a name or if they're in New York City so how do you get projects some of them I'll just contact the publisher and the people that I have relationships with they'll send me an email and say are you available at this time this is what we have for you can you do it do you know anyone who does a similar type of work the types of books that you are interested in not around here no but in other places no not really is there a way to find out if anyone else is doing a similar kind of work or to connect with people who are involved in this type of work yeah probably there's a couple people that do book editing around here but I haven't really connected with them I know who they are but I'm not friends okay and so if you had to choose one one thing try one thing even very very small to try to get that amazing project that you'd like what would that be what are some options small things that you could do and it's not a trick question just anything that comes to mind you know something really small like well I thought well I wanted I want books on music or something how do I do that I don't know on the top of my head you know I've tried contacting publishers that do those types of books but I haven't gotten anywhere so other than that I don't know who would reach out to or where to go it's a good question okay are you comfortable wrapping up the conversation yes well thank you very much so of course this is a very short short conversation here but but I wondered if you noticed anything about the conversation that relates to what we talked about earlier I mean it seemed like Jeff at the beginning had a sense of maybe a lack of affirmation but in your conversation you're able to find the source of positive feedback that was back there that maybe you feel good about your capabilities in your line of work when it sounds like you know you're good at your job obviously but I think everyone sometimes has that self doubt and it's important to find some sort of like a source of that positive affirmation in there that's hard to remember sometimes and it seems like in the beginning you would not rekey exactly back to him but reframe it like you said in a more positive way but you'd start the sentence it sounds like or what I'm hearing is or you said earlier this kind of like putting your perception on it based on what he said I think he was a gentle but directness to ask him what it is that he wants so it's like where can I help you what's of most importance to you right now I got the paraphrasing as well too and I thought that it was not pressing your perspective on to Jeff but inviting Jeff to share did you experience it in any particular way I can ask for feedback if I want to you know if I'm not getting it I can say you know you keep hiring me to value where you think I can you know strengthen myself I get an answer I don't but I might and it might be something worthwhile and make me feel better and learn something maybe but I haven't asked for feedback if I get it I'm appreciative that I haven't asked yeah so there's the action we were looking for at the end so yes and what I notice too is that we moved from the topic of wanting to be more organized or not procrastinating feeling more confident about the work and towards the end of the conversation and right now we're discussing ways for you to get feedback ways for you to learn what your strengths are so maybe ways to to get those projects that really get you motivated and excited so the idea is you know we start with a problem statement and we shift it to what we really do want instead and then we work with that and then we we learn more about that so in an appreciative interview you always start by defining the topic the affirmative topic and then you want to interview that person to really get I mean typically you know we would spend 20 minutes on just this very first part about tell me about an experience that really worked out for you tell me about a success story and then you spend a long time really being a good listener and then opening yourself up to these stories and listening very carefully to these stories and usually what happens is that when the person starts talking about their success story their mood is going to be lifted they're going to be enthusiastic they're going to remember one thing and then another and so as a listener you're trying to identify all those elements that made it successful stories about ourselves we may not always notice but someone listening can be very helpful in identifying oh so you mentioned this word you said you really know what you're doing I heard that often we try to identify who might help what are the relationships that are supporting what you want so not in your example in particular was oh a friend of mine was involved so you're trying to help the person identify why it worked well so their strengths what they valued that's really really important it's probably the key to having this conversation is finding what is it that you really value is it to not procrastinate or is it to work on a project that really gets you excited because it's interesting and you can use your strengths seeing the details keeping track of things putting your strengths at work that's really valuable so you're always looking in the past to bring up a positive story and once you have this information you try to apply it to your ideal outcome so you go from the past and what is it that you want to do with that so now you know you have these strengths you have these successes you've already done this, this, this you're very capable now what do you want to do with it and then you work on defining the goal so the goal is not to get rid of the problem I want that book project that's really exciting and so you work on that on that image and again you ask lots of questions to get very clear about what does it feel like, who's involved what are they doing how do you do it, what are the outcomes and then you bring it back to okay now I know what I'm good at, I know what I have to work with I know where I want to go so now let's get to work so that's where you you know you start researching what are your options and at that point there's a lot of emotions making us more creative so that's usually when you have more ideas about well I never thought of that but maybe I could ask this person or oh there's this organization does this maybe I could look into that so then you start brainstorming about what your options are and and all this work I said it at the beginning maybe but it's really playful it's not serious linear this is what we're doing this is the solution we're going to come out with it's really let's play with it let's toss this around in as many ways as we can to try to see what comes out of it and maybe a great idea is going to come out of a conversation in a way that we didn't expect it at all so the idea is to let yourself be you know and dream big and use big words and really play with those ideas and so to complete the cycle I was saying that it's also a step by step process so to complete the process would be to then really take action and take action is not about having a perfect plan in place it's not about knowing exactly what we're doing having done all the research and there's this idea of constantly learning and constantly inquiring and so we try and then we ask again and what works and what doesn't and so once you gather a lot of ideas a lot of data you don't want to narrow it down to the perfect solution to the problem you want to come up with tons of ideas but small enough that you can try them and if they don't work no big deal you have another small one and another small one and another small one and that's how you make progress to solving problems or reaching your goals it's really by getting energized getting excited about something and then doing something tiny tiny tiny that will move you in that direction it's not about getting there in that direction so maybe calling someone up maybe sending an email maybe checking a website it can be just a small thing you just never know what happens so that's an important thing too so we have five minutes to go thank you again for being willing to volunteer great any other questions or comments you want to share I guess they just in brief reflection I like the idea that it's playful and small and I think at least for me I don't really feel like a lot of the people that I know they're really just not open to something like this they would rather be in a negative rut all the way to stay exactly the same as they are but I really appreciate the smallness the playfulness just get out and explore and experiment with it and so that's really you know just off the top of my head it's something that I plan to take out to make discussion thank you so you can imagine this work is like I said it kind of originated in the business world so you're introducing this to executives and you know on big projects big problems very high level and so the language that is used in a lot of these books is also for that audience so but it has been incredibly successful because it's so new and different and kind of a breath of fresh air to problem solving so it's kind of exciting to see it used in big companies in smaller communities well there are some books here if you want to look at them this is just an example of an encyclopedia of positive questions so there are very specific questions I mean I made them up as we were talking but if you were doing that in a more formal way there are some consultants or people who do this kind of work spend a lot of time just writing the questions and phrasing them a very specific way and to get to the important things there's another one that's positive family dynamic and this is applying this work to lots of you know family situations or you know it goes from planning to have children to I don't know living in another family member's home to so there are just lots of different topics and they give ideas of again if you're struggling with a teenage child for example you know how could you reframe the question what kind of questions could you ask what kind of topic could you identify to bring out these kinds of positive conversations so look at those and I'll just give you I think I have enough it's just like a quick summary of of the principles and some websites if you want to look into it more and yeah this one I updated my email so the other ones have my old email but that's okay you can still use it somebody just popped in my head I feel like sharing so it's not very often that silly Facebook memes have an impact on how I conduct my day-to-day life but I did see one recently it was basically framing language and emails it was like a chart here's the passive negative phrasing that most people use and here's the way that you can reword your language to have a more affirming tone and the one that really struck out most to me was if say you're really tardy responding to an email people will say something like oh sorry for my late response whereas you could sort of reverse it and instead of saying sorry for my tardy response rather you could say thank you for your patience it's like a different way of acknowledging that you are late at doing what you were supposed to do but putting a positive spin and there was like six of these things and I've referred back to that a few times and just tried to think of that as I phrase that's great, that's a great example it wasn't just that one example now of course I'm blanking on what there are other five things on that chart of course it's just silly but useful yeah that's really cool I don't really remember that one actually I can do that a lot I'll look it up and email you the chart that'd be great, yeah I'd love that and if you would in mind feeling a quick evaluation that would be great that's the last thing we're going to pull off and come to me too thank you we need to get it back to her the suggestion that we go to Kulio is because it's $2.00 margarita night thank you so much for coming thank you, thank you you're sharing your insights and knowledge with us thanks share your email we appreciate that too