Life Coaches and the World Database on Happiness Research
Article Outline
I HAD THE recent experience of attending the American Association of Critical Care Nurses National Teaching Institute and listening to life coach Keith Harrell advise us all to turn to the person next to us and say, “I feel good, I look good, and you're lucky to be sitting next to me.” Harrell (2003) is author of the book Attitude is Everything and a frequent speaker at conventions and conferences. Harrell further advised that worrying is a form of negative medication.
That same week, in preparing my presentations for Nurses Week 2008, I discovered the world database on happiness research maintained by Veenhoven (2008), an academic at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. Happiness as defined by Veenhoven is the degree to which an individual judges the overall quality of his life as a whole favorably. Economists study the happiness of nations as correlated with overall health data such as that reported to the World Health Organization. Other social scientists study happiness as related to personality characteristics, social groups, or cultural characteristics. The happiness Web site includes a register of the vast collection of scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life, with reports of multiple correlates of happiness, including over 8,000 findings from more than 600 studies conducted across the world. Thus, the study of happiness is not a minor area of scientific investigation.
Both of these encounters, so close together in time and place, caused me to reflect on what we do each day as psychiatric nurses. So much of our work, both in the research and clinical practice arena, is centered on those with affective problems, including persons experiencing depression, mania, anxiety, or panic disorders. Whereas attitude change is an important part of the interventions we use to help individuals learn new behaviors, unfortunately, it is not as simple as finding a life coach. Then again, perhaps as psychiatric nurse therapists, we are the “life coaches” for those in need of our services. As we test therapies ranging from conventional psychotherapies to the more recently acknowledged complementary and alternative therapies, our clients are persons beyond the “worried well” who most often seek the advice of life coaches. Their pain is stronger, and their needs are greater. At the same time, our clients also need to affirm the positive aspects of life, to move beyond worries of the past and the future, and to make the most of the present. I recently synthesized my own understandings of the meaningfulness of life as related to understandings of health and illness, life and death, and the work that nurses do to enhance meaning in individuals' lives (Fitzpatrick, 2008). Most of my research related to the affective components of life meaning has been focused on depressive symptoms. Perhaps the study of happiness will extend the conceptualization to more positive variables and related health outcomes.
References
- . Meaning in life: Translating nursing concepts to research. Asian Nursing Research. 2008;2(1):1–4
- . Attitude is everything. New York: Harper Collins; 2003;
- . World data base on happiness. Accessed May 1, 2008, from http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/2008;
PII: S0883-9417(08)00101-5
doi:10.1016/j.apnu.2008.05.001
© 2008 Published by Elsevier Inc.
