Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by baona, Courtesy of iStock Photo

When you first get into a relationship, you notice everything that’s right. You see all the things you have in common. There’s lots to talk about. You love spending time together. Each other’s little quirks are endearing. You’re in love!

After being together for a year or more (although sometimes sooner), you become aware of differences. You notice personality traits and habits that bother you. They might even be things you were initially attracted to, but living with them is taxing.

If both of you are mature, self-aware, and adept at talking things through, you might easily weather these differences as they arise.

More likely, you aren’t good at that yet. And truth is, every relationship starts with an initial period of being in what’s called the “love bubble” followed by deflation or, in some cases, a bubble burst. This is when the real work of the relationship begins.

Today we’re going to talk about how to address those nagging differences. And by the way, you can use this information even if you’ve been with your partner a long time. You can also apply it to other close relationships such as parent and child, siblings, or family and friends.

Two Types of Differences

These are broad categories, but they help you get clear on what things are workable and what things aren’t.

Let’s start with what’s not. This group is called the “deal-breakers.” These are the things that aren’t negotiable. They’re behaviors or actions you cannot and will not accept.

The second category is “style differences.” They include temperament tendencies, idiosyncrasies, and habits. The term “style” used here makes it easier to see these differences with some emotional distance so you can think about them objectively.

Let’s go through some examples of each.

Deal-Breakers

The most common ones are:

• Infidelity
• Repetitive lying and dishonesty
• Physical or emotional abuse
• Substance abuse
• Opposing political affiliations
• Destructive spending habits
• Control and dominance

I’m sure you can think of more, and some of these may not be on your list. People are always curious about “political affiliation,” but for many people, this is non-negotiable.

Style Differences

These are things like:

• Money habits and philosophies on spending
• Accumulation of stuff, i.e., pack-rats versus minimalists
• Organization, cleaning, and housekeeping habits
• Sleeping needs
• Eating schedules
• Selection of TV shows, types of music, and other media
• Entertainment choices
• Socializing (introverts versus extraverts)
• Communication styles
• Love languages

Again, these are just some of the possibilities.

How to Make Use of This

If you’ve been with your partner a long time and think you have a handle on all these issues, you don’t need to read on. But I’ll bet that even if you’ve been together a long time, there are still style differences that bother you that you haven’t found a way to resolve.

Try these steps to work them out.

#1 Make two lists for your deal-breakers and style differences.

It helps to clarify exactly what you have issues with, especially those things that could lead to the destruction of the relationship. Note: It’s best if both you and your partner do this exercise simultaneously.

#2 Spell out the specific behaviors involved with each item.

Make a list with two columns: one that lists your styles and next to each one, your partner’s style. These can be similar or different styles. It’s good to get them all down. Your partner will make these same two lists. Do this part of the exercise separately first.

Examples might be you like the dishes done right after dinner, and your husband is okay with waiting until the following day to do them. You like the TV off, or much lower in volume on weekend afternoons, and your husband wants to watch movies all day with more volume. A similar style might be that you both are morning people and like to get up early and get going.

Get specific. Use a journal and keep it handy to jot things down as you think of them.

#3 Now, prioritize each item in these categories:

Differences that:

1. Enhance or are compatible with yours.
2. Bother you a lot and create discord with your partner.
3. Are bothersome, but you can deal with.

When you get through this exercise, you should have better clarity about what’s working, what’s not, and what you think needs some change.

You hopefully also have been able to think about how some of your differences complement each other. If not, go back over your two lists and make an effort to identify and write those down. They’re important.

Next Step

The obvious next step is to share your lists with your partner and vice versa. You could do this in two ways:

1. Give each other your lists to look over for a few days or maybe even a week before discussing them, or
2. Share them and discuss them at the same time.

It’s good to make some rules for the discussion.

Keep in mind that the first step is to understand how you see each other and understand each other’s style differences without judgment.

Don’t go into this discussion with an accusatory tone or a sense of exasperation.

Allow each other to explain your styles and what’s behind them. For example, why does someone save everything? Or why does it matter if the dishes are done at night? In other words, what’s important to each of you.

It’s highly beneficial to be heard and understood, even if you disagree.

Once you have your rules in place, then go through these three exercises.

#1 Go over your deal-breaker lists first.

If you find you don’t agree on something, you can talk it out, but you should seek counseling to work on this if it’s contentious. Disagreement on deal-breakers is a serious problem and shouldn’t go by the wayside.

#2 Go over your style differences and negotiate compromises.

Compromises should be win-win, not win-lose. How can you both be comfortable and feel good with whatever you decide? If you spend enough time upfront trying to understand each other and learn more about what each of you needs, then you’ll be more inclined to work things out for mutual satisfaction. It’s easier to alter your behavior when you know how it impacts your partner. Understanding creates greater tolerance and appreciation of differences.

#3 Identify the ways your differences can be complementary.

Usually, couples have a lot of similarities, and research has shown that those that do have more similarities get along better. However, some differences are very beneficial.

Suppose one of you is more oriented to problem-solving, management, and organization, and the other is more oriented toward creativity, spontaneity, and idea generation. In that case, these two orientations can work together well to open and run a business, plan an event, hold different types of jobs, and run a household.

It’s best to use the differences to complement each other rather than as a source of contention.

One Last Note

Style differences are not the same as value differences. Values are the set of principles and beliefs you live by. Styles are your personality leanings and natural temperament characteristics.

Successful couples usually hold similar values. There may be some differentiation, but overall they’re close, especially those that determine how you see the world and what principles you expect to flow through your relationship. Values underlie your deal-breakers.

If you can agree on deal-breakers and you hold similar principles and values, style differences can be worked out and can enrich the relationship.

That’s all for today. Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by IPGGutenbergUKLtd, Courtesy of iStock Photo

So what’s the first thing you think of when you read that title?

Mine would be “practice.” If you want to get better at anything, you have to practice.

(If that wasn’t yours, shoot me an email and tell me what it was. I’m curious!)

Certainly, other things would help, but “practice” has to be a significant component. And not just any practice, but something called “deliberate practice.”

I’ll give you a quick overview of what that is, and then lay out the five steps to use it.

What exactly is “deliberate practice?”

If you do something over and over to get better at it, isn’t that deliberate practice?

Yes and no. Repetition is essential, but there’s more to it than that.

Deliberate practice requires three additional elements along with repetition.

1. Conscious focus. You have to engage your mind in the process with intensive focus. For example, you can repeat an action mindlessly, like lifting weights while watching TV. But it’s better if you turn the TV off and focus diligently on the muscles you’re using, the effort you expend with each lift, and maintaining the correct form.
2. Consistent attempts to improve. Along with focus, you must keep trying to get better with each repetition, tweaking your practice as you go.
3. Evaluation and feedback to monitor your progress. You need to establish a system to evaluate and get feedback on your performance in order to see where and how you need to improve. This may include having a teacher, mentor, or coach who can assist you.

Now let’s apply this to a real skill and go through the steps.

5 Steps to Improving a Skill

Step #1: Choose the skill you want to improve.

Suppose you decide that you want to become a highly-skilled communicator. That’s your goal.

Your first step is to identify the skills you need to get there. Then you choose one and practice it until you’ve reached a high level of competence, after which you can tackle your next one. Your practice aims to build skills, not focus directly on the goal.

Sticking with our example, let’s go through all five steps.

The goal is to become a good communicator. The skill we’re going to focus on is “listening.”

I chose that one because it’s a single, concrete skill you can break down and measure in specific actions. You’ll see what I mean as we go through the steps.

Step #2: Do your research.

What exactly does good listening entail? What are the mechanics of it?

Be thorough in your research and get the best information you can from sources that are valid. Start with reading up on it or interviewing someone who has the skills and know-how you need. You could also ask people close to you what they look for when they want someone to listen to them, as well as ask yourself the same question.

Write all these requirements down with as much specificity as you can. Spell out the exact behaviors you want to get good at.

Examples might be:

• Face the person, make eye contact, sit or stand in a relaxed manner, keep your facial expression open and receptive.
• Allow enough personal space.
• Put all digital devices away and silence them.
• Invite the person to talk and remain quiet and attentive until they come to a break in the conversation or ask for feedback.
• Ask questions to clarify, and repeat back what you hear to make sure you understand.
• Empathize by verbalizing how you think the person is feeling.

Once you have everything written, you can use it as a checklist to monitor your progress.

Step #3: Set up a system of practice.

How will you go about practicing these behaviors to increase your skill with each one?

First, choose someone to practice with – maybe someone you’re close to, like a partner or friend. You might decide to practice with everyone, but to get feedback, start with someone you know well so they can help you evaluate your performance.

Secondly, set a schedule. It’s harder to be exact with a skill like listening, but you can set a goal to practice at least once or twice a day with a specific person. Make your practice plan as detailed as you can and either get it on a to-do list or on your calendar.

Step #4: Evaluate and track your progress.

The fourth step is to evaluate your progress and tweak your activity to make improvements.

Schedule your evaluation activities right in with your practice sessions. I would do this in two parts:

1. Do a quick evaluation directly after each practice session.
2. Do a weekly review that’s more thoughtful and thorough once a week.

Using our listening example, you could jot down notes right after a listening episode and do your more formalized review of all your notes once a week.

During your weekly review, measure your progress against that checklist you created and set up revised strategies to make improvements.

Step #5: Feedback and Accountability

A big part of the evaluation process is getting feedback. You could get direct feedback from the person or people you’ve practiced listening with and ask them specific questions related to all the behaviors listed on your checklist. For example:

• Did my body language come across well?
• What specifically did you like or not like?
• Did you feel heard? What could I do to make you feel even more heard?
• Did you think I understood your feelings? Did I empathize well enough?
• Were you comfortable?
• Did I give you time enough to say what you wanted to say?
• What could I improve upon or change next time?

You could also consult someone who’s an expert in the area of communication such as a counselor or therapist, or you could continue using new communication strategies you’ve found in your research and try them out.

Whatever you choose, it’s good to set up accountability for yourself. You could either check in regularly with someone you’ve selected to help or, if you’re relatively self-disciplined, show up consistently with your weekly reviews and monitor your next steps toward your overall goal.

I do both. I conduct a weekly review with myself every Saturday morning for my writing, and I read my blog to my husband each week to get his feedback before making final edits. I’ve also promised publicly to publish a blog every week. All those things keep me accountable and focused on improving.

How You Can Learn More

Deliberate practice as a method for excelling at something came about in part from refuting Malcolm Gladwell’s popularized idea that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill and achieve a high level of excellence. (See Outliers.)

The originator of the deliberate practice concept, Anders Ericsson, agreed that repetition was necessary, but he added in those three modifiers – consistent focus, intensive systematic effort to improve, and qualified feedback.

If you’re interested in reading more about deliberate practice and how it works, here are several books I’d recommend:

Peak by Anders Ericsson
Deep Work by Cal Newport
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner

You might also like to hear Malcolm Gladwell’s explanation of his ideas on this Youtube video.

That’s all for today. Until next Monday, have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Doucefleur, Courtesy of iStock Photo

I’m guessing you’ve had the experience of being in your head too much.

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had that experience. It’s annoying when you catch yourself doing it, but worse, it colors your world and emotional life. Not in a good way.

The broader term for this habit is “rumination.” It means:

Persistent thinking about something, most often in the past, although it can be something current, that has a negative focus and is emotionally stressful.

We rarely ruminate about something good.

“Overthinking” is a particular type of rumination focused on analyzing something to death and feeling paralyzed to take action.

Both are involuntary. You’re doing something like washing the dishes, and before you realize it, you’re immersed in thinking about a conversation you had with a co-worker earlier in the week, and you’re going over and over what you said and how you came off and making all sorts of assumptions – mostly negative – about what they thought about you.

Or maybe you’re ruminating about how one of your friends mistreated you or the person you spoke with on the phone was rude. You create fantasies in your head about what you could have said or done, and make up conversations and rehearse them.

You know what I’m talking about. We all do this, and some of us do it a lot!

Why?

There are many reasons, but they mostly fall into these categories.

1. Anxiety about how you’re perceived or over a decision you made.
2. Insecurity, feeling inferior, feeling judged.
3. The “shoulds.” Anguish about things not going the way you think they should.
4. Regret. Wishing you could do something over.
5. Trauma and bad memories.

The biggest hurdle in getting ruminating under control is that it’s your mind’s default when you’re not using it in a conscious and deliberate way. It sneaks under your attention radar and happens before you notice you’ve fallen in.

Think of it this way:

Your mind is always active unless you’re in a deep sleep. You either take charge of it, or it runs automatically – like a car motor.

When you’re driving, you control where the car goes. When it’s idling with no brake on and no one at the wheel, the car rolls in whatever direction is easiest, likely where the road slants down.

If you’re not aware and in control of what your mind is doing, i.e., what thoughts you’re entertaining, it reverts to the default position and rolls on in a steady stream. And, the default is negative more than positive.

Negative memories stick.

Negative memories and experiences are memorable because of their emotional impact.

Your brain has a cataloging process to store them. Unfortunately, it doesn’t store them verbatim. When you have an experience, your brain makes sure that the memory you form fits in with your beliefs, values, and previous memories, so it all makes for a nice compact narrative.

Our memories are highly subjective, and as time goes on, they get altered more to fit in with new experiences and changing beliefs.

So when you ruminate, what you remember is significantly influenced by the emotional effect it had on you and how it fits in with your current belief system.

Great, so what do I do?

1) Catch yourself in the act.

The first thing is to make it a habit to catch yourself doing it. You can be off in some rumination for an hour (or more) before you recognize you’re in it. But with practice watching for it, you get quicker at catching it.

2) Divert your attention.

If you’re overthinking something and feel stuck on it, do something physical. Go for a walk outside, or if you like more strenuous exercise like lifting weights, running, or hopping on a treadmill, do that. Or you could do something calming like Yoga. If formal exercise is not your thing, then get out in the yard and garden or mow the lawn. You can also choose other activities like cleaning out a closet, washing the car, cooking, or whatever makes you feel better.

3) Question the validity of your thoughts.

Most ruminations are heavily biased, emotional, and exaggerated. Question your thoughts. What’s actually true? What’s the intent of your thought train? Are you just angry, hurt, afraid, anxious? Based on what you figure out, decide if you need to take some action to resolve a problem. Or maybe let something go or correct your thinking.

4) Write it out.

Writing it out can help you get it out of your head and gain a little distance. Seeing it on paper can clear things up and help you make decisions about what you need to do.

5) Replace it with a positive solution or new thought.

Ruminations create mind ruts because you replay them over and over.

Think of these mind ruts as grooves in your brain that allow the same thoughts to flow more easily as the tracks get deeper, like water floating through a deep channel.

You can cut those channels off by creating alternative positive mind ruts. Focus on replacing your negative ruminations with positive solutions and corrected thoughts.

The antidote to ruminating and overthinking is taking action. Rumination holds you hostage.

Do these four things:

1. Analyze your thought for validity.
2. Create a corrected thought pattern.
3. Take action to put it in motion, e.g., make notes to yourself, make reparations if someone else is involved, or create a formal mantra or new phrase and post it where you’ll see it.
4. Repeat it.

The Yardstick

A question I never thought to ask myself about my ruminations is, “Are they kind?” I ran across this idea when I read Soundtracks by Jon Acuff. It’s a book about overthinking, and if it’s something that you do a lot, read this book. It’s extremely helpful.

The question “Is it kind?” is a perfect way to interrupt the power of a repetitive rumination because almost always, they’re not kind to either you or someone else. They’re generally attacking. You’re either berating yourself about what you did or who you are – or aren’t – or you’re attacking someone else for what they did to you.

Ruminations are often built on a foundation of blame.

When you use kindness as a yardstick to measure the value of a rumination, you drop it fast. And that free’s you up to let it go, or take action, or repair something that needs to be fixed. It also quiets that nagging, critical voice in your head.

Last Word

If you haven’t already figured it out from previous blogs, I’m big on meditation. And that’s because I’ve done it regularly for many years and know how valuable it is.

It’s especially effective for regulating emotions and learning to let things go that get in the way.

Daily practice automatically creates space in your mind between your experiences and your reactions to them, especially emotionally packed ones. It also greatly increases your attention muscle.

Those two things together give you significant control over your mind. I don’t know of any other practice that accomplishes that as well.

If you want to give it a try, click here for instructions for an easy type of meditation.

That’s it for today. Have a great week as always!!!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by gremlin, Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Let’s start today with a quote I recently ran across while reading Focus by Daniel Goleman. It comes from Richard Boyatzis, a distinguished psychologist at Case Western Reserve University. He says:

You need the negative focus to survive, but a positive one to thrive. You need both, but in the right ratio.

I love this quote because it’s realistic. When you have a positive outlook, you can see possibilities and opportunities for growth, and you pursue them. Yet, you still keep an eye on obstacles as they arise and attend to them, so they don’t sabotage you.

Today we’re going to delve into what it means to have a positive approach and how negative thoughts and events fit in.

Let’s start with an overview.

What is the “Positive Approach?”

In general, the positive approach is seeing life as a process of personal development that includes:

1. Self-actualization
2. Focus on well-being
3. Emphasis on strengths
4. Making enduring connections

Martin Seligman defines it in terms of the five tenets of Positive Psychology known as PERMA. Let’s go through them.

1) Positive Emotions

Positive emotions are sticky, expansive, and energizing.

Based on research, it’s been found that positive-leaning people can sustain positive feelings longer than someone who’s depressed. We know this because of what happens in the brain when you’re in a good mood. The left side of the prefrontal cortex, which is the side of the brain associated with positive emotions, is activated and remains active.

When you consistently feel and express positive emotions, your outlook tends to remain that way which affects both your perceptions and activity level.

There’s more. When you’re feeling upbeat, the left prefrontal cortex sends messages to an area in the mid-brain called the nucleus accumbens. This part of the brain is associated with motivation and reward due to its richness in dopamine.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter associated with reward, motivation, attention, and pleasure. So when you think positively, dopamine is released, and you have an easier time striving toward goals and maintaining your attention to them.

Your brain also releases its own opiates during this process, which adds to the feelings of reward. The dopamine fuels drive and persistence, while the opiates add feelings of pleasure.

As long as you stay positive, these brain circuits stay active and help you sustain your efforts despite obstacles or setbacks. Positive emotions also keep you energized. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.

2) Engagement

Because positive emotions keep your juices running, they help you stay engaged in purposeful activity for more extended periods.

Persistent negative emotions and a pessimistic outlook de-energize you and close you down.

That’s because your emotional energy is tied up. Emotions supply the drive to do something, so when your emotional energy is soaked up with pessimistic thoughts, you don’t have the drive to pursue anything. You feel deflated.

Positive emotions do the opposite. They activate, invigorate, and release your energy to pursue what you want to do.

You can do it with greater depth and focus and get in a state of what’s called “flow.” When you’re in “flow,” you feel completely absorbed in what you’re doing so that the sense of effort disappears. This happens when you’re laser-focused on something, and the work almost seems to happen without your input. You feel calm while being highly active. It makes work pleasurable and heightens creativity.

3) Connection

Engaging in healthy connections with others is the third aspect of the positive approach.

We’re wired to connect, and being involved in satisfying relationships allows us to experience love, feel seen, be understood, and thrive.

The positive approach fosters kindness, genuine emotions, and social intelligence. When you get into good relationships, you increase your awareness of both your and others’ motives and feelings. You have greater empathy and compassion.

Chronic negativity creates a sense of isolation, even if you regularly commiserate with others who are negative. The outlook is one of doom and is destructive to close ties.

4) Meaning

The question “Why am I here?” is at the heart of the next aspect of the positive approach. You’re focused on finding meaning and purpose you can wrap your mind and heart around to guide your goals, activities, and pursuits. You explore with hope and faith, and you’re receptive to answers when they come.

True joy comes from engaging your whole self in something bigger than you. It’s an anchor for your life’s work.

5) Achievement

This last aspect of the positive approach is putting your purpose into motion. You use your signature strengths and virtues (Seligman) to engage in activities that fulfill your purpose and provide meaning. You actualize your purpose through your accomplishments and achievements.

How does negativity fit in?

The positive approach does not include ignoring or excluding negative emotions.

Sounding an alert.

As noted in the quote at the beginning of this article, “You need the negative focus to survive.”

What that means is that you need to see what is. If you smell smoke coming from the kitchen when you’re in the back of the house, you don’t ignore it. You rush out to the kitchen to take the smoking pot off the burner before a fire starts.

Negative feelings can act the same way. They send off alarms that there’s a problem you need to attend to, and if you don’t, there are consequences to pay. We need those alarms.

Alarms can come in many forms. Sometimes they’re wake-up calls like when the boss calls you in for a meeting to discuss being late too often, or you get the cold shoulder from a friend you’ve blown off too many times. Or maybe your doctor informs you that your blood sugar is climbing because you’re eating too much junk food.

When you have negative experiences or feelings like these, pay attention. They’re alerts you need to heed.

Negative emotions are necessary and normal.

There are many instances in life that bring on negative emotions or reactions:

A loss of someone you love, severe financial stress, being laid off from your job, receiving a dressing down by your boss in front of other staff, finding out your car repair is going to cost $2000 . . .

All of these naturally bring on a period of distress, sadness, anxiety, or all of these.

It’s not good to suppress negative emotions that arise due to circumstances, even those from previous trauma. When using the positive approach, you allow the emotions to arise, feel them, and when enough time has passed, take steps to gain insights from your experience or learn something you can use.

Feeling negative emotions and having a negative approach are not the same.

Feeling negative emotions is not a problem. Hanging on to them longer than needed and feeding them is a problem.

People who have a negative approach jump first to the most negative interpretation of any situation. They move from one negative thought to another and, when presented with a positive solution, find reasons why it can’t work. As Goleman says,

“It’s not just a focus on the could, but the conviction that there are even darker ones lurking behind.”

Final Thoughts

If you aren’t naturally optimistic, you can make a shift with practice. It’s okay to keep a healthy skepticism when taking in information.

Being positive doesn’t mean being blind or having only positive thoughts.

The goal is to keep a positive attitude, even in the face of negative circumstances, while addressing obstacles that get in the way.

That’s all for today. Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Davidson, R. J. & Begley, S. (2012) The emotional life of your brain. Hudson Street Press.}

_{Fowler J.H. & Christakis, N. A. (2008) Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: Longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study. BMJ, 337:a2338. doi:10.1136/bmj.a2338}

_{Goleman, D. (2013). Focus: The hidden driver of excellence. Harper.}

_{Lee M-A & Kawachi I. (2019). The keys to happiness: Associations between personal values regarding core life domains and happiness in South Korea. PLoS ONE, 14(1):e0209821. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0209821}

_{Scorsolini-Comin, F., Fontaine, A. M., Koller, S. H., & Santos, M. (2012). From happiness to well-being: The flourishing of positive psychology. Psciologia: Reflexaso e Critica, 26(4), 663-670. doi:10.1590/S0102-79722013000400006}

_{Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic happiness. Free Press.}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by KatarzynaBialasiewicz, Courtesy of iStock Photo,

Wouldn’t it be great to not care about what other people think? It would be easier, that’s for sure. But then, that’s unrealistic.

Even if you think you don’t care, sometimes you do, and sometimes you need to.

So which is which? When does it matter, and when does it not, and how do you stop yourself from caring when it doesn’t?

That’s what we’re going to tackle today. Let’s start with when you need to care.

When You Need to Care

1) Work and Other Contractual Agreements

When you sign on for a job or promise something to someone, you’ve agreed to perform at a certain level and follow specific rules of behavior. In those cases, you have to care what’s thought of you to the extent that you meet the expectations you’ve agreed to.

We all generally want to be thought well of by our boss, customers, or whomever we answer to in work situations. Conscience also usually dictates our caring about holding up our part of the bargain or agreement with anyone to whom we’ve promised something.

2) Situations That Reflect Your Conscience or Values

This one goes a little deeper. It’s not so much about holding up your end of a bargain. The question is:

“Am I doing the right thing? Am I causing someone harm or pain?”

You care about how your actions will impact someone else. You also care about how they see and feel about you and your behavior. The more intimate you are with someone, the more you care about what they think of you.

When You Don’t Need to Care

You don’t need to care or put any energy into situations where someone is:

1. Projecting their bad feelings onto you and accusing you of behaviors that belong to them. The caveat is that if this is someone you’re close to, you may need to work it out, but it isn’t a true reflection of you.
2. The purpose of the judgment is to bully, antagonize, provoke, humiliate, or just be mean. In these cases, set boundaries or ignore the source.

How do you get the right balance?

It’s not always cut and dried or clear when you need to care and when not. Partly this has to do with your own insecurities and partly because of the confusing nature of relationships in general.

Here are a few ideas to help you decide.

1) Watch out for “conditions of worth” you’ve internalized and chained yourself to.

If you don’t know about “conditions of worth,” read last week’s blog to help make sense of this one.

Briefly, your conditions of worth are created as you grow up by parents, teachers, coaches, your community, and society. As you move into adulthood, you internalize these conditions as your own and use them as yardsticks to determine your acceptability and worth.

When dealing with other people, you assume they use these same yardsticks, and you worry about whether you’re living up to them. Often, what you assume has nothing to do with what others actually perceive.

This is an internal problem you have to work through.

2) Don’t assume people are thinking so much about you.

Truth is, people think more about themselves than anyone or anything else.

In his book Focus, Daniel Goleman spells this out succinctly when he poses the question:

“Where do our thoughts wander when we’re not thinking of anything in particular?”

His answer is:

“Most often, they are all about me. . . ‘Me” reflects the activity of the default zone. . . Mind wandering tends to center on our self and our preoccupations.”

So relax. Everyone’s not thinking about or judging you.

3) Have a sense of humor.

Sometimes you screw up, embarrass yourself, or say the wrong thing. It happens to all of us. Learn to have some humor in those moments and laugh along with yourself. Be humble, join the human race, and lighten up a bit.

4) Avoid being judgmental.

Clean out your own closet and leave others to clean our theirs. If you consistently focus on other peoples’ stuff and send a lot of negative judgment their way, you’re opening the door to receive the same back.

5) Focus on being your authentic self.

Work on being more of who you are. Hone your values, formulate your opinions, expand your talents, pursue your interests, and connect with people that appreciate and like you.

The more authentic you are, the more comfortable you are with yourself, and the more other people are comfortable with you. Also, the less concerned you are with what other people think about you.

6) Consider the source.

Consider feedback from people you care about and whose input you value. Avoid considering input from people who simply want to fight, one-up, troll, and create discord.

7) Develop more compassion.

This includes compassion for yourself. Everyone’s in different stages of development. No one is intrinsically better than anyone else, but it is helpful to understand that we all develop at our own pace. We each have our histories, narratives, and experiences that shape where we are. When you see it this way, it helps to suspend judgment. You feel more compassionate for the difficulty in being human and appreciate the privilege we all have to live it.

Sometimes when I’m out in public and people-watching, I wonder what’s going on in someone’s life as I look at their face. What burdens do they carry? What’s their life like? What have they experienced?

When you open up that way, it’s easier to suspend judgment of everyone, including yourself. You become more forgiving and inclusive.

8) Engage in something meaningful, and that gives you purpose.

Part of being your authentic self is to express the gifts you have by engaging in purposeful activity. Put your energy into focusing on your unique talents and expressing them through your work and interactions. Create meaning through your ideas, beliefs, and values. When you have a purpose, you spend less time worrying about what other people think and more time contributing.

9) Own your worth.

All of the above feed into this one.

If you work at expressing your authentic self, question and revise your conditions of worth, set boundaries on toxic input, avoid being judgmental, develop a sense of humor that comes with humility, and find your purpose, then you’ll feel your worth.

You’ll live it while navigating through many successes and failures and new insights. You’ll care what people you care about think of you, but not to the extent that your total sense of self rests on it.

Care about what you think of yourself most. Do it with honesty and compassion, and let the rest work itself out.

That’s all for today! Have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Tero Vesalainen, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Today we’re talking about “conditions of worth.”

This term comes from the work of Carl Rogers, a pioneer in the field of humanistic psychology. I love this concept because it gives you a way to question how you determine your self-worth. It helps you challenge the conditions and expectations that have been imposed on you that really don’t reflect who you are or what you want.

Let’s start with a definition.

Conditions of worth are those “conditions” we think we need to meet for people to accept us as worthy of their love and positive regard.

They consist of the rules of behavior we learn growing up that serve as the measure of our worth and the conditions for approval. They start with our parents and are enforced later by teachers, coaches, friends, community leaders, and the culture. They’re based on conditional love.

If you behave in a particular way, you receive approval and love. If not, you feel disapproval and a lack of worth.

A simple way to think about it are two common parenting strategies used by most parents at some time or other:

1. Withholding love when you don’t do as they wish.
2. Showing love only when you do as they wish.

In each case, your behavior becomes the vehicle by which you feel either accepted or not – loved or not – worthy or not.

When parents act with unconditional love, they still hold you accountable for your behavior, but always with the message that you’re worthy and loved regardless of what you do. That’s a big difference.

With conditional love, you are your performance, and what is “good performance” is defined by others.

The Effects of Conditions of Worth

What happens as you grow up is that you eventually internalize the conditions of worth you’ve been taught. That means:

The voices outside your head become the single voice inside your head. It’s your voice, and it repetitively measures you against those learned conditions you now call your own. You don’t question them.

For example, what if becoming a doctor was expected of you because your father was a doctor, as was your grandfather before him. You had a natural talent for art and loved it, but your parents brushed that aside and pushed you toward med school. You knew if you didn’t meet their expectations, they would be disappointed in you. Your whole family would! You went so far as to convince yourself that you also wanted to become a doctor.

So you did. But you weren’t happy. It didn’t fulfill you. But, instead of recognizing that you took the wrong path, you decided there was something wrong with you. You shoved your desire to pursue art so far down that you lost sight of it, and you took on your parents’ expectations and made them your own.

When we accept conditions of worth imposed on us by others, without examining them for their validity, we end up reducing ourselves to an image someone else created.

We become someone else’s expectations, and we judge ourselves by how well we meet those expectations. The conditions of worth dictate the measure of our self-esteem, how we make decisions, who we get into relationships with, and how we must act to be loved and accepted.

Worse yet, we become our own worst critic. Just as we were primed with conditional love to conform to the behavioral standards prescribed, we now assault ourselves with that same mindset. And we get locked into a never-ending need for affirmation from outside sources.

It’s like being in a straight-jacket on a tight-rope; only the tight-rope resides in your head.

What can be done?

Let’s start with the goal, which is “to become your true self.” That means learning to listen to the inner voice that’s been muffled out by the years of external conditioning.

It doesn’t mean that everything you’ve learned and internalized growing up is wrong. That’s likely never the case. It means that you have to be able to sift through it all and question what’s valid for you and what’s not. What truly resonates with who you are – your values, opinions, interests, talents, and desires.

There are two parts to working toward this goal.

1. Recognizing and reviewing your conditions of worth.
2. Identifying your truths about who you are and who you want to be.

Review your conditions of worth.

In his book Authentic, Stephen Joseph outlines an exercise that I think is perfect for working on this part of the goal. It’s done in writing. Get a piece of paper and write this sentence:

To be of value, I must _____________.

Fill in the blank as many times as you can. Include everything that fits for you.

Examples might be:

• Take care of other people
• Be wealthy
• Be married and have children
• Have a career (whatever fits)
• Be sociable
• Be successful (define it)
• Be calm and never angry
• Be beautiful
• Be perfect

After you fill these in, sit with each one, and as you do, let any thoughts, feelings, or memories come up in your mind. Observe them and write them down.

As you proceed, you’ll start to see where these conditions of worth originated and how they’re embedded in your relationships with parents, family, and other important figures in your life. You might also feel the weight of each one and recognize decisions you made that took you away from what you really wanted or who you really are.

Identify your truths.

As you go through this exercise, you’ll become more aware of what fits and what doesn’t. You’ll question, recognize, and revise what you think, need, and want. You’ll be able to crystallize what you truly value. You’ll find your inner voice again – probably stuck somewhere in a box covered by heavy books and sealed with tape. Dig it out.

This process will allow you to change how you talk to yourself and construct narratives for your life. The voice in your head will become your friend rather than a correctional officer holding you hostage. The door to new opportunities for exploring yourself and becoming more of who you are will open up.

Better yet, this process puts you in charge of your life. It’s both relieving and freeing, not to mention exciting, because it opens the door to step into your authentic self and reach your potential.

That’s all for today. I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by bernardbodo, Courtesy of iStock Photo

It’s normal to want to be seen and heard. It’s built into your DNA.

How you accomplish it is the issue.

If you grew up in a family where you felt understood, valued, and loved, you’re likely not driven to seek extra attention more than the norm.

If you didn’t grow up in a family where you felt valued and loved, and felt emotionally neglected, you might find as an adult that you feel compelled to seek attention more than other people, even when you know it’s probably not a good idea.

Attention seekers are not all narcissists trying to outshine everyone. Some are, but more often, they’re people who struggle with feeling unseen, unimportant, and unloved. At its heart, the attention seeker feels different and inferior to others.

Today I’ll briefly go over the twelve most common types of attention-seeking behaviors people use and then give you some strategies to change them.

I’m giving you the extreme example of each, so don’t feel criticized as you read along. It’s essential first to identify what behaviors you engage in most so you can make a plan to work on them.

12 Common Attention-Seeking Behaviors

1. Boasting and one-upping.

You’re uncomfortable with other people’s achievements and need to top them. You boast about your accomplishments or say something you think is more intriguing or exciting. Interactions are competitions, and you need to win.

2. You seek sympathy.

You dominate the conversation with personal stories about being victimized. Your boyfriend cheated on you, your boss fired you because he hates you, you had a terrible upbringing, you’re misunderstood, you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, you have no time for yourself. The goal of telling these stories is to gather sympathy.

3. You take over conversations.

You tend to take over conversations and bring the subject back to you.

4. You try and shock people.

Shocking people makes you stand out. You might wear something, say something, or do something outrageous. You don’t consider whether the behavior paints you in a bad light. The need for attention overrides that consideration.

5. You pick arguments or provoke.

You say things that stir people up and cause controversy. You provoke people to argue with each other or with you.

6. You don’t ask other people about themselves.

You keep the attention on you, your life, your issues, your interests. You don’t ask people about their lives or concerns. You quickly dismiss conversations that lead away from you.

7. You cling to powerful or influential people.

You quickly scan a room to find the most popular or influential person and then make yourself known to them. You use flattery to get their attention, either covertly or overtly.

8. You exaggerate.

When telling stories about yourself, you exaggerate the facts and dramatize. As a child in elementary school, I remember making up crazy dramatic stories during sharing time. The others kids were mesmerized as I spoke. The teacher raised her eyebrows, but I didn’t care. I needed the attention, and I got it until the teacher spoke with my mother about my stories. It always backfires.

9. You love social media and use it.

Social media is the perfect platform to display all these behaviors. You can pick fights, get sympathy, one-up, shock, complain, show off, and dominate conversations.

10. You either pretend you can’t do something or pretend you can do it better.

In the first case, you feign distress so someone will help you, and in the second, you broadcast your success to outdo everyone else.

11. You fish for compliments.

You need approval and confirmation, so you talk about yourself in a way that seeks affirmation and compliments from those listening.

12. You complain.

The content of your conversation focuses on complaints and negativity and holds people captive.

What to Do

That’s a long list, and it certainly paints a negative picture. Truth is, we all engage in some of these behaviors in bits and pieces, and more likely when we’re under stress or feeling low on self-esteem. It’s harmless in small amounts.

The issue arises when attention-seeking behavior is a regular pattern. If you see yourself in any of these behaviors, you’re depriving yourself. Think of it this way:

The approval, security, and love you seek can never be acquired through attention-seeking behavior. In fact, the opposite is true. Attention-seeking pushes people away and robs you of the very thing you need and want. It isolates you.

If you can accept that, you can turn things around to your great advantage.

Here are three things to try.

1) Practice listening.

Next time you’re at a social event, or even in a one-on-one conversation with someone, let go of the desire to impress the other person and turn your attention toward them. Ask questions, show interest, and keep the conversation on them, not you.

You might find this tedious and challenging but do it anyway. And then repeat it over and over until it’s an automatic habit. You can read this article to get specific instructions on how to do it well.

At first, you might feel empty because you don’t feel you get anything from these conversations. But over time, you’ll find that people begin to gravitate toward you naturally without your having to capture them. They’ll seek you out because they feel good when they’re around you. They’ll show more interest in you, and you’ll feel liked, seen, and appreciated. Truth is, everyone likes to talk about themselves, and a good listener is a treasure. It’s the best way to connect.

2) Pick the behaviors on the list above and one at a time delete and replace.

Instead of complaining, talk about positive experiences you’ve had. Things you’re grateful for, things that went well.

Instead of boasting, compliment and appreciate others’ accomplishments. It will feel ingenuine at first, but keep doing it until it’s not.

Instead of exaggerating, work on being accurate when relaying stories or talking about your experiences. Practice verbalizing facts.

The key is to decide what you’re going to do in each case ahead of time. Write it out and be specific, so you know exactly how to act. Then practice until it’s automatic.

3) Explore what feelings are driving you to seek attention.

This is the most important one.

What is it you’re really seeking and why?

Journaling is an excellent method to help you identify the emotional patterns driving your behavior, but that may not be enough. I would also encourage you to seek therapy, so you have some help gaining insight into what’s going on. As an alternative, you can talk to someone you trust who can give you good feedback.

This is an emotional process, and it helps to have some support from someone who can help you explore your thoughts and feelings without judgment. You have to be vulnerable to the painful feelings that drive you to seek attention. You can’t resolve them unless you take that step.

Keep this in mind.

You can change anything you truly wish to, and you’ll be rewarded. The desire to be loved, seen, known, and understood is your right. You just need to go about it the right way. Attention-seeking will only deprive you of it, so now is a great time to turn that around.

That’s all for today. Hope you have a good week.

All my best,

Barbara

P. S. Suggested reading: Authentic: How to Be Yourself and Why It Matters

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by ClarkandCompany, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Being too hard on yourself is a common plight and one I’m pretty familiar with, so I’m assuming it might be something that also gets the best of you sometimes.

I’ve found it helps to take a look and see exactly how I’m doing it, and then replace the bad habits with better strategies that work.

Let’s go through those two steps.

What exactly does “being hard on yourself” mean?

In a sentence, it means:

. . . any act or thought you impose on yourself that damages you emotionally or psychologically. It’s an attack on your very core sense of self.

Let’s try to categorize the various ways it manifests.

1. Self-criticism that belittles, shames, denigrates, deflates, or attempts to shred you.
2. Acts that punish or deprive you of the chance to repair, improve, or make amends. You might berate yourself so much that you feel too paralyzed to do anything.
3. Thought trains that expect perfection. Nothing is good enough. Successes are minimized and quickly replaced with criticism.
4. No forgiveness. Mistakes are not allowed. Worse, you take on the mistakes of others and blame yourself for them.
5. Excessive expectations. You expect yourself to be super-human. You should be able to accomplish “everything” that’s put before you and more. You are your achievements (or failures).

The Fallout

When you’re excessively hard on yourself, the underlying belief lurking in your mind is that it will make you better. You’ll perform better, become more self-disciplined, do more, succeed, and make the front page news as a winner!

Somehow, if you beat yourself into submission, you can get that monkey off your back that’s telling you aren’t good enough and aren’t living up to the expectations you and everyone else has of you – and if you only could, you’d get that approval you seek and feel like a “good person” who’s worthy.

The problem, of course, is that no one can beat themselves into being a better person. Beatings don’t work. They never have and never will.

There are only two reactions to beatings:

1. Becoming defensive in an attempt to stop the onslaught of emotional pain you’re feeling, or
2. Retreating into depression and increasing the unwanted behaviors that have brought on the beating in the first place.

In the first case, you come up with every conceivable reason why the accusations you’ve flung at yourself are wrong. They must be! You can’t be that bad. So you look for every reason, excuse, or possible way out of taking responsibility for what you think you aren’t doing right.

In the second case, you berate yourself with the most cruel and punitive accusations you can think of that build the case for why you should be beaten.

If you can relate to either of these, I would also guess that you alternate back and forth between them. Either way, you don’t feel better or do better when you’re excessively hard on yourself. That’s the bottom line.

But, there is a better way!

The Sweet Spot

There’s another approach, and that’s to make sure that the way you speak to yourself, and the way you characterize your worth, is done with love and compassion.

That doesn’t mean you don’t need to push sometimes or call yourself out. You do. However, there’s a way to do that that will preserve your worth, while helping you take steps to improve whatever needs work.

To do that, you have to start with two basic premises, which are:

Premise #1: You’re more than what you do. Your worth is intrinsic, meaning it comes from within and is tied to your existence, not your achievements. You’re worthy because you exist. All human beings have worth.

Premise #2: Life is evolution meaning your life is ongoing growth and development. Evolution is a process of change that starts with initial movements forward, followed by setbacks, new insights and resets, and then another forward push. It isn’t a straight line upwards. There are periods of growth and failure, and sometimes you get stuck in the ditch and have to pull yourself back out.

The sweet spot is learning how to ride those waves of growth and setbacks, both as an observer and participant so that you can make the most of them.

Here are some strategies to help you do that.

1) Be an empathetic and loving narrator.

If you were writing a story, you would have a main character who likely would come up against obstacles and, over the course of the story, would overcome them.

You would allow your character to make mistakes, take the wrong path at some points, and correct and find creative ways to get through the obstacles in pursuit of a good ending. That makes the story interesting!

Write your own story in this same manner. Be creative in figuring out ways to get around obstacles, and cheer yourself on when you’ve taken wrong turns and need to rethink your path. Engage in your narrative, but also be a guiding force that’s on your side.

Be mindful of how you talk to yourself, the words you use, and the feeling behind them. Compassion and guidance should work together.

2) Admit mistakes, failures, and wrong paths.

Be honest and scrutinize yourself. Take time to examine what you’re doing, as well as how you feel about what you’re doing. Objectively look at what you could do to repair situations that need it and make improvements in areas that need revamping.

Learn as you go, and do it with a sense of challenge and excitement that you can do better with sustained efforts.

Never give in to the pounding and relentless hammer of self-condemnation, and don’t forget to count your wins!

3) Hold yourself accountable, but do it with love.

Being kind to yourself doesn’t mean being lax. It just means always seeing yourself as worthy of love and acceptance while staying focused on what needs to be done.

4) When you make a mistake that involves someone else, repair it.

Fess up and apologize. Sincerely. Don’t defend or look for a way to excuse your behavior. Strength is admitting when you’ve hurt or offended or let someone down. Follow up your apology with corrected behavior.

5) Forgive yourself.

Let me give you this quote from Matt Haig from The Comfort Book. When I first read it, I let out a big exhale.

“Imagine forgiving yourself completely. The goals you didn’t reach. The mistakes you made. Instead of locking those flaws inside to define and repeat yourself, imagine letting your past float through your present and away like air through a window, freshening a room. Imagine that.”

Yes. Imagine that! By forgiving yourself and letting go, you’re far more able to keep going forward. The emotional energy you use up condemning yourself will keep you at a standstill, and you’ll find yourself unable to move. Forgiveness clears the way to keep going.

That’s all for today! Be kind to yourself, and have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Pogonici, Courtesy of iStock Photo

There are many ways to improve a relationship, yes? But there is one you can’t do without, and that’s the capacity to show genuine empathy.

Empathy is the glue that keeps a relationship alive and strong. It’s a:

1. Salve for conflicts and differences.
2. A means of getting closer.
3. And an antidote for loneliness and distance.

You gotta have it if you want a relationship that’s satisfying, fulfilling, and thriving!

An easy way to get better at being empathetic is to become an “empathetic detective.” To help you do that, I’ll go over the three components of empathy, show you how they work, and then give you some ideas about how to use them.

Let’s start!

Component #1: Cognitive Empathy

“Cognition” is associated with your thinking or intellectual capacity. So cognitive empathy is using your brain’s analytical skills to get a picture of what’s going on. This is the detective part. You’re an investigator.

Your goal is to see things through the other person’s eyes and understand their vision by finding out:

• What they’re thinking and feeling.
• If there’s a background story.
• And, what they want you to know.

You find this out by listening, asking questions, clarifying, and reflecting back what you hear. There’s no judgment. You simply want to understand.

The empathy part comes in when you can imagine how the other person feels by recalling situations where you’ve had similar feelings. You remember what it felt like to be there. You get it.

This type of empathy is a “top-down” process because it uses the newer part of the brain – the prefrontal cortex – where thinking, planning, self-regulation, and other executive functions occur. It involves investigation, analysis, and comparison.

Now let’s go to the next component.

Component #2: Emotional Empathy

With emotional empathy, you actually feel the other person’s feelings rather than just imagine them. Literally.

You “join” the other person, and their emotions reverberate through your body and psyche. This is what’s called being in emotional attunement with someone.

Have you had the experience of listening to a friend, and as they unfold something painful, they tear up and you tear up with them, or you get a lump in your throat or your stomach drops? This is emotional attunement.

You feel their pain as yours. Empathy is “embodied.”

This is a “bottom-up” process that occurs spontaneously and automatically. The feelings come up from the older instinctual and emotional part of your brain – the amygdala.

The way this works is that as you focus on the body language of the person speaking and pick up on facial gestures and postures, as well as hear the words spoken, your brain receives a signal of distress broadcast by the amygdala.

Simultaneously, mirror neurons in your brain replicate the feelings you hear and perceive. To make it a more complete hand-off, the area of the brain that’s activated when you feel pain – the anterior insula – is also activated when you feel someone else’s pain. You literally experience what the other person feels because it’s mirrored in your neurons.

Now, let’s go to the last component.

Component #3: Empathetic Concern

This next component is an activation of the feelings of empathy to do something. It’s the transformation of empathy into compassion and caring.

For example, you might see an older person limping across the street while carrying a bag of groceries, and you can see in her eyes and body language that she’s in pain and suffering. You might even tear up as you watch. The question is:

Will your empathy move you to ask her if you can help and carry her bag, or will you watch until you turn away and go about your business?

We can feel empathy, but compassion moves us to do something to alleviate the pain. It may be that listening until someone is finished talking is enough, or maybe you soothe or hug the person or ask if you can help in some way.

Empathetic concern pushes us beyond just becoming emotionally attuned. We want to help.

Is being empathetic something we come with, or do we have to learn it?

It’s both. All mammals have neural wiring built in to sense the feelings of others. It’s part of the evolutionary need to protect our young, so they survive and grow. We have a “keen attention to an infant’s signal of distress.” We have a “keen attention to an infant’s signal of distress.” Our brain tunes us in by arousing in our own body the infant’s emotional state.

However, more sophisticated emotional empathy and compassion are developed through your interactions and experiences as you grow up.

Your family of origin has the most significant impact on developing self-awareness of your own emotions, as well as your ability to pick up on those of others.

In other words, the apparatus for empathy is there at birth, but the development and depth of it are learned through experience.

You can develop it yourself with practice.

If empathy, and its partner, compassion, don’t come easy, you can develop them. There are three parts to this.

1) Self-Awareness

To read other people’s feelings, you need to be able to read yours first. You have to be more vulnerable. I know, that’s not an idea everyone likes, but start with you. Check in with yourself daily. What’s your emotional temperature? Carefully observe your reactions to things that happen or experiences you have, and honestly monitor your motivations and behavior.

The more you know about yourself, and the less you deny or avoid emotions you don’t want to deal with, the more you can become attuned to others.

2) Practice cognitive empathy first.

Get used to listening attentively, carefully, and without judgment. Watch for bodily gestures or cues to how someone might be feeling. Be a detective. Ask questions and clarify as you go to make sure you’re reading the other person correctly. Be curious and inquisitive. In short, listen to understand.

Even if this is quite difficult for you at first, you’ll get better at it over time and come to enjoy it. It will eventually come easily and naturally. All therapists are taught how to do this in formal classes. There’s no reason you can’t learn to do it too if you haven’t already. It’s a matter of consistent practice.

3) Emotional empathy will follow.

Once you get good at empathetic investigating, it’s time to add emotional empathy to the equation.

This will happen automatically as you become more attuned to yourself. When you increase your self-awareness and by exposing your true feelings to yourself (and maybe to those close to you), you find that you feel for others more deeply. The practice of cognitive empathy, along with deeper self-awareness, brings out your natural instincts toward emotional empathy.

Last Note – Listen more than you talk!

Listening with an open and curious mind is the way in. It’s an art, and you can get good at it.

For more help with listening, read this article. You might also enjoy reading Focus by Daniel Goleman, especially “Part 3 – Reading Others.”

That’s all for today! Hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Decety, J. (2010). The neurodevelopment of empathy in humans. Developmental Neuroscience, 32(4): 257-267.DOI: 10.1159/000317771
Decety, J (Ed.). (2012). Empathy: From Bench to Bedside. The MIT Press.
Goleman, D. (2013). Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. HarperCollins Publishers.
Jackson, P. L., Rainville, P. & Decety, J. To what extent do we share the pain of others? Insight from the neural bases of pain empathy. Pain. 125(1-2): 5-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.pain.2006.09.013
Stephens, G. J., Silbert, L. J. & Hasson, U. Speaker-listener neural coupling underlies successful communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107(32): 14425-30. DOI:10.1073/pnas.1008662107}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by valentinrussanov, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Let’s start with a quote today from Matt Haig found in The Comfort Book:

Pain is selfish. It demands full attention. But each moment is part of a totality. Each moment is a brushstroke in a painting—let’s say a painting of a river—which, when we stand back, can be rather beautiful. I have had moments of pain so strong I wanted everything to end. But standing back, they’re just shadows accentuating light.

Pain is a part of life, and if we use it right, it is “just shadows accentuating light.” That isn’t to minimize the sometimes excruciating experience and depth of it, but finding something of value in it helps.

Let’s dive into things that will get you through it and process it effectively.

1) Pain has its own time.

When you’re in emotional pain, it’s natural to want to get away from it. You might try and minimize, deny, distract or avoid the feeling. Or you might try to hurry it up.

The problem is that those tactics don’t get rid of the pain. It stays in some form or other – if not directly felt, then subconsciously planted where it comes up again and again until you deal with it. It’s best to let it have the time needed to recede.

If you burn yourself on the stove, the pain slowly subsides. You can put ice on it, which helps, but it still takes a certain amount of time to let up. Give it the time needed to play out.

2) It will eventually pass.

All feelings are temporary, even those that stay with you for a long time. How you feel right now is not going to last or be felt with the same intensity down the road.

When you’re in a lot of emotional pain, hearing that usually doesn’t ring true because of the overwhelming nature of it. It shuts out other feelings and dampens hope. Nevertheless, it’s true, and reminding yourself of it gives you some help. You’ll feel different in time, and the pain will let up.

3) Recall similar experiences in your past.

It helps to remember other times you’ve been in pain and lived through it. Depending on the source of the pain, you may find some solutions or help by remembering how you dealt with similar situations before. Maybe you took steps that were helpful, and you can retake those same steps now.

4) Write down your feelings.

When you write out what you’re experiencing, it does several things:

1. It crystallizes. It shrinks down the overwhelmingness of the feeling by limiting it with words. That might sound ridiculous upfront, but let that sink in. When you assign a feeling to language, you concretize it and give it some boundaries, making it easier to wrap your head around it.
2. It externalizes. It takes what’s in your mind out and puts it in front of you where you have some distance and can begin to sort through it.

When we’re teaching our young kids to handle their emotions, the first thing we do is help them assign words to express them. By giving them language, they can regulate them. Writing them out does the same thing.

Don’t worry that writing will make things worse or that you’re dwelling on the negative. In this case, it’s not so. It will help.

5) Accept the pain.

This is the hardest one, I think. Who wants to accept pain? But accepting it is the beginning of working through it.

Don’t suppress. That makes it worse. Feel your way through it, meaning let it have its time as you sift through the feelings and wait for it to subside. It usually comes in waves, and you have to ride each one, resting in between and taking solace. By going through this process, you’ll be able to take something from it that’s helpful. You’ll also prevent it from haunting you as you move forward.

6) Keep this truth in mind.

There’s no good without bad, no pleasure without pain, no gain without loss, no success without failure. They’re all intimately tied to each other.

Our job is to find the joy that rides just up above and permeates everything else. We have no choice. We’ll get the same lessons presented to us until we learn from them and move on. Keep going.

7) You are not your experience.

Even though emotional pain is sometimes totally overwhelming, you’re not your experience. You’re the “I” that has the experience.

Every experience has an effect on how you see yourself, but you have some control over how you make sense of that. You’re more than what happens to you.

This idea comes from Matt Haig’s book, but it’s also an Eastern concept that shows up in many spiritual contexts. It’s a bit lofty, but when you think of it and begin to see it in all your daily experiences, it gives you a different way of handling what comes your way. You gain some distance from what you experience and get a stronger sense of your “self.”

8) Find meaning.

The ultimate goal of pain is to find meaning.

• It may come as you work through a problem that keeps cropping up until you master it.
• It may come as a significant loss that is at first unbearable but eventually paves the way for an appreciation of something you hadn’t recognized before.
• It may open the door to a new direction you wouldn’t have taken on your own.

In all these cases, you gain new insight. Viktor Frankl says it perfectly:

In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering as the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

General Things You Can Do That Help

1. Don’t isolate. Stay in good company.
2. Be kind and patient with yourself. Don’t beat yourself up.
3. Stick to regular daily routines as much as possible. Get out of bed, shower, eat, go for walks, do the essentials.
4. Don’t worry when you backslide. Just keep going.
5. And if you’re heavily depressed or have a history of depression, anxiety, or some other diagnosis, don’t be your diagnosis. You’re more than that. You’re the “I” experiencing the depression, not the “depressive.” It’s a fine distinction but important.
6. And by all means, seek help. Don’t go it alone. Talk to someone you trust. Seek therapy if needed.

Last Thought

Life is attitude in many ways. The right attitude when in pain is to know:

• There’s no wrong with it.
• You can stand it, even if it feels like it’s crushing you.
• It will let up eventually.
• You can help based on how you look at it and what you do with it.

I’ll leave you with one final quote, again from Viktor Frankl. If anyone knows about emotional pain from the inside out, he does.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstance, to choose one’s own way.

That does it for today. As always, I hope you have a great week, and I’ll be back to you next Monday!

All my best,

Barbara