P52 Week 26 - Photographer's Choice: Three Good Things

THREE GOOD THINGS

Over the past several weeks I have been drawn to deepen my spiritual practice. Finding out about Three Good Things has been a welcome synchronicity.

Last week I attended the Group Health Permanente quarterly coaches meeting, made up of a group of clinicians who provide communication and leadership coaching within the organization. I have been associated with Group Health for many years: over twenty years practicing internal medicine and family medicine, and more recently as a coach consultant. At the meeting I learned that Group Health is expanding more into wellbeing and one of the videos we were shown, created by the Duke University Patient Safety Center was about Three Good Things. Bite Sized Resilience: Three Good Things

The Duke video outlines a simple technique for increasing resilience and decreasing burnout. It is based on the research of Martin Seligman – the originator of the Positive Psychology movement – which showed how using the Three Good Things technique created improvement in subjects that was “better than Prozac.” Duke introduced Three Good Things for the medical housestaff as an aid to prevent burnout. Their results confirm Seligman’s study, and show significant improvement in wellbeing and resilience when done for just two weeks with benefits continuing for over six months after discontinuing the practice.

As I sat through the Duke video, I thought back to my medical residency training days many years ago and how I had felt so emotionally constrained, bound up as if in a straightjacket. I was overwhelmed most of the time. How wonderful it would have been to have known about Three Good Things!

The technique is deceptively simple and might even seem somewhat hokie:

Two hours before retiring in the evening – research has shown that this is the best time to retain information – think about or jot down the answer to these questions:

What went well today? Name three good things.

For each good thing, what was your role in making it happen?

And what is the positive emotion that best fits how this good thing made you feel?

For my own use, with my training in neurobiology and somatic psychology, I have added a body sensation piece to the practice, anchoring the positive emotion in my body. I ask the additional question:

What is the physical sensation of this positive emotion?

The simplicity of this technique does not take away from its value. I believe that practices such as Three Good Things are important, not just for our wellbeing and those around us; they add to the positivity in the collective world consciousness. They are world work, and much needed in our current global atmosphere that is over-peppered with negativity.