E-Minibook 1 Appreciative Living-Getting Started v2 (1)

Copyright 2010 by Appreciative Living, LLC

Appreciative Living:

Getting Started

By Jackie Kelm Version 2.0

3-Part E-Series

Chapter 1: Unleash the Power of Focus

Chapter 2: Ignite Your Imagination

Chapter 3: Life Changing Questions

These materials are copyrighted by Appreciative Living LLC, and may not be duplicated without

permission. Please visit us at the website below to get your own free copy of this mini-book, and learn

about workshops other services, including Appreciative Living Learning Circles you can teach or attend

locally. You may also email [email protected] or call (800)214-0959 for more info.

Thank you!

www.AppreciativeLiving.com

E-Mini-Series

2010 Appreciative Living, LLC. V2.0 Unleash Your Joy! Visit www.AppreciativeLiving.com to get a free

copy of this mini-book, and learn about tele-seminars and other products that will help you create the life of your

dreams. Be sure to check out Appreciative Living Learning Circles, which are local 4-week classes that help you

apply this to your life. You can even order materials and teach Learning Circles yourself! A certification program is

also coming 2011, so check us out & be part of the movement at www.AppreciativeLiving.com Pg. 1

Appreciative Living: Getting Started

Chapter 1: Unleash the Power of Focus

Installment 1 of 3

Ver. 2.0

Welcome! Looking for Joy? Youve come to the right place. Im Jackie Kelm, founder and author of

Appreciative Living, and The Joy of Appreciative Living, and my goal in this mini-book is to help

you learn how to shift your thinking to create a life beyond your wildest dreams. Learning to

see life from an appreciative perspective has transformed my daily experiences beyond

anything I ever thought possible, and I cant wait to share these ideas with you. I have finally

found real joy in living, and also feel like I have found my lifes work and purpose in sharing

what Ive learned with others. It is with the intention of positive social change, and the highest

good of all, that I share this work freely with you now.

This is the first of 3 chapters of Getting Started with Appreciative Living. Each chapter provides

a high-level overview of the main ideas and principles of Appreciative Living, followed by simple

exercises and a template for completing them. If you read through each one you will have a

good sense of what Appreciative Living is all aboutand doing the exercises will start you on

your journey.

You may want to print a copy of these chapters and put them in a notebook so you can refer

back to them later. If you have any questions, or would like to share how it has worked for you,

please email [email protected] . We love to hear your stories, and if you are willing,

to share them with others. We also have a variety of books, workshops, Learning Circles, and

other things to help you on your way at www.AppreciativeLiving.com

The Constructionist & Poetic Principles

Ahhh where to start? First I need to provide some background for those of you who may be

new to Appreciative Living, so you know where it comes from and how I came to it. Allow me

two paragraphs to bring you up to speed and then well move on.

Appreciative Living is based on the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) work of professor David

Cooperrider and his PhD advisor, Suresh Srivastva of Case Western Reserve University. AI is

essentially a positive, strength-based approach to organizational change, and I suggest visiting

the AI commons at www.ai.case.edu for more info. It has been used in many for-profit and






nonprofit organizations with wonderful results, and some of the case studies and a wealth of

other materials are available on the website.

I first found out about AI in the mid 90s, while getting my MBA. I took classes from David

Cooperrider and went on to use the approach in my work as a management consultant for a

large consulting firm. In 2000, I began researching and applying the ideas to my personal life,

integrating complementary philosophies I came across at the time such as positive psychology,

brain science, and living systems theory. In 2005, I wrote the book Appreciative Living: The

Principles of Appreciative Inquiry in Personal Life, and its been an incredible whirlwind of

growth and learning ever since.

Whats In It For You?

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of what this is all about, let me share a recent story that

shows how these ideas can transform your daily experiences. Here are two simple examples of

what its like to move through life from an appreciative perspective. I still find it all amazing.

In August we took our annual vacation to the beach with my husbands family, and it was one

of the best trips weve had yet. It is an incredible testament to this work, because there were

several things that happened that would have caused me to categorize it as the worst trip Id

ever taken.

The first thing that happened had to do with a babysitter we hired for our two children who

were 6 and 8 years old. The sitter came highly recommended with fifteen years experience,

and at $16 an hour we expected the kids would be well taken care of. That was not the case.

There were several things that happened during the course of the evening, but the worst was

that my daughter brushed the sitters hair for three hours. My daughter told me how her hand

was really hurting, and how she kept trying to change positions as she was brushing, but

couldnt find one that was comfortable. The sitter told my daughter she would bring her candy

the next time she came, and that perhaps my daughter might break the record of another little

girl who had brushed her hair for five hours. The brushing finally stopped when we arrived

home at 11:00 p.m. (my daughter was supposed to be in bed at 9:30), and I have to wonder

how long it might have gone on if we had stayed out later.

I did not find out about the hair brushing until the next evening when trying to console my

daughter at bedtime. I was livid. I have experiences of abuse of power in my past, and all of

them got triggered. But what was so different now with Appreciative Living, is that I was able to

work through the bulk of my anger that evening, and actually be at peace with the situation by

the next day. Ill share how I did this in a minute, but it is radically different from how I would

have reacted in the past. Prior to this work, I would have gotten caught up in my rage and it

could have gone on for days and ruined the trip. Within a week I was able to see the learning

and the good in the situation, and was able to make phone calls that were helpful and






empowering rather than vengeful and spiteful. In the end, the situation helped heal another

layer in my own pastand may have initiated a healing journey for the babysitter as well.

The second thing that happened on the trip, was a freak accident at the beach where I was hit

in the head with a heavy-duty beach umbrella. It came flying out of the sand during high winds

and knocked me unconscious for a short period of time. I was taken to urgent care, and was

relegated to a soft/liquid diet for the next several days and could not sleep on my favorite side.

In the past this would have created a lot of frustration and disappointment for me, but in this

case I barely skipped a beat. I went out that same night with my black-and-blue face and had a

wonderful time. I didnt mind the key lime pie for dinner or the slight headache, as I was

focused on my incredible gratitude for being alive.

You know, things happen in life. There were other difficulties during this trip, and five years ago

I would have categorized it as one of the worst vacations on record, instead of one of the best.

Appreciative Living teaches you how to take whatever comes and frame it in a way that makes

the best of it. Whatever happens, you can bounce right back and find joy. You can learn to see

the good in the midst of the craziness and it changes everything.

The best part of all is that anyone can learn to do this. Trust meif I can do it, anyone can. I

never would have thought I could experience this kind of joy, and I want to share what Ive

learned with you. In the next section Ill talk about two of the five principles that explain how all

this works. Lets get started.

The Constructionist Principle

David Cooperrider originally created five principles in Appreciative Inquiry, and in this chapter

well talk about two of them. The first is the Constructionist Principle. Its a long word, but it

helps if you think about the construction part of it. This principle essentially says that you are

constructing or building your life experience in every moment with your thoughts.

Its like the proverbial story of having a thousand people witness an accident, and thus there

will be a thousand different accounts of what happened. Each person will have a different

perspective, due to the unique set of filters through which he or she views the world. In effect,

there is no one correct way to think about things. There is essentially no one right reality or

fixed way of viewing a situation. There are multiple perspectives in every situation that are as

varied and different as the people experiencing them. One of my favorite quotes by James

Branch Cabell illustrates this point: The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible

worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Going back to my vacation story with the babysitter, my husband and I had two very different

reactions upon learning that my daughter had brushed the sitters hair for three hours. I was

mortified, slotting the sitter into the category of psychopath, because my past experiences






included people who took advantage of me, and that is my frame of reference. When my

husband found out, he said, Well, I guess we wont be getting her again. Then he promptly

went to bed. His framing was that our daughter simply experienced some discomfort with a

woman who did not use good judgment. End of story.

Prior to Appreciative Living I would have been almost as mad at my husband as I was at the

sitter for his seeming indifference. But I was able to see in the moment that we were

constructing very different views of what had happened based on our past experiences, and I

did not get mad at him (a miracle in itselfthis insight alone avoided several days of strained

relations between the two of us.)

This has been a major learning for meand one that I often forget in the heat of the moment.

Rather than trying to defend my way of thinking, and convincing my husband that he should be

more upset by this situation, I instead tried to see what I could learn from his viewpoint. This is

huge. This one concept alone can transform many relationship issues.

After he went to bed, I considered possibilities for how he might be viewing the situation to see

what I could learn. When I took the emotion out, I realized that my daughter had not been

harmed in any significant way, and that she was safe now and it was over. Inquiring into his

reaction (or lack thereof) calmed me down and helped bring me more to the middle,

emotionally. It helped move me from rage to anger, lowering the negative emotion a notch. I

was still angry about the situation, but more importantly, I was not angry at him.

Trying to see another persons perspective is radical when you really think about it. Dont we

spend most of our time trying to defend our way of thinking? Miracles happen when we let go

of being right and try to learn from the way other people see things. As the Talmud states, You

dont see the world as it is, you see it as you are. We can all learn a lot from the way others

see the world. This doesnt mean we have to adopt their perspective; it simply means we can

learn from it. Im not saying my husbands response was the correct one; Im saying there was

something for me to learn in it. Big difference.

You see, we are all living in our own little worlds! When someone else is having a better

experience in a situation than you are, there is something good you can learn from him or her.

You dont have to take on their entire perspective, you can just take on the part that is helpful

and leave the rest. Appreciative Living helps you find more of the good that is already present

that you are filtering out. It in no way suggests that you ignore problems, or pretend they dont

exist. It simply shows you how to expand your glasses to allow in more of the good things,

which brings us to the next principle.






The Poetic Principle

The Poetic Principle suggests you can find whatever you want in a situation. There is good and

bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly in every moment. Its all there, and what you find

depends on what you pay attention to. And whatever you pay attention to, grows.

I had a classic experience of the Poetic Principle a few years back, during the presidential

election. My husband and I felt strongly about opposing candidates and decided to watch a

debate together one evening. At the end of the debate, we both turned to each other and

effectively said, See? I told you my candidate was the better choice.

I still remember being horrified that he did not see that my candidate was clearly better in the

debate. (This was before I got the idea of trying to learn from someone elses perspective!) The

fact that we both heard the complete opposite things in the same situation is a perfect

illustration of the Poetic Principle. We can find whatever we want in any situation. He was

looking for what he liked about his candidate, and what he didnt like about mine. I was doing

the opposite. Guess what? We both found what we were looking for. And the more debates

we watched, the stronger our beliefs became. Whatever you focus on grows, and with enough

experiences, it eventually becomes your truth.

The power in the Poetic Principle is becoming aware of how your focus creates your reality, and

intentionally using it to pay attention to what you want. A critical factor in this is learning to

focus on what you want more ofand not less of. Your brain is not able to process the negative

or absence of something, so it is important to pay attention to what you want more of.

For example, if I keep feeling like I never have enough money, then what I am noticing is that I

never have enough money, and what I will continue to create in my experience is never having

enough money. If I want to change that situation, I need to start paying more attention to what

I want more of, which in this case might be abundance, or financial independence, etc.

The key in all this is knowing what you want more of, which can be more difficult than it first

appears. Many of us are culturally programmed to focus on what we want less of, so it can feel

awkward or even difficult at first to think about what we want more of. It can also feel just plain

wrong, since we are so programmed to focus on what we dont want and eliminate it. The

following story from Debbie Fords book, The Right Questions, further illustrates how this

principle works (pg. 100):

When Jonathans mother arrived at school one day, his teacher made an off-

hand remark about his habit of picking his nose. His mother was horrified. As

she grew more preoccupied with her sons bad habit, she seemed to lose sight of

the bigger picturethat she was blessed with a healthy, funny, creative, and

loving child. The more she reprimanded Jonathan for his habit, the more he

acted out, sometimes picking his nose right in front of her just to gain attention.

Finally, when the mother realized she was just focusing on what was wrong with






her son, she decided to give up trying to fix his behavior and instead focus her

attention on all the things that were right about him. At bedtime after she read

him his story, she began stroking his head and telling him all the things she

loved about him. Within a few days, Jonathan had stopped acting out and

instead seemed to be thriving in the presence of his mothers approval.

Jonathans mother began with a typical approach of trying to eliminate the undesirable

behavior with her little boy, but the more she focused on it and tried to remove it, the more it

happened. Eventually she stopped giving it attention, and instead focused on what she wanted

more of, which was a loving relationship with her child. The more she focused on that, the

more it grew.

Summary

The Constructionist Principle suggests that you dont just experience life, you actually create it

with your thinking. The Poetic Principle takes it a step further, and says that whatever you pay

attention to grows, and becomes a bigger part of your experience. Taken together, these mean

that you can create more of whatever you want in your life by focusing on it.

On the next page, youll see a short gratitude exercise you can do each day to help apply this

principle in your own life. I would suggest continuing this brief exercise for the next three

weeks as you go through the chapters. It is a small step that can have big impact over time.

In the next chapter, well talk about two more principles that will help you step into the drivers

seat of your life. Youll learn how you can create whatever you want in the future, and why its

so important to pay attention to your feelings.

Be sure to check out the exercise on the next page and have a great week! - Jackie






Try This:

Write three different things you are grateful for each morning or evening. Its like lifting

weights to help build your appreciative muscle. It may be hard at first, so just keep going and

it will get easier over time. (Toiletries and food count.)

Date: Three things I am grateful for today are:

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E-Minibook 1 Appreciative Living-Getting Started v2 (1)