How do we get along better with our fellow humans? One way is by asking ourselves, “From whereth cometh this person?”

I believe that if I want to be happy in this world and get along, it is in my best interest to understand a person’s context before I make any assumptions. In a few words I believe that understanding from whereth a person cometh allows me to understand the situation better and to react to it accordingly.  And we don’t seem to talk about this enough, let alone do it enough. Understanding a person’s context gives us the opportunity to understand why the person thinks and does what they do.

If I say to you my daughter told me she hated me and there were no context, you might think, “well that wasn’t very nice, what a brat.” If I told you my daughter told me she hated me, after I told her she had to do something she didn’t want to and that she was a teenager, you might think, “well maybe saying I hate you is harsh but I understand.” If I told you my daughter told me she hated me with a mischievous smile on her face, after I told her she had to do something she didn’t want to and she’s a teenager, you might think, “well she was joking around” and I understand and that would be the end of it. 

Context matters. Context gives you perspective and understanding and needless to say, understanding another person is really important. We don’t all think alike, as simplistic and obvious as that sounds I think we navigate through this world knowing we don’t all think alike but thinking that we do and should. But we don’t! When interacting with a person who thinks differently from you, do you ever stop and ask yourself, “why does this person think this way (from whereth cometh this person)?” Probably not. We don’t all think alike, so understanding a person’s context helps us understand the person and how they think and why they say and do what they do. This helps us navigate the world more effectively and harmoniously.

Starting today what can you do differently? Honestly I think the best answer to this question is to take a beat before you react to the other person. Taking a beat gives you the opportunity to respond instead of react. A good way to take a beat is to take a breath. Another way to take a beat is to ask yourself, “where is this person coming from, what does this person mean?”

Why does the word failure have a negative connotation? Is failure bad? Well duh you might say, “of course it is bad to fail.” Well I’m not so sure about that, actually I am sure. If anyone reading this knows how to walk, then they must have failed a few times, they must have fallen down and gotten up a few times while learning to walk. They didn’t stay down when they fell, they didn’t feel so bad that they gave up. I’d like to propose that not all failure is created equal.

Obviously operating on a person and killing them is a bad failure. Building a building that collapses is a bad failure. But these examples are the outliers. Within the range of your average failure I believe effortful failure can be good. Let me clarify.

First, let me clarify what I mean by effortful failure. If a person has tried as hard as they could, that’s effortful failure. Obviously just slogging by is not effortful failure, that’s laziness. When someone tries as hard as they can and fails, I believe that should be celebrated.

I believe that should be celebrated because it is important in order to grow and become a better person, to stretch yourself, to go out of your comfort zone, to try challenging things. When you stretch yourself, when you go out of your comfort zone you risk failing. But in my opinion it is a risk worth taking. If you are afraid of failure, if you learn failure is bad then you won’t go out of your comfort zone and it will be difficult to grow and get better.

The critical point here is learning from failure. Failure is information, information that tells you how to go forward and what to do differently. If, when you fail, you don’t use this information to do things differently going forward then failure is not bad, it’s a wasted opportunity.

Starting today what can you do differently? Reconceptualize failure as something that isn’t so terrible. Learn to be self-compassionate. Go out of your way to go out of your comfort zone. Remember a time you failed and survived.

I hate the term positive thinking! I know that is a harsh way to start off a blog posting, but it’s true. More than hating the term I hate the concept, as I understand it.

One of the first classes I teach when I teach about resilience is called “Resilience and Hunting the Good Stuff.” I consider this class to be a resilience boosting class, specifically I consider the ability to hunt for the good stuff a way to boost your resilience immune system. In this class I talk about resilience, the negativity bias and what I believe is the importance of offsetting the negativity bias by helping ourselves give as much air time, in our minds, to the positive as we do to the negative. I believe I stress the importance of feeling the whole range of feelings, the good, the bad and the ugly. However, I do believe it is important to be aware of our tendency to see more negative than positive and to try to pull our attention to the good in our lives.

For me, positive thinking is almost like toxic positivity, or worse yet magical thinking. In my class I talk about toxic positivity. I don’t believe that we can just think positive thoughts and happiness and resilience will ensue. That’s magical thinking and according to psychologist Jean Piaget, magical thinking should end by age 10.

Let me be clear I deeply believe that we should notice all the good that is around us as well as feel the hurt, sadness, stress, and pain of everyday living. The point of hunting the good stuff is making ourselves just as aware of all the good around us as we are of all the other stuff.

Starting today what can you do differently. Well the first thing is to be aware when you are upset or feeling bad. You can’t heal what you don’t feel. And feeling bad doesn’t go away by ignoring it. Then you can practice gratitude, you can make a practice of counting your blessings a few times a week. You can also practice mindfulness, you can take five minutes to be aware of your breathing and to slow it down. At the end of the day you decide where you want to rest your attention, I propose that you rest it on the good stuff in your life as much as the bad stuff.

I’ve been thinking a lot about words lately, as the saying goes, words matter, but then again do they really!

First, words matter because words are the way we connect to the world. What we say and how we say it matter because it’s the way we convey our thoughts and feelings, they are the way we make ourselves understood. Words are the way we let people know us. It’s the way we either build relationships or erode them. It’s the way we allow people to understand us and get close to us or not. According to Freud, “Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.” And what we say and how we say it matter because words can hurt.

However, do words really matter? I guess if I take all the words uttered by the people I care about seriously, then words matter. However do I really want to take their words seriously. When someone disagrees with me, do their words matter? Or better asked do their words matter enough to get upset with them. Their words matter, because the person matters to me, understanding them better matters, and their words help me do that, but because the person matters, maybe their words shouldn’t matter so much. Maybe when their words are not my words, instead of getting upset we should acknowledge them, not let them upset us and move on. Here’s where I sincerely believe words shouldn’t matter so much.

If at the end of the day our thoughts, which are made up of our words are just beliefs we make real, if our thoughts are just basically a string of words we’ve put together, then should words really matter so much? I guess the answer is, depends on who is saying the words and what words they are saying and how we choose to receive these words. Words matter because they can hurt, but words can only hurt if we choose to let them hurt us. Words matter, depending on who is saying them, how they are saying them, to whom they are saying them and how we choose to interpret those words. So maybe words matter, but not always.

Starting today what can you do differently? Well first you can start by being careful with your own words. Then you can learn to not take other peoples’ words too seriously. Then you can learn by not taking your own words, uttered to yourself, too seriously.

I just read a blog posting that started by asking, in the next 30 seconds name all the emotions you’ve been feeling over the last day. The posting then went on to say that according to a study of more than 7000 adults who were asked a similar question, they were only able to name 3 emotions on average. Guess which 3 emotions were named? Yep, happy, sad and angry, pretty basic, I’d say.

Hmmmm, where do I begin to address this! Emotions matter. How we feel matters, for better or for worse. And having a repertoire of only three emotions or believing you have a repertoire of only three emotions makes life very limited. Our emotions impact our decisions, our health, our relationships, whether we pursue our goals or not, our emotions impact every facet of our lives. Not being able to name more than three emotions is a big problem.

If you can’t name it you can’t tame it, much less process it. You might be feeling a certain way but if you don’t know what the emotion is called how do you recognize it much less deal with it. By processing emotions I mean naming it, feeling it and dealing with it (in a productive way). Processing emotions is important because theory goes if you don’t process your emotions they impact mental and physical health. I contend that being able to name and process emotions is important because otherwise these emotions (especially the negative ones) manifest themselves in counter productive behaviors.

Starting today what can you do differently to know your emotions. One simple way to become more familiar with what you are feeling is by learning the names of all the different emotions. If you go online you can find lists of emotions, both positive and negative ones – print that list and put it somewhere visible. Check in with yourself periodically, ask yourself how you are feeling, use the list to name the emotion. And last but not least acknowledge the uncomfortable emotions.

Why is it so important to have realistic expectations?

As challenging as they can be, having realistic expectations makes you happier, the operative word being realistic expectations. All too often I hear people say, “It’s better not to have any expectations, that way I won’t be disappointed.” I believe that’s an unrealistic statement, it’s near impossible to not have expectations, I’d even venture to say that if you think you don’t have expectations you are probably fooling yourself. Why is it so hard to have realistic expectations?

First off, what is reality, well that’s probably a whole book in and of itself! According to the Cambridge Dictionary reality is defined as, “the state of things as they are, rather than as they are imagined to be.” I believe it’s really hard to see a situation for what it is for many reasons.

One reason being there is something called a confirmation bias. The term confirmation bias was first coined by English psychologist Peter Wason and is defined as the tendency to favor information that confirms a person’s beliefs or values. When making a decision, forming an opinion or deciding on an action we tend to hone in on the information that supports the beliefs we already have rather than seeing the whole picture and taking note of information that might challenge what we believe. If we don’t challenge what we already believe how do we get a realistic read on what we are facing. A very simple example of confirmation bias is ignoring news that contradicts your beliefs like watching or listening to one news source.

Another reason it’s so hard to have realistic expectations is because as Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert says we aren’t very good at predicting how we will feel in the future. So if we don’t know what will make us happy or unhappy how can we have realistic expectations?

Starting today what can you do differently in order to have realistic expectations? Well first, learn to be in the present. I’m a big believer in learning to breath. I also think it is really important to question your beliefs – what can you control, how do things HAVE to be done, this SHOULD happen, are important beliefs to be aware of and question. Truth be told just by starting to question your expectations you probably are beginning to set realistic expectations.

I’ve never met a person who doesn’t want to be happy. So what is keeping us from being happy?

Actually the Declaration of Independence tells us what is keeping people from being happy. Most people focus on the happiness part of the pursuit of happiness. They seem to over look the pursuit part, as I see it this is a big problem. As I’ve said many times, contrary to what most people think, we aren’t entitled to be happy just because we think we are, or because we wake up in the morning or because … you name it. Happiness is really hard work.

Why don’t people work as hard to become happy as they do to become physically fit, learn something new or make more money? I think it is because many people have the misconception that happiness is a destination. The belief is, if I (fill this in with anything – marry, make more money, have fun) then I will be happy. Happiness is not a destination, it’s not Miami Beach. Happiness is more like Disneyland. You can visit it, and you can visit more and more often the harder you work at it. The irony here is that, in theory, working hard and achieving something tends to make us happy, except most people don’t know that, so they just feel sorry for themselves for having to work so hard (at something that should just happen). No one leaves this earth having lived happily ever after without having worked hard at it.

Starting today what can you do differently to work hard to make yourself happy. You can set goals, achievable, relevant ones. Ones you can break down into small steps, so that you can actively pursue them. You can join a group, a charity, a religious group or a political group. Being part of something bigger than yourself gives life meaning and it also makes you feel good. You can learn something new, preferably something that will challenge you. According to Michael Csikszentmihalyi the most productive state a person can enter is a state of flow, when the task at hand is challenging but not overly challenging. The bonus here is that learning something new also gives us a sense of achievement and according to Martin Seligman achievement is a pillar of happiness. You can learn some form of mindfulness meditation. Again learning something new tends to make people happy. And needless to say learning to be mindful, being in the present also tends to make us happy.

Starting today what will you choose to do differently?

Question – What does your mind do when you practice gratitude?

Answer – It scans your day.

Why is this important?

First, let me explain a little about questions. When you ask yourself a question the question sends your mind in search of an answer. When you ask yourself, “What am I grateful for today?” That question sends your mind scanning through your day looking for those things for which you are grateful. The question has the benefit of focusing your mind on something specific – for what you are grateful – the good parts of your day, your brain tends to only look at those aspects of your day.

Due to a variety of reasons, we tend to focus more on the negative than we do on the positive. Our brains naturally scan for all the bad things in our lives, we don’t even have to ask ourselves a question for this to happen. The act of scanning your day looking for what you are grateful allows you to reacquaint yourself with all of the good things that have happened during the day/week/month. Scanning helps you look through your day, the question that sets your mind scanning allows you to focus your mind on the good parts of your day/life/relationships/past. Habitual scanning for the good has the benefit of rewiring your brain to offset the natural tendency to focus on the negative. What you do with the results of the scan is your choice.

Starting today what can you do differently? In order to get the biggest bang for your buck when practicing gratitude scan your day for the smallest, most obscure and specific events for which to be grateful. Those events for which you find yourself saying, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” Those are the events you want to make a habit of scanning for. Make a habit of priming your children for the good by asking them about the good things of their day. This way you will teach them how to scan their days, during the day they will be more attuned to the good that happened.

Focusing on the good doesn’t come easy, we are a deficit oriented society. We are interested in bad news, we love to solve problems, we readily empathize with life’s difficulties. Anything negative calls our attention. The bad is like velcro – it just sticks to us, the good like teflon – it just rolls right off of us. There are many reasons for this phenomenon.

First there is something called the negativity bias. According to Paul Rozin and Edward Royzman we give greater weight to the negative than we do to the positive. We have better recall for the negative and the negative impacts us more than does the positive. Your boss tells you how well you did on the report you just presented, he was impressed with the content and found it very helpful. He asks, however, for the next time, that you summarize the findings better. What stays with you? The two compliments or the correction about the findings? For most people it is the correction. We give greater weight to the negative or what we perceive as negative than we do to the positive, the negative just calls to us and sticks.

Why is this the case? According to Evolutionary Psychology this is the case because focusing on the negative served a purpose. Primitive man would have not survived if he didn’t focus on the negative. The positive offers no survival information, the negative does. You ignore the positive, nothing happens. You ignore the negative, potentially you don’t live another day. Hence our focus on the negative.

Having said all of the above, we know that our attention is like a spotlight, we can choose to place it anywhere we want. It’s not easy, but it can be done. We can actively drag our attention to wherever we want to put it. We can do this in many ways. We can practice mindfulness. We can practice gratitude. We can change our questions. Or we can simply make a conscious effort to hunt the good stuff. Whichever method you choose attending to the good in our lives offers a slew of benefits.

If we assume most parents want their children to succeed in school and a growth mindset fosters academic success then I guess the question becomes how do we foster a growth mindset? According to Carol Dweck there are several ways to foster a growth mindset. You can teach your children how the brain works. You can praise your children for effort rather than intelligence. You can incorporate the word yet into your vocabulary. You can teach your children how to set goals. You can teach your children how to have self-control. 

Today I would like to talk about effective praise. There are two kinds of praise, effective praise and ineffective praise. What makes one effective and the other ineffective? If the point of praise is to promote self-esteem, reinforce good behavior and encourage children to succeed, then I would venture to say that the way most parents praise their children is ineffective – it doesn’t achieve the intended goal. Telling a child, “Good job, Champ,” doesn’t achieve any of the afore mentioned goals – it’s ineffective.

What is effective praise? Effective praise also known as process praise, as its name suggests, highlights what the child did in order to succeed. Effective praise doesn’t label, it doesn’t judge, it simply tells a child what you saw happened and how you feel about what happened. Let’s say your child does well on his/her math test. Instead of saying, “Wow, you’re amazing!” you can simply say, “Wow I bet you really studied hard, I’m so proud of you.” And you can add, “Tell me about what you did to make this grade?”

For many parents, this type of praise is not very satisfying, it doesn’t convey the joy and enthusiasm they feel in the face of a child’s success. However, if we are honest, praise is not for the parent to feel good, it’s for the child to feel good and to continue to succeed and what the research shows is that effective praise accomplishes this goal. Children, when praised effectively, feel a sense of pride and self-efficacy – they feel good about themselves. And at the end of the day when a child feels good about themselves they will most likely be academically successful.

The pursuit of happiness is a fundamental human right, the Declaration of Independence says so. The operative word here being pursuit. The Declaration of Independence doesn’t say you are guaranteed to be happy just because…, it says you are guaranteed the right to pursue happiness.

So what is happiness anyway? Before I tell you how happiness is defined, let me first tell you what it isn’t. It’s not marrying prince or princess charming, it isn’t having all the money in the world. Happiness isn’t a destination. You don’t achieve happiness as a permanent state. Happiness isn’t being in a good mood all the time and smiling all the time. It isn’t avoiding upsetting or negative feelings (actually it’s quite the opposite).

 
So how is happiness defined? According to Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky happiness is defined as a combination of feeling positive emotions and experiencing a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile. I’d say the positive emotions part is pretty self explanatory. So what gives our lives meaning, makes them good and worthwhile? Well, many things give our life meaning and value – organized religion, social support is a big one, service – as in doing for others, goal achieving, among other things. Let me give you an example. For the most part parents believe that children give their lives meaning and value. Children aren’t always a source of positive emotions (to put it mildly) but most parents unequivocally claim that, in the big picture, their children give their lives meaning and value and thus are a great source of happiness. 

The last part of Dr. Lyubomirsky’s definition is important because we all engage in activities that, at the moment might not bring us positive emotions, they might not make us happy or bring us joy, however when all is said and done, these activities bring us immense satisfaction and happiness. It is kind of counter intuitive to the idea of happiness and the whole notion of positive emotions as a source of happiness. However, if we are talking about real, lasting happiness this idea is very important. Think about it, when you work really hard on a project that turns out well, you might not feel happy while you are working hard, but when it’s over you feel immense happiness and that happiness lasts for awhile. Same goes for when you exercise, try something new or do anything that challenges you. If being happy is so important, then I believe it is just as important to be aware that the activities that give our lives meaning and value and happiness might not be the same (by a long shot) as the ones that give us immediate positive emotions.

Awareness of our self-talk is a key resilience skill. Being aware of what we are telling ourselves when we experience difficulty offers us the opportunity to take the unproductive, unrealistic, inaccurate thoughts that are causing us to feel and behave in self-defeating ways and challenge them. Like someone standing up to a bully, when we challenge our thoughts that are destructive, we can stop the damage they inflict on our well-being and happiness.

Unfortunately most of us are sorely unaware of what we are telling ourselves. If we aren’t aware of what we are saying to ourselves, it’s hard to change our thoughts. When this happens, when we can’t hear our self-talk, we can at least try to be aware of the cognitive distortions we are using. While cognitive distortions can be automatic, we can usually listen for certain words we are using – shoulds, terrible, always, never, etc, which signal a cognitive distortion. Once we notice these words we can begin to challenge the thoughts which encase these distortions. 

There are many ways to challenge cognitive distortions, the goal of challenging our cognitive distortions is to find a more realistic, balanced way to explain to ourselves why something happened. It’s like being the judge of your own thoughts – are these thoughts facts or opinions. If our thoughts are just beliefs that we make real then they are opinions not facts, therefore we can replace one belief for another one. We can look for a more accurate, balanced belief to replace it with. When we challenge our cognitive distortions we are making our thinking more accurate. When we think more accurately we tend to feel less bad. Please note – we are not going for thinking positively, we are going for thinking more accurately and feeling less bad. This is a very important distinction, the objective is a more balanced and helpful way of thinking. It’s important to emphasize that we will not eliminate all difficult emotions when we challenge our cognitive distortions, that’s not what well-being is about.

Again, what we are going for when we challenge our thoughts is accurate, realistic thinking, the kind of thinking that is in your own best interest. We are NOT looking to eliminate negative feelings. Knowing how to cope with the whole spectrum of feelings is part of being resilient. We are looking to eliminate inaccurate, unrealistic negative feelings. 

I believe one of the most important resilience skills is an awareness of our thoughts. Remember, in order to function in this world we need to make sense of it (and right now that’s no easy task). We make sense of it by explaining to ourselves why things happen. The more mentally flexible we are, the more accurate we can be in our explanations as to why a given situation took place. The more accurate we are in our explanations the more resilient we will be.  Most of us have consistent ways of explaining why something happened, we have patterns of explanations. Within those patterns of explanations we all use what we call Cognitive Distortions or Irrational Beliefs. 

Cognitive distortions are thoughts that cause people to see reality inaccurately. They are beliefs that are irrational and inaccurate and are usually associated with negative feelings. We all have cognitive distortions and we tend to use the same distortions repeatedly. The thing about these errors in thinking is they happen automatically, we don’t intentionally think inaccurately, but we do. And the thing about cognitive distortions is that we feel bad when we think distortedly. When we perceive an event distortedly or irrationally we are negatively impacting our well-being. Remember our thoughts drive our feelings and behavior. By thinking distortedly we are making ourselves feel worse than need be.

So for example, in the face of an upset, I can say to myself “Why am I always (over generalization) reacting this way?! I shouldn’t (should statements) feel this way, this is just terrible (catastrophizing.)” or I can say to myself, “Why am I reacting this way! I really wish I didn’t feel this way, but I do. I know it will pass soon.” The content of what I am saying to myself is very different in each case and will have a different effect on my subsequent feelings and behavior. Always, shouldn’t and terrible are cognitive distortions. If we can hear what we say to ourselves in our efforts to make sense of the world, especially the cognitive distortions we use, we can harness that ability in order to be more accurate and flexible in service of reframing our thoughts or challenging our beliefs

Remember, resilience is not only the ability to overcome adversity, it’s the ability to accept what is beyond our control and make the best happen. There really isn’t much we can do about what life sends our way, but there is a whole lot we can do about how we deal with it. 

During difficult times I can’t stress enough the importance of social support. I know, when social support is most elusive, it can be what we most crave. Social support comes in many forms. Remember social support is not defined by the quantity of people in our lives nor the physical presence of the person. Social support is defined by the quality of our relationships. You don’t have to be face to face with a person to have a quality relationship. And research is really clear, social support is correlated to well-being. In case you doubt the importance of social support this is a video on a very well known longitudinal study called the Harvard Study, it explains the importance of social support.

In case you still continue to doubt the importance of social support, this is a wonderful podcast (done at the beginning of the pandemic) on the research on social support and how to beat the sense of loneliness during these times. Dr. Laurie Santos is a Yale professor. In 2018 she offered Yale’s most popular class entitled Psychology and the Good Life.

So, in an effort to make the best happen, to help yourself be more resilient, difficult times can be an opportunity to build community, reach out to people. Call people, skype, zoom, facetime, conference call whatever you choose but reach out. Keep in contact. Be creative about reaching out and being in contact. And be flexible about your expectations.

I have spent countless hours teaching about the importance of a growth mindset  and how to foster it. At the beginning of the pandemic I wrote about the importance of self-compassion.  I just love the idea of self-compassion. As Kristin Neff says we are harder on ourselves than we are on anyone else. I believe we all could use a little more self-compassion nowadays. So how does a growth mindset and self-compassion relate? Well, I just read this article on how to silence your inner critic and learned how they relate.

The voice of our inner critic can be so loud that it makes it hard to hear our voice of self-compassion. Besides we really aren’t as well versed in self-compassion as we are in self criticizing and now is NOT the time to be criticizing ourselves (much less anyone else). One of the motivators for self criticism is when we feel we aren’t or haven’t been good enough – we fell short of a standard we held for ourselves. We yelled at the kids, didn’t help with schoolwork, had to cancel something, the list can be endless. During this difficult time, it’s very easy to not feel good enough.

I find the idea of holding ourselves and our loved ones to the standard of goodish as opposed to good a wonderful idea! Goodish gives us the room to grow, to learn, to improve, it rolls a growth mindset and self-compassion into one idea and makes us more resilient. Goodish implies we are on a learning curve, kind of like when we use yet in a growth mindset conversation. To me goodish means we have the desire to be good and the self-acceptance to acknowledge and allow that stuff can happen along the way. Goodish implies tolerance for being human, plus the hope that we will improve and become a better person. When we expect ourselves to be goodish we hold ourselves to a high standard knowing that there is always room to grow.

So…what does the world of goodish look like? Well, let’s say you’re on a business call (zoom, skype, facetime, you pick it) and despite the fact that you threatened your kids with their lives, your son comes running in yelling mommy, mommy. And of course you get very upset. Well that reaction would be from your old world of good. In your new world of goodish your reaction is different. Here are a few options:

If you are using self-compassion you could say to yourself, “Well that didn’t go the way I wanted it to go! I wish it had gone as I had expected it to go. The times are difficult, I did the best I could, I bet most parents have a story to tell about their kids disturbing their calls.” You might take a few breaths, treat yourself to something special (self-compassion) and share the story with a friend (social support).

You could take a moment to access your thoughts. Are you saying to yourself, “Well, that was awful, I’m so embarrassed. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for the kids to ever listen.” You could then challenge your thoughts. You could ask yourself, “Am I thinking in all or nothing terms (awful). Am I using “exaggerating” words, such as never, always, forever, need should, or must (ever listen).” You could try replacing “awful” with something like “not how I wanted it” and you could replace “hard for the kids to ever listen” with “they didn’t listen this time.” 

Please note that in the examples you are using your ability to be flexible. Also please note we are looking for goodish, nothing more. We are looking to use the resilience skills that best work for you to go from miserable to less miserable. We aren’t looking to go from miserable to elation. Going from miserable to less miserable allows you to feel good enough to continue going, which is what will allow you to make sustainable change.

Welcome to the new world of goodish!

I believe one of the most important resilience skills is an awareness of our thoughts. Contrary to what most people think, in the face of difficulty, or any event for that matter, it is our thoughts not the event that cause us to feel and react.  What we tell ourselves will either perpetuate adversity or stymie it. Our thoughts are our explanation as to why something happened. Our thoughts are our way of making sense of life, they are our way of understanding why X event took place.  In order to effectively deal with life we must understand why things happen.  For example, you have a fight with your best friend. How upset you get and what you subsequently do is based on what you tell yourself about that fight, how you make sense of it. Do you say to yourself, “Every close relationship has its ups and downs, I’ll just give it time. I think we were both in bad moods. I’ll call Jane tomorrow.” Or do you say, “Well there goes that relationship, she’ll never want to talk to me again and I don’t really want to talk to her. She is always getting mad. I’m never going to call her again.”  If you explain the incident to yourself by saying every close relationship has its ups and downs as opposed to she is always getting mad and we’ll never talk to each other (both viable explanations) the subsequent behavior is very different. The results of these two different ways of thinking prompts two very different outcomes. Our explanations help us or hinder us. Our thoughts either allow us to deal effectively and go forward or not. 

Our explanations of an event are based on a multitude of factors. However, simply put, our thoughts are just beliefs that we make real. If this weren’t the case then we would all hold the same beliefs and behave in the same way. If this weren’t the case we would all have the same explanation for the same event. But we don’t. Furthermore, more often than not, we usually aren’t aware of our explanations of events. For many, a large portion of their explanations reside in the realm of the unconscious. And therein lies the challenge to resilience. The more aware we are of what we say to ourselves in the face of adversity, the easier it is to be resilient. If we can hear our thoughts then we can make ourselves more resilient. 

The beauty of this idea is, much like life, you can’t control the event however, you CAN control the thoughts that arise as a result of the event. So, if you are aware of what you are saying to yourself, let’s say for example during this difficult time, and what you are saying is not conducive to resilience then you can challenge your thoughts to help yourself become more resilient. This is not always an easy task, but it is one well worth the while. 

In summary, when you find yourself feeling off, bothered, or just plain upset, search for your thoughts. Ask yourself, “What am I saying to myself?” Once you become aware of what you are saying to yourself, take those thoughts, one by one and challenge them. Ask yourself, “Are these thoughts accurate, would a jury of 12 of my peers say the same things, would my best friend say this?” Use any technique that works for you to break up the counterproductive thoughts. Remember our thoughts are just beliefs we make real. You can replace one thought for another one. Remember, you are not going to change radically, you are not going from upset to elated, you are going to go from upset to a little less upset. 

Last week I wrote about character strengths and how they make us resilient. This week I’ve been thinking about the character strength of gratitude. I always love seeing gratitude in action, it warms my heart. 

So what is gratitude? Gratitude is the action of noticing and acknowledging the good in one’s life. Gratitude is the act of affirming the good things in your life that come from outside yourself. Gratitude is the ability to notice and relish little pleasures. It’s the recognition that you have been the recipient of a benefit, of something good. Gratitude is not only the action of giving thanks, there’s so much more to gratitude than saying thank you.

There are two types of gratitude – dispositional gratitude and state gratitude. For dispositionally grateful people gratitude comes naturally, it is a stable characteristic of their personality. An attitude of gratitude comes naturally to a dispositionally grateful person, it’s the way they interface with the world. Dispositionally grateful people find ways to be grateful for the ordinary experiences of daily living.  For other people, gratitude is experienced as a state. Something happens and they feel grateful. In this case gratitude isn’t a stable characteristic of their personality, it’s induced by an event. Either way, research is very clear, being grateful increases happiness and well-being. And the beauty of gratitude is that it is a learnable skill. 

Practicing gratitude has many benefits. One benefit is that it allows us to be in the present. When we are grateful we are aware of the good that is happening to us in the moment. Also gratitude blocks negative emotions, actually it pulls our attention away from the negative. It’s very difficult to express gratitude and experience a negative emotion at the same time. Gratitude tends to cancel out negative emotions. Also, gratitude is a social emotion, it strengthens our relationships.  When we feel gratitude we are  acknowledging the other people in our lives. Gratitude makes us aware of other people and their kindness. Also gratitude makes us more likable, gratitude makes us nicer to the people around us.

According to Dr. Robert Emmons, one of the world’s leading researchers in gratitude, practicing gratitude during difficult times is essential. It might be harder to practice gratitude during hardship, however, the benefits make the effort well worth your while. Remember, gratitude increases happiness and well-being. According to research practicing gratitude helps us cope with stress more effectively and regulate negative emotions. 

So, what are you grateful for? I’ll go first. I’m grateful for many things during this difficult time. First and foremost, I’m grateful for my family and friends, I’m grateful for my health, I’m grateful for Instacart, I’m grateful for so many things both big and small. What about you?

This week I’d like to talk about character strengths. First, I want to remind you that another variable that contributes to our resilience is a sense of self-efficacy. That belief that I can do what I want to do because I know how to get it done. When we feel self-efficacious we feel we can master our environment, we are confident in our ability to get things done. This feeling of self-efficacy tends to make us more resilient.

So our character strengths contribute significantly to a sense of high self-efficacy.  According to positive psychology we all have 24 character strengths in varying degrees, however, we tend to commerce in anywhere between 5 to 8 strengths. These strengths are called our signature strengths. They are like our thumbprint,  they identify us as who we are. If you were to ask someone who knows you well to paint a verbal picture of you, they would talk about your signature strengths. Our signature strengths have a few identifying qualities. First they come naturally to us, second they energize us and third when used they enable us to be at our best. When we use our signature strengths we tend to do things really well. 

When we use our signature character strengths to help us do what we want to do, they help us do it really well. In other words when we deploy our signature strengths, because they energize us and enable us to be at our best, we tend to me more self-efficacious, thus we tend to be more resilient. Unfortunately most of us are more familiar with our weaknesses than we are with our character strengths, let alone our signature strengths. I would like to argue that now is the time to become very familiar with our character strengths and those of our family. Knowing what your signature strengths are allows you to use them intentionally and frequently. I know most people are busier now than before, but finding out what your and your family’s strengths are is a great family activity. It’s also a very nice topic of conversation. And most importantly it will help you to be resilient.

We are seeing people at their best during this time. When we bear witness to awesome acts, we are witnessing character strengths in action. I’ve seen love, kindness, perseverance, leadership, bravery, creativity to name just a few. What character strengths are you using to get you though this difficult time?

Remember, resilience is the ability to overcome adversity. It’s also the ability to accept what is beyond our control and work around it. There really isn’t much we can do about what life has sent our way, but there is a WHOLE lot we can do about how we choose to deal with it.  

Remember when we talk about resilience and what makes us resilient, the ability to be mentally agile makes us resilient. The ability to see multiple options in order to solve problems makes us very resilient.  When you face a difficult situation, when you need to solve a problem, the ability to be flexible makes solving the problem less difficult. You can choose to hold tight to how you usually do things (even if it’s not possible at the moment) or you can be flexible and do what is in your best interest – solve the problem as best as you can, for the time being.  These are not normal circumstances and there is not much you can do about that, but you surely can choose to do something that’s in your best interest and good for your well-being.

So I have two proposals during this difficult time. #1 do things differently. Be flexible when you can. Now is a time to think about what is in your best interest and that of your family and decide accordingly. If you can continue to do things the way you have been, great! However, when you can’t and you have the option I encourage you to actively choose to do things differently. Remember flexibility makes us more resilient. It’s good for the brain. And it usually makes us feel good to be flexible.  

Proposal #2 when you can, make good happen. On those days that you feel up to it, I’m proposing that you make lemonade out of lemons. I’m not suggesting, by any means, to deny the feelings of confusion, sadness and anxiety we all are experiencing in the face of these uncertain times. What I am suggesting is that a byproduct of doing things differently can be making the good happen. When actively choosing to do things differently, think about how you can make the good happen and go for it. Think about what you want to achieve and ALL the ways you can go about achieving it. And pick the way that will make your life better (for the time being, at least). Remember achieving your goals feels good. Make good happen every chance you can. 

So if you need to do exercise and don’t enjoy nature, take a walk outside. If you like routines but find it difficult to stick to one because of the circumstances try to be more spontaneous. If you don’t like or have family traditions or rituals, start making family rituals.  Do things differently. I guess in a way I’m advocating for upside down day. And above all hunt the good. Honestly, along the road of doing things differently you will most likely make good happen, I encourage you to acknowledge that good and celebrate it.

One last thing, once this pandemic is over no one is saying that what you do differently today will be the new normal. All I’m saying is make good happen now, by doing things differently during this difficult time.  This pandemic will be over sooner or later and we will all look back and say…? 

During this difficult time, with so many people offering advice about what to do and not to do with the kids and how to do it, plus all the other demands the idea of being self-compassionate seems appropriate.  There is no template for how to deal with what is happening now, I’d venture to assert most people are just trying to do the best they can.

According to Kristin Neff, the world’s leading expert on self-compassion, on the best of days we tend not to be very nice to ourselves. Actually, she says, we tend to be nicer to people we don’t like, than we are to ourselves. This is worrisome! Now more than ever it’s time to try to do things differently. It’s time to cut ourselves some slack, well actually, more than cut ourselves some slack, it’s time to be very, very kind to ourselves. 

Self-compassion involves responding to ourselves when we have a difficult time, fail, or notice something we don’t like about ourself in the same supportive and understanding way we would to a friend. Easy, right! Not really, when we don’t live up to our own standards, when we feel we have fallen short, we tend to beat ourselves up. This is probably not the best time to be beating ourselves up. Lately, I’ve heard a lot of talk about how important it is to be kind to others, I believe it’s just as important to be kind to yourselves!

So how do we do this? Well, it’s easier said than done, so be kind to yourselves in your efforts to be kinder to yourselves. There are many resources out there to teach yourself self-compassion. The Greater Good Science Center has a lot of information on how to build self-compassion for parents. The Center for Mindful Self-Compassion also has a lot of resources and information on how to learn self-compassion.