Only the loony disregard this crashing economy. Yet the prudent recognize it’s vital now to practice resilience, even virtue. It helps to be near friends who feel the same. (Who lifts your spirits?) So it also helps to know that we’re born with a set point for happiness.

The good news is that set point “determines just 50% of happiness.  A mere 10% can be attributed to differences in people’s life circumstances – that is, whether they are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, married or divorced, etc. This leaves a surprising 40% of our capacity for happiness within our power to change.” That’s the theory of The How of Happiness author, Sonja Lyubomirsky and her two colleagues, Ken Sheldon and David Schkade.

Since we experience negative emotions faster, more intensely and longer, to enjoy life more we must cultivate a 3 to 1 ratio of positive to negative emotions, believes Positivity author Barbara L. Fredrickson.

Her suggestions to achieve this ratio sound familiar:

• Meditate

• Reduce exposure to negative news

• Cultivate kindness

• Connect with nature

She offers a  “broaden-and-build” approach.  In short, choose how you view a situation. If it makes you feel down, look at the bigger picture.  This reminds me of the “make a bigger pie” negotiation technique. When you feel you need more clout among the players in the discussion, involve more people.

As Frederickson notes,” pleasant emotions like hope, inspiration, joy, and well-earned pride literally open us. As the blinders of negativity fall away, we take in more of what surrounds us. We see both the forest and the trees. We appreciate the oneness that binds us instead of the barriers that divide us. Even race becomes irrelevant.”

The benefits of optimism, according to Frederickson:  

Positive thinking opens our minds.

Positive thinkers:

• See more of the world around them

• Are more likely to find innovative solutions to problems.

People imbued with positivity are:

• Healthier

• More generous

• More productive

 They:

• Bounce back from adversity more quickly

• Make better managers

• Live longer

So, let’s grab more moments to go on a walk/talk, pick up the phone to praise and to share our reasons to be grateful.

Ugandan women sell health, using the Avon ladies’ approach.  Yes, door-to-door outreach looks different in villages than in American suburbs.

But a template leverages profits faster for them, and for you.  The same woman-to-woman franchise that sold creams and make-up in the U.S. is selling preventive know-how to stop malaria, diarrhea and TB in over 100 countries.  Using a micro-finance template to franchising, LivingGoods, based here in my town of Sausalito, has built “an $8 billion business with over five million agents.”  These “mobile health entrepreneurs” get uniforms, training, promotional support and quality monitoring. Like Delancey Street, LivingGoods provides all the tools to actually change behavior as described in Influencer.

The licensed agents are not taught to shame people out of dangerous health habits.

Telling clients what they should do doesn’t work. Instead, Albert Bandura advises, link people’s actions to their values. Influence expert, William Miller told the authors of Influencer:

• “The more you try to control others, the less control you gain.

• The instant you stop trying to impose your agenda on others, you eliminate the fight for control.

• You sidestep irrelevant battles over whose view of the world is correct.”

• Instead:

-  Ask what better outcome someone wants, listening closely

- Then offer suggestions that help her reach those outcomes, offering steady support over time.

Living Goods agents gain confidence and make more money over time as they get frequent, consistent feedback on their skill-building progress.

You, too, can adopt the Leveraging Effect

The LivingGoods template is scalable. It can be replicated elsewhere – and honed over time because those who use it experience direct benefit from improving it. Similarly, Nido Qubein’s Great Harvest Bread franchisees enjoy profits and camaraderie by sharing ways to grow their local bakeries faster. To thrive in a down economy, use your skills to craft a template – a business model that you can franchise or license to others – or coach them to implement on their own as Susan Page and Jake have done. (See at moving from me to we)

Here’s to living a greater life and accomplishing greater things together than we can on our own:

“It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else’s private world with our own. “  ~ Joyce Carol Oates

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung

“We judge others by their acts, but ourselves by our intentions.” ~ American proverb

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances. If there is any reaction then both are changed.” ~ Carl Jung

“Mutual understanding and the human touch are in inverse relationship to frequency of encounter and kinship.” ~ Yi Tuan

“A true leader is not one you look up to because they are the best. A true leader is one that draws the best out in you.” ~ Anne Warfield

“A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.” ~ Henrik Warfield

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”  ~ anonymous

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.” ~ Samuel Johnson

“You can’t stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.” ~ Jay Leno

“In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.” ~ Blaise Pascal

“In the religion of love to pray is to pass, by a single word, into the inner chamber of the other.” ~ Galway Kinnell

“A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To love another person is to see the face of God.” ~ Victor Hugo 

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.” ~ James Arthur Baldwin

“Conversation means being able to disagree and still continue the discussion.” ~ Dwight Macdonald

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne “All value resides in individuals. Value is distributed in individual space. Relalationship economic is the framework for wealth creation.  Deep support is the new metaproduct. ~ Shshanna Zuboff 

“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” ~ Victor Hugo

“We didn’t come over on the same ship, but were all in the same boat.” ~ Bernard M. Baruch

“The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, I was wrong.” ~ Sydney J. Harris

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is not in numbers, but in unity, that our great strength lies…” ~ Tom Paine

“Man does not weave this web of life. He is merely a strand of it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.” ~ Chief Seattle

“Many candles can be kindled from one candle without diminishing it.” ~ The Midrash