WWW - What went well?

Teachingexpertise.com writes in this article on implementing positive psychology in school about a personal training tool they call "WWW - What went well?". Here are the tips for developing your strengths and to build your succsesses!

Training idea – WWW

WWW stands for What Went Well? Start using it yourself at the end of a day or week as a professional development tool. Draw WWW in the middle of a page and begin to doodle all the positives you can think of – the more you do this the easier it becomes. Even bad days have some good things in them. Reflecting on what has gone well allows you to build on successes and develop them.

Explain to colleagues that WWW is used to counter what psychologists call negative bias – our tendency to spot easily the things that go wrong. This was an evolutionary advantage during human development – those who spotted and remembered dangers and potential hazards survived. Now, however, it has less advantage and can lead to depression.

Teaching our brain to counter its natural negative bias can make us more optimistic, more successful and healthier. As an exercise, take the previous week or half term and notice what has gone well. This starts off being quite difficult. Once you make a start, however, it gets gradually easier. Soon you will have collected a host of positive memories. Exercises like WWW build on what has been called the ‘neuro- plasticity’ of the brain, ie its ability to grow and change into old age. Every positive thought creates a channel in the brain. Lots of positive thoughts create deeper, stronger channels that consequently make positive thought easier. The same is true, of course, of negative thought. The aim of WWW is to build positive pathways in the brain.

Source: http://www.teachingexpertise.com/articles/implementing-positive-psychology-3700