Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

― Albus Dumbledore

Congratulations, we are coming to the end of the first part of this positive psychology challenge! We hope you will take time to rest, rejuvenate, and reward yourself for what you have accomplished so far. In the second part of this challenge, we will focus on helping you identify, build, and use your strengths and what is best in you. In the third part, we will focus on enabling you to improve your relationships and your ability to be involved with and impact the larger community and world around you. Finally, in the fourth part, we will focus on enabling you to create a master plan for the kind of life that you might want most and might make you most happy in the future.

There is one more basic lesson in this chapter that will help you plot your course and find your way during the rest of this challenge. We want to talk about how you can foster two things that have been thought to be important for centuries, but that most people think there is little they can do to foster in themselves. The first is wisdom and the second is creativity.

What is wisdom and why might it be so important for our lives and this challenge? Simply put, wisdom is not just intelligence or what we can learn in school. It is the practical knowledge that comes from life experience and enables us to achieve the happiness, well- being, and success we seek in everyday life. It enables us to live in a world of uncertainty, where there are so many different kinds of people, and where so much is relative, changing, and depends on the situation and context.

One common example of wisdom is in what is called the Serenity Prayer – that asks for the courage to change what we can, the serenity to accept what we can’t change, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Another example of wisdom that the psychologist Barry Schwartz has provided has to do with how we make decisions. There are some people that he calls “maximizers” who always try to consider every alternative before making a decision. There are others he calls “satisficers” who only look until they find an alternative or option that is good enough. It turns out that there are some situations where it may be better to be a maximizer and other situations, in a world of so many options, where we may be happier if we just go with what is good enough. Again, the wisdom may be in knowing the difference!

How might wisdom help you in this challenge? For one thing, it may help you decide what is most important to work on, what element of PERMA you might want to increase, and what goals you might best have for the future. For one of your activities for this chapter, we are going to give you a task that will help increase your wisdom about your life by giving your more perspective on what you may want to work on and try to improve.

But for now, let me tell you about what we have learned about how we can foster wisdom in our lives.

• First, we can learn from the wise people that we may know by asking them our toughest questions – or even asking them to become a mentor for us.
• Second, we can learn from wise people in history by watching documentaries and reading about them, especially those we admire and who have faced challenges that may be similar to our own.
• Third, we can become more aware of our own wisdom by having a dialogue with a real or fictional wise person. In doing this, we may realize that – like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz – some of what we seek may already lie within us.
• Fourth, many people find it useful to ‘google’ lists of quotes from wise people, identify the ones that they resonate with the most, reflect on how and why these quotes speak to them, and then use them as a guide in making tough decisions.
• Fifth, we can make it a point to get to know people who have different perspectives and experiences from our own. Einstein said that “Problems cannot be solved with the same mindset that created them” and we may need to look for or put ourselves into a different mindset to solve a challenging problem.
• Sixth, we can become a mentor, guide, or teacher for someone else. You may be surprised by what you already know and don’t know, and with what you might learn in the process of trying to teach someone else.

But even more than with wisdom, many people think that creativity is just not in the cards for them. Like them, you may think that you are just not a creative person. It turns out that this may more often be an excuse than the truth. Creativity has been defined simply as a new way to think about, see, or do something – that serves some adaptive or constructive function or purpose.

The problem is that most of us think of creativity only in terms of the rare things that people like Leonardo Da Vinci or Albert Einstein have done that changed the world. In contrast, creativity researchers have found that we all have a remarkable aptitude for creativity where it counts – in the uniqueness of our own everyday lives and in the specific challenges that we face.

I remember talking to an older student who was down on herself because she didn’t think she was creative enough to be an artist. As she talked, I realized that creativity and art were readily apparent in the picture she was painting with her whole life. It was obvious in the way that she balanced her conflicting demands, worked at night, took a full load of classes, found parking in time to get to class, did a great job raising her children, and later in the way that she wove all of her experiences together in using them to help her reach her goal of getting a graduate degree and becoming a licensed counselor.

The reality is that human beings have evolved to become inherently creative, especially when we are living out own lives and not trying to live those of someone else. But even more important, research has shown there are many things we can all do to foster creativity.

• First, we can simply give ourselves time to brainstorm by making lists – like were you asked to do for the pleasant events activity earlier in this first part of our challenge, or will be asked to do in finding new ways to use your strengths in the next part.
• Second, we can get together with a friend or group of friends who can help us get started in brainstorming and coming up with new ideas if we have trouble starting on our own.
• Third, we can practice mindfulness by paying attention to our senses, whatever is happening right now, and take notice of the new things we may not have seen before.
• Fourth, as with the behavioural activation we talked about and the pleasant events list you reviewed, you can try all kinds of different things and continue to do the things you enjoy the most. The positive emotions that doing pleasant activities cause have consistently been shown to be a source of creativity. When we are feeling good and happy, we are more likely to feel the freedom to think about new things than when we are feeling down and only focusing on one negative thing that has happened or we are afraid will happen.
• Fifth, we can find new ways to experience flow and do them as much as we can. Flow is fertile ground for creativity because the more we do something, the better we get at it, and the more likely we will be to discover new and better ways to do it.
• Sixth, we can redecorate a room or a part of a room where we live or work in a way that that says something unique about us. When we are free to make something our own, we are naturally more likely to think of new ideas and approaches that reflect our own uniqueness.

Yes, the reality is that there is no one else just like you – your experience and perspective are unique. You can paint a picture with your life that has a beauty all its own and that no one else can match. During this challenge, we hope that you will do some of these things to foster your inherent capacity for wisdom and creativity and that you will use them to get a clearer picture of where you want to go in your life and how you can get there.

Workbook Tasks for the Chapter

Here are the tasks that will foster your wisdom in understanding how balanced your life is and your creativity in benefiting from stress and in noticing the good things in your life.

First, there is a video where a woman displays her creativity in finding benefits in something no one would want. I wanted to give you an example of the kinds of benefits you might be able to find after some of the worst things you could think of happen to you.

Secondly, there are reflection questions asking you to write about a time that something good came out of something bad and how something good might come out of something stressful you are currently dealing with. This is a way of fostering wisdom and creativity where it matters most – when we are facing a challenging or stressful situation. In addition, as with the activity in Chapter 5 where you wrote about a time you were resilient, research has shown that writing about when you have benefited from stress helps you better cope with stress, improve your happiness and well-being, and experience stress-related growth..

Thirdly, there is an activity called the “wheel of life” to help increase your wisdom in grasping the big picture of your life. This task involves rating how satisfied you are in different areas of your life and then thinking about and identifying the areas that you would most like to work on. There is a link to a website that can make this a very quick and easy way to get an overview of how satisfied you are with all the important aspects of your life.

Finally, although we hope you will continue to note the good things that happen to you during the day in the future, for the last time I am asking you to do a variation of these simple but potentially powerful task. I began with this activity in this first part of the challenge because so many people have found it helpful in reducing their bias toward the negative and in taking on a whole new perspective on their lives.

Thus, this time the task involves both noting three good things and thinking about how you might continue to benefit from an exercise like this by making it a part of your regular routine. For example, you may want to continue to do it every day this for the rest of the challenge, do it weekly or a few days a week, or identify a different number of good thing every day. In addition, you could focus on different kinds of good things like those you see in your friends and family members, good things that happen in your school or work life, or those that are beautiful, funny, or meaningful in some way.

Beyond that, I hope that you will take time to appreciate and celebrate what you have done in the first part of this challenge!