Nathalie Ishizuka

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wpx_beyondou

Nathalie Leiko Ishizuka enjoys thinking and writing about happy human beings, a science of health, criteria for health models, defining happiness, quantifying happiness, states of inner wellbeing, and the structure of healthy optimal human minds.  She has applied Lifetrack assumptions about healthy human beings to a variety of disciplines including to the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics.

Nathalie has spent over 18 years of learning and writing about the mind and how Dr. Yukio Ishizuka‘s positive mental health approach (a Harvard trained Japanese psychiatrist and her father) transforms personality (see how Lifetrack works and insights on Life Purpose).

After working several years with Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, in 1995 her desire to extend assumptions about healthy human beings to other fields including economics, organizations and international affairs lead her to complete the Master’s program onLaw and Diplomacy, and an MBA.

As a graduate student, Nathalie Ishizuka applied the health concepts (called Lifetrack) to both the firm and the nation-state. A number of Harvard Business School students preferred Ishizuka’s application of Lifetrack concepts to the firm over the assigned reading of The Road Less Traveled. The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School published her working paper dealing with Lifetrack concepts and mediation. Ishizuka’s work on psychology and the GATT (now WTO) resulted in a correspondence with Arthur Dunkel, former head of the World Trade Organization. Her work, “Lessons from Preventive Health to Preventive Diplomacy,” received the attention of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali and that of the office of Kofi Annan, winning also the Eisaku Sato Memorial Essay Award from the U.N. University in Tokyo.

Accepted in the Ph.D. program at Berkeley in Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, she told her professors at Fletcher she would go there to apply an assumption on healthy human beings to Oliver Williamson’s (recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics) theory of the firm.

It is at Berkeley that she met a new mentor, Dr. Len Duhl, who at the early age of twenty-one, headed Mental Health in the United States.  In May of 1998, the School of Public Health, introducing her to work with the Menninger Foundation, proposed her name for an NIMH fellowship.  “I greatly admire the Menninger brothers, and yet it was too early for such work,” said Ishizuka.  “I came to apply a psychology based on healthy human beings to organizations and economics, but something was missing.  I needed to test models through organizational experience, to go far beyond my conceptual knowledge.”  Greatly admiring Oliver Williamson and Len Duhl, she agonized, but left academia, following the man she loved to Paris and picking up an MBA during her stay.

Enjoying work with innovative individuals, companies, entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists, she founded a small innovative company to teach herself about promoting health through entertainment and technology.  “The idea that inspired me is far too big for me,” says Ishizuka, “but, sometimes things don’t work out for a reason.  Perhaps it will surface elsewhere.”

“I am not an expert in highly specialized fields, but when I lack the answers or the expertise, I am good at finding, meeting, and working with those who do,” says Ishizuka.

My mentors in many fields have taught me much about the human mind, about happiness and how to create innovation across disciplines.  Technology is a tool, not an ends.

By helping individuals enjoy the process of their own creation, she believes she can create far more change than on her own.

Nathalie’s inter-disiplinary approach integrating the psychology of individuals, organizations, and the nation state has lead her to work with individuals from many fields and to receive the George A.Plimpton Fellowship for the study of social, economic and political institutions.

She has created the Positive Mental Health Foundation site to promote quality information on health, happiness and reduction of human suffering.  While the focus of this site is on individual health, applications to other fields can be found in the sectionapplications of a psychology of health.

New Focus Japan Crisis

Her current focus is on the Japan crisis.  (Nathalie), also called Leiko by her Japanese friends, is working on an article with, Dr. Paul Briot, Ph.D. in philosophy and  a Belgian essayist, on using the crisis as an opportunity for positive change.

“I’ve met and worked with brilliant, talented, and profound people in all sectors, says Ishizuka, including my father.  And yet, never an individual that has moved me to put all else aside and to focus. Never an individual as inter-disciplinary, modest, knowledgable and spiritual.   Then again, the Japanese crisis may offer us one of the greatest challenges we have seen in a long time.  And one of the greatest opportunities.”

Past academic interests include applying Lifetrack assumptions about the healthy mind to organizations, nations, Japan, economics, negotiation, crisis management & diplomacy,economic integration, war/crisis/health, international affairs, econometric modeling and the mind, and political science.

Attracted to life, to learning, and to pushing an understanding of the healthy mind further, she believes innovation comes from the cross-road of disciplines.

Nathalie Leiko Ishizuka is married to a French man (who like her mother has no need of theories on happiness), has two children and lives in Brussels, Belgium where she pursues her vocation of writing and teaching a psychology of health.  She works with scientists, engineers and many others in a variety of fields.

Nathalie received her M.B.A. from Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC), M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy (administered in cooperation with Harvard), and a B.A. Political Science, Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, Amherst College.  She participated in the winter Harvard Law Negotiation Program.  She is a member of SCWBI and enjoys capturing movement in watercolor.

For an excerpt on applying an assumption about healthy human beings to the Nobel Laureate in Economics (2009) read Oliver Williamson’s theory of the firm.

For a lighter read, see her book OTHER based on Health and Happiness for children and parents who dare to be different  www.natsays.com

Visit http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com to understand individuals at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Individuals, Organizations and the Nation State
Nathalie Ishizuka, a Fletcher School graduate, explores an inter-disciplinary approach to integrating the psychology of individuals, organizations, and the nation state.
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Dr. Yukio Ishizuka

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wpx_beyondou

Dr. Yukio Ishizuka was born in 1938 in Hakodate, Japan.  He experienced WWII as a child and grew up during the American occupation.  It was a time of cross-fertilization of ideas of East and West.

In 1961, he entered Keio Medical School in Tokyo, where he taught himself English and founded the Japan International Medical Student Association (JIMSA) with the support of Dr. Taro Takemi—the long-standing President of the Japanese Medical Association and a well-respected physician and nuclear physicist.  Upon his graduation from Keio, Ishizuka informed Dr. Takemi of his plans to pursue post-graduate training in the United States.  “You should not return to Japan,” advised Dr. Takemi.  Yukio Ishizuka understood that he was being set free.

In 1965, the young graduate left Japan to complete a rotating internship at Jefferson Medical College Hospital in Philadelphia.  The following year, he was one of 25 physicians accepted for residency in psychiatry at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center of Harvard Medical School.  Elated, Dr. Ishizuka took a trip to Europe on a two-week discount ticket, spending much of his savings in the process.  During this trip he fell in love with a French woman, Colette, who would follow him to the US several months later, marry him, and inspire much of his work.

Towards the end of his residency in Boston, Harvard Professors Elvin Semrad and David Riesman encouraged Dr. Ishizuka to undergo further training in psycho-analysis.  Dr. Ishizuka briefly considered going to Mexico City to study under Erich Fromm.  Unconvinced, however, that psychoanalysis could enable people to become healthier and happier, he left psychiatry and was hired by McKinsey, and international business consulting firm.  After several years of consulting for McKinsey in Paris, Amsterdam, Toronto, and New York, he did mergers and acquisitions.  It was during his fourth year of mergers that one of his work colleagues became depressed.  Dr. Ishizuka’s rewarding experience helping his friend led him to return to the field of psychiatry in 1976.

Having been taught to approach complex problems as a whole by defining and measuring ‘objectives’ critical for organizational survival and success, he returned to his own field eager to understand the existing criteria for positive mental health.  Instead, he found a growing list of mental diseases and disorders (Diagnostic Statistic Manual of Psychiatry).  Whether one suffered from anxiety or depression, successful psychiatric treatment demanded the elimination, reduction, or containment of disease.  To be healthy is not to be sick.  There was little if anything on positive mental health, well-being, and happiness.

At that time, Dr. Ishizuka remembered the work of the American psychologist Maria Jahoda, who in 1958 published “Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health.”  The monograph introduced guidelines for the evaluation of models of positive psychology.  Unfortunately, in 1976 little work had followed.  No model of positive psychological health was developed or tested with patients.  It was his mentor, Dr. Jack R. Ewalt, the man who was in charge of the study by Jahoda, who pushed him and others not to give up on health.  As Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ewalt continued to challenge his students to question prevailing medical doctrine and conceptions on health by learning directly from patients, rather than using their own words to define and treat illness.

Dr. Ishizuka, drawing both on the East and the West, his experience in psychiatry, and most importantly, his patients, developed a science of health.  That paradigm incorporates both an understanding of the mind in distress and optimal well-being.  Over the years, he used and tested the model with different nationalities and people from all walks of life.  Rather than examining stress, disease, and illnesses, Ishizuka asks different questions of his field: What is the objective of therapy?  What does it mean to be well? How do we measure wellbeing as a part of a cycle of life?

The model of human personality and experience that he developed incorporates man’s search for self, the need for intimacy and the quest for achievement.  It also incorporates peak positive and negative experiences and an understanding of physical health.  The tripod model has withstood the demanding criteria put forth by the American psychologist Maria Jahoda in 1958 on “Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health” for the creation of new models of health defined in positive terms.  Dr. Ishizuka’s work helps us to build health far beyond a previous best level of health, happiness and optimal adjustment.  Working to overcome a fear of the unknown, he has defined and quantified the subjective nature of wellbeing and one working model of positive mental health and human personality (objective subjective).

Dr. Ishizuka’s has been using, refining, and testing the model of positive mental health with over 2000 patients in the last 35 years of his daily practice.  With a good sense of humor, a great sense of balance, and over 40,000 session hours examining millions of graphs on health and happiness, he has fine tuned a science of health and well-being.  His approach on healthy human beings has been presented to numerous fields including economic man, war/crisis/health, national health, Japan and organizations.

Today through his busy private practice, he continues the work that Dr. Ewalt incited him and other residents to undertake.  He hopes that insights that arose during Lifetrack therapy can contribute to each person’s life purpose ; the experience of much higher levels of self, intimacy and meaningful achievement.   Through this website and future books he hopes to share with other psychiatrists, psychologists, practitioners, academics, and most importantly the general public.

Dr. Yukio Ishizuka graduated from Keio University Medical School, Tokyo, Japan in 1964.  He completed his residency in Psychiatry at Mass Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School in 1969.  He is the founder of Japan International Medical Students Association (JIMSA), which received the coveted Japanese Health Culture Award in 2007 by the Minister of Japanese Health at the Japanese Imperial Palace. Happily Married for 44 years with three children, he is also a member of the Salmagundi Club of N.Y. as a resident artist.

Visit the Positive Mental Health Foundation to support a study of human beings at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

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Happiness and Health
Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, A Japanese Harvard trained psychiatrist presents a new model of Health and Happiness. Explore a science of happiness, the cycle of life, life purpose, objective subjective, stress types, and a life way that integrates both East and West.
http://positivementalhealthfoundation.com/about/yukio-ishizuka/

Happiness and Health, Excellence and Well-being
Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, a Japanese Harvard trained psychiatrist who left psychiatry to work at McKinsey (management consulting) and later mergers and acquisitions, returns to his field with a new question: what does it mean to be well?   Explore individual and organizational excellence and wellbeing.
http://positivementalhealthfoundation.com/about/yukio-ishizuka/

Happiness and Health
Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, A Japanese Harvard trained psychiatrist presents a science of happiness, a new life way or life purpose.
http://positivementalhealthfoundation.com/about/yukio-ishizuka/

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Happiness and Health

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wpx_beyondou

Happiness and Health

Happiness means different things to different people.  Some seek it above all else, others believe it will arrive by accident.

The Aspiration for Inner Happiness

Most of us wish to be free from conflict, suffering, struggle or pain.  Many aspire to be happy, to go beyond pain and experience positive peaks of wellbeing.  Of course happiness means different things to different people.

Defining Happiness and Health?

Inner health in the Lifetrack model is defined as positive peaks of peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness and mastery.  They are inner states but can also be accompanied by their opposites: anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression or psychosis.

As we attempt to increase the positive peaks in our life, negative peaks will also arise. That is normal and to be expected.  Positive and negative peaks are not self-exclusive. With the good can come the bad and vice-versa.  With a loving relationship can come its loss or termination, with the achievement of a goal can come disappointment or a new goal to replace the old one.

Accept the Inevitable Negatives and Increase Positives

To be happy, we have to accept the inevitable negatives in life as we continue to increase our experience of positive peaks.   We do this by being fully aware of the self, being present in our intimate relationships and by meaningful achievement.  When we successfully increase positive peaks while accepting the inevitable negative peaks, we can maintain longer states of well-being.

Definition of Wellbeing:

Positive peak : Positive Peak experiences (within a given rating period)

Peace :  Feelings of peace, relaxation and safety
Friendliness : Friendly, positive feelings toward those around you
Physical Wellbeing : A feeling that you are healthy and strong
Happiness :  Feelings of happiness and contentment; a feeling of being fulfilled
Mastery : Confidence and optimism; a feeling that you are master of your own fate

Well-being: Peace, Friendliness, Physical Well-being, Happiness and Mastery

Definitions are Stepping Stones to Experience Health

Do not get caught up in definitions.  Your definition of happiness may be different from someone else’s.

In inner health, it is your experience that counts and not a definition.  Definitions are stepping stones to the experience itself.   They are only a useful beginning, and can not substitute the experience.

To help individuals experience happiness and health the Lifetrack positive mental health approach contributes:

  • Definition of Spheres that contribute to building Psychological Well-being and Health in Positive Terms: Self, Intimacy & Achievement
  • Quantification of Positive Mental Health allowing one to track the subjective inner experience of Health and Well-being
  • Self rating providing individuals with a handle on the subjective factor that determines happiness and well-being; instant graphs and feedback available
  • Active advocacy role for Positive Mental Health by therapist or coach (objective subjective).  The therapist or coach gives feedback on self-ratings and reinforces gains, placing setbacks into perspective

The Lifetrack model of positive mental health  presented on this site meets all the criteria for models of Positive Mental Health (science of health) proposed by the renown psychologist Jahoda in 1958.  Since the Lifetrack model can explain the mind both in distress and well-being it is a useful model for the sick, the well and everyone in between.

Visit the Positive Mental Health Foundation to support a study of human beings at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

Opt in for more on Health and Happiness

Use the resources on our site to build, fortify, and develop each sphere of life (self definition, love definition and work definition) far beyond a previous best or optimal level.  Opt in to our newsletter and also our blog.  Read our section a Science of Health (life way), Criteria for Health Models (science of happiness), Happiness Defined? Quantified?  (cycle of life),  Happier? (fear of the unknown),  Why Positive Mental Health Works (objective subjective), Insights (life purpose), Applications (international behavior).

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

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Positive Mental Health (Lifetrack Model & Lifetrack Therapy)

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wpx_beyondou

Lifetrack Positive Mental Health & Lifetrack Therapy:

What does it mean to be well?  For a positive definition of health please download the article (3MB) on Lifetrack therapy by Dr. Yukio Ishizuka published in Psychiatr J. Univ Ottawa, Vol. 13, No. 4, 1988.

Lifetrack Positive Mental Health and Your Happiness:

  • Insight into subjective happiness or spheres of psychological life that contribute to health including self, intimacy, achievement, well-being, stress, physical health, the objective subjective experience of health, and life purpose.
  • A method to monitor the inner experience of happiness (subjective nature of happiness) in spheres that promote health (self, intimacy and achievement).
  • A method to increase positive peaks of peace, friendliness, physical wellbeing, happiness, mastery.
  • The reduction of negative peaks or stress (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression, psychosis) while building psychological health.
  • The capacity to welcome crises (aggravation of symptoms) as opportunities to make breakthroughs and overcome a fear of the unknown (including happiness).
  • Freedom from the stigma of ‘mental illness,’ and the empowerment to build and sustain one’s own health, happiness, and psychological well-being far beyond a previous best level of adjustment.
  • Insights on human defenses against intimacy and how to become far happier and closer in the most important couple relationship.
  • Transformation and growth of personality (one’s self, intimacy and achievement) spheres through increased closeness to the most important person in your life (when single find love,  or how to develop an important relationship, if desired).

Breakthrough Intimacy

Intimacy as a Route to Personality Transformation

The Lifetrack model of positive mental health transforms existing personality through ‘breakthrough intimacy, (a breakthrough in one’s closest most intimate relationship).

Breakthrough Intimacy helps individuals reach and far exceed a significantly higher level of happiness and well-being in their closest and most important relationship (spouse or equivalent) and affects all spheres of life including a formidable breakthrough in a person’s sense of self and work.

Criteria for Models of Health

The Lifetrack positive mental health model withstands the demanding criteria put forth by the American psychologist Maria Jahoda in 1958 on “Current Concepts of Positive Mental Health”.  Jahoda produced these criteria under the direction of Dr. Jack R. Ewalt, the former Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

The Lifetrack positive mental health model is a new paradigm in the science of health, well-being, human personality, and happiness.  Dr. Yukio Ishizuka has developed and tested it in his daily practice with patients, helping thousands of individuals build and surpass a previous best level of happiness, well-being and optimal adjustment.

The Same Health Model for All

By placing health and disease on a continuum, rather than viewing them as two separate poles of human experience, the Lifetrack positive mental health model helps those suffering from psychological distress, those who are well, and all those falling somewhere in between.  It is equally appealing to those with borderline personality disorders and individuals at their healthiest most creative form.

Success is not the absence of disease, but the attainment of an optimal level of health, several times over our previous best sense of health and happiness.

More on Lifetrack

For more information see Lifetrack books, FAQ (Life Questions), Lifetrack Press, and download a succinct article from Ottawa Journal of Psychiatry on Lifetrack therapy.

Visit the Positive Mental Health Foundation to support a study of human beings at their best, happiest, and most creative form.  Link to us to promote health and happiness.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

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Lifetrack Positive Mental Health
Happiness and Health, Psychological Adjustment, Optimal Adjustment, Life Questions, Stress Techniques.
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Lifetrack Positive Mental Health
Three spheres of basic human needs (Self, Intimacy and Achievement). Examine happiness and health, self definition, work definition, love definition, stress types.
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

Lifetrack Positive Mental Health
A Japanese Harvard trained psychiatrist presents a new model of Health and Happiness. Explore a science of happiness, the cycle of life, life purpose, objective subjective, stress types, and a life way that integrates both East and West.
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com


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Positive Definition of Health and Mental Health

Posted on October 11, 2010 by wpx_beyondou

Positive Mental Health Foundation

A Science of Happiness and Health?

Wellness is not the absence of disease. It is the presence of something — the question is of what?

Certain basic psychological needs, when fulfilled, lead to greater happiness and success.  These basic psychological needs are just as important as the body’s need for food, water, and sex.  Failure to meet and balance them can lead one to experience a variety of stress symptoms, burnout or divorce.  After prolonged neglect of basic psychological needs, one may become physically sick, or experience signs of stress.  At that juncture, it is important to take action.

Health in Positive Terms

Even though our happiness depends on fulfilling basic psychological needs, we know very little about them.

Regrettably, many in the field of psychology and psychiatry still concentrate largely upon the diagnosis and cure of disease: stress symptoms or stress types (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression and psychosis).

We have forgotten that the goal of psychology is to help individuals live healthier, happier lives, as well as identify genius and optimal adjustment in any one sphere of our lives.  The medical field has spent years defining sickness.  It has yet to define what it means to be well.

Defining Psychological Health

Dr. Yukio Ishizuka, a Harvard trained Japanese psychiatrist, however, took a different path.

Instead of focusing on disease and illness, he observed that despite the unique symptoms and backgrounds of his patients, the elements that determined their well-being or distress were strikingly predictable.

This lead to a hypothesis that there may be certain psychological spheres which when fulfilled built successful psychological health, and when unfulfilled or repeatedly neglected, caused stress symptoms and made one vulnerable to disease.

Basic Psychological Needs 

By 1975, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka hypothesized that these three basic psychological needs or spheres that determined psychological health were:  the search for self, the need for intimacy, and the quest for achievement.

The Three Spheres

These three spheres –Self, Intimacy, and Achievement — as defined by the Lifetrack model of Positive Mental Health remain broad enough to encompass nearly all psychological events.

None of the three spheres exist in isolation.  Together they dynamically interact to characterize a person’s personality.

Hence, Dr. Ishizuka’s definition of psychological health is also a personality definition of man’s aspirations in a psychological sense.

Self

Traditionally, the integrity of the Self refers to the entire personality of the individual.  The Lifetrack model defines Self more narrowly as the ability and willingness to be “in touch,” “at peace, ” and “in control, ” of one’s own thoughts, feelings and actions.  Such self-awareness distinguishes human beings from their achievements and from their close relationships.  To be “in touch,” “at peace,” and “in control” of self requires the capacity to recognize and accept both positives and negatives in life, integrating them into a balanced perspective.  It also includes the flexibility to initiate, modify, and control thoughts, feelings, and actions.  We can do this by observing our Self and remaining present in the given moment.

Intimacy

Intimacy requires us to extend our thoughts, feelings, and actions beyond the self and become close to another human being. Many different types of intimate relationships such as those with a parent, spouse, significant other, children, friends, God or the universe bolster the psyche. A couple relationship, however, enables human beings to experience fullest union of personality, in all three dimensions of human intimacy – Intellectual/Social, Emotional, and Physical/Sexual.  It is for this reason, that in Lifetrack therapy, the therapist will focus on marriage intimacy or the development of an equivalent close couple relationship.

Achievement

Achievement is the capacity to reach beyond the self through the productive, creative, and the constructive expression of one’s capacities. It is an indirect way of finding an intimate union or relationship with the world in which one lives. Behind one’s work, career, athletics, hobbies or other intellectual and productive activities is the desire not only to subsist, but also to find meaning and achieve value, acceptance, respect, admiration and deep down love by doing something difficult or meaningful.  A person who is either unable or unwilling to build a relationship with the world through his or her constructive capacities may turn in desperation to destruction – an attempt to be noticed and counted and freed from total insignificance by a forced relationship of dominance.

Positive Mental Health: Balance the Cycle of Life

Regardless of one’s willingness or natural ability, experiencing wellbeing in any one sphere of life requires presence, dedication and perseverance.

There are trade-offs.  There are moments when one sphere becomes dominant.

However, when a person continuously chooses one sphere over the others, efforts become counter-productive.  At the end of one’s life one may regret having leaned too much towards the self, having thrown oneself into a love relationship at any cost, or having been consumed by achievement.

Life Definition : Genius in All Spheres of Life

When balance is forgotten, a love of life is sacrificed.  If one only experiences peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness and mastery in one sphere of life, then all time spent in the others spheres feels ‘wasted.’   We are not present and this is a source of great pain and frustration.  To be a genius in inner well-being is to be a genius in all three spheres, to be fully present in our self, intimacy and achievement spheres.

Beyond Work, Love and Play?

Although these three spheres have long been the subject of poets, philosophers, intellectuals, and theologians, Dr. Ishizuka goes beyond saying that health is work, love and play.  He does so by defining a whole model of human personality based on these three psychological aspirations, a method to surpass our own previous best level of adjustment in each of the three spheres, and a means to put our setbacks and fear into perspective by observing the true nature of things (objective subjective), quantifying happiness and tracking our progress.  He does all of that with a great sense of balance, skill and humor.  Rather than pointing to one life way or cycle of life, he has defined spheres of psychological health that define inner health at any given moment.

Life Purpose: A Model of Health Combining East-West

“Everywhere I go, ” wrote Freud, “I find a poet has been there before me.”

We all can and should come up with insights on our own happiness and health.  The advantage of a model based on basic psychological needs that encompass insights from the East and West is that it helps us to better recognize, develop, and fulfill the limits and capabilities of the human psyche.

By defining psychological health in positive terms and developing a means to quantify and track it, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka is contributing to a Science of Health.  In the last 35 years of his work on a model of positive mental health, over two thousand individuals have used his Lifetrack method to go beyond crisis and surpass a previous best level of psychological health.

Building Inner Health: A Life Way?

The experience of over 2000 individuals tracking daily their health in the three spheres of self (self definition), intimacy (love definition) and achievement (work definition) as well as their daily perception of their physical condition, positive peaks of well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness, and mastery) and negative peaks of stress (anxiety, anger, physical symptoms, depression and psychosis) has provided great insight into our desire for happiness and health, and to resistance against it.

Life Questions :  Find Love?  Work first?  Self esteem help?

Most of us do not build inner health.  We just deal with stress and problems as they arise.

The Lifetrack personality model attempts to understand how the three spheres of self, intimacy and achievement grow, interact and influence each other in our experience of health or distress.

The question then becomes what is the best way to achieve a greater sense of well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness, mastery)?

Should one first seek peace in self, the realization of achievement or fulfillment in intimacy?

The answer may depend on where we are in life and who can help us should we be overwhelmed.

Overcome Fear of the Unknown

Experience Positive Mental Health

To experience well-being (peace, friendliness, physical well-being, happiness and mastery) one may attempt to do so through any sphere.

Regardless of the sphere one approaches inner well-being, one has to struggle to overcome stress or fear in the form of anxiety, anger, physical-symptoms, depression or even psychosis.

Fear can be triggered from a difficult past or even be dormant in people who have had positive experiences.  They exist in all of us to differing degrees and can surface when we push beyond a previous best level of self, intimacy or achievement.

Reach Out, Overcome Fear, Recognize Stress Types, UseStress Techniques, Beyond ‘ I hate life ‘ to new Life Purpose

If you are overwhelmed, you may wish to reach out to loved ones or seek professional help.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Often it is the strongest who push themselves beyond areas where most would have given up.  Anyone can reach their threshold of stress if they push themselves too hard, and too long.  Each of us can experience the joy of building in the present, of living fully one’s sense of self, close relationships and meaningful achievement.

Opt in for more on A Science of Happiness and Health by the Positive Mental Health Foundation

Use the resources on our site to build, fortify, and develop each sphere of life (Self, Intimacy and Achievement) far beyond a previous best or optimal level.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter for more on happiness and health, conferences, events, new books and timely topics.   Join our blog to be updated on articles on happiness and health.

Personality Test : Tracking Happiness and Health using the Lifetrack Model of Positive Mental Health

For those wishing to track one’s own health and gain insights on one’s Personality or pattern of coping based on love, work and play, download (3MG) Lifetrack Therapy published in the Psychiatry Journal University of Ottawa, Vol 13, No. 4, 1988.  The article contains a summary of the positive mental health approach and a full definition sheet and room to track your inner health.  Criteria for a Science of Happiness and Positive Mental Health Models are provided by the reknown psychologist Jahoda.

You can use such definitions to rate your experience daily.

The Lifetrack model of Positive Mental Health and Lifetrack sheet can be used to take a global look at your inner health or to surpass a previous best level of self, intimacy and achievement.  Be aware as you rate yourself, you may experience resistance in the form of stress.  This is good stress.

The Study of Health and Happiness by the Positive Mental Health Foundation Site and Applications to Sciences

Whether you want to build psychological health in your own life, or understand how assumptions about healthy human beings can change other fields such as economics, join us.

We encourage individuals from all walks of life, including editors, journalists, writers, artists, scientists, housewives, academics, economists, psychologists and the general public to contribute to a deeper understanding of topics such as psychological health, happiness, and optimal adjustment.  Together we hope to better understand healthy human beings and build a new paradigm of personality based on health.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Ready Made Links to the Positive Mental Health Foundation:

Happiness and Health, Cycle of Life, Life Way, Life Questions
A Japanese Harvard trained psychiatrist explores happiness and health, cycle of life, life purpose, life questions, stress types, and a life way that integrates both East and West.
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

Happiness and Health : Life Way? Positive Mental Health Foundation
Happiness and Health a life way?  Life questions, cycle of life, psychological health by the Positive Mental Health Foundation
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

Personality Test Self Rating, Personality Definition, Life Definition
Personality test : life definition as self, intimacy & achievement, happiness and health, self definition, work definition, love definition, by Positive Mental Health Foundation
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

Life Questions : Work first ?  Find Love ?  Self Esteem Help ?
Life questions : a life way ?  Happiness and health through work first ?  Self esteem help ? Ability to find love ?, Life through work definition, love definition, self definition
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

Posted in Achievement & Happiness, Applications to Other Fields, Children & Happiness, Intimacy & Happiness, Positive Mental Health, Self & Happiness, Spirituality and Happiness | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Where Health and Entertainment Meet

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Nathalie

New Irressistable Series for Children and Adults

A New Irressistible Series

“The Nat Says Series provides busy adults and kids with a better understanding of optimal mental health, how to fortify it and improve it– all while being entertained.”

–Len Duhl, Professor of Public Health at Berkeley & Pioneer of WHO Healthy Cities Project in Europe

Busy Adults & Curious Kids
“Today’s busy adults and curious kids need to be entertained. They are not going to be found pondering over health pamphlets, working through a stress management program, or reading self help books, unless they already have a life changing problem and are in real pain. By then its often too late. The divorce has happened, the kids are hanging out with the wrong crowd or addicted to drugs, and one’s job has become so stressful that you don’t sleep well at night,” says author and illustrator, Nathalie Ishizuka. “Psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers can all do their part in helping us pick up the pieces, but somehow we have to help ourselves before things get that bad.”

Don’t Wait Until Things Fall Apart
Rather, than waiting until the pieces fall apart, Ishizuka wants to entertain and educate people before problems arise. Hence the birth of an entertaining illustrated health series, Mom Says, Dad Says, Nat Says: Other that reads much like the St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, but with a different message. The book is about optimal health, what we wished our Mom had told us, what our Dad may not have known, and what our own head and heart might still have difficulty grasping. Unless, like the characters in the book, your Mom has a ‘savoir vivre’ that is larger than life, your Dad an internationally renown Harvard trained psychiatrist on health, and you like the author Nat, has spent years trying to integrate both your Mom’s heart and your Dad’s head.

Enjoy Being Outside the Box
This heartwarming illustrated book is for busy adults and kids who have felt picked on (and who hasn’t), or constrained by a label (their own or someone else’s). Child psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and teachers will also get a lift from its freshness. Through the surprising coping strategies in the book, being different, can suddenly become a formidable stepping stone to health.

Nathalie Ishizuka is a Franco-Japanese American author and illustrator of Mom Says, Dad Says, Nat Says: Other who has spent over 15 years writing about a model of health and happiness. Her innovative interdisciplinary approach integrating the psychology of individuals, organizations, and the nation state has lead her to work with people from many fields and to receive the George A. Plimpton Fellowship for the study of social, economic, and political institutions.

Join Us by Linking to Positive Mental Health or Psychological Health
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

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Spheres of Psychological Health: What Makes Us Happy?

Posted on May 27, 2010 by Nathalie

Spheres of Psychological Health?

Spheres of Psychological Health

Wellness is not the absence of disease. It is the presence of something  — the question is of what?

After returning to medicine, Dr. Yukio Ishizuka asked himself what does it mean to be well?  What is the objective of therapy?

As he actively interacted with his patients, he observed over and over again that despite their infinitely varied and unique symptoms and personal backgrounds, the elements that determined their well-being or distress were strikingly predictable. This lead to the hypothesis that there may be certain psychological spheres which when fulfilled built successful psychological adjustment, and when unfulfilled or repeatedly neglected, caused distress and made one vulnerable to distress.

Basic Psychological Needs : The Three Spheres
By 1975, he realized that the three spheres critical to building health in our daily lives were quite simple. These three spheres –self, intimacy, and achievement — remain broad enough to encompass nearly all psychological events. None of the spheres exist in isolation. They are overlapping and inter-related. These three spheres together dynamically interact and constitute a person’s personality.

Self
To be “in touch,” “at peace,” and “in control” of self requires the capacity to recognize and accept both positives and negatives in life, integrating them into a balanced perspective. It also includes the flexibility to initiate, modify, and control thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Intimacy
To extend one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions beyond the self and become close to another human being. Many different types of intimate relationships such as those with a parent, spouse, significant other, children, friends, or God can bolster the psyche. The couple relationship, however, enables human beings to experience fullest union of personality, in all three dimensions of human intimacy – Intellectual/Social, Emotional, and Physical/Sexual.

Achievement
To reach beyond the self through the productive, creative, and the constructive expression of one’s capacities. It is an indirect way of finding an intimate union or relationship with the world in which one lives. Behind one’s work, career, athletics, hobbies or other intellectual and productive activities is the desire not only to subsist, but also to find meaning and achieve value, acceptance, respect, admiration and deep down love. A person who is either unable or unwilling to build a relationship with the world through his or her constructive capacities may turn in desperation to destruction – an attempt to be noticed and counted and freed from total insignificance by a forced relationship of dominance.

To learn more about the three spheres and other basic concepts of Lifetrack positive mental health please sign in our Opt-In Box and blog.  If you would like to write an article on LifeTrack please download a Press Packet or use the contact us form to contact Dr. Ishizuka for an interview & opportunities to speak at your organization.

Copyright © 2010 Lifetrack Corporation

Join Us by Linking to Positive Mental Health or Psychological Health
http://www.PositiveMentalHealthFoundation.com

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