Archive for: Our Happiness Blog

‘Tis the season to be grateful! Research shows that practicing gratitude intentionally (and not just having a passing grateful thought) makes it more meaningful and is an effective skill for boosting happiness. Small but important details of how you practice gratitude can affect how beneficial this happiness skill can be. For instance, writing down what you’re grateful for helps to organize your thoughts and make it more clear and real in your head. Expressing gratitude to others makes them feel appreciated and allows you to experience the effects of that. So here are two gratitude activity suggestions for all ages:

1. Gratitude scavenger hunt. Make a list of 20 (or more!) prompts for things that people feel grateful for. Participants have a limited amount of time to find evidence of of each and bring them back – first one back wins. The prompts can be related to anything at all. You can find ideas in senses (something that smells good), feelings (something that makes me feel excited), thinking (something that I recently learned), location (something in nature/a place I have visited), comparatives (someone who is older than me/from a different culture), characteristics (something that is red/tiny/attached to the ground, etc.). Give participants chances to use people as their answers since feeling grateful for people tends to be more meaningful than feeling grateful for things. And give people a chance to feel grateful for adversity (something that was hard for me, something that scared me, something I didn’t want to do). Afterward, talk about why they are grateful for some of these things.
2. Gratitude jars. Have everyone in the family jot down ten (or more!) things about each family member that they are grateful for. Research shows that specific gratitude (acknowledging the giver’s intentions, the cost to the giver, or the benefit to the recipient) is more meaningful then vague gratitude. So, “That time you brought me to work when my car wouldn’t start, and you didn’t make me feel bad about it even though it made you late for work. I was able to get there in time to deliver my presentation, which made me a contender for that promotion” is likely to feel more meaningful then “You’re a helpful person.”

Happy Thanksgiving!

You know that famous proverb, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”? It’s a neat little saying.

It needs to be adjusted.

If when you fail you just try again and again without making a change to what you’re doing, you’re going to experience a lot of demoralizing failure. If what you’re doing isn’t working, change it. You probably do this a lot anyway without realizing it. If your 3-point shots always float to the right then you will naturally adjust your follow-through slightly to the left. If every time you serve broccoli your whole family avoids it you’re probably going to put some cheese on it next time or give them carrots instead. If traffic always makes you late for work you are going to leave earlier or try a different route or change your schedule. We have a natural drive to do what works. But when emotion is involved we don’t always use such logic. When angry, we might approach our partner with the same harsh start-up even though it leads to the same bad argument. In our enthusiastic hopefulness we might set the same exercise goal that we never reach and always end up feeling bad about. At these emotion-laden times it pays to be aware when what we’ve been doing isn’t working, and then we need to adjust our approach.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try again maybe one more time the same way just to be sure, and then consider why it’s not working and do it differently.”

It just rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. – American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr

That version’s a bit fancied-up from the one we usually hear, but I think it’s the original. Regardless of your beliefs about a higher power, it’s just good common sense to figure out what you can and can’t change, change what you can, and accept what you can’t. But I thought I’d clear up something about the acceptance piece as I’ve found myself talking about it more than usual lately:

The following are three different creatures: Acceptance, Resignation, Embracement.

Resignation sounds like this: “I’m so unhappy. I can’t change this thing and I wish I could. I will sit with it though I don’t want to, and I will always wish it were different.” Acceptance is like this: “Well, this is reality. I can’t change it, so I choose to exist with it peacefully.” And here’s Embracement: “This is how it is and since I cannot change it I welcome it in with an open mind and heart and I will find a way for it to add to my life and help me grow.” We have a choice of resignation, acceptance, or embracement about things that we can’t change. When we choose embracement we are choosing to actively work on happiness. It is not always easy.

It is always worth it.

Your friend comes up to you at a party and says, “That girl over there is such an idiot!” She could mean:

• The girl humiliated her.
• The girl got a low score on her SATs.
• The girl didn’t get her joke.
• The girl doesn’t share her political views.
• The girl said something that wasn’t factually accurate.
• The girl is dating your friend’s ex-boyfriend.

…and we could go on and on.

Your friend’s statement is a judgment while the bulleted options are facts. We learned in the last post that, while judgment has its place, it can be vague and misleading because it’s a shortcut (for consequence, preference, or standard) that we overuse. Since we’re inundated with judgments we tend to hear them as statements of fact rather than an unclear opinion driven by emotion.

JUDGMENT CHALLENGE: For one day, notice judgments. Practice interpreting other people’s judgments flexibly. Remake your own judgments into facts and notice that not only does your real meaning come across but the emotion is decreased or eliminated. For example, “I’m fat” could be changed to “I weigh 50 lbs more than I want to” or “My doctor is concerned about my health.” More information and less emotion make more room for happiness which – all judgment aside – is a good thing.

You’re at a family reunion and your cousin whispers, “Aunt June’s chicken salad is bad.” She means:

a. The dish has been sitting out in the sun and you might get sick if you eat it.
b. The dish has curry in it and your cousin hates curry.
c. This dish can’t compare to the other many delicious dishes there.
d. The chicken used in the dish wasn’t a free-range chicken raised on organic feed.

Judgment is shorthand for a few things: consequences (choice a), preference (b), and standard (c and d). It has its place – it’s not a bad thing to say a book was good, and it could be important to warn someone about that chicken salad. But judgment is vague and makes the listener responsible for figuring out what we mean. If they guess right, no harm done. But if they don’t, well, things can get messy. You might save the day at the family reunion by letting people know to avoid the spoiled chicken salad. Or you might end up just making Aunt June feel bad while depriving curry-loving relatives of the best dish of their lives.

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” – Stuart Smalley, Saturday Night Live

Though he’s quick to admit he’s not a licensed therapist, Al Franken’s character Stuart Smalley was onto an important psychological skill with this positive self-talk business. How we talk to ourselves really affects how we feel. But did you know that how we refer to ourselves is important too? Though Stuart tended to cheerlead and shame himself in the first person, a recent study suggests that using the pronoun “I” increases negative self-talk, while using second-person language (“you” or your name, as if you were talking to a friend) increases objectivity and gentleness. This is important because language is something we can change with rather little effort. That subtle linguistic shift from “I” to “you” can be the difference between making a regrettable emotion-based decision while in a place of deep shame, and feeling adequate enough to consider things in a rational light and make a healthy and effective choice. So it’s a good, simple skill to use when trying to make a hard decision (just ask LeBron James). Plus, we don’t want to spend our precious time in life in shame and telling ourselves we’re not good enough.

In the words of Stuart Smalley, “That’s just stinkin’ thinkin’.”

Think of a baby just learning to walk. He takes a couple of tottering steps and then he’s back on his bottom. Before you know it he’s up again and makes it a few more steps before he falls. He’s not put off for long – this baby’s on a mission and falling is just part of the process. In the end he not only learns how to walk but also how to fall and get back up without missing a beat.

Fast forward a few years. The boy is learning to tie his shoes. Every time he hits that loop part he gets frustrated. He tries over and over, and this time there are tears. Now sometimes he needs encouragement to try again. Then one day, suddenly, he gets it. I mean, he gets it. Have you ever been lucky enough to witness an “a-ha” moment on a kid? The sheer joy that lights up his face is there because he didn’t succeed right away.

We are hard-wired for mastery but we must nurture that drive as we get older. Somehow we learn (some more than others) that if we don’t succeed at something early on, we shouldn’t pursue it.

Fast forward a decade or two. He’s got his first mountain bike and wipes out on his first log jump. If he’s learned that hard-won success is extra sweet, he will try that log again. And again and again and again. Until finally he gets it, and he is no less thrilled than when he was a six-year-old tying his shoes.

Waking up too early to a blaring alarm you are acutely aware that you didn’t get
enough sleep. As you rush around trying to get out the door in time for work you
consider having breakfast but realize you don’t have enough time. As you listen
to the horrible new noise your car is making you imagine what it might cost this
time and decide that you don’t make enough money. You brew your third cup of
coffee before heading into your morning meeting because you don’t have enough
energy. In the meeting you feel shut down and dismissed and you think to
yourself that you don’t get enough respect. Driving home from work, thoroughly
exhausted, you lament that you don’t have enough time off for a proper vacation.
As you crawl into bed you think, “I didn’t get enough done.”

How often in the course of a typical day do you find yourself thinking “not
enough”? As in, I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money, I don’t
have enough love or respect? When we become hyperaware of scarcity we start to
act out of fear. At best it might come across as insensitivity and at worst,
entitlement or narcissism. It looks like not letting people into your lane
because you want to get home as fast as possible. It looks like getting loud
with the store manager to make them bend their return policy for you. It looks
“ugly,” as we say in the South.

The fear of scarcity is a huge obstacle to happiness. The antidote? “I have
enough.” Just trying on this new way of thinking might be enough to quell that
fear and turn towards happiness.

POP QUIZ

Your spouse says to you: “You didn’t run the washing machine last night. There was something in there I wanted to wear today.” You respond with:

A)     “Call the police!”

B)     “Geez! I forgot, alright?! So sue me. You never notice the stuff I do right around here.”

C)     “Oh, shoot! Sorry about that.”

Pencils down! Let’s look at these.

A) – depending on the intensity of the situation, the state of your relationship, each person’s personality, what kind of mood each person is in right then, and all the subtleties of your delivery, this answer could be seen as sarcastic and rude or simply lighthearted. So it might escalate or help de-escalate a conflict. Lots to consider with this response.

B) is a highly defensive answer and the most likely to elicit a defensive attack from your spouse or an abrupt backing off and disconnect. Neither of which is good for a relationship.

C) is the correct response if your goal is to have a happy, healthy relationship. This response is the most likely to immediately and completely diffuse a conflict. According to John Gottman, a world-renowned couple’s therapist and researcher, frequent defensiveness is one of the four indicators that a marriage is headed towards divorce. The antidote? You guessed it! Taking responsibility. Try it. The next time you feel defensive don’t just react. Genuinely take responsibility and then sit back and notice the immediate and pleasant effects it has on you, the other person, and your relationship.