Author: Christine Carter

Perfectionism is a Disease

This video is the 3rd in a series about fostering academic success from The Raising Happiness Homestudy. Watch the rest of the videos here.

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they’d make up their minds.”
–Wilt Chamberlain

Video Notes: Combat Perfectionism

(1) Reflect on the following:

Perfectionism is a particular form of unhappiness; moreover, it is a myth that perfectionism leads to success. Do you see perfectionism as a problem for you? Your children? What do you do that might be fostering perfectionism? Do you value your children’s character over their achievements? If so, how do you communicate this to them?

If perfectionism is a problem for you or your children, script your change.

What is the specific situation in which you tend to foster perfectionism?

What will you do differently in that situation?

What will you say?

(2) Practice “satisficing”: Model it, teach it directly, and practice together. Here are three simple steps for practicing saticficing:

1. Outline the criteria for success. You might also want to set time limits with some kids (or for yourself).

2. Choose the first option that meets all of your criteria for success. This means truly stopping when those “finished” signs appear.

3. Focus on the positive aspects of the choice you made or project you completed. What worked out well? What do you like about it? Resist the temptation to think of what “might have been.”

If you would like to download the audio version of this video to listen to in your car or on the go, click the link below.
DOWNLOAD THE AUDIO VERSION HERE.

This post is taken from “The Raising Happiness Homestudy,” an online course I created as a companion to my book Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents. I’m sharing one “class” from this online course per week here, on my blog. Want to see previous posts? Just click this Raising Happiness Homestudy tag. Enjoy!

The Perils of Pretending

One of the great things about smartphones and social media, we often think, is that they keep us from ever feeling bored. Or feeling anything we don’t actually want to feel, for that matter. Feeling guilty that you aren’t working? Check your email, perhaps, to reassure yourself that you actually are engaged at work. Feeling anxious? Distract yourself with a youtube video. There are an infinite number of ways that our devices make it so that we don’t really have to feel uncomfortable emotions. . . .Which you might think is kinda a good thing. Because who wants to be uncomfortable, right?

But a little bummer about the human brain is that we can’t selectively numb our emotions. So when we dull our difficult emotions (like shame or panic or fear), we also numb the pleasant and positive emotions (like joy and gratitude and inspiration).

This might be painfully obvious, but we can only really experience the emotions that we want to feel when we are conscious of what we are feeling, when we are in touch with all of our emotions, like ’em or not.

Numbing our unpleasant emotions is just one tactic for not accepting what we are feeling, for not feeling what we feel. Our devices and networking tools make it increasingly easy for us to not-feel by providing us with such effective ways to blunt our emotions, but numbing isn’t the only way that smartphones and social media allow us to deny our emotions.

Questions for your reflection:

1. How are you feeling right now? How satisfied are you with your life — with your work, your family, your relationships? Who are you — what kind of person are you? What and who do you love and value? Jot down answers to these questions in a journal or on a blank piece of paper, knowing no one else will ever see them. Just write down a few adjectives about who you are, how you are feeling right now, and your overall life satisfaction.

2. Now answer those questions again, but this time for an audience. How would you describe yourself and how you are feeling to co-workers? At a reunion? To a close friend you haven’t seen or spoken to in a long time? On social media?

Are your answers different depending on the audience?

This post is from a series about authenticity from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

How to Close the Gender Wage Gap

Did you know that women still make only 79 cents to men’s dollar—and that this income differential has barely budged in the last decade? At the current rate of change, it will be more than 100 years before this gap closes.

This gap used to largely be due to a difference in education and work experience—men had more of both. But as women are now surpassing men in their acquisition of education and have increased their labor force participation and job experience, research shows that this cause no longer holds.

In a brilliant analysis of gender wage gaps across professions, Harvard Economist Claudia Goldin demonstrates that employers and industries that value long hours and overwork are currently driving the male-female income difference:

“The gender gap in pay would be considerably reduced and might vanish altogether if firms did not…disproportionately reward individuals who labored long hours and worked particular hours.”

This means that our limiting beliefs about work and workers — that productivity and high quality work comes from working long hours — are creating the “motherhood penalty” that working moms clearly pay.

Cornell sociologists recently laid bare this motherhood penalty by sending out identical resumes that sneakily identified some job candidates as parents. The employers receiving the resumes were less likely to invite mothers for interviews than they were men and childless women.

And as if that wasn’t horrible enough, they also rated mothers as less competent, less committed, less promotable, and less fit for management. Also, they recommended lower starting salaries for them. (The resumes were identical, remember.)

WHY OH WHY, you ask?

It’s the myth of the ideal worker, AGAIN! The researchers believe that the conflict between the stereotype of the “Ideal Mother” — someone who is utterly devoted to her family, a la the 1950s housewife — conflicts with the myth of the Ideal Worker. They write: “this study suggests that cultural beliefs about the tension between the motherhood and ‘ideal worker’ roles may play a part in reproducing this pattern of inequality.” Ideal mothers cannot also be ideal workers, which leads us, usually unconsciously, to believe that they will be less competent, less committed, less promotable, etc.

So finding flow—truly fulfilling our potential for productivity without working long hours or risking burnout—has the potential to correct some of the influential biases that are keeping our society unequal.

This isn’t just a chick problem, people. Unless you are a guy without a mother, sister, wife, girlfriend, female bestie, or daughter, I’m going to assume you care about this social ill just because you care about your people. But I also feel the need to point out that inequality in the workplace hurts everyone. As men become increasingly involved with their children, the faulty belief that having a life and responsibilities outside of work reduces competency, commitment, and productivity is going to hurt them, too. Obviously.

This post is from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

Welcome To Unit 6 – Feel!

“When was the last time you were completely honest with yourself about what you were feeling? When did you last really let yourself feel something difficult or uncomfortable?”

by Christine Carter

The Power of Positive Emotions

All of our emotions, both positive and negative, can have a profound physiological effect on our bodies and our brains. We feel this the most when something makes us feel threatened—or physically stressed, such as when we deprive ourselves of sleep or catch a cold—and our body releases stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline.

Anger, fear, and negative emotions increase activity in the part of our nervous system that increases our heart rate. Gratitude, compassion, awe, love, and other positive emotions, on the other hand, decrease our heart rate, among other healthy things. This is why Barbara Fredrickson, a positive psychology pioneer, has famously shown that positive emotions put the brakes on the part of our nervous system that creates the deleterious stress response—what she calls the “undoing effect” of positive emotions.

When we’ve experienced stress, positive emotions return us to our natural state. #flow #powerofpostivity Share on X

Consider this study where Fredrickson and her colleagues deliberately stressed out their research subjects.

Applying considerable time pressure, we asked [the research volunteers] to prepare a speech on “Why you are a good friend.” To build the psychological pressure even further, we told them that we’d videotape their speech and have it evaluated by their peers. As you can imagine, this surprise public-speaking assignment made people anxious. Indeed, that was our goal—to make everyone who participated in this study anxious. And we thoroughly succeeded!

Understandably, everyone’s blood pressure went way up. Fredrickson’s team could then measure what might “undo” this stress response most quickly. After being told that they were actually going to watch a film clip instead of give the speech, the volunteers began to relax. Some subjects saw a video that evoked sadness by “showing a young boy crying at the death of someone he loved.”

Others got to watch clips that evoked serenity (by showing ocean waves) or mild amusement (by showing a puppy playing with a flower).

It was the volunteers in the last two groups—those who saw the ocean or the puppy videos—who recovered from the stressful event the most quickly physiologically. Their heart rate, blood pressure, and the constriction within their blood vessels returned to their baseline levels much faster than those who weren’t primed with a mild positive emotion.

The takeaway: When we’ve experienced stress, positive emotions return us to our natural state, unwinding the damage that stress does, and brings us back to ease.

This post is from a series about flourishing from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

Wrapping Up Unit 7

“The most powerful emotions of all (are) love, empathy and compassion.”

This post is taken from “The Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. I’m sharing “lessons” from this online class here, on my blog. Want to see previous posts? Just click this The Science of Finding Flow tag. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

And the Single Strongest Predictor of Happiness Is…

“People with many social connections are less likely to experience sadness, loneliness, low self-esteem, and problems with eating and sleeping, and are more likely to experience life positively.”

This short video is the first in a series about social connections from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

Pick Your Top 5 Priorities

Once you’ve identified what will bring you joy, ease, strength, and meaning in your life — or how you otherwise hope to feel— it’s time to start organizing your time accordingly. Peter Bregman, author of 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, advises his clients to pick their top five priorities and then spend 95 percent of their time doing only those activities, saying “no” to virtually everything else. To give you an idea of how this worked for me, here are my top five priorities, in order of importance:

(1) Maintain my own health and happiness. Because this is my top priority, first I schedule the things that most affect my happiness. I make time for sleep, exercise, creative work, personal growth, and my friends and family, and I say “no” to those activities—fun as they might be—that interfere with my sleep, exercise, and time with my closest friends and family. When I skip exercise or shortchange myself on sleep, I might cross more off my task list or answer more emails, but that puts my first priority—staying healthy and happy—at risk. And if I get sick or so stressed out that my energy is drained? Well, that puts my other priorities at risk, too. I have to constantly remind myself: It takes less time to exercise in the afternoon than it does to recover from the flu, should I get run down. (This doesn’t mean that I’ll never catch another cold, but it does mean that I’m less likely to!)

(2) Nurture my family, home, and closest friendships. My children and husband first, extended family next, friends and community after that. This is about raising amazing human beings who are healthy and happy, and about cultivating a deep sense that I am part of something larger than myself. In order to honor this priority, I need to schedule a fair amount of family time on my calendar. Because I actually have this scheduled, I can say “no” to other things that come up more easily. I simply say that I have a scheduling conflict.

(3) The Practice. This is about “shipping creative work” in the way that Seth Godin defines that. Learning, writing, and teaching are some of my highest priorities. In 2021, my goal is to learn everything about how the ways we work can be redesigned so that the work design itself—the structures and cultures organizations create—help people everywhere fulfill their potential for creativity, focus, productivity, purpose, meaning and joy.

(4) Coaching and speaking. These are the professional activities in my life that consistently remind me of my social value. I love creating coaching programs, like this one, and I love coaching teams and individuals. Every day that I coach I get feedback that I’m helping people become happier, healthier, and more productive.

(5) Give back. I challenge myself to do something every week, if not every day, to use my skills and passions to help someone else. For example, I love to cook, and so I love bringing meals to friends who might need them (this weekend I’m making a delivery to a friend who lives alone and has a broken leg). I also love to volunteer to serve food in our local soup kitchen.

How we schedule our priorities doesn’t have to be entirely proportional. We might value family most in life but spend the biggest amount of our time on some aspect of our work. So long as we are spending enough time on each of our priorities to accomplish our goals, that amount of time is enough.

Spending 95% of your time on your top 5 priorities leaves only about five hours a week for other things—the other 5%, the things that aren’t real priorities, but often need to be done. Most days, my 5% time is mostly spent answering emails and doing administrative work that is unrelated to the above Top 5.

Here’s the really great news: Deciding on your Top 5 priorities is going to REALLY free up some time for the things that matter most to you.

Now it’s your turn to decide on your top 5 priorities ala Peter Bregman. Use the “Top 5 Priorities” tab in this online/printable planner as a guide for picking your priorities.

by Christine Carter

The Virtue of Love, Even at Work

As it turns out, all positive emotions were not created equally. Love and the similar emotions that we experience when we feel connected socially—like affection, warmth, care, fondness, and compassion—are more powerful than the others. In Barbara Fredrickson’s words:

Love is our supreme emotion: its presence or absence in our lives influences everything we feel, think, do, and become. It’s that recurrent state that ties you in—your body and brain alike—to the social fabric, to the bodies and brains of those in your midst. When you experience love . . . you not only become better able to see the larger tapestry of life and better able to breathe life into the connections that matter to you, but you set yourself on a pathway that leads to more health, happiness, and wisdom.

The longest running study of human development, The Harvard Grant Study, has charted the physical and emotional health of over two hundred Harvard alumni since 1938 (which means that many of the study’s participants are pushing a hundred years old—or pushing up daisies). The Grant Study makes it clear that “the most important influence, by far, on a flourishing life is love,” as one of the researchers behind the study, George Vaillant, put it in Triumphs of Experience.

It isn’t just that people who are more connected are the happiest people. They are also the most successful at work and at school. When college students feel a sense of belonging, their grades go up. In one study, African American college students were asked to read a short testimonial from older students about how they had been worried about fitting in but that things had turned out well. They then had to make a short video testimonial about their own experience of fitting in. This one simple intervention “led to an enduring improvement in GPA in nearly every semester of about 0.2 GPA units (for example, a GPA of 3.6 instead of 3.4),” writes UCLA neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman.

Take a minute to reflect.

Where do you feel the greatest sense of belonging in your life? Where do your strongest and most positive social connections come from?

This post is from a series about social connections from the “Science of Finding Flow,” an online course I created as a companion to my book The Sweet Spot: How to Accomplish More by Doing Less. Want to go on to the next class or start the course from the beginning? It’s free! Just go to The Science of Finding Flow course page. Enjoy!

by Christine Carter

Two Powerful Things You Can Say to Kids

“The only thing you can control is your own effort.”
–Theodora van den Beld

This video is the 1st in a series about fostering academic success from The Raising Happiness Homestudy. Watch the rest of the videos here.

Three Ways to Create a Growth Mindset

(1) Use growth-mindset praise. First, identify where you are most fixed-mindset in praising your children. Is it during athletics? When they bring home grades? For me, it was when my kids brought home art projects. Identify a specific situation: this will be your action trigger.

Second, decide what you will say the next time you praise your kids. The key is to focus on the process rather than the end-result.

(2) Ask process questions. Who taught you how to do that? Did you use a different strategy this time? With younger kids, just asking them very simple things (Who did you sit by when you did that? What type of material did you use?) can be enough to provoke a process-oriented conversation.

(3) Identify where your KIDS are most fixed-mindset. Do your kids have fixed-mindset ideas about one area of themselves? Help them identify where the fixed-mindset is hamstringing them, and help them outline a practice strategy. Think of my belief that I couldn’t carry a tune, and how that almost prevented me from auditioning for the high school musical.