A good friend asked me for advice today on how to deal with negative feelings, and it made me realize something. With all the reading I’ve done, all the blog posts I’ve written, I’m not sure I have the answers. … Continue reading
One of my most pivotal moments of 2014 was on June 2010, just before 1 pm. I was sprawled in the middle of the street in Toronto, scraped up, bike by my side, arm broken.
I did some life experiments in 2014 – in optimism and vulnerability – but this was an uninvited experiment in acceptance. Could I take my broken arm for granted and go from there? Or would I repeatedly replay the scene and curse the streetcar tracks that brought my bike to the ground?
Well, let’s just say my 2015 New Year’s resolution is “practice acceptance” for a reason.
The more I thought about acceptance during my month of invalidity, the more it seemed key to happiness. The more I think about it now, the more connections I see between non-acceptance and many of my challenges in life.
I am who I am.
I am what I am.
I am where I am.
I did what I did.
I can do what I can do.
I like what I like.
I feel what I feel.
One of the bits of self-insight I gained in 2014 was how much of a workaholic I am. Every minute must be productive; trips to the grocery store feel like a waste of time; sleeping to heal your broken arm is overrated (boy, was I wrong about that).
At the very root of it, if I dig down all the way and sift through things, I believe I feel this way because of a lack of self-confidence. Who I am today isn’t enough. I haven’t achieved what I see as my potential. I have to always be moving toward the person I want to be. In essence, I’m not accepting who I am today.
It is what it is.
It was what it was.
It will be what it will be.
It takes as long as it takes.
It certainly does take as long as it takes – almost 7 months later, my once-broken arm still needs stretching to recover full mobility. I’m okay with that, but the hassles of life still grate on my mood more than they should. Too-hot weather, long lines, slow Internet, and unfulfilled expectations bring me down. And worrying about the future – my career, my health, and whether my favorite Survivor contestant will win – is just another form of non-acceptance. Que sera sera.
He is who he is.
She is who she is.
They are who they are.
I’ve always been someone with a strong sense of morality and justice, which is another way of saying I have lots of ideas about how things should be done. When people do things “wrong,” I itch to tell them (or someone else). But I want to learn to be more understanding and empathic, particularly for the people I care about. I want to love them as they are, because they are wonderful.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think this advice is for everyone. Some people need a bit more righteous indignation and dissatisfaction to get things going; for them, their acceptance may have reached the level of passivity. But not for me. My pendulum has swung in the other direction, and what I need is a hefty dose of acceptance to balance out my tendencies to resist, regret, and judge.
In some meditations, you learn to label your thoughts as “thinking” or “feeling,” which is supposed to create some distance from them. If you can be a third-party observer to what’s going on in your head, you don’t get so caught up in it. I’m hoping the same thing works for acceptance. My resolution is to be aware of the times when I’m not accepting, and soothe myself with the balm of the trivially-true-but-so-profound statements above. Is this awareness and reframing enough to make a difference to the way I feel? I’m not sure yet, but it will be a great experiment.
I’ve known for awhile that I’m a perfectionist, but this summer was the time when my perfectionism and I finally had a standoff.
Perfectionism: I think it’s a great idea to feel stressed, pressured, and overwhelmed all the time. K?
Me: Uh, wait, no, but…
Perfectionism: Also, seriously, you’ve been on this planet for 25 years and you’ve yet to achieve anything extraordinary. Aren’t you paying attention to what I’m saying?
And so on. We wrestled for awhile. We’re still wrestling. And as the summer draws to a close, I decided to sit down and hash out all the things we’ve been arguing over. So here they are – the rules that the mean voice in my head keeps trying to enforce, and the thoughts I want to cultivate.
Perfectionism: Don’t waste time.
Me: Life takes time. Time is only wasted if I’m waiting for it to be over.
Perfectionism: I wish things were different.
Me: Life is a game of “Yes, and…”[1]
Perfectionism: I need to plan in order to control the future.
Me: I’m curious what will happen today and I know I can handle it.
Perfectionism: Must. Be. Serious.
Me: What would kitty do?[2]
Perfectionism: This is such a big deal.
Me: Will this matter in a year?
Perfectionism: I have to be careful.
Me: Life’s great dare is: Am I all in?[3]
Perfectionism: What will the future look like?
Me: What does the present feel like?
Perfectionism: I have to be maximally productive.
Me: I want to explore my whole self.
Perfectionism: I must get everything done.
Me: I can only do my best.
Perfectionism: I have to accomplish something extraordinary.
Me: I want to be happy and serene.
My hope is that articulating these in words will become a useful tool in my day-to-day life. I was doing a chore the other day, wishing for it to be over, when I thought, “Life takes time. Time is only wasted if I’m waiting for it to be over.” Perfectionism will still try to do battle with me, but at least I have some weapons in my arsenal now.
[1] The organizer of the Toronto Happy Healthy Women meetup, Natalie Colalillo, came up with this idea at an improv comedy workshop. Improv comedy requires a “yes, and” approach – you take whatever the other performers give you and run with it, rather than trying to contradict them or go in a different direction. Life is like this, too – you have to accept what happens to you before you can move on and have positive experiences.
[2] In other words, be silly! Cats and cat videos are a reminder for me to keep things fun, silly, and lighthearted.
[3] This is from Brené Brown, and the full quote is: “Vulnerability is life’s great dare. It is life asking, ‘are you all in?’” Living wholeheartedly means not holding back.
Photo by Flickr user Digitalnative
Some of it has to do with how we execute a habit – getting support from friends, giving ourselves breaks when we need them, and building on momentum. But some of it happens way before that: when we feel compelled to form a habit in the first place.
In The How of Happiness, psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky offers a test to help determine which happiness habits are best for you. For optimum fit, a habit should have these characteristics:
Ideally, a habit shouldn’t have these characteristics:
In the end, Lyubomirsky explains, these five aspects are largely measuring something called “self-determined motivation,” a drive to achieve goals based on our genuine interests and values.
“Research suggests that if you have this kind of motivation . . . you will continue to put effort into the endeavor and be ultimately more likely to succeed. In other words, where there is a good fit, you will try harder and feel right about what you’re doing,” she writes.
Not all goals will have all these characteristics, and that’s okay. In fact, we can reframe goals so they check more of the right boxes. I might be driven by guilt to avoid sugar and carbs, but I should strive to focus on being creative and challenging myself to come up with tasty treats (enjoyability). Your boss may force you to take a training course in marketing, but you can focus on how the new skills will be valuable for your career.
How do your goals stack up?
Photo by Flickr user .melanie
This is day 31 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the questions “What does it mean to be courageous and “show up”?,” “What does it mean to be authentic?” and “How can you play, laugh, sing, and dance more?” More info here.
I never thought I’d be the one writing about “fluffy,” “sentimental” stuff like vulnerability, acceptance, authenticity, and worthiness. But here I am, on day 31 of (whoops) #30daysofvulnerability, and that’s all that’s on my mind.
If you look back at my writing from college, I’m talking about productivity and rationality and success. I even had a blog once called Joie d’Achieve (that should have been a clue).
Turns out that everything works until it doesn’t work. Being over-focused on achievement worked for me (sort of) for 25 years. But it’s not working anymore.
It makes a lot of sense to me now why self-improvement content is so personal. Gretchen Rubin discovered this when she asked readers what their personal commandments were, and got a ton of contradictory answers: Do more. Do less. Say yes. Say no. Let go. Hold on.
It’s like a pendulum – I’ve been swinging so far to the side of productivity and achievement that I’ve swung all the way to the top and the pendulum is upside down, and I have all the stability of an upside-down pendulum. What I need now isn’t what I needed then – or at least, not what I thought I needed. Maybe if I had encountered these ideas earlier, I wouldn’t be so unbalanced now. But I doubt I would have listened.
What I learned is the value of being open-minded. Today, I’ve read books that I wouldn’t have touched four years ago. I’ve entertained ideas and concepts and exercises that I would have seen as silly, irrational, or weak. But guess what? It works now. It’ll work until it doesn’t work.
So I’m here on day 31 to tell you about my new three goals. I wrote about how productivity is not a useful happiness proxy, at least not for me. Maybe I’ll fare better with these:
Courage, not success. Focusing on success often means I’m hesitant to try new things and get discouraged in the face of discomfort and stress. Courage means attempting and persisting even when things are hard. Even if I don’t get every single thing on my to-do list done with the patience and peace of a Buddhist, I can still decide to persevere and stay engaged and not give up. I love how Brené Brown says that vulnerability is life’s great dare, asking if you’re all in. I so want to be all in, living with my whole heart, not holding back.
Authenticity, not perfection. Who knew? Turns out I’m not perfect. Or the smartest. Or the best. I want to find out who I am besides an intelligent, productive person. I want to learn about and value my other traits, like being kind and good and curious. I want to listen to my feelings (God, I never thought I’d write this) and not be constantly telling myself how I “should” feel.
Play, not productivity. For a long time, I had this feeling that people who acted silly were dumb, unintelligent. Turns out silly people are very, very smart. I want to smile enough that no one on the street can joke that I dropped my smile (not funny, people!). I want to laugh enough so I get wrinkles and don’t care. I want to play and do nothing and take breaks and cut myself some slack.
So there you have it. None of this is going to be easy, because I still haven’t kicked out the little gremlin inside of me that’s constantly jumping up and down shouting, “Work! Work! Work!” He’s such a jerk, I should totally evict him, but we’re good friends and I’m not quite sure where I’d be without him. I’m not even sure I’m ready to get friendly with a flowery, emotional, Zen fairy, but I know she’s a lot nicer and she won’t call me names. And if she makes me happier, that’s all I’m asking for.
Photo by Flickr user Sarah Ross photography
This is day 28 of #30DaysofVulnerability: “Make a “joy and meaning” list: List the ingredients that you need in your life to feel like things are going well, and compare it to your to-do list.” More info here.
One of the little tips in Brené Brown’s The Gift’s of Imperfection caught my eye:
“One of the best things that we’ve ever done in our family is making the ‘ingredients for joy and meaning’ list. I encourage you to sit down and make a list of the specific conditions that are in place when everything feels good in your life. Then check that list against your to-do list and your to-accomplish list. It might surprise you,” she writes.
Okay, okay, I get the idea. We have to focus on the essentials. But it didn’t hit home until one evening when I was stressing about my to-do list and forced myself to follow her suggestion:
…you get the idea.
You may find related items on your lists – for example, “go to gym class three times a week” and “health.” Health is my real goal, so I need to cut myself some slack when I miss a class (which hasn’t even happened, except when my arm was broken). All my work-related to-do’s should be in service of “a career I love,” not the need to be perfect or hyper-efficient or inhumanely productive. Just because I don’t reply to one of my dad’s emails or say something when I’m hangry that I later regret doesn’t make me a bad daughter or a bad girlfriend.
These lists remind me of Shawn Achor’s concept of meaning markers, the symbolic goalposts in life that guide our actions. Sometimes, we forget about our real meaning markers and get distracted by “hijackers,” false sources of meaning that end up making us frustrated and unhappy.
In other words, most of our to-do lists have been “hijacked” – and if we want our sanity back, we need to find our way to what’s really meaningful.
Photo by Flickr user atomicity
This is day 28 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question “Why should accomplishment not be your main priority?” More info here.
Ever since I was 7 years old, I thought productivity was a magical thing. I had just started playing violin, and I made a nice little chart with dates that I taped on my wall. Every day when I practiced for 20 minutes, I put a little check mark in the appropriate box.
Some nights, lying in bed, I would jolt awake realizing that I hadn’t practiced, and hop out of bed to put in my 20 minutes in my pajamas. Apparently my 7-year-old self hadn’t read up on the science of sleep yet.
These days, I still act like productivity is a magical thing – and by “magical thing,” I mean a proxy for happiness.
You can’t wake up and try to be happy, so most of us wake up and try to be something else. I try to be productive; Fred tries to achieve freedom; other people probably try to be good parents, altruistic, or healthy.
I suspect productivity is one of the most common happiness proxies. As Shawn Achor explains in The Happiness Advantage, “Most individuals follow a formula that has been subtly or not so subtly taught to them by their schools, their company, their parents, or society. That is: if you work hard, you will become successful, and once you become successful, then you’ll be happy.” He spends the rest of the book explaining why this formula is “broken,” and it’s actually happiness that leads to success.
But if science isn’t enough to dethrone productivity, we can just look at our own lives. Lately, I’ve been hyper-aware of the negative consequences of deifying productivity: I begrudge a weekday trip to the grocery store because I “should” be working; I get irritated at Fred because he’s not getting out the door fast enough, wasting time; I ignore stress and persist, which makes my stress worse.
The problem with productivity as a happiness proxy is that – at least as I conceptualize is – it’s not a trait but an action. When I’m working, I’m (usually) productive; when I stop working, I cease being productive and start itching to be productive again. That’s probably one of the reasons why people become workaholics: because productivity is their self-worth and their supposed path to happiness, so being at home makes them feel lost and frivolous.
A workable happiness proxy should be some kind of trait that we have all the time, or at least more of the time. Productivity is hard (not impossible) to apply to leisure time, and to do so you have to fight the cultural stigmas against play, self-indulgence, and doing nothing. Goals like being authentic, brave, or grateful might be easier to apply.
It’s not enough to say, “Authenticity is my new goal” and be cured. As Gretchen Rubin points out, we all have “True Rules” for behavior, or rules of thumb that we unconsciously follow. Mine include “If you have free time, work”; “To-do’s must be finished, no matter what”; and “TV is a waste of time.” We have habitual emotional patterns that won’t disappear with the snap of a magician’s fingers. The only way to change our happiness proxy is to put in the hard, introspective, emotional, honest work – but remember to cut ourselves some slack along the way. We’re not productivity monsters, after all.
Photo by Flickr user mikerastiello
This is a weekly series on the latest happiness research. Learn and be merry!
Danish DNA – Research out of the University of Warwick found that the closer a nation’s DNA is to Denmark’s (the happiest country), the happier it is.
Don’t put off happiness – Research published in the Journal of Happiness Studies found that well-being and life satisfaction improved at retirement, dipped a few years later, and stabilized around age 70. In the end, retirement doesn’t make you much happier than before.
Sing along – Research by Spotify and the University of Groningen explored the relationship between songs and emotions, finding that “Birthday” by Katy Perry and “Best Day of My Life” by American Authors produce happiness.
Glass two-thirds full – Research by PsychTests found that people who are happiest, most satisfied with relationships, most resilient to stress, and subjectively healthiest aren’t extreme optimists. Instead, on a scale of 1-100, they rank around 63-68 on optimism.
Move to Louisiana – Research out of Harvard and the Vancouver School identified the happiest cities in America. The top five are all in Louisiana – Lafayette, Houma, Shreveport-Bossier City, Baton Rouge, and Alexandria – and New York City is the unhappiest. In general, growing and metropolitan areas tend to be unhappier.
Surprise me – A survey of 2,000 Brits by DoubleTree suggested that little surprises are what make us happiest. 82 percent of people said the best things in life are unexpected, and their top five happy moments included finding money you forgot about, the sun shining, getting an unexpected discount at the cash register, getting something for free, and climbing into bed with fresh sheets.
Control yourself, man! – Research in the Journal of Personality suggests that people with more self-control are happier.
Mixing business and pleasure – A LinkedIn study found that 46 percent of professionals believe work friendships are important to their happiness. This is particularly true of millennials, 67% of whom would share things like salary, relationships, and family issues with coworkers.
Photo by Flickr user col&tasha
This is day 24 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the question “If you’re able to persist and engage in life despite discomfort, what does that say about you?” More info here.
The man who survived the Holocaust and came through with a positive attitude. The 17-year-old girl who spoke out against life under the Taliban. The cyclist who beat cancer and went on to win the Tour de France (before all that drug stuff).
I’ve always felt an odd combination of awe and uneasiness when contemplating the greatness of such people, and now I think I know why. I admire them for their resilience – bouncing back after adversity – at the same time that I question if I’d be capable of it.
There’s a widespread belief that these traumatic moments are when our true self emerges. But how can we know how we’d react to cancer, abuse, tyranny? It’s like contemplating heroic acts – I think I would save someone from drowning…right?
If we want to know the answer, we need look no further than life’s daily discomforts. When Gretchen Rubin created the Happiness Project, she realized that part of her motivation was to prepare for tragedy – her husband’s future liver failure. Not only was she creating a storehouse of happy memories, she was also learning to deal with life’s frustrations.
If we can’t deal with losing a sock, will we be able to deal with our spouse’s liver failure? If a cold is devastating, what will diabetes be like? If we can’t stop thinking about the $5 we lost, what will happen when we lose our job? And so on.
To eliminate the fear that we’d collapse under the adversity, we need to start with the lost socks and colds and bills. Instead of getting annoyed, we can think of them as life’s little exercises – mini-training in resilience. And slowly, the uneasiness and fear may give way to calm and courage.
Photo by Flickr user r.nial.bradshaw
This is day 22 of #30DaysofVulnerability, answering the questions: “How do you run away from discomfort?” and “Why do you need to normalize discomfort, or understand that discomfort is a part of life?” More info here.
Every time I do a guided meditation, the soothing Andy Puddicombe asks me to remind myself of my motivation for sitting down to practice.
But just before “Stop my rambling thoughts! Get rid of my stress!” comes desperately to mind, he adds a caveat: meditation doesn’t stop thoughts or feelings. Your motivation has to be in line with the nature of meditation, which is to help us observe, accept, and be present with them.
Really, Andy, that’s all you’ve got to offer me?
Brené Brown would agree with him, but her way of saying it is that we need to “normalize discomfort.” Discomfort is part of life, normal. She even tells her students that if they don’t feel uncomfortable during the semester, they’re doing it wrong.
“The simple and honest process of letting people know that discomfort is normal, it’s going to happen, why it happens, and why it’s important, reduces anxiety, fear, and shame,” she writes.
Well, it would have been nice to know that a while ago. Most of us grow up learning that discomfort, like pain, is a sign that something is going wrong. Now I understand why some parents resolve not to fix all their children’s problems and tears, but let them sort it out on their own. If every unhappiness or cry is treated like a catastrophe, we grow up into adults who live in fear of negative emotions.
So, we devise all these techniques for keeping them at bay. I avoid emotionally risky situations – I’m aware that I have an aversion for trying new things, because it’s uncomfortable for me to be an uncertain beginner. It takes Herculean effort for me to go networking, because I constantly feel awkward. I distract myself – with movies and lolcats, reading books, meditation, or talking.
But probably worst of all, I try to minimize my feelings. I blame other people when the cause is within myself. If I’m in the mood, I make jokes (“I’m stressed about stress! How ridiculous is that!”). I tell myself it’s irrational, I shouldn’t feel upset, to be optimistic. In short, I do everything Andy says not to – I deny what I’m really feeling and try to get it away from me!
“For many of us, our first response to the vulnerability and pain of these [powerful emotions] is not to lean into the discomfort and feel our way through but rather to make it go away,” writes Brown.
The good news in all of this – besides the fact that we’re not nuts, messed up, or flawed for feeling blue sometimes – is that negative and positive emotions are separate things. According to positive psychology research, emotion isn’t a single lever, but two. Women, in fact, have more positive and more negative emotions. Even if you’re feeling bad about something, you can also cultivate good feelings.
My dad often reiterates words of wisdom from his best friend: “Who said easy?” A lot of the time, it’s our assumption that life will be smooth sailing that makes the rocking and bumping unbearable. As in meditation, the point is to ride out the storm and wait for the waves to settle, not steer the ship as if nothing’s wrong.
Photo by Flickr user mikecogh
Kira M. Newman 