Home » Archives for Christine Carter » Page 47

Author: Christine Carter

by Christine Carter
is-your-phone-actually-controlling-you-christine-carter

Is Your Phone Actually Controlling YOU?

Social media can stress us out — or help us feel love and connection. The key is to understand their impact and use them strategically.

The Pew Research Center released a report on social media use and stress, and subsequent media coverage has boiled its message down this kind of headline: “Using Facebook and Twitter a lot can actually decrease stress,” to quote the Washington Post.

Wishful thinking. Pew surveyed the associations between people’s self-reported social media use and how stressful they perceive their lives to be, but it did not attempt to determine how Internet and social media use affects stress levels.

The Pew report did find that “women who use Twitter, email and cellphone picture sharing report lower levels of stress.” But we have no idea if there is a cause-and-effect relationship. Perhaps the low-stress women Pew surveyed have more leisure time, which both lowers how stressful they perceive their lives to be, and also gives them more time to send their friends pictures from their smartphones, and to post to Twitter.

Or perhaps these women were feeling the positive effects of communicating with friends. That would be consistent with 150 years of research that has found a person’s well-being is best predicted by the breadth and depth of their social ties.

Knowing this, we can ask how social media can strengthen our real-life relationships. Perhaps sending your sister photos makes you feel closer to her, especially when she comments and sends photos of her own in return. Plenty of research would back up the notion that the love and closeness you feel during this picture exchange really could lower your stress in a measurable way. Many people report a similar positive effect from posting on Facebook. The same goes for reading an article posted to Twitter that makes you feel engaged and curious, or viewing a particular artist’s photos on Instagram that inspires you. These are all instances where social media can foster positive emotions — and positive emotions reduce stress, help us relax, give us energy, and lend our lives meaning and fulfillment.

On the other hand, you might notice that your email or social media use is making you feel bad about yourself. Comparing ourselves to others, while natural, can make us feel envious and unhappy. Does social media use make you feel like you aren’t measuring up? Or does it make you feel isolated? Neither of these feelings will make your life better.

And, as so many people know, constantly checking email or feedback status throughout the day can exacerbate your stress. When researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Kostadin Kushlev regulated how frequently research participants checked their email, for example, those limited to checking their email only three times a day (vs. an average of 15 times) were less tense and less stressed overall.

Take Action: Social media does have the power to make us miserable and stressed out — or to help us feel love and connection, joy and gratitude, inspiration and curiosity. The key is to understand how these technologies influence our emotional lives, and learn to use them strategically. To reap the benefits of electronic connection, try these 3 strategies today:

Strategy #1: Check email intentionally, not compulsively. Designate three specific times today that you’ll read and respond to your email, and keep your mail application closed (and alerts off) at all other times.

Strategy #2: Decide on a few places where you will ban your smartphone use. (Consider starting with the dining room table, your bed, and the bathroom.) If you don’t have your phone in the same room, you’ll be a lot less tempted to check it.

Strategy #3: Use social media and email to strengthen your real-life relationships. For example, each morning, send an email telling someone what you really appreciate about them.

Join the Discussion: What tactics do you use to make sure that you aren’t controlled by your smart phone? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

by Christine Carter

This is What I Hope I’ve Taught You

My baby Fiona giving her 8th grade commencement talk. (A reminder to me that she’s got this thing — she gave better advice to her friends at graduation than I provide in this article.

 

My daughter, Fiona, leaves for school this week. I’m happy and excited for her—and also broken up about it. Although it was always the plan for our kids to grow up and move away, this week, like so many parents who have a child going off to school, I’m consumed by grief.*

I’ve done my best to teach my kids everything I know about finding happiness and fulfillment in life, but who knows when they are really listening? Just in case she missed something, here is a list of the principles I hope Fiona takes with her to school.

1. Make kindness the central theme of your life. Look for opportunities to show compassion and generosity. Don’t be tricked into thinking that happiness will come from getting what you want; happiness comes from giving, not getting. When you’re feeling down, help someone else.

2. Tolerate discomfort. Have the difficult conversations. Let yourself truly notice when other people are suffering. Do the right thing even when the right thing is hard. You are strong enough.

3. Live with total integrity. Be transparent, honest, and authentic. Do not ever waiver from this; white lies and false smiles quickly snowball into a life lived out of alignment. It is better to be yourself and risk having people not like you than to suffer the stress and tension that comes from pretending to be someone you’re not, or professing to like something that you don’t. I promise you: Pretending will rob you of joy.

4. Let go of what other people think of you. Another person’s opinion of you is their business, not yours. Great leaders are often criticized. Especially ignore critics who seem delighted when you stumble.

5. Invite constructive criticism from the people who want the best for you. Other people offer us a different view; we need their broader perspective to grow and improve.

6. Accept that well-meaning and loving people will sometimes give you bad advice. You’ll know when something isn’t right for you because you’ll feel it in your body. Our unconscious mind is our best source of intelligence, but it communicates through intuition and bodily sensations, not words. Learn how to read your “body compass.”

7. Know the difference between legitimate and not-helpful fear. Legitimate fear, like terror in the presence of a dangerous person, makes us want to get the heck out of whatever situation we are in. When you feel legitimate fear, run like the wind. Not-helpful fear, on the other hand, makes ushesitate rather than bolt. (Like when we are afraid of looking stupid and so don’t ask an important question.) Ignore your hesitation. As Maria Shriver wrote in And One More Thing Before You Go, often “anxiety is a glimpse of your own daring … Whatever you’re afraid of–that is the very thing you should try to do.”

8. Your relationships with your family and closest friends are always more important than any achievement. Prioritize accordingly.

9. When you hurt someone, apologize. Even if you didn’t intend to hurt that person, or you think they are over-reacting.

10. Look people in the eye. Chat with people in elevators and in line at the store. Look up. Smile.

11. Develop a strong handshake. Try to connect with people in your first interaction, to make them feel your delight in them (even if you are scared to death).

12. Hug people liberally. Even people you’ve just met. People are stressed. They need more love. Don’t withhold it.

13. Don’t compare yourself to others. When we get caught in a web of thinking that we are better or worse than others, we usually end up depressed, anxious, and insecure. If you notice that you are comparing yourself to others, try asking yourself these questions: What do I appreciate about those people? How can I connect with or learn from them? How can I add value to their lives?

14. Develop good habits; you won’t need so much willpower that way.

15. Don’t wear uncomfortable shoes, even if everyone else is doing it. High heels are the cigarettes of the future; they are bad for your health and they get you in the habit of ignoring pain in order to look good to others, which is never a good idea.

16. Let yourself feel what you feel. When we feel stressed out (or sad, or disappointed), we live in a world that offers many ways to numb those negative feelings–to not really feel them. But to honestly feel the positive things in life—to truly feel love, or joy, or profound gratitude—we must also let ourselves feel fear, and grief, and frustration. Your emotions are how your heart talks to you, how it tells you what choices to make. Practice listening to your heart. This is the way to know who you are and what you want.

17. Train your brain to see the positive in your life by keeping a gratitude journal.

18. Don’t believe everything you think. If a thought is stressing you out, it is probably untrue.

19. If you feel overwhelmed, unplug. Create times and places in your life every single day where you are free from technology.

20. Make your bed, and keep your room clean. The state of your bed is the state of your head. The outside tends to match the inside.

21. Know when and how to say “no.” That way, you’ll feel more joy when you say “yes.”

22. Chase meaning, not happiness. What purpose or value does your work and your passion have for other people? If you don’t know, find out.

23. Focus on the journey, not the achievement. Instead of wishing you were somewhere else, or saving your happiness for when you get where you are going, enjoy where you are. Right now. You are always already right where you need to be.

24. Remember that talents are actually skills. “Talent” comes from hard work, passion, and great coaching or teaching.

25. Give people the benefit of the doubt. When someone does something hurtful or annoying, consider the idea that it isn’t about you. Practice compassion and empathy by putting yourself in the shoes of others.

26. Make mistakes. In the classroom, in your relationships, on the athletic field, at parties, at home. We learn stuff from our mistakes that we couldn’t learn any other way.

27. When you make a mistake, don’t beat yourself up about it. Self-criticism makes us depressed, and much more likely to make the same mistake again. Instead, remind yourself that mistakes make us human. Feel compassion for your suffering. It can feel really awful to make a mistake. It’s okay to feel awful–to feel frustrated, embarrassed, guilty, disappointed, etc. You can handle these feelings.

28. Repair your mistakes. Use them to become a better person.

29. Love what is. Wishing to be older or younger, wanting other people to be different than they are, wanting it to be sunny when it is raining–this is fighting with reality, and it is a futile and frustrating pastime.

30. If you are tired, rest. Working 24/7 will get you nowhere fast. (Trust me, I’ve tried this.)

31. Remind yourself that more is not necessarily better. Do this especially if you are worried that you won’t have enough of something, if you feel like you don’t have as much as others, or if you are feeling ungenerous with your belongings or your time. Many of your peers will spend their time striving for more: more money, more likes on Instagram, more clothes, more popular or important friends, more prestigious schools. But as they accumulate more, odds are, they’ll just want more! True abundance is not a quantity of something; it is a quality of life, a feeling of sufficiency. When we step back from the idea that more might be better, often we see that we have enough to share.

32. Surround yourself with people and situations that make you laugh uncontrollably. Laughteris heaven on earth.

* Fiona is going to boarding school for 9th grade. This is at once terrible and wonderful. Even though I went to the high school she’ll be attending (The Thacher School), and I’ve served on its board for nine years, I’m really having some hesitations about all this going away business. But then I remember: I had an incredible experience at Thacher that I would never dream of depriving Fiona of, especially just to satisfy my own selfish desire to keep her home. Still.

by Christine Carter

7 Ways to Feel Loved and Connected

4983429703_4a81ed3748_b

Photo by xxFr0z3n

Celebrate other people’s success. The people we love feel closer to us when we actively rejoice with them. When they succeed, whoop and holler like a cheerleader, bring them cupcakes, or pop open a bottle of champagne.

Consciously practice gratitude. Everyday, express appreciation to a friend or family member.

Allow yourself to be vulnerable. Vulnerability can be uncomfortable, but it allows trust and intimacy to develop.

Accept that people are often annoying. Love them anyway.

Learn how to apologize effectively. We all make mistakes; the trick is knowing how to repair them.

Forgive people. Forgiveness is not about erasing the original hurt; it is about choosing positive emotions over negative ones.

Stop thinking about yourself so much. Turn your attention to the things that you can do to make other people happy.

ss_7waystofeellovedandconnected

Download the printable list here!

If you like this printable list, I bet you’ll love my Thursday Thoughts. Get them via email here.

May you be happy,

Christine Carter, PhD

by Christine Carter

How to Find Your Sweet Spot

Jill Suttie sat down with me recently to talk about my new book

CARTER_20140929_628

In 2009, Christine Carter felt like she had it all. On top of her dream job here at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, she had two wonderful kids, a best-selling book called Raising Happiness, a popular blog, and frequent requests for speaking engagements.

Then she got sick. At first, it seemed like no big deal—just a little strep throat. She took a round of antibiotics, but didn’t recover; then she took more. Nine courses of antibiotics later, she still hadn’t healed. Instead, she ended up in the hospital with a severe kidney infection. The diagnosis?

“Exhaustion,” says Carter.  “My body had basically lost the ability to heal itself.”

That’s when she realized something was really wrong. Her life had become completely out of whack, and it was taking its toll.

“Here I was, an expert on how to sustain high performance and be happy, and I could not get myself healthy, because I was overwhelmed and exhausted,” she says. “The irony was not lost on me.”

Carter began to chart a new course. Drawing on her background studying productivity, positive emotions, and well-being, she put together a plan to reinvent her life. That process, as well as correspondences from her readers who also felt overwhelmed by the pace of their lives, inspired her to write a book about her path to healing: The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work which is being published this week by Ballantine Books.

Carter will be talking about The Sweet Spot tonight, January 21st, at 7:30 PM at the Hillside Club in Berkeley, in an event co-sponsored by Berkeley Arts & Letters and the Greater Good Science Center.

We sat down to discuss her book—and the science behind finding one’s sweet spot.

Jill Suttie: What exactly is the sweet spot?

Christine Carter: Most people think of the sweet spot as a point of maximum impact in sports—the point on a bat or racket that hits a ball with its greatest power, and with the least stress or resistance. So, as it applies to our lives, the sweet spot is the overlap between where we have the most ease in our lives and the place where we have our greatest strength.

Think of it as a Venn diagram, with a “strengths circle” and an “ease circle.” I tend to operate from my strengths circle: I’m a high achiever, I get a lot of hits. But, before I changed my life, I couldn’t get those hits without operating outside of my ease circle.

It’s pretty common for people to favor one side or the other. The trick is learning where your overlap is, and expanding that area of overlap.

JS: Your book is coming out just after the New Year, when many of us are thinking about forming better habits, using willpower and determination. But your book says that willpower isn’t the best way to create healthier habits. Why is that?

CC: The activities that we consciously control in our day-to-day lives are few and far between relative to everything that we do unconsciously, on autopilot. Our brain’s ability to train itself to do things without willpower, without self-control, without any sort of conscious control is one of our greatest advantages. Being able to do something with no effort or resistance, completely automatically—that’s the definition of ease.

<a href=“https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553392042/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0553392042&linkCode=as2&tag=gregooscicen-20&linkId=V4ZLNDBQKFV3HZES”>Ballantine Books, January 20, 2015, 320 pages</a>
Ballantine Books, January 20, 2015, 320 pages

One of the ways I grew the ease part of my life is that I put a lot of my life on autopilot, so I wouldn’t use up my limited supply of willpower on things I could do automatically. The things that take self-control or willpower, for the most part, involve decision-making, and we don’t want our willpower muscles to become fatigued by every day decisions when they could be automated. We don’t’ really need to spend a lot of time deciding whether or not we’re going to exercise in the morning, or what to eat or what to wear. A lot of people spend time making decisions in the morning that, in my opinion, could be automated.

JS: But don’t you find people resist routines?

CC: It depends. Some people are high in novelty seeking, and they find it hard to get into routines, so they resist. And to them, I’d say: It’s not as hard as you think.

My husband and I are novelty seeking—we really love change. For me it’s important to automate mundane things in your life as a way to free up attention for new things, new endeavors. It’s not that I have less novelty or change now that so much is automated. It’s that I can seek change and growth in more important realms.

JS: In your book, when writing about the balance of mastery and ease, you start with the ease side of the equation—the importance of relaxation and taking breaks. Why start there?

CC: Because stress is pretty epidemic in North America and in the West. Most people don’t understand the benefits of ease, and they need to.

We have a whole cultural mantra around busyness—How are you? Oh, I’m really busy. By that I mean: I’m busy and important. I’ve got so much going on. Busyness is seen as a sign of success, and the marker of character and importance. If you’re not busy and stressed and overwhelmed, then the reverse might be true: You might not be important or very significant; you might be lazy and of low character. This is the big cultural thing we’re up against.

Researchers call busyness “cognitive overload.” The state of cognitive overload makes us worse at everything. It hinders our ability to organize ourselves, to plan, to think clearly, to be creative, to innovate. It makes us irritable. It impairs our verbal fluency, and our ability to remember social information. And it hinders our ability to control our emotions.

So it makes us worse at everything. When somebody tells me they’re busy, what I hear is, this is someone who is not fulfilling their potential. They’re not able to do the best work in this world that they can, or enjoy the work that they are doing or the life that they are leading.

JS: Speaking of busyness, it seems like we have become so enslaved to technology. How can we find more balance in our lives around technology use?

CC: I think it’s really important not to demonize technology, but to realize that something can happen in our brain with it: It provides what’s called “variable ratio reinforcement”—it’s like a slot machine. If you have your email open, and you see that you have a new message, your attention is drawn away from what you’re doing, because every so often the email is rewarding you in some way.

Also, we have a dual attention mechanism in our brains—like a seesaw—so we can either be focused on a task, getting things done, or our minds can wander and be unfocused. It can’t do both of those things at the same time. That’s why we get so stressed and overwhelmed with technology: because we’re constantly pulled between those two states. And that’s why it’s super important to close down your email, turn off alerts, and put your cell phone on sleep mode while you’re working on something else.

The other important thing is not to push yourself too far with technology. We turn ourselves into zombies if we have just been sitting in front of a screen all day. In order to do our best, most enjoyable work, we need to engage our mind-wandering mode from time to time. When our mind is wandering—when we’re staring into space or going for a walk in nature or doing anything but focusing on a task—there’s a neural network that’s constantly making connections, which can lead us to our greatest insights. Unfortunately, it’s the focusing part of our brain that often gets all of the credit for our work.

JS: One thing I appreciated in your book is how you included “ridiculously small” steps people could take to make real change. What ridiculously small step made a big difference in your life?

CC: The example I give in the book is still true for me: my better-than-nothing workout. Every morning, I do a one-minute plank, 20 push-ups, and 25 squats. Doing two years of just that, you should see—I have Michelle Obama arms! It only takes me three minutes. Three minutes, every morning.

Does that mean that I don’t do any other exercise? No, I get a lot of other exercise too, but not consistently. This better-than-nothing routine is what has made a huge difference in my overall health.

JS: The book is geared toward individuals changing their own lives. But, do you feel the book has a message for society at large?

CC: Many of the reasons we feel so overwhelmed and busy and don’t operate in our sweet spot come from social structures that aren’t working for us and from really big cultural lies—for instance, that busyness is a marker of importance, that more is almost always better.

I’m getting asked a lot now to come and talk at corporations to their administrative teams and big HR departments, and it’s thrilling to me to be able to expose them to these ideas. They may say they want to work smarter, not harder—but they don’t know what working smarter is!

At their companies, working smarter currently means working long hours. But if we examine what is really smarter—and how they can change their work culture—it will do a lot to undo those unhealthy and unproductive behaviors in their employees.

Jill Suttie writes about the science of wellbeing, and she is the book review editor for Greater Good, the online publication of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. She is also a singer songwriter, and has recorded two CD of her original songs, both available at cdbaby.com/cd/jillsuttie.

by Christine Carter

Fail at Your New Year’s Resolution

2657846618_bd0b518e73_b
Photo by Avern

This week is an important one for people who made New Year’s resolutions (I hope that’s you)! If you can keep your resolution for the rest of the week, you’ll be much more likely to end the year having kept it, too.

When starting a new habit, it can be frustrating to fail. But failing is also essential to the process of creating a habit that sticks. Unless you are some sort of superhero, you will not be able to get into a new habit perfectly the first time. You’ll trip and fall and royally screw up. And then you’ll have the opportunity to learn something from your failure that you probably couldn’t have learned any other way.

Faltering is a normal part of the process. It doesn’t matter if you have a lapse, or even a relapse, but it matters how you respond. If you’ve had a slip, don’t get too emotional or succumb to self-criticism.

Take Action:  If you’ve started faltering with your resolution, the first thing to do is forgive yourself. Remember: lapses are a part of the process, and feeling guilty or bad about your behavior will not increase your future success. Make a plan for the next time you face a challenge similar to the one that caused your lapse. What will you do differently? What have you learned? What temptation did you face that you can remove? Is there something that you need to tweak? Were you stressed or tired or hungry — and if so, how can you prevent that the next time?

Join The Discussion: Tell us about your lapses in the comments. Be sure to ALSO tell us how you’ve gotten back on track.

Need more structure? If you want more support in making a change like this one, please sign up for my free online class. You’ll get a worksheet and an email everyday for 21 days that will give you more help establishing good habits like this one.