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Self-Esteem is More Complicated Than You Think

By Happiness

 

In a study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, she found that college kids today are more likely to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, while their test scores and hours spent studying are decreasing. Their tendency toward narcissism has also increased over the last 30 years.

Today I want to look at what I consider one of the sources of this trend: the unearned self-esteem movement.

Many years ago, when I was young psychology graduate student studying with Nathaniel Branden, I remember him talking one day about how he had been invited to be part of The California Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem, lead by California State Assemblyman John Vasconcelos.

Nathaniel couldn’t see why he would be involved in that, since he did not see a role for government in the development of self-esteem. Nonetheless, the Task Force carried on, and created guidelines for building “self-esteem” in a way that Branden would never have advocated.

According to a New York Times article about the study group in October of 1986:

Mr. Vasconcellos, a 53-year-old Democrat, is described by an aide as “the most radical humanist in the Legislature.” Mr. Twombly said the study group was an attempt by the Assemblyman to translate into political action his 20 years of “personal emotional work” in various forms of psychological therapy at Esalen Institute near Big Sur and other places.

”I’ve explored a lot of alternative ways of being and relating,” Mr. Vasconcellos said. The bill that created the 25-member study group says its aim is to compile “the world’s most credible and contemporary research regarding whether healthy self-esteem relates to the development of personal responsibility and social problems” such as crime, drug abuse, teen-age pregnancy and welfare dependency.

Whether it was Vasconcelos’s intention or not, the model of self-esteem that the task force has effectively encouraged was the one that my favorite social psychologist Roy Baumeister showed did nothing to improve a person’s happiness, success, or character.

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The High Drama Biases of Politics

By Happiness

 

As this political season heats up, and all the arguments, indignation and accusations that go with it come to a rolling boil, I thought it would be worth having a look at some of the deeper biases that we all can get immersed in, regardless of ideology or political sentiments.

I write this, not because I think you should be apathetic about politics, or choose a particular side that I might like. I write this because the bombardment of manipulations we are subject to can cause us to lose focus on the meaningful details of our own lives; and the biases which politics are teeming with can throw off our judgment about what’s most important.

By politics, I mean the process by which we – politicians and media most strongly, but individuals as well – persuade, cajole, manipulate, trick, argue, deceive, and otherwise do everything we can to empower those we want to empower, and disempower those we want to disempower.

This is an equal opportunity inquiry. We all have our personal beliefs, and, regardless of what they are, every single one of us gets seduced by our biases.

Emotional Bias:

First of all, politics, and the media hype around it, creates an emphasis on emotion. From the regal music of the Sunday news shows, to the passionate oration of the politicians, to the choreographed sneers and eye rolls of the political commentators, politics feeds into our emotional system much more than our rational, intellectual assessments, no matter how much a given speaker may insist that they offer the “True Facts.”

Tribal Bias:

Human beings are by far the most caring, empathetic creatures on earth. We have unique wiring in our brain that makes this possible. If a chimpanzee in the wild is injured, he will not be taken care of by the troop – they will let him suffer and starve; but when current day members of human hunter gatherer bands were questioned, fully half of the members had been in just such a situation, and the band nursed them back to health.

This is significant, because the exceptions stand out in stark relief. When we see or hear about examples of people doing monstrous things to other people, it horrifies us – because this is not how almost all of us behave toward our fellow human beings. (There are examples of other animals, dogs, elephants, etc. showing deep caring; but these are moving because they seem so human – they are also, almost always, toward direct relations.)

But politics feeds into a tribal bias. That level of compassion and empathy mostly disappears when we think of people as outside of our group. These days, more than any time in history, the whole world is our group, which is a very good thing. But when we judge a politician from an opposing party, we lose that empathy and compassion. Our bias is strongly for our party, and against the other.

Which means we’ll tend to see only or mostly the good in members of our team, and only or mostly the bad in the other. Regardless of what the actual truth may be.

Immediacy Bias:

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How Trade Has Helped Make Us Human

By Happiness

 

One day in East Africa, deep in our primitive past, an exceptional innovator carved a palm sized, pear shaped, razor sharp axe head out of stone. This must have revolutionized the ability for he or she and their band of hunter-gatherers to hunt, to butcher food… and to wage war on their neighbors.

This was about seventeen hundred thousand years ago, long before homo sapiens had even appeared on earth. Over time, others learned to copy this stone ax head, and the innovation spread throughout the relatively small population of pre-humans, known as homo erectus, or “upright man.”

The identical design of what archaeologists call Acheulean hand stone axes has been commonly found at many different archaeological sites throughout different eras, and up to about a hundred thousand years ago they were still being made, in exactly the same way, by our homo-sapiens ancestors.

For over a million and a half years, as far as we can tell from the archeological record, this was the extent of human and pre-human innovation. That was it! Nothing new for over 1,600,000 years.

Then, something revolutionary happened; something that changed the nature of humanity and transformed our cultural growth as a species… the world’s first jewelry was invented.

One day, about 90,000 years ago, something new appeared in the heart of Africa. Beads. Beads, made of the shells of a tiny marine snail called Nassarius gibbosulus, painted, and with tiny holes drilled in them.

What was truly transformational, though, wasn’t the beads themselves, it was the mystery they presented. How did beads originally found at the seashore of Mediterranean Algeria make their way hundreds of miles to the south? That would be crossing the Sahara Desert now, but back then it was a lush, green hunter’s paradise.

They were brought there. Not as some one-time haul from a murderous raiding party – which would have been the most likely way up to that point for one tribe to get something from another tribe.

No, these beads were part of something new; something that from any evidence we currently have, had never been seen on the face of the earth before; something we take completely for granted today:

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Positive Subtraction

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

 

I met my wife Sue over 30 years ago at a Thanksgiving party with some friends of ours. Normally I would have been with my extended family – Thanksgiving was always a favorite of my parents – but this year they hosted our family dinner on Friday, so other family members could be with their respective in-laws.

Had my parents not changed the routine that year, Sue and I might never have met; we never would have been married, we would never have had our kids, and the life we know would be different in so many ways it’s hard to fathom.

Many other circumstances lined up just right to lead to that night that might not have worked out – my wife might not have come to the dinner (she almost didn’t), one or both of us might have lived in another town, we might not have known these particular friends…

It’s pretty remarkable if you think about it, that two people ever meet. But people do, and we did.  If you’re married, it might be worth considering there’s a chance the two of you might never have met.

Doing this deliberately can also make you happier.

In the classic Frank Capra movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey is so despondent from events that he’s on the verge of committing suicide. Clarence, a new angel hoping to earn his wings, shows him what life would be like for those he cares about had George not existed. George comes to appreciate the many ways he has deeply affected people, and how much he had taken his good effect toward all those people he held dear for granted.

Seeing clearly what his absence would have meant – and would mean – for so many people he cares for puts suicide out of the question, and brings him to a state of profound gratitude.

That’s more than a sweet story and a classic movie; there is something very true and strong in it that has consequences for a life well lived.

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The Shocking Impact of Personal Influence

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

 

It‘s easy to underestimate our effect on others. We go about our business in our own world, and assume that everyone else is going about theirs.

New parents can be stunned sometimes to hear their own words coming out of their kid’s mouths; their own actions being recreated by their children. But our impact on each other runs deep, and extends far beyond our immediate family.

Those we are close to, and even those people who are three degrees of separation away from those we are close to – friends of friends of friends – are our sphere of influence… and we are theirs. What we say and do makes a real impact on those around us, and even on those a moderate distance away.

Appreciating this can be a great motivator for living our best life.

In studies by Christakis and Fowler, drawing from the Framingham Heart Study subjects, they found just how powerful our personal contacts with people can be. Here are some examples:

  • For every happy friend we have, our likelihood of being happy ourselves increases by 9%.
  • Our chances of becoming obese increases by 57% if we have a friend who becomes obese.
  • Among pairs of adult siblings, if one sibling becomes obese the chance that the other will become obese increases by 40%
  • If one spouse becomes obese the likelihood that the other spouse will become obese increases by 37%

That’s for our immediate connections; in other studies, they found that we can have a remarkable effect on others even several steps removed from our direct contact:

  • If our friend’s friend’s friend quit smoking, we are much more likely to quit smoking ourselves.
  • Even happy people we’ve never met, three degrees of separation away, have a positive effect on our own happiness.

Good and bad behaviors pass from friend to friend; we influence each other’s health and happiness just by our social interactions.

But the impact of our behavior in one arena is particularly significant… shocking even.

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The Most Destructive Emotion

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions

 

Envy is an ugly emotion with awful effects. Many religions forbid or warn against it, as with the 10th commandment in the Old Testament; storytellers show its horrible effects. We all know that it’s bad on a feeling level, yet envy persists as a powerfully destructive force.

It isn’t about having very little; we aren’t particularly unhappy when we have very little. But we do become very unhappy, depressed, and bitter when we dwell on having less than our neighbor.

Yet there is an antidote to envy: empathy, curiosity, admiration, and the effective redirection of our initial impulses. It can also help to more fully understand this destructive and bitter emotion.

Envy de-humanizes the person envied. When we envy another person, we are not seeing that person for who they are, we are seeing him for what he has. It breeds malevolence; when we envy, we are not happy for the success of our neighbor, we are resentful of it.

Envy diminishes our capacity for empathy, and this lack of empathy makes it possible for people to do horrible things to one another.

It also reinforces a self-image of helplessness and impotence. Envy implies disbelief in ourselves; it presupposes that we don’t believe we can create the wealth, the relationships, the values that we see in others, and this helplessness can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, limiting our ability to work toward what we would like to create in our lives.

But like any negative emotion, by catching ourselves and understanding what we’re feeling, we can redirect our actions in a way that works much better for us.

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Fear, Famine, and Finances

By Emotions, Moods and Reactions, Habits and Strategies

 

Money troubles can tap into the most primitive emotions, including intense fear, and even reactions of flight and panic. But there are ways of using these signals, so we don’t get lost in them.

Matt wakes up in the middle of the night, anxious and troubled. Breathing shallow and high in his chest, thoughts racing… The severity of his financial troubles has just hit him. His investments have dropped significantly, and his spending has been putting him deeply into debt surprisingly quickly.

At least it feels like it was quickly. The habits had been established some years earlier, but he hadn’t modified his spending in relation to the real income he could draw from. For many months the trouble had been building, but credit created a buffer that allowed him to avoid feeling it.

Then one morning, at 3 am, it hits him. He’s in trouble, big trouble. So big that he couldn’t see a way to solve the problem. Panicked and overwhelmed, he soothes himself with a positive fantasy of things turning out okay. This calms him enough to get back to sleep.

When he wakes up, he’s forgotten the urgency, and dives into his day. The soothing fantasy providing a reprieve from the anxiety. Until another week passes, and he wakes up again in a panic…

In this case, the panic is Matt’s friend; his own awareness trying to break through his defenses so he can face the real problems. And there are ways of solving these problems. But nothing happens until he’s willing to acknowledge the reality first.

Why is this panic around money so severe?

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Why it’s Hard to See What’s True

By Habits and Strategies, Happiness

 

A healthy relationship with the truth is essential for a happy, successful life.

But this is not a simple thing; the ability to see, acknowledge, and accept what’s true – about ourselves, our circumstances, our relationships; our own strengths and weaknesses, and the challenges we face – is actually much harder than it may seem.

We have all known people in our lives who are smart, self-aware, and curious, but they keep making the same mistakes over and over in one particular area of their lives. You see it, other people see it, but they don’t seem to see it at all.

It’s even more difficult when other people are seeing things that we don’t see – and seeing that we don’t see them.

I remember as a young psychotherapist in my 20s (I’ve been doing this for a very long time!) discovering a new approach or technique that seemed to do wonders. All I could see was the success, and it was exciting.

What I wasn’t seeing was my own confirmation bias, that would minimize where it didn’t work very well, and maximize where it did.

It took some time and experience to see that every approach has its strengths and weaknesses, and every client I work with is unique – what’s helpful with one person may do nothing for another.

And this sort of confirmation bias is something I still have to stay continually vigilant about – because our biases never disappear.

We are made for learning and growth. Our success in life depends, to a significant extent, on increasing our awareness and understanding of the world. Yet we have a tremendous array of biases that color our interpretation of what we perceive, what we experience, and what we think we know.

These biases are not flaws in our system, they exist because they are functional. Like our habits, in most situations, most of the time, these biases work pretty well for us, and the automatic nature of them allows us to live without being continually overwhelmed with bringing consciousness and willpower into every tiny aspect of our lives.

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Rumination and its Antidote

By Habits and Strategies, Happiness

 

To ruminate means literally to chew over and over again. It’s what cows do with grass so they can draw as much of the nutritional value from it as they can.

When we dwell too much on what hurt us in the past, we are doing a different kind of ruminating. We “re-chew” our negative thoughts and memories, drawing as much pain and suffering out of them as we possibly can.

This is one of the worst things we can do for our sense of happiness and well-being.

The compulsion to ruminate can be powerful, especially if we’ve practiced it a lot. We can develop an irresistible urge to replay the events that have made us miserable. Yet some older popular notions from psychology can lead people to believe this is a good thing. We think we are figuring something out. In fact, it’s more like re-striking a bruised injury thinking that will help it to heal.

When we purposefully remember painful memories over and over again, without changing our perspective towards them, we actually reinforce the pain with each visit.

Remember, our narrative memories aren’t facts, they are stories that can contain facts—but they can also contain mistaken ideas or conclusions. So when we ruminate we are not exploring Truth with a capital “T,” we are replaying a painful and helpless story.

I don’t say this to deny anybody’s experience or to minimize anybody’s trauma, but the best thing we can do with painful experiences is to have them take their proper place in history.

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Growing a Sense of Resilience and Possibilities

By Habits and Strategies

 

One of the ways we can access some of the hidden strength within us is to look for the people, events, and opportunities about which we can feel grateful. But there’s another category of strength that we can often ignore: the things we’ve brought into being through our own decisions and actions.

All too often it’s tempting to be drawn toward memories and events that were painful or traumatic. We have a negative bias that’s about four times as strong as our positive experiences.

There’s a gravitational pull toward these negative experiences that had survival value for our species – remembering what happened to our friend when he tried to pet the saber-toothed tiger reminded us not to ever do that ourselves, no matter how cute the kitty might be.

If our ancestors didn’t have this negative bias in their very dangerous world, they wouldn’t have lived to become our ancestors.

But in today’s world – which, for all its very real troubles, is orders of magnitude less dangerous than it was for our ancestors, and whose innovations and opportunities are nothing less than miraculous by comparison – this pull to think of the negative is much less functional.

In fact, it’s a recipe for depression and anxiety, and keeps us blind to opportunities and relationships that could be truly expansive and wonderful.

We are forward thinking beings. We can envision possibilities, anticipate consequences, and choose actions that go against our natural habits or impulses in order to achieve our goals. While we don’t want to deny any painful truths about our own history or circumstances, it’s not useful to dwell on them. The major purpose of our memory of past experiences is to help us move more effectively into our future.

If we want to grow our own sense of resilience and possibilities, there are two things to look for and remind ourselves of about our past:

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