What mix of happiness and unhappiness do you have?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recently I have been reading the 2023 book by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey titled Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. (There is a brief preview at Google Books). On page 14 they explain that:

 

“We all have our own natural mix of happiness and unhappiness, depending on our circumstances and character, and our job is to use the mix we’re given to best effect. The first task in doing that is learning where, in fact, we are.

 

One way to get evidence of your natural happy-unhappy mix is by measuring your levels of positive and negative affect – mood – and how they compare to others’ using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, or PANAS.”

 

That schedule is described by Brooks in a pdf article titled LESSON TOPIC: Positive Affect and Negative Affect. (There also is a Wikipedia page). You rank twenty different emotions on a scale from one to five where 1 = very slightly or not at all; 2 = a little; 3 = moderately; 4 = quite a bit; and 5 = extremely.

 

And on pages 16 to 18 of the book they elaborate that:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Unless you are the highly unusual person who is right at the average on both positive (about 35) and negative (about 18), you will fall into one of four quadrants, as illustrated in Figure 1. If you have above-average positive affect and above-average negative affect, you’re one of the ‘Mad Scientists,’ who are always spun up about something. If you’re below-average positive and below-average negative, you’re a sober and cool ‘Judge.’ ‘Cheerleaders,’ with above-average positive and below-average negative, celebrate the good in everything and don’t dwell on the bad. ‘Poets,’ who register below-average positive and above-average negative, have trouble enjoying good things, and always know when there is a threat lurking.

 

We know, we know: you wish you were in the cheerleader quadrant. But we can’t all be cheerleaders, and the world needs the other profiles as well. On a moment’s reflection, you’ll likely realize that it would be a nightmare if everyone saw only the bright side of everything, because we’d keep making the same mistakes again and again. Poets are valuable for their perspective and creativity. (And everyone looks great in a black turtleneck.) Life is more interesting with Mad Scientists in the mix. And Judges keep us all from blowing ourselves up with impulsive ideas.

 

You have a unique role to play in life. Your profile is a gift. But no matter what that profile is, you have room to increase the happiness in your life. To do that, you have to understand your natural happiness blend, manage yourself, and then play to your strengths. For example, let’s say you are a Mad Scientist. You will tend to react very strongly, good and bad, to things in your life. This might make you the life of the party, but it can exhaust your loved ones and coworkers. You need to know this, and work to manage your strong emotions and reactions.

 

Maybe you are a Judge. You are cool as a cucumber, and perfect for jobs like surgeon or spy (or anything in which keeping your head is an advantage – like raising teenagers). But with friends and loved ones, you might seem a little too unenthusiastic at times. This knowledge can be useful so that you work to muster a little more passion than comes naturally, for the sake of others.

 

Or perhaps you are a Poet. When everyone says everything’s great, you say, ‘Not so fast.’ This is important, because it can literally or figuratively save lives – Poets see problems before others do. But it can make you pessimistic and hard to be around at times, and you can tend toward melancholy. You need to learn how to brighten up your assessments and not catastrophize.

 

Even a Cheerleader needs emotional self-management. Everyone loves being a Cheerleader, but keep in mind that you will probably avoid bad news and have a hard time delivering it. That’s not always a good thing! You will need to work on that so you can give people the truth, see things accurately in life, and not say everything is going to be all right when it just isn’t true.

 

Learning your PANAS profile – your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings- can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend on your unhappiness. The PANAS test is empowering, because using it, many people understand themselves for the first time, and see that there is nothing weird or wrong with them. For example, some people go for many years thinking they are defective because they experience more negative feelings than others around them, and have a hard time mustering as much enthusiasm as others. They learn that they are simply Poets. And the world needs Poets.”  

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrices.

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.

 

What is the history of books that defined our English vocabulary over the past 500 years?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been enjoying skimming through a large book which I found on the new books shelves at my friendly local public library. It is a 2024 book by Bryan A. Garner and Jack Lynch with a long title -  Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A 500-Year Pictorial History of the Lexicographic Geniuses, Sciolists, Plagiarists & Obsessives Who Defined the English Language. The list price is $65.

 

Their Introduction opens by stating:

 

“Samuel Johnson – creator of not the first English dictionary, but perhaps of the first great one – wickedly mocked his own trade when he defined lexicographer as ‘a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.’ But dictionaries are serious business, and the people who drudge away at them are anything but harmless. This book tells the stories of the most important English-language dictionaries and their makers.

 

Dictionaries are repositories of erudition, monuments to linguistic authority, and battlefields in cultural and political struggles. They have been announced with almost messianic fervor, decried as evidence of cultural collapse, and relied on in judicial decisions. They are works of almost superhuman endurance, produced by people who devote themselves to years or even decades of wearisome labor. As commodities in a fiercely competitive publishing business, they also can keep a company afloat for generations or sink it in a few years. Some also are beautiful objects, products of genuine innovations in typography and book design.”

 

Their chapters about Noah Webster and his critics were most interesting to me. Chapter 57 (page 177) is titled Noah Webster at His Most Compendious, and discusses his two-column 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. You can find a pdf of it at the Internet Archive. Chapter 62 (page 199) on Noah Webster’s Deeply Flawed Magnum Opus begins:

 

“Although Noah Webster produced his compact, one-volume Compendious Dictionary in 1806, this big two-volume work earned him the title Father of the American Dictionary. Released in November 1828, it was an important declaration of American identity, heralding the nation’s linguistic independence from Great Britain. It marked the biggest milestone in English lexicography between Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) and the OED [Oxford English Dictionary] (1928).

 

But even with a modest press run of 2,500 copies, retailing for $20 apiece, it failed to sell out over the next 13 years. The price was too high for most potential customers.

 

Webster’s achievement was remarkable in several respects. His wordlist, for instance, was much more comprehensive than that of earlier dictionaries. If we take the span of entries from la to laird, Webster provides 141 entries as compared to Johnson’s 84. Some 17% of his headwords – 12,000 of the total of 70,000 – hadn’t appeared in earlier dictionaries. He had mined the resources of American English to include such words as caucus, electioneer, parachute, revolutionize, safety-valve, skunk, tomahawk, and wampum. He developed his own system of recording pronunciations, which required him to have a new typeface cut to distinguish the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sounds of C and G.

 

Webster’s definitions, too, were generally superior to those of his predecessors. Like Johnson, he was a splitter, identifying multiple meanings of most words and breaking them out with numbered senses. His definitions were also abundantly clear. Consider the entry for mortgage. Johnson had defined it as ‘a dead pledge: a thing put into the hands of a creditor.’ For most readers, that’s wholly unenlightening. Webster provides an etymology,’Fr. mort, dead, and gage, pledge,’ and continues ‘Literally a dead pledge; the grant of an estate in fee as security for the payment of money, and on the condition that if the money shall be paid according to the contract, the grant shall be void, and the mortgage shall re-convey the estate to the mortgager’….”

 

Webster also included American spellings, as is discussed in another article in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary titled Noah Webster’s spelling wins and fails. His lack of consistency was attacked by Lyman Cobb, who is discussed in Chapter 64 (page 211) titled Lyman Cobb – Walker’s Promoter, Webster’s Tormentor. You can find Cobb’s entire 56-page pamphlet at Google Books.

 

There is a 54-minute podcast by Ron Lombard at WCNY PBS on June 12, 2024 titled Firebarn Chats, Episode 2 – The authors of “Hardly Harmless Drudgery”

 

The cartoon boy reading was adapted from here at Openclipart.

 

Finding speech topics in unusual places – like a Learning Express article about 525 writing prompts in the New York Times

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The November 2024 issue of Toastmaster magazine has an article by Mackenzie Eldred on pages 26 and 27 titled Finding Speech Topics in Unusual Places. Her seven examples are:

 

Mail Problems

Burger Love

The Chicken Soup of Life

Finding Speech Inspiration on the Flight Deck

Lessons From the Attic

Reaching the Summit

Reflecting on My Hair Journey

 

But there is more unusual place to look. It is a Learning Network article at the New York Times which was updated on August 2, 2023, titled 525 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing. There are 37 categories. This article is a gigantic collection of speech topic ideas! And when you click on a prompt, you are taken to a brief Learning Network article – a starting point for your research. I blogged about it in a post on May 15, 2024 titled My workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Toastmasters Conference on May 18, 2024 about Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions.

 

The cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.

 

100 Years of Confident Voices: a mostly thoughtful documentary video about Toastmasters International with a brief segment that should have been edited out

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a 46-minute centennial documentary video about Toastmasters International titled 100 Years of Confident Voices that you can watch here on YouTube. And there is a pdf file with a Discussion Guide. The video has a lot of interesting history:

 

1938 Inter-Club Speech contest – 11:13

 

1938 Toastmistress clubs begin – 12:35

 

1940s first educational manual Basic Training for Toastmasters – 13:27

 

1950 Advanced manual, Beyond Basic Training – 13:58

 

1959 Golden Gavel Award - 17:43

 

1962 moves into its own building - 18:38

 

1970 Distinguished Toastmaster award begins - 21:54      

 

1973 Convention, women can join - 24:08

 

1978 clubs cannot restrict gender - 24:50

 

1980 74,000 members - 33:09

 

1981 Accredited Speaker Program - 29:50      

 

1985 Helen Blanchard first female president - 25:40

 

1989 New headquarters building in Rancho Santa Margarita - 35:02

 

2017 Pathways learning experience is entirely online - 38:21 

 

2018 World Headquarters moves to Englewood Colorado (south of Denver) - 39:40 

 

From 2010 to 2019 membership goes from 260,000 to 360,000 - 37:21

 

But back at 6:18 there is a brief segment from the 2019-2020 President, Deepak Menon, that should have been edited out:

 

“Toastmasters is international and should be international because it benefits all mankind. It’s not just one set of people who should be benefiting from Toastmasters. It is the entire universe that can get the benefits of Toastmasters.”

 

All mankind and the word International cover the world. The universe is way too overblown – it is beyond both the solar system and the galaxy.

 

Images of a business world and galaxy were adapted from Openclipart.

 

 

A new building at Boise’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights with quotations carved in stone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An obituary article by Florangela Davila at The Seattle Times on August 29, 2002 discusses Bill Wassmuth: Rights activist took on Aryan Nations. Earlier this month the new Philip E. Batt building opened, as described in an article by Mia Maldanado at the Idaho Capital Sun on October 8, 2024 titled “The next era for us’: Idaho’s Wassmuth Center for Human Rights to open doors of new building. As shown above, there are four quotations in tan panels on the west side which are visible as you drive by on Ninth Street. They are:

 

“Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy, and sustainable human development.”

Kofi Annan

  

“Teaching young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

Maya Angelou

 

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

Jesus  [John 13:34]

 

“I am still learning.”

Michaelangelo

 

There also is another quote:

 

“In spite of everything, I still believe that people are truly good at heart.”

Anne Frank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The south side has another quote:

 

“What if I’m the one? What if I’m the one who could make a difference in the lives of others?

Heidi Thompson (Scentscy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The east side has yet another quote on a bench outside the entrance, by the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial:

 

“When love permeates our interactions, we become slow to judge and quick to forgive. We take the perspective that everyone has value, everyone can belong.”

Orville Thompson (Scentscy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the top of the southeast side is another quote:

 

“There is hope”

Anne Frank

 

The Maya Angelou quote is not right, a Facebook page instead says:

 

 “It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.”

 

I blogged about the Anne Frank memorial more than a decade ago on January 16, 2012 in a post titled Quotes for the day from a wall in Boise.

 

America’s biggest fear by states – just in time for Halloween

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Near Halloween each year there are silly fear surveys, like one from Casino.ca titled America’s Biggest Fears Study: What Spooks Each State. They surveyed 3000 Americans asking questions on their biggest fear. The number of states with each of eight fears is shown above on a bar chart. Death was most common, in 17 states, followed by Heights in 8, Snakes in 7, then Enclosed Spaces and Public Speaking - both at 4 and Failure and Spiders - both at 2. The text incorrectly says Snakes were the biggest fear in six states.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another bar chart shows what activities Americans fear. Using a Ouija Board was first at 27%, followed by at tie at 21% for Visiting a Graveyard at Night and Walking Through a Haunted House.

 

Are the results by states significant? Not very. If we divide 3000 people evenly among 50 states, there are only 60 per state. The Margin of Error then is plus or minus 11.5%! That’s pretty awful compared with the 2.8% for a sample of 1000.

 

In the tenth Chapman Survey of American Fears for 2024, public speaking only was ranked #59 of 85 fears at 29.0%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday Chapman University released results from their tenth Chapman Survey of American Fears, which asked 1008 adults about 85 fears. There is an article by Carly Murphy on Chapman News for October 23, 2024 titled Corruption, Nuclear Threats, and Economic Instability Dominate National Fears in 2024.

 

Public speaking was not in the Top Ten, or even the Top Fifty. It only was ranked #59 of 85 fears at 29.0%. The most common fear was Corrupt Government Officials at 65.2%, followed by People I Love Becoming Seriously Ill at 58.4%, Cyberterrorism at 58.3%, People I Love Dying at 57.8%, and Russia Using Nuclear Weeapons at 55.8%.

 

The main web page is Fear Survey 2024. There is a pdf article which discusses the Key Findings and Top Ten Fears. And there is another pdf article with a list of fears ranked by percent. There is a third 106 page pdf article with the detailed Methodology. When I checked the percent list against the methodology, I found one typo for Becoming Seriously Ill – listed as 42.0% where it instead should be 43.5%.  

 

As usual, the fears were listed as the sum for Very Afraid and Afraid. If we add the 36.6% for Slightly Afraid, we get a total of 65.7%, which is still about ten percent below the often-quoted 75% for fear of public speaking.

 

The sign was modified from a picture at the Library of Congress.