An hour before leading my annual “new year” yoga and positive psychology workshop, I saw the news of another killing in Minneapolis. Was what I was about to share even important anymore? It felt strange, tone deaf, trite. What could optimism, hope, relationships, etc. possibility do in these dire times?

So much.

Our first step is not giving up. What will support us in not giving up? We have to use tools, internally and externally, that support our well-being, our resilience, our strength in order to stay in the fight. Tools and spaces that help us continue connecting with one another. 

The systems in power feed on disillusionment and disconnection. Success for this type of regime means fully stripping people of their choice. But if we can hold on to our agency – our belief that we can make our own decisions and influence the world – then we can take the first step. 

So, for me, in dark times, we begin where we have some agency and efficacy – for ourselves, our loved ones, our immediate communities. In my workshop, I began by introducing positive psychology in its most basic terms. Especially now, it is important to reinforce that positive psychology doesn’t ignore what is wrong in the world. It’s a shift in our attention, a change in what we allow and prioritize in our consciousness. I loved that the workshop attendees were not familiar with the negativity bias (if this is new to you also, this article provides a starting summary). It gave us great material to dive into, and provided folks the technical language and evolutionary reasons behind a phenomenon we all experience.

We then dove into identifying our core strengths. While we didn’t have time to take the VIA Character Strengths for this workshop, we took a few minutes to journal about the things we love most about ourselves. Think of them as the core elements of who we are. Why? Because a lot of new year messaging focuses on what you have to change about yourself, things that are not right – I want to shift the attention to what we already know is beautiful and right about each of us. 

In my last post I wrote about how I was recently inspired by Jonathan Fields’ Good Life Project series for the new year, talking about “unresolutions.” We spent time discussing what we want to MOVE TOWARDS in the new year instead of things we want to avoid or fix. This also connected deeply with the way we talk about optimistic mindset in the resilience and positive psych world. Developing this workshop also inspired me to dive more deeply into research on approach and avoidance motivation specifically.

The other idea that has been percolating is situational agency, a concept Angela Duckworth explores in her recent essay for the New York Times. It reminds us that we are not the thing that needs to be fundamentally changed – our situation is. And while we don’t have control over the entirety  of our “situation” – where we live, who we’re surrounded by – we can hone in on areas where we do have agency and can shift our physical space, our peers, our mentors, and our culture. As we thought about what we wanted to move towards in the new year, we committed to one change in our situations. 

And of course, because it was a yoga workshop, we moved. Why? I asked the group this question – responses ranged from the mind-body connection, to a space without distractions, to restoring your physical energy. I think about the yoga practice as a place to try on new mindsets, to see, just for a little while, what a shift in perspective might do. I also think of the practice as a place to build habits, so when you move through physical asanas you are also reminded of your strengths, of the negativity bias, of approaching rather than avoiding. When you come back to the mat, time and again, the lessons are waiting for you. 

My favorite thing about the workshop? The people – old friends and new, spending time in authentic connection, with hope for a future where we can use our strengths and agency.