Archive for: Our Happiness Blog

Think of your beloved grandmother. Or your dog, or your child. Someone you love with your whole heart. Imagine telling them repeatedly that they’re inadequate. That no matter how hard they try they’re not good enough. If you’re good at imagining you’re probably cringing now. It feels awful even thinking of treating someone we love so poorly! So why treat ourselves this way? Because that’s what we do every time we fall prey to perfectionism. When we set unattainable, unrealistic expectations and goals for ourselves we set ourselves up for repeated failure with the inevitable message of inadequacy.  Shame and guilt are not effective motivators for change and we know this when it comes to others but somehow forget it when it comes to us. Treat yourself the way you treat your loved ones. Model for them how you’d want them to treat themselves. Stop making perfectionism a badge of honor.

I’m a hurrier. I value efficiency and timeliness. But sometimes outside forces put a crimp in my ability to translate these values into practice, so instead of actually being efficient and on time I just stress about it. Maybe you’ve experienced this too – a new job with a tight schedule that forces you to rush around, or you’ve become a parent and are figuring out how to fit another person’s life into your own. Life can (and does) change, and sometimes the life we’ve moved into doesn’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done. That’s stressful, but it it’s only the tip of the iceberg.  There are significant secondary effects that hurrying can have on us and those around us. When I hurry I make less eye contact with the checkout clerk and smile less at my colleague when saying good morning. I’ll tend to zoom ahead instead of letting someone into my lane when I’m driving to work. In short, I’m not my best “me.” Appearing unrelaxed, unapproachable, and unhappy can affect other people’s happiness and most certainly affects how they interact with me. It’s a feedback loop of unhappiness.  Also, hurrying doesn’t always achieve what we want to achieve. A friend once did an experiment after getting another speeding ticket on his way to the beach. The next few times he went he drove the speed limit the whole way. Not only did it take only about 15 minutes more but the entire drive was relaxing and enjoyable. His weekend could start when he started the drive instead of three hours later when he got to his destination. Sometimes we need to hurry, but let’s face it fellow chronic hurriers – usually we don’t. So let’s practice not rushing. What’s the worst that can happen? We’re a little late for something and we learn to leave earlier next time. And the best that can happen? We and everyone around us feels more relaxed and happy. So hurry up and start slowing down!

I’ve written a few posts about making difficult times work for us but perhaps it’s even more meaningful coming from someone who has a few years on me. Rita Levi-Montalcini lived to be 103 and worked as a neurologist until shortly before her death. She earned several significant awards, among them the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her work with nerve growth factor. She was a Jewish woman in the world of science during WWII. Politics barred her from academia for almost a decade as soon as she got her medical degree. She escaped German occupation of Italy. She made her most amazing discovery in a home laboratory before she was allowed to re-enter the workforce. This woman knew struggle and hardship. Here is what she said about it in her older years: “Above all, don’t fear difficult moments. The best comes from them.” She has also said, “If I had not been discriminated against or had not suffered persecution, I would never have received the Nobel Prize.” Imagine if you could view all hard times as growth opportunities? There would be less negative anticipation, less fear, less regret and resentment. And more long-term happiness.

Again with the gratitude!  Because it works. It’s an antidote for so much of what we struggle with – anger, sadness, anxiety, self-pity, hopelessness, feeling overwhelmed, shame, embarrassment… It’s not that it shields us from ever feeling something difficult but it can immediately pull us out of a bad place when we’re stuck there. So here’s your challenge: once every day for the next week, use gratitude to combat a difficult emotion. Whether you feel annoyed at your roommate for not doing the dishes again, sad about dropping your crying toddler off at the new daycare, overwhelmed at the sheer volume of mess to clean up in your home – combat it with gratitude. She didn’t do the dishes last night but I’m so lucky that she loves baking cookies for everyone. I’m sad to be leaving as he’s bawling but I’m grateful he’s in safe and loving hands all day long. This mess feels too much for me but I’m fortunate to have a home to mess up and be able to afford so much stuff to mess it up with!  Often, that single thought of gratitude is enough to help you turn your mind from “this is too much” to “things aren’t so bad; actually, they’re pretty good.”  And if a single thought isn’t enough, go ahead and think a few more. Make a whole list. It won’t hurt anything.

The other day my toddler picked a flower and gave it to me. Fortunately it was from our garden and not someone else’s and as far as I know it wasn’t some prize-winning, million-dollar geranium.  So it wasn’t a “bad behavior” exactly, but in truth it was a stay-in-the-garden type flower and he wasn’t really supposed to pick it. But he gifted it to me so I was delighted.  It got me thinking – when else in my life had I seen only the unwanted behavior and not the well-intentioned origin of it?  I fear it’s probably a lot more often than I want to admit because people are often not able to explain themselves (pets, toddlers, drivers who cut in front of us). We’re usually aware of when we (ourselves) have a well-intentioned origin to a behavior someone else considers bad – like when we get caught speeding because we’re trying to get the ice cream to our homebound neighbor before it melts, or when we got yelled at for slipping the dog some table food because we thought it would make him happy but instead it made him sick.  Of course, not every unwanted behavior stems from a well-intentioned origin but keep your eyes peeled for the ones that do.  That slight shift in understanding will be the difference between an argument and a hug.

Think back to when you knew you were going to lose something or someone you loved.  Maybe your best friend was going to move away, or your vet told you your dog had only a few weeks to live. Maybe the sense of impending loss came when you picked up the seventh Harry Potter book to read the last chapter. Did you spend more time with that friend before they left, and appreciate them a bit more as you imagined not hanging out with them again? Did you hug your dog more than usual and murmur lots of “sweet boy”s? Did you savor every “expelliarmus?”

It’s common sense that when we anticipate the loss of something we love we feel more grateful for it.  But did you know that in the end we can actually feel happier? One study examined this phenomenon with college students journaling during their last six weeks of school. The participants who were encouraged to view the rest of their time as very short demonstrated more gratitude and were more motivated to fully engage in the rest of their college experience than students who were encouraged to view the last six weeks as a long stretch of time and those who were encouraged to journal about their daily activities. At the end of the study the “short time” students reported an increase in happiness and the others reported no significant change.

So anticipating the end of something you love is an effective way to boost your happiness. But – as faithful readers might guess – how you anticipate will play a crucial role.  Try to focus on imagining life without that special being or thing but not get swept away by anticipatory sadness or anxiety.  Loss is a part of life, and as with every other difficult thing it’s our job to use it to work for us.

In a previous post I addressed the somewhat controversial concept of believing that at any given moment everyone is doing their best.  I acknowledged that I sometimes have trouble embracing this mindset but that the more I practice it the more I find that it fits.  I think I recently figured out the final obstacle – for me – to fully believing it.

In seventh grade I threw the English class spelling bee.  I didn’t know which would be worse: advancing to the school bee and failing in front of everyone, or winning and being an even bigger nerd. Both were equally horrible outcomes in my book.  Anyway, this is my earliest memory of not trying my hardest at something “big” so it’s the example I always come back to when I stumble with believing everyone is doing their best. When I intentionally misspelled the word I clearly was not doing my best… at spelling. But I was doing my very best, with the resources I had at the time, to protect myself from the shame and embarrassment I was sure would come from moving on to the next stage of the bee.

Give it a shot. Assume everyone is doing their best, consider that you might not know what they’re trying at, and see if this extra empathic effort doesn’t make you feel good.

Do you ever find yourself intentionally expecting the worst? It’s something I discuss in session regularly because it’s a pretty popular form of protection against difficult feelings: expect the worst so if it happens you’re prepared for it, and if it doesn’t happen you’re pleasantly surprised. That makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, the reason this comes up in therapy so often is because it doesn’t work – in the long run, anyway. It might minimize your feelings of disappointment or devastation for that event, but it also makes you overall more anxious and depressed. Here’s why: if you practice negative anticipation it becomes a habit, and then it’s really easy to notice “bad” things and much harder to notice “good” things. On top of that, instead of interpreting something as neutral or good you’re more likely to interpret it as bad because you’ve trained your brain to go in that direction. Then fear or depression sets in because you’ve learned the world delivers a lot of bad stuff. Then you start to act in ways that actually cause more bad things to happen which reinforces your tendency to negatively anticipate. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and downward spiral. So stop waiting for the other shoe to drop and start looking for more reasons to be happy!

“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

– J.M. Barrie, 1902, The Little White Bird

J.M Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, wrote this in 1902. The book I read it in paraphrased it:  “Always be a little kinder than is necessary.” For some reason this quote resonated with me. Probably because it sounds so simple but can be so hard to do. But don’t worry, it doesn’t mean you’re a mean person.  Maybe just a little… self-focused in that moment. Who here has zoomed through the grocery store line without even making eye contact with the check-out clerk, so intent were you on rushing to pay, maybe bagging it up yourself, and dashing off with your cart so you could get dinner started, hurry-hurry-hurry?  Or maybe you’ve found yourself feeling that awkwardness that comes with not really knowing when is the appropriate moment to make eye contact with the stranger you’re about to pass, so you avoid eye contact altogether, whew-weirdness-averted? Or maybe your struggle feels more consuming, and you wonder if everyone is looking at you and judging you, or perhaps you fear that you’re not worth noticing at all? All of these render us really self-focused in the moment, which makes it hard to focus on being kind to others.  “Great,” you might be thinking.  “All I have to do is stop being in a hurry, or ever feeling weird or insecure, or thinking that others don’t like me.” For some, changing these ways, feelings, and thoughts is a long and familiar struggle. So start with a small step. Strive to be a little kinder than is necessary in one situation today.  And then tomorrow do one more.