I recently picked up a night class at the junior college to work my way toward an AA Psychology. I’m taking Social Psychology at the moment (the study of how people act, think, and feel in the context of society). I was excited last night when I saw the phrase “positive psychology” written on the board of topics to cover that evening. “What luck!” I thought to myself, “he might even mention Shawn Achor and I can share about how we implement these practices at my work.”

But to my shock, when the topic came up, my professor immediately started bashing the concept. He introduced it as a “new psychology method that is honestly for all of the tree huggers out there that just think to feeeeel better and that will fix everything. It’s a bunch of BS.” 

He completely disregarded and brushed past the entire topic. The reason that we here at SlideBelts recommend the Happiness Advantage book is not just because it’s a “feel good fix it” book. That book is full of hard evidence and study after study containing results that are hard to disregard.

I gathered 2 points from this experience:

1: I’m glad that here, one of our seven keys is “open minded policy.” Even if something is new and “sounds like BS” at first, it’s important that we listen and give it a chance before making brash assumptions. Unfortunately my professor didn’t seem very open minded at all in that moment.

2: Once I was aware of his stance on positive psychology, I began to pick up a little more on the overall negativity that was sprinkled throughout his speech and actions. He would often end sentiments with a negative or pessimistic spin on them, instead of a positive one.

Now of course I was looking for the negativity at that point so it was more easily found, and obviously my professor overall is a very intelligent guy that I’ll end up learning a lot from, but it was just interesting coming from work in a very positive and uplifting environment and going straight to one that was almost an opposite environment. It made me grateful that I get to spend the majority of my time here where we actively try to be CEANN...who knows, maybe I’ll lend him the Happiness Advantage.

For those of you who don't recall, Courtney's loop last Wednesday revolved around the topic of "Celebrity Idolization" and the importance of "see[ing] each of your role models for everything they are, instead of just the perception build up around them."

For today's loop, I'd like to revisit this topic and make my own connection/extension on the topic. Courtney gave the hypothetical example of Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson...well, I bring you all the example of Sir Winston Churchill and a side of him you may not have known. 

I think it might be fair to assume that many praise Churchill for the countless accomplishments he was able to achieve during his lifetime: he was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, he was appointed the Privy Council of Canada in 1941, he successfully led Britain to victory over Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and was the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953.

So how exactly is Churchill a good example of the dangers of Celebrity Idolization? Well, for those of you who may not know, Churchill played the main "hidden" factor in the 1943 Bengal Famine in British India. With the help of his loyal friend, Fredrick Lindemann, he influenced the closure of the shipping ports to India and guided the rejections of Canada's and the United States' offer to send food when the famine was at its worst. Three million people ended up dying in the Bengal Famine of 1943. But what led Churchill to help commit such an unfortunate and ghastly event? The answer: Churchill hated Gandhi and India. A hatred that, again, claimed three million innocent lives. Kind of hard to believe this is the same man who successfully led Britain to victory over Nazi Germany during the Second World War huh.

Overall, I hope this brief example can help shine a light on last week's loop devoted to Celebrity Idolization and the importance of digging into who you choose to idolize.  

I don't know if you're anything like me in this way, but it seems that as I've gotten older it's become easier to be deeply affected by the many difficult things happening across the world. From natural disasters to political/racial tensions to humanitarian crises and everything in between, it just feels like the presence of social media has made it easier than ever to be consumed by the pain and negativity and hurt across the world. 

Which makes Branden Harvey's Good Newsletter that much more important and necessary. What started as a podcast (Sounds Good with Branden Harvey) has turned into the Goodnewspaper (a subscription newspaper filled with good news and stories), the Goodnewsletter (a weekly email filled with good news and stories), and an online community of hundreds of thousands of positive world changers.

The Goodnewsletter has become my favorite part of every Tuesday. It's an awesome way to hear about the amazing things that incredible people across the world are doing on a daily basis and it's a welcomed respite from the onslaught of not-so-good-news that we get from the more mainstream outlets.

In this week's Goodnewsletter, the Good team recounted the heroics of one woman in the Barcelona attack, the ways that Israelis are risking their lives to save Syrian refugees at the border, and how a group of Australian researchers made a breakthrough in curing children of peanut allergies. 

If you want a little extra good in your inbox every week, go to https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter to subscribe. I also highly recommend the Sounds Good podcast if you're into that sort of thing. In fact, a friend and former co-worker at Invisible Children, Jedidiah Jenkins, was on the podcast last year. That episode (http://soundsgood.libsyn.com/jedidiah-jenkins-the-adventure-of-curiosity) might get you hooked on the podcast in the same way it did for me.