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3 events coming up in March: Appreciative Intelligence and ADR

March is a busy month. I recently learned of three events, all of which look worth time and money.

First is a day-long program taught by my friend Dr. Tojo Thatchenkery on Appreciative Intelligence. Click to read an interview I conducted of him on the topic.) The class will be held on March 26, in Arlington, VA. Read all the details here about Leading Change through the Power of Appreciative Intelligence®.

Next, still in the DC area, is a three-day conference titled A World Class View of Dispute Resolution. Click to view the brochure for this event being held March 14-16.

Moving to the opposite coast, the 20th Annual Northwest Dispute Resolution Conference will happen on March 29-30 in Seattle. Click to read all about this conference.

 

 

New columnist at WealthManagement.com will focus on positive stories

My friend and colleague Hartley Goldstone will be writing columns on improving relationships between beneficiaries and trustees through the use of stories. From his debut, titled "The Positive Story Project" (WealthManagement.com):

Can the widespread dissatisfaction and all the talk of “problem” beneficiaries and “problem” trustees, give way to more creative and productive relationships?  I say:  “Absolutely.”  And, if your intuition is the same as mine, the harder question becomes “how do we get from here to there?”

...

Like everyone else, beneficiaries and trustees create stories to put given moments into context. And, the stories become their reality.  A particular story might serve the storyteller well, or not so well.  The point is the ability to direct thinking: Beneficiaries and trustees can decide on their point of view—trusts as a problem, or trusts as an opportunity.

...

That’s why we’ll focus on what we can learn from positive stories.  We’ll take a look at the skills and behaviors of our storytellers as they confront dilemmas and opportunities.

To learn more about Hartley and his positive-story project, listen to this interview. Click to learn about his new book TrustWorthy: New Angles on Trusts from Beneficiaries and Trustees: A Positive Story Project showcasing beneficiaries and trustees.

One way to collect your gifts of 2013

During this holiday season of 2012, I have been giving my friends a small pocket calendar and also giving them a poem about how they might use the calendar. The little planner is meant to be a place for friends to collect some of the gifts that come along in 2013. I will let my poem explain . . .

Here comes the new year, 2013 —

May it be the best one you've ever seen.

I've a wish for you; A little book, too

Let me explain now what I hope it will do.

Click to read the rest of the poem. (Using this method, I plan to fill up one of these little books myself during the coming year.)

Note (added December 21, 2012): Below is a response, from a retired lawyer, to my poem. Although I think he has written it with some degree of seriousness, I found it very funny. He wrote (and I post this with his permission):

Attitude of gratitude? How about the power of boo-boo juju?

Have you heard that having an attitude of gratitude can improve your life? Or that writing a gratitude journal can make you happier? I've heard that advice, read it, and then heard it again. After trying the journal, I concluded that I must be one of those people for whom that kind of writing is not effective enough to make it worth my time and paper. I sincerely tried appreciativeness exercises but finally returned them to the thankfulness store because they didn't fit.

Now writing about my mistakes! That I could get down with. This blog post about journaling your mistakes caught my eye, connected with my imagination, and satisfied my erring heart and soul. From "Why journal your mistakes?" (The Mistake Bank):

Documenting and reflecting on mistakes isn't easy. It's a discipline that needs to be learned. But think about this: according to the Harvard paper, most people don't learn well from their own mistakes. If you can be one of the few that do, it puts you at a tremendous advantage. That advantage will create opportunities, and allow you to capitalize on them.

As far as I know, there has been no research on the benefits of writing about one's mistakes. Nevertheless, I am going to give it a try and see how it works. Let's see if chronicling boo-boos creates juju.

If penning gratitude is valuable for you, then perhaps you can fold in some mistakes? I suspect that, in the world of diaries, woots and boo-boos are not mutually exclusive.

Note: I am grateful for many things in my life (my level of gaiety, even celebration, can be jarring for true pessimists and worriers), but moments of awe appear spontaneously, often when least expected. Scheduling them, or the memory of them, was counter-productive for me and my nature.

National Mediation Conference: Treats from the past and in the future

At this year's National Mediation Conference in Sydney (September 10-13), Fredrike Bannink will be one of the speakers. A couple of years ago, I saw a program she gave and it was one of the top five mediation presentations and demos I have ever had the good fortune to attend. Her book on mediation is excellent too.

On the NMC Web site, you can listen to many programs delivered at the 2010 conference. Click to listen.

Click to see the slides from Bannink's presentation at the 2011 ABA Conference in Toronto.

Note (added February 19, 2012): This article is a good overview of the solution-focused approach: "The Solution-Focused Mindset: An Empirical Test of Solution-Focused Assumptions" [pdf] (www.solutionfocusedchange.com).

Past blog posts in which I have mentioned Bannink:

• A tight grip on your mental flashlight is the deciding skill in conflict resolution
• From Mediate.com, an article on scaling, a technique used in solution-focused conflict resolution
• September issue of THE JURY EXPERT includes an article on solution focused mediation
• Article on Solution Focused Mediation—and an upcoming interview of the author

You may decide to add this ritual to your family Christmas (and suggest it to some of your clients, too)

My friend and colleague Hartley Goldstone works in the field of trusts and estates, helping relationships between trustees and beneficiaries to be functional and even fruitful. (More about what he does below.) As part of his practice, he has a blog; today's entry was especially touching and worthy of reading twice. He blogged about a family tradition you may want to include when your family gets together for this holiday and for those in the future.

From "Our Family Blessings":

We started blessings, as we called it, with our kids when they were very young. At Christmas time, we asked each of the kids to write a blessing to each other and to their mom and their dad. They all went into a big pot. Then we sat around the fire and sorted them out and each of us read the blessings we had received from the others.

There was no requirement or expectation of what the kids were supposed to say. They could say anything they wanted. Even things like,

What do lawyers appreciate? Looking back on answers to that question from half a decade ago

To balance (or maybe supplement) all the news about lawyer unhappiness, Julie Fleming and I, in December of 2006, instigated a round of appreciation from lawyers in the blawgosphere. To see how we organized the roundup, read Lawyers Appreciate… A 10-day countdown (Julie's description) and 10-day countdown: Lawyers Appreciate . . . (mine).

Five years later, let's look back and see what nearly 40 blogging lawyers wrote about what they most appreciate. Many of the entries were beautiful messages about being thankful; click to read them. (Or click to see Julie's list of links to what lawyers wrote; I think her list and mine are nearly identical.)

To those lawyers who participated: what do you think about what you wrote half a decade ago? To all lawyers: what are you appreciating about your profession as 2012 approaches? Please feel free to answer in the comments below or on your blog.

Mental health courts and the challenge of therapeutic jurisprudence

An interview and transcript are available here at Australia's All in the Mind. From the Web page:

When people with mental illness and cognitive impairments cycle in an out of jail—is there a better solution? 'Problem solving courts' are one approach, and shift the relationship between the judge and the judged. Join Natasha Mitchell at a symposium considering the 'for and against' with key players in Australia.

 

Tomorrow is the 10th annual Upsy Daisy Day: Learn happiness from cows of Boston

In my past, I have done many things, including publishing an ezine called Upsy Daisy Daily. A decade ago, I declared June 8 Upsy Daisy Day and registered it with Chase's Calendar of Events; the holiday has been official for 10 years. The tag line? "A day to remind people to get up gloriously, gratefully, and gleefully."

Okay, so I was in my greeting card phase. I did have fun, and met many very nice people who subscribed to the ezine and then contacted me. In honor of tomorrow, I will today post one of the ezine's editions. I find it curious that I wrote it a few years before I learned about brain science and neuroplasticity (or the benefits of gratitude), yet it foreshadows what I have since learned. It's brain science in bovine terms.

Loosen Up Your Mind With Gratitude

Benefits of elevation (response to moral excellence), gratitude, and admiration

Abstract of research paper titled "Witnessing excellence in action: the ‘other-praising’ emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration":

People are often profoundly moved by the virtue or skill of others, yet psychology has little to say about the ‘other-praising’ family of emotions. Here we demonstrate that emotions such as elevation, gratitude, and admiration differ from more commonly studied forms of positive affect (joy and amusement) in many ways, and from each other in a few ways. The results of studies using recall, video induction, event-contingent diary, and letter-writing methods to induce other-praising emotions suggest that: elevation (a response to moral excellence) motivates prosocial and affiliative behavior, gratitude motivates improved relationships with benefactors, and admiration motivates self-improvement. Mediation analyses highlight the role of conscious emotion between appraisals and motivations. Discussion focuses on implications for emotion research, interpersonal relationships, and morality.

Click to read the rest (Journal of Positive Psychology).

The link to this research was posted on the Positive Psychology listserv; it seems appropriate to consider on Mother's Day Eve. The research is also very relevant to my re-semble key for making changes, described here.