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Author: Christine Carter

Why Parents Aren’t Happy

We say [‘I’m SO BUSY’] to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a real mark of character. The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and, we imagine, to others.”–Wayne Muller

This video is the 3rd in a series about being happier as a parent from the Raising Happiness Homestudy. Watch the rest of the videos here.


Video Notes:

We can’t do our best raising our children without being happy, and we can’t be happy if we are too busy to enjoy life. So this week our practice is to focus on cutting back and saying no.

(1) First, take notice:

  • What types of activities routinely make you feel “crazybusy”?
  • What types of things are you doing out of obligation or routine, that you feel you should do, but that don’t bring you (or your kids) joy?
  • What do you do because you are afraid of missing out?
  • What “extras” do you have in your life that you wouldn’t miss if you took them out?

(2) Get out your axe. Start systematically pulling things off your calendar.

(3) Plan for the future.

  • Make rules for yourself so you don’t end up back where you started, e.g., no email after 9:00 pm.
  • Get support from your friends, your own parents, or your spouse.
  • Script and practice saying no.
  • Clear roadblocks. Is there someone in your life whose expectations might make your life more difficult? Who is imposing “should dos”? Talk with them directly about your happiness and the happiness of your children. Then listen to yourself, not them.

audio_icon-100x100If 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!

Overwork… Doesn’t Work

This post is from a series about the ideal worker archetype in my online course, Science of Finding Flow. Read the rest here.

We can check our email before breakfast (and while we wait in line for our lattes), and make calls during our commute. Most of us can keep working straight through lunch while we eat–how wonderfully productive is that? And after dinner, we can log back in and KEEP WORKING when our grandparents back in the day might have been, say, conversing with a neighbor or spouse or child. Or perhaps reading a book. For pleasure.

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Gemma Correll commissioned by JetBlue for Humankinda

The truth is super hard for us to hear: Overwork does not make us more productive or successful. For most of the 20th century, the broad consensus (among the management gurus) was that “working more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive–and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot,” writes Sara Robinson, a consultant at Cognitive Policy Works who specializes in trend analysis and social change theories.

Moreover, according to Robinson, more than a HUNDRED YEARS of research shows that “every hour you work over 40 hours a week [will make] you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul.” Really! Even, or maybe especially, for knowledge workers!

Why? The human brain did not evolve to operate like a computer that gets switched on and can run indefinitely without a break. Just as a fruit tree does not bear fruit 365 days a year, human beings are only productive in cycles of work and rest.

So if we are to be our most productive, successful, and joyful selves, we must create a new cultural archetype for the ideal worker. One that is based on the biology we actually have and the way that we actually are able to work. That is exactly what we are doing in this course.

Choices to make

This idea will be threatening to the people around you who still strive to be ideal workers. But sticking with the status quo—a life of unrelenting work—will break your heart slowly, as one of my clients so aptly put it. True happiness and fulfillment, it turns out, are not found in the unyielding pursuit of an impossible ideal.

To develop our multiple talents, we must stray from the herd of our cultural archetypes. This can be terrifying and disorienting—after all, humans are deeply social animals, so our nervous system sends distress signals when we break from our group. But we will not find flow by conforming to unrealistic ideals or outdated stereotypes. We’ll find it by allowing ourselves to be complex and divergent–our most authentic, balanced selves.


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 one “lesson” from this online class per week here, on my blog. Want to see previous posts? Just click this The Science of Finding Flow tag. Enjoy!

Want to Feel Appreciated on Mother’s Day?

Here’s an icky confession: I used to dread Mother’s Day.

When I first became a mother, the holiday somehow left me feeling unappreciated. I tended to get in a funk, and not out of grief or some sort of well-defined pain — I can only imagine how hard Mother’s Day must be for someone who has lost their mother. I felt bad in a bratty way, like a toddler who is pissed that she’s not getting what she wants. The worst version of myself has typically made her appearance, ironically, on the day that we were supposed to be celebrating my best, most beloved, self.

What is it that left me so resentful on Mother’s Day? What did I want so much that I wasn’t getting?

Until a couple of years ago, I thought it was about gratitude. I wanted to be appreciated on Mother’s Day in the way that we used to show appreciation to my mother. Research shows that when we express gratitude in our relationships, we become more attuned to our family member’s efforts on our behalf. I was hoping for a little more attunement to all the work I do as a mom — mostly from my husband, but also the kids.

Until last year, I always dreaded — no, hated — Mother’s Day. Share on X

At least the way I remember it (I’m a little afraid to ask my mom for verification; it just now occurred to me that my memory is probably a little rosy), we’d bring my mom breakfast in bed, showering her with homemade cards and gifts. My dad would give my mom a funny card and a gift that he’d bought. We’d take a family bike ride on the path around St. Mary’s College, with a picnic that my dad and I packed with help from the deli at Black’s Market. Norman Rockwell could’ve painted us.

None of that actually seems hard to recreate, but for the love of God my family has never even come close. The worst Mother’s Day I ever had was the year that I lowered my expectations and then laid them out clearly for my husband. “I’m fine with no gifts,” I explained, “So long as there are cards and a family activity.” This did not happen. 

For the record, three of the four children made me BEAUTIFUL, heartfelt Mother’s Day cards. They were practically set to music they were so thoughtful and moving.

But that was not enough for me.

Expectations, even low ones, are a tricky thing. Unfulfilled, they set us up to ruin what is actually happening by ruminating over what we think ought to be happening. Painful thoughts — How could he not do this for me given all I do for this family??! Does he not appreciate me at all? — start to loop endlessly, triggering waves of disappointment.

So how could I, once and for all, make Mother’s Day different? I had already lowered my expectations to no material gifts, and that didn’t help me much; I’m not sure I can lower them to nothing. In past years, I’ve made a massive effort to focus on myself less by helping others, but ultimately, even that didn’t really prevent me from feeling unappreciated myself. I felt entitled to a little gratitude, dammit.

(Let’s not miss the irony here: Entitlement is the opposite of gratitude. Rarely do we attract the opposite of what we feel. Just as we don’t foster other people’s love by lashing out at them, my unbridled sense of entitlement wasn’t exactly generating a mountain of appreciation.)

Emotional traps like this — obsessing over my feelings of unmet expectations — are usually triggered by a mistaken belief. So where was the error in my thinking?

I really was feeling unappreciated by my husband, Mark. I felt like I sacrificed more for our family and children, and that he should recognize and feel grateful for that. I held a deep seated conviction that I gave more. I spent more time doing the hardest parenting work, creating and enforcing structure and discipline, managing the near-constant drama of life with three teenage girls and an active adolescent boy.

Now, I should mention that, according to research, I am not alone in believing that I do more for our family than Mark — but I might not be correct. When researchers add up the percent of work each person in a couple says he or she does, they consistently find that the total ends up being more than 100 percent. So if a mom says she does 65 percent of the household work, and her husband says he contributes a solid 50 percent . . . there is a 15 percent error in there somewhere. Perhaps this was the heart of my mistaken belief?

My Mother’s Day funk did grow out of my belief that I do and sacrifice more for our family than my husband does. And weirdly, I somehow thought that this seemingly massive imbalance could be righted through a Mother’s Day display of profound appreciation.

This is funny to me now, because clearly even the most magical Mother’s Day outing would not dissolve my resentment. We needed to deal with the source of my bitterness.

“We need counseling,” I announced to Mark. I sat down to work through what I wanted help resolving. What did I want Mark to do differently?

What I found, when I really thought hard about it, was that my assumptions about our division of labor were blatantly untrue. Believe me, I was shocked by this revelation. But it turned out that I had loads of evidence suggesting I don’t do more for our family than Mark.

True, I do the bulk of the emotional labor. But he does nearly all the house and garden maintenance. We spend about the same amount of time in the car driving kids around. I plan our meals and cook; he shops and cleans up. We’ve got a division of labor where he does the things he likes to do best (like mowing the lawn) while I get to do the things that I love to do (like talking to the kids about their feelings). I am lucky to have a truly equal partnership.

I was harboring resentment out of habit rather than reality.

At times, being a mother can feel so overwhelming; when the kids were little, I sometimes felt a little victimized by it all, a little trapped by the sheer magnitude of the way they’d taken over my life. My husband simply couldn’t do many of the things that I was doing. Pregnancy, labor and delivery, and breastfeeding bred loads of occasions when only mama would do. My family could never repay me for the sacrifices I’d made for them — but they could, and should, show me a little gratitude for it. Hence my feelings of entitlement to a little Mother’s Day appreciation.

Billy Collin’s wrote a poem about this. In it, Collins recounts the thousands of meals his mom made him, and the good education she provided, and all the other zillions of things she did for him. In return he gave her . . . a lanyard he made at camp. Collins concludes:

And here, I wish to say to her now,

is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,

but the rueful admission that when she took

the two-tone lanyard from my hand,

I was as sure as a boy could be

that this useless, worthless thing I wove

out of boredom would be enough to make us even.”

Now, this is what I wish to tell my children and husband both: We are even, with or without lanyards and family outings on Mother’s Day.

Because I am not trapped. I have not been victimized. There is no need for reparation. You don’t owe me a darn thing, even gratitude. I don’t have to do any of the many things I do for you or our family. I choose to do them. I do them because I love each of you so very much. Moreover, this love that I feel for you is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given. It is a great joy to be a mother in this family, your family. I’m deeply, profoundly grateful for all we are and all we have — together.

Why Parents’ Happiness Is Important

“If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh

This video the 2nd in a series about being happier as a parent from The Raising Happiness Homestudy. Watch the first video here.

Notes for the upcoming week:

This week, record your “bright spots” throughout the day and week. Bright spots are activities or times when you feel bliss, joy, play, fun, flow, etc. And then consider: How can you add more bright spots to your life?

As an example, I feel total bliss if I wake up a few minutes early, make myself a cup of coffee, and let myself read before the rest of the family comes downstairs for breakfast. This is a bright spot for me, and so I know I can’t stay up late the night before if I want to wake up early.

With my kids, my bright spot is bedtime: cuddling (well, when they were littler…now I take what I can get) reading together on their beds, talking about “three good things” from our day. I miss this time when I give a talk at night, and so I reschedule it for after school: I leave work early, pick up the kids, and we hang out together until I need to leave for my talk.

Sometimes it’s not about adding something blissful to the calendar, but instead transforming existing activities, e.g., afternoons with the kids, into something that we enjoy more.

Join the Discussion
We can also clone bright spots from other people, or other parts of our lives. Please post your bright spots in the discussion here so that others get ideas.


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!

Final Course Instructions

“This course will invite you to address some of your oldest and most entrenched habits. But I’ll provide guidance every step of the way!”

This video is from a series in my online course, Science of Finding Flow. Read the rest here.


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, and you’ll now have access to these lessons for as long as you’d like. Want to see previous posts? Just click this The Science of Finding Flow tag. Enjoy!

The Happiness Advantage


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. Enjoy!

Note: Because the course was designed to focus on one theme per month (and one instructional video per week) I label the videos as such, e.g., this video is Theme One, Week One.

“The mere search for higher happiness, not merely its actual attainment, is a prize beyond all human wealth or honor or physical pleasure.”

—Cicero

This video begins Theme One: “How and why to put your own happiness first.

Here is what I want you to get out of the video: We need to prioritize happiness in our lives, and our children’s lives, over all other things.

Please understand that I’m not meaning to say that we need to prioritize pleasure, or gratification, or that we need to prioritize happiness over basic needs like food and shelter (the absence of which makes happiness much more difficult). Rather, we need to prioritize positive emotions and resilience. This class will help you build the skills you need to foster both positive emotions (like compassion) and resiliency in your family.

In this video, I talk about how Aristotle viewed happiness as the “chief” or “highest” good. I like the way that Darrin McMahon explains this in his dense but interesting book Happiness: A History:

What, then, is the highest good of the craft of life, the good for which all others are simply means, the end that is complete in and of itself? In Aristotle’s view, this final end is happiness…It is our natural telos—the end we ought to reach if we live well—and our highest attainment to be won by cultivating the faculty that sets us apart from all other creatures and acting accordingly…Happiness, Aristotle concludes, is an “activity of the soul expressing virtue.”

Join the Discussion
Reflect on how you are spending your time. What “roads to happiness” are you already on? What beliefs, activities, and habits do you have that routinely bring greater happiness and meaning into your life? Don’t forget to consider activities that deepen your connection to others, including your children. The goal here is to reflect on what you are already doing well.

 

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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.