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WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY MIGHT NOT

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Surprising Things You Think Are Making You Happy—But Are Doing the Opposite

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Angela Haupt from Greater Good Magazine recently did a deep dive on HAPPINESS…what we think it is and maybe.   .   .what it’s really not.      .      .Fat salaries and corporate success aren’t the gateways to happiness they’re cracked up to be. But it makes sense that we might think they are. “We’re fed such an incredibly dense diet of popular media and marketing that shapes our understanding of happiness in a way that actually gets in the way of it,” says Emiliana Simon-Thomas, science director at the University of California at Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. “I think we as a society, particularly in the West, have a bit of an illusion about where happiness comes from and how to get more of it.”

Researchers have long sought to sort fact from fiction when it comes to pinpointing what increases happiness. Here are six surprising things we often think are making us happy—but that might actually be doing the opposite.

Dodging your negative emotions

Being happy is a lofty goal. Squashing negative emotions like anger, fear, and resentment is surely a step in the right direction, right?

It turns out the opposite is true—and experts say that’s the No. 1 thing most people get wrong about the pursuit of happiness. “We have the mistaken idea that a happy, meaningful life means feeling good all the time and avoiding our negative emotions,” says Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale University. “But the evidence suggests that suppressing our negative emotions can be a recipe for making those emotions worse.”

Research has concluded that suppressing negative emotions is a “barrier to good health.” One study suggests bottling up emotions like frustration or disgust can make people more aggressive; another indicates that the habit can lead to lower social support and fewer close relationships. Additional researchhas linked suppressing emotions to an increased risk of early death from any cause.

It’s much healthier to reframe how we think about happiness, Simon-Thomas says, and to accept that it includes the full spectrum of emotions. Remind yourself that when you’re scrolling past beaming faces on social media, you’re only seeing part of the story, and it’s not possible or healthy for anyone to constantly be happy.

Once we redefine what happiness means, “there’s a way to relate to our unpleasant emotions that’s more restorative—more growth- and learning-oriented,” Simon-Thomas notes. It’s important to practice self-compassion, and to recognize that when we feel bad, the answer isn’t to stifle those emotions or berate ourselves. “Rather, we need to understand what they’re for,” she says. Practicing mindfulness can help some people figure out how to acknowledge and cope with difficult emotions in a healthy way, as can a specific framework called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT. The approach helps teach people to accept their inner emotions instead of avoiding them.

Living in a city

Some of the great American cultural icons—from Frank Sinatra to Jay-Z—have waxed poetic about life in metropolitan areas like New York. But waking up in a city that never sleeps isn’t necessarily good for inner peace.

Research has found that urban living often translates to stress, anxiety, and plain old unhappiness. According to one study, people who resided in cities were 21% more likely than those in rural areas to experience an anxiety disorder, and 39% more likely to have a mood disorder like major depression. In another study, those based in areas with lots of road noise were 25% more likely to report depression symptoms than people living in quiet neighborhoods. (One potential reason: Noise can interrupt sleep, which is a crucial component of mental health.) Research has linked simply being in the presence of high-rise buildings to worse moods and feelings of powerlessness.

One reason why cities have these impacts is that our brains are only wired to live in social groups of about 150 people, says Colin Ellard, a neuroscientist at Canada’s University of Waterloo, who studies how natural and built places affect emotion and physiology. Of course, most places have a bigger population than that—but in a smaller town, you won’t pass all of them on the street during your morning commute. “Once the size of our group exceeds that, we’re basically in a situation where we’re living among strangers, and that is cognitively and emotionally taxing,” he says. Feeling crowded in a high-density area can, for example, lead to higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol. Plus, “people struggle mentally in situations where they don’t feel in control over their circumstances,” which is common in cities—there’s nothing you can do to get the taxis to stop honking or to clear a crowded sidewalk.

Fortunately, if you’re a city-dweller and plan to remain one, there are ways to protect your mental health. Even brief exposures to natural areas like urban parks can help, Ellard says, as can trading a bus commute for a walk or bike ride. And investing in black-out curtains and a white-noise machine can help improve sleep quality in loud, bright neighborhoods.

Having tons of free time

Researchers have long known that having enough discretionary time is crucial for wellbeing—but it turns out that having too much free time may be almost as bad as having too little.

According to a study published in 2021 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, wellbeing increases in correlation with free time, but only to a certain extent. The benefits level off after about two hours, and decline around five hours of free time per day. “What we found is that if you have a lot of discretionary time, you’re not necessarily happier, and in some cases, you’re actually less happy,” says study author Marissa Sharif, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “The reason for that is you don’t feel like you’re productive anymore, and you feel like you lack purpose and meaning.”

Still, how you spend your free time matters. When people with more than five hours spent it with others—or felt like they were passing it in a productive, meaningful way—they didn’t experience a drop in well-being. Some of the activities that helped participants feel like they were optimizing their time included exercising, participating in group activities, and pursuing a hobby like gardening or studying a new language. Scrolling through social media or using the computer, on the other hand, made people feel less happy about how they’d spent their free time.

“If you do happen to have lots of time, just think consciously about how you’re spending it,” Sharif says. “Think about how to use that time in a way that makes you feel like you have meaning, or purpose, or like you’re productive.”

Chasing success

From the time we’re little kids, many of us are taught that if we work hard, we’ll land the perfect, high-paying job, get a flashy promotion (and then another), and live happily ever after. It’s the American Dream.

But experts say checking off those accomplishments won’t actually make you happier—at least not for long. The false notion that achieving success will lead to long-lasting happiness is called the arrival fallacy, says Tal Ben-Shahar, co-founder of the online Happiness Studies Academy. “Most people believe that if you win the lottery or get that raise or promotion, or win a tournament, then you’ll be all set,” he notes. “This actually leads millions—if not billions—of people on the path to unhappiness. Because at best, what success does is lead to a temporary spike in our levels of wellbeing, not to lasting happiness.”

Almost as soon as we achieve one goal, we often become fixated on the next, ending up trapped in an endless cycle of not appreciating what we have. Plus, success frequently translates to more stress and less time for things we care about, like our families. In one classic study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, professors who had either received or been denied tenure were asked to rate their happiness, and both groups had similar scores. (That’s despite significant career differences, including higher pay and job security.) When assistant professors who weren’t yet eligible for tenure were asked how achieving such a milestone would affect them, they tended to overestimate how happy the change would make them.

Discovering the fleeting nature of happiness following a big accomplishment can feel like a letdown. But there are ways to stretch out the positive feelings success initially brings, says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California Riverside and author of books including The Myths of Happiness. For example, if you change jobs, aim to keep feelings of novelty alive by seeking out new challenges and opportunities: “Meeting new people, learning new things—if we’re able to do that,” we’ll fend off feelings of staleness, she says. So sign up for an online course in some new skill you’d like to explore, and schedule networking coffees with colleagues you don’t know very well yet. Doing so may lift your spirits and invigorate you.

Anonymity

It’s natural to want to blend in some of the time: to keep our heads down, avert eye contact, and mind our own business. But the pursuit of anonymity isn’t doing us any favors, says John Helliwell, one of the founding editors of the World Happiness Report, a publication of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a nonprofit launched by the United Nations.

He references an experiment in which participants were asked what might happen if they lost a wallet with $200 in it. How likely did they think it was that a police officer, neighbor, local clerk, or stranger would return it? People who believed they lived in an environment in which someone would return their wallet were much happier than those who didn’t think they’d get it back. “We found it was really important for people to feel that they live in a society where other people care about them,” Helliwell says. “If you believe that other people will return your wallet, you’re more likely to return their wallets—and you’re likely to feel happier because these are the people who watch out for your kids when they’re walking to school, who tell you to ‘watch out’ if you’re about to run into a curb.”

To foster this sense of community belonging, Helliwell issues a few challenges. The next time you’re walking down the street, think to yourself: “These are all people who would return my wallet if I dropped it,” and offer them a smile instead of quickly looking away. Or start a conversation. “Turn your next elevator ride from a place to read your mail, or to look at the elevator inspection certificate, into an opportunity to say hello to someone,” he says. “Because it’s that connection that’s going to make both of you happy.”

Buying fancy things

Money and happiness have a complicated relationship. Earning a decent salary does improve how happy you are—but only to a certain point. Researchsuggests that Americans tend to feel happier in correlation with the amount of money they make up to about $75,000 a year per person (and $105,000 per yearin more expensive North American areas); after that, emotional well-being levels off.

But exactly how we spend our money can also impact happiness, says Michael Norton, a professor at Harvard Business School and co-author of the book Happy Money. Research suggests that buying stuff—designer clothing, shiny new cars, the latest gadgets—doesn’t make us happy. Rather, as people become more materialistic, their well-being plummets.

People who spend money on experiences instead of material things, however, tend to enjoy greater happiness. That’s likely because fun activities facilitate social connection and can be appreciated for what they are, not compared to someone else’s experiences (which isn’t the case with consumer goods). Experiences don’t need to be big vacations, either: “Going out for lunch with a friend instead of buying yourself some [trivial] thing” counts too, Norton says.

Spending money on others rather than on yourself can also improve happiness, Norton’s research indicates. “Giving really does pay off more than spending on yourself,” he says. “And it’s not like you have to do a billion-dollar foundation.” Only have $5 to give? “That day is going to be a happier day.”

HERE IS TO HAPPINESS.         .         .
WHAT IT IS
WHAT IT ISN’T
WHAT WE THINK
WHAT WE CAN’T IMAGINE.       .        .

SOMETIMES, UP ON A BOX

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It’s true.         .          .
You may never get an Answer
if you don’t ask a Question
but it’s just as true
that sometimes the best Answers
require no Questions.          .          .

S U M M E R I N G

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I am not the only one who
THINKS
or most certainly
F          E          E          L          S
I    T.          .          .

But I keep looking for the rest of Summer
as soon as the last sparkler loses its sparkle
on the 4th of July
which got me to thinking about things
a little beyond Summer
and this one Summer of 2023
being the last one any of us will
ever live.        .       .
h      e      n      c      e:

100 Summers                                               

100 Summers from now
I’ll be gone
and so will everyone
I know and love
(and you too, dear reader)
My name won’t be
remembered or spoken
The Okay-ness
of this is that after
100 Summers gone
is there’ll be as many
Falls, Winters and Springs
taking their places as
100 Seasons before
without much explanation
(recently written for a 15 poems in 10 day challenge for local gems)

Uhhhhhhhhh
days gone by
are never really days
g  o  n  e.        .        .        .

THE JOY OF JOY

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How to Find Small Moments of Joy in Dark Times

Illustrations by Brown Bird Design for TIME
It may not have a price tag on it or could be purchased/delivered by Amazon Prime, but JOY is one of those unnamed items that’s on everyone’s wish list because, well because it literally is PRICLELESS.     .     but how do YOU define it and where do YOU find it?  Angela Haupt,  writer for Time Magazine did a deep dive into the Ocean of Joy and how we might possibly dip our toes into its frothy waves.     .      .

Sometimes the smallest moments of joy are the only ones that feel possible. That’s what Nora McInerny learned in 2014, when she lost her 35-year-old husband and her father to cancer and her second baby to miscarriage—all within the span of eight weeks.

Her husband, Aaron, was a “naturally buoyant person,” says McInerny, who’s the host of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking and author of the upcoming book Bad Vibes Only. “He just had this otherworldly ability to find the fun and the joy in anything,” she says. “I learned from him the importance of staying as present as possible in the moment, even when the moment sucks. Even as he was literally dying, he could make me laugh.” (Among Aaron’s final words to his wife: “I will always be with you … so you need to stop picking your nose.”)

It was a moment she remembers with levity, plucked out of an unbearable time. During these past few years—plagued by political strife, social unrest, and, well, an actual plague—many of us have struggled to even briefly escape morose moods. But experts say that incorporating just a little bit of joy into our lives can disproportionately enhance our well-being by reducing the risk of chronic illness, strengthening the immune system, and combating stress.

“I think joy feels sometimes like a really big emotion—like crazy happiness,” McInerny says. “But it can be a small point of light in the darkness. It doesn’t have to be throwing the light on in the dark.”

Remind me—what’s joy again.     .     ?

Joy is the state of feeling freedom, safety, and ease. Unlike some other positive emotions, like compassion and contentment, experiencing joy often depends on preparing for it, rather than spontaneously feeling it, says Philip C. Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University who’s authored many of the leading research papers on joy.

One of the best ways to usher in joy is to strengthen bonds with friends and family. “The most intense joy experiences are probably experienced in relationships,” he says. Filling your life with meaningful goals and purpose is also essential, Watkins notes, as is cultivating an open mindset—and not just to the good stuff. “If you’re open to joy, you have to be open to disappointment,” he says. “Paradoxically, in terms of experiencing joy, there has to be a willingness to experience loss and sadness.”

If you’re not sure how to go about sparking joy, start with some self-reflection, advises Brie Scolaro, a licensed social worker and co-director of the New York City-based and LGBTQ-focused Aspire Psychotherapy. First, take an inventory of what joy means to you, and when you last experienced it. Ask yourself: What’s standing in your way of feeling joyful?

Then, think back on your favorite, happiest moments. Doing so will trigger some of that same joyful energy (just as reflecting on sad memories will make you feel upset). It will also give you a hint of how to achieve more joy in the future.

Next, “make a plan to bridge the gap between what you know brings you joy and what you’re currently feeling,” Scolaro says. What actionable steps can you take today to increase your odds of experiencing joy?

Finally, make sure you’re present enough to soak in joy when it washes over you. “Are you listening to your friends speak? Are you tasting the beer that you’re drinking? You have to be able to register joy,” Scolaro says. “Joy is in the moment. Building the capacity to move back to the present moment—like through meditation—is the best way I can think of to be present to joy.”

Here are a few ways to achieve small moments of joy in dark times

Make a joy bucket list

Robin Shear, a life coach, speaker, and author based in Detroit, has an emergency plan for those inevitable times when everything feels awful. Instead of spiraling—and it would be so easy to hop on the merry-go-round of doom—she turns to her “joy bucket list,” a tally of all the things that make her joyful: test-driving fast cars, being spontaneous, sharing new experiences with her family. She suggests others do the same, storing it in their phone or some other easily accessible place.

Having a physical reminder is helpful, “because there will be times in your life when you don’t feel joy. When life really hurts—and when you’re needing to rise out of that—it can be difficult to think about what will bring you joy again,” says Shear. “If you already did the work and made your list on a scrap of paper, you’ll find it’s much less challenging.”

 

Illustration by Brown Bird Design for TIME

Incorporate daily habits you look forward to

Every morning, Deborah J. Cohan has a cup of coffee in a colorful ceramic mug. She begins looking forward to it the evening before. Another favorite part of her day: Going for a nighttime swim under the stars. “I think there’s something about joy that’s multisensory,” says Cohan, a professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina, Beaufort. “You smell it, you taste it, you see it—it’s a heightened sensory experience.” Think about ways to schedule pleasurable habits into your day. Then savor the anticipation of them, because that’s part of the magic.

Find a palatable way to express gratitude

There’s strong research indicating that gratitude fuels well-being. But sometimes it feels like too much of a stretch—or, as McInerny puts it, like “a blunt-force object to force people into a better attitude.” If keeping a gratitude journal or otherwise expressing thanks isn’t a path to joy for you, think about more creative ways to reflect on and appreciate the good parts of your life.

When McInerny’s son broke his arm right before the summer, he was sentenced to a giant cast that rendered him unable to swim or participate in other fun activities. “The day he got it off, he was like, ‘Say goodbye to my cast, Gerald,’” she says—revealing that even in a bummer situation, her son had created a cute, funny nickname for his orthopedic device. It reminded her to find something lighthearted and fun in every crummy situation. Now, she looks for a “daily Gerald,” or one small thing that’s good about even a bad day.

Illustration by Brown Bird Design for TIME

Have a short “recess” every day

You’re never too old for a recess break—a sentiment backed by ample research. Even short amounts of physical activity, in particular, can elevate your moodand cut the risk of depression. Shear likes to schedule a 5- or 10-minute play session once or twice a day. “It’s an appointment with yourself. And whenever that time comes, you stop what you’re doing and get to spend a few minutes doing whatever makes you feel good,” she says. Shear has spent recess breaks hula-hooping, for example, and likes to set a fun ringtone on her phone as a notification that it’s go time—the adult version of a recess bell.

Look for connection

When McInerny gets lost in a black hole of gloominess, she calls someone she loves. The conversation might last just a few minutes, but that’s enough to lift her up.

When she’s particularly overwhelmed, she looks for other small, tangible ways to connect: If she goes for a walk, she’ll try to catch someone’s eye. Or she might mail a friend a card. “Whatever I can do to feel connected to other people is really helpful,” she says.

Dance it out

Music is a reliable way to spark a few minutes of joy, says Melanie Harth, a psychologist based in Santa Fe, N.M. She suggests making a happiness playlist full of upbeat, inspiring songs that make you want to bust a move, and then turning it on whenever your spirits start to falter. “I dare anybody to go on YouTube and watch Pharrell Williams’ Happy or Sara Bareilles’ Brave and not feel a little better”—or give up on your gloom and start dancing, she says.

Illustration by Brown Bird Design for TIME

Help someone, or something

Robust research indicates that helping other people, or getting involved with a cause that’s important to you, is correlated with well-being. Look for an opportunity to give back, in even a small way: by planting a tree, donating blood, or contributing to a friend’s online fundraiser. “It can help us get out of our scary little minds and into something that’s more important,” Harth says. “And it can also help catalyze an unexpected moment of joy. You never know when that’s going to happen.”
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.         .        .

J                       O                      Y
maybe you find it most
when you create it in others.          .          .

BEANNACHT

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Tracey Schmidt’s poetic reading of a Blessing for Our Death reminds us of the complexities of life – how we can be gatekeepers and entrance points, light filled and vulnerable, lonely and loved, all at the same time. She praises life and exhorts us to do the same, to “sing as if tomorrow will not come because one day it will not.” This singing of life’s praises enables us to live fully, “as if home were everywhere and you are no longer a guest but a loved and welcome member.”

L   I   V   E
L         I          V          E
W   E   L   L

BLANK CANVAS THEATRE AMAZEMENT

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It won’t receive a Tony award or any other for that matter, but last Thursday I saw LEAP OF FAITH, the musical at Blank Canvas Theatre, an intimate little place that holds only about 100 people in an old warehouse on W. 78th Street in Cleveland.  I’ve seen several plays there and have never been disappointed but last Thursday, even though it wasn’t my favorite play seen there, was one I’ll never forget.

Right before the show started, the Artistic Director and Founder of Blank Canvas, Patrick Ciamacco came out and told us that the lead for the show had fallen ill and instead of canceling the show like they had to do the weekend before because of multiple illnesses, that he would be filling the role of the lead actor and apologized that he would be having full script in hand and further apologized that he had just gone over the musical pieces he’d be performing and hoping it wouldn’t take away from the show.
Utt-ohhh didn’t get sighed out loud, but I believe the audience of about 70 people thought this might be one to escape by intermission.  WRONG!

Patrick’s THE SHOW MUST GO ON mentality for me, WAS THE SHOW.

He shared in his Director’s note:

It’s always been my goal for Blank Canvas Theatre to present shows that are rarely, if ever, produced in the Cleveland area.  We strive to give you, our audience, an opportunity to discover something new, whether it be a recently-written piece or a little-known show.  Leap of Faith opened on Broadway on April 26, 2012 but despite its impressive credentials, an all-star createive team, an EGOT winning composer, multiple Drama Desk Award nominations and a Tony Award nomination for Best Musical—it ran for only 20 performances.  That’s just twice the number of performances that Blank Canvas Theatre will present!  While no piece of theatre is ever perfect, Leap of Faith certainly has its flaws.  But it is still a story worth telling and seeing something new is always fun.

I saw the film, Leap of Faith in 1992 and remember being intrigued by Steve Martin’s performance in a very different type of role than he usually played.  Religion was not a crucial part of my life growing up, and while religion and belief in God play a role in Leap of Faith, I find that the story of Jonas Nightingale means much more.  To me, this is a story about faith in all its forms: religious faith, yes, but also the faith we have in the world, the faith we have in our friends and family and most of all, the faith we have in ourselves.  We may sometimes lose faith in those we love because of their actions or our feelings.  We may lose faith in ourselves, doubting every decision and choice we make.  Each of us has flaws, and we all may feel like we are far from being who we want to be, but with faith, we can succeed.

I hope that you share our faith that this show will succeed both as an evening of entertainment and as an opportunity to consider the role of faith in our lives.  Thank you for taking a leap of faith in coming to see a show that is most likely unknown to you—and thank you for supporting live theatre!

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.
Patrick Ciamacco
Witnessing what Patrick did on stage that night will never be award winning, but more importantly, never forgotten by those of us in attendance.  He not only took a huge Leaf of Faith, he GIFTED  IT, and for then as in right now, (and I believe a part of my ‘forever’) I’m a severely grateful beneficiary
SO.            .            .
what Leap of Faith
have you not only taken recently
but have gifted another.            .          .          ?
THE WORST STEP OF ALL
IS THE ONE
NEVER TAKEN.          .          .

ETHICAL WHISPERINGS

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When it comes to our ETHICS these days sometimes it’s less speaking and more hushed whispering or worse.        .        .a shushing

Are People Really Becoming Less Ethical?

A new study questions the common view that people are less kind, honest, and moral than they used to be.  .  .

Jill Suttie from Greater Good Magazine took a look behind the not so transparent ethical curtain to give us a different look at our ethics, or lack thereof.       .        .

When we read the news, it’s hard not to get depressed about the state of the world. Stories of vitriolic politicians, unethical CEOs, and indifference to the suffering of others fill its pages, leaving us feeling like goodness and morality are nowhere to be found.

According to a recent Gallup poll, people in the United States think that morality is at an all-time low. But, according to a new study, this belief is likely an illusion, based on the way our minds work—not a conclusion based on evidence.

In the study, recently published in Nature, researchers looked at several surveys of hundreds of thousands of Americans and people from 59 other nations around the world. In the surveys, participants had shared their views on whether honesty, ethical behavior, and moral values had been increasing or decreasing in their society or country.

In every country polled, people tended to think moral, ethical behavior was on the decline. This belief held steady no matter when the survey was given, too (whether 1949 or 2019)—suggesting that people always tend to see morality as waning in their lifetime. This perception seems unlikely to be true, says lead researcher Adam Mastroianni, formerly a postdoctoral student at Columbia University.

“You might think that people are sensitive to things happening around them or in their country, and that dictates what they think about people getting better or worse (from a moral conduct standpoint),” he says. “But it doesn’t seem that way, because pretty much whomever you ask, and wherever and whenever you ask them, people give you the same answer—people are less kind today than they used to be.”

To further study this, he and his coauthor, Daniel Gilbert, conducted their own surveys polling Americans about their views of present versus past morality. They asked people to rate how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people were then compared to past years (2, 4, 10, or 20 years earlier) or compared to when the participant was born or turned 20 years old. The researchers also considered the age, political orientation, gender, race, education, and parental status of the participants, to see how that affected their answers.

In all cases, people believed that morality was in steady decline. It didn’t matter if the comparison was made between now and two years ago or now and 20 or more years ago.

“It’s not just that people think the 1950s were great, and then it got worse in the ’60s, and it’s been bad ever since then,” says Mastroianni. “People think, even in the recent past, that people treated one another with more kindness and respect.”

Some people saw more moral decay than others, though. Politically conservative participants thought morality was dropping more precipitously than liberal participants did (though liberals also saw morality in steady decline). Older people tended to see more decline in morality than younger people, too. But it didn’t seem to be because of their age, but rather because they were considering longer stretches of time (for example, comparing current morality to when they were born).

“Older people do say over the course of their lives that there’s been more decline than younger people do; but, of course, their lives have been longer,” says Mastroianni. “Young people are basically on track to look like older people when they get older—which suggests that this isn’t about the idiosyncratic experiences of individuals, but about the way that human minds work.”

Is it all in our heads?

None of this proves that morality isn’t in decline, though. Perhaps people’s perceptions are accurate, and we really are becoming less kind and ethical over time.

But past evidence suggests otherwise. As psychologist Steven Pinker notes in his books, based on hundreds of studies and surveys on societal trends over time, there is less violence and fewer wars in the world than there used to be (despite what people think), and crime is generally down. At least some research finds that people tend to be less selfish these days than in the past, and common myths about generational character differences—that Boomers are selfish or millennials are more entitled—appear to be unfounded.

Adding to that evidence, Mastroianni and Gilbert analyzed some other available surveys: Between 1965 and 2020, over 4 million respondents around the world had reported on their own and others’ moral behavior, in response to questions like “Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?” and “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?” and “During the past 12 months, how often have you carried a stranger’s belongings, like groceries, a suitcase, or shopping bag?”

After analyzing these responses, Mastroianni and Gilbert found that, no matter the year, people saw their own behavior and the behavior of people around them as generally good, with little personal experience of immoral behavior to back up their belief that morality was slipping. This was true 90% of the time, says Mastroianni, and was true for both Americans and people from other countries.

This is why Mastroianni thinks that people’s views around moral decline are an illusion.

“If people are far less kind today than they used to be even just a couple years ago, it should be easy to find some evidence of that shift. So, if you ask people how they were treated today, fewer people should say ‘yes’ today than they did five years ago,” he says. “But we find no evidence of that going on. In fact, we find pretty strong evidence that it’s not going on.”

So, if morality isn’t going down the tubes, where does this misperception come from? There could be many reasons, but two stick out for Mastroianni: our tendency to focus more on the negative than the positive in life, which media exploit by emphasizing negative news; and our tendency to remember good things more fondly, while the badness of bad memories fades with time. When we are constantly bombarded with stories of unethical, immoral behavior from a handful of bad actors, we give them more weight than our own personal experience. Similarly, if we try to remember what the world was like in the past, we may look at it with rose-colored glasses.

“If you put these two phenomena together . . . you can produce an illusion where every day the world looks bad, but every day you also remember yesterday being better,” says Mastroianni.

Why we need to check our biases

Why does this matter? Mastroianni says that it’s important to know if society is actually in moral decline or not. We need goodness and kindness to function as a society, and if those are missing, we’ll need to focus on changing that.

On the other hand, if it’s an illusion, we could be spending time trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. He points to Gallup polls in which a majority of Americans say they think government should address the moral breakdown of the country—which might be a waste of time and money and take away from other important priorities.

Unfortunately, our biases, while leading us astray in some ways, are also fairly hard-wired—and for some good reasons. Being alert to negative news can make us more cautious and keep us safer, and looking at the past more benignly can help us feel good and move on from bad events in our lives that might otherwise keep us stuck.

Still, Mastroianni worries that if we have an overall pessimistic view about people’s morality, it may interfere with trusting others, which could lead to social problems. It might make it harder for people to do business with each other or have the courage to go on dates or form loving relationships.

While he wishes our daily news diet was less sensationalist and provided more context, he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon. But one thing people could do to lessen this warped view is to try practicing a bit more humility. When comparing the present to the past or past generations to younger generations, we should be a lot more cautious about making judgments about their morality or any other character trait.

“Just because a feeling comes to mind easily—like people are less moral than they used to be—doesn’t mean that you’re actually right,” he says. “The ease of thinking something is not an indication of its accuracy.”
BE CAREFUL OF THE LENSES YOU VIEW OTHERS.        .         .
Just SEE them in a way
that they feel
R     E     C     O     G     N     I     Z     E     D

MORE HEART, LESS ATTACK

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Much to ponder in this song performed by the award-winning Becky Buller.
Let your mind paint the picture your Heart needs to see that'll give you more Heart and less attack.   .   .  

MORE HEART, LESS ATTACK

Be the light in the crack
Be the one that's been there on a camel's back
Slow to anger, quick to laugh
Be more heart and less attack

Be the wheels not the track
Be the wanderer that's coming back
Leave the past right where it's at
Be more heart and less attack

The more you take the less you have
'Cause it's you in the mirror staring back
Quick to let go slow to react
Be more heart and less attack

Ever growing steadfast
And if need be the one that's in the gap
Be the never turning back
Twice the heart any man could have

Be the wheels not the track
Be the wanderer that's coming back
Leave the past right where it's at
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack
Be more heart and less attack

I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I'm nearly sanctified, I'm nearly broken
I'm down the river, I'm near the open

I stuck my hat out, I caught the rain drops
I drank the water, I felt my veins block
I'm near the sanctified, I'm near broken
I'm down the river, I'm near the open

I'm down the river to where I'm going


(My thanks to Becky Buller and friends.)

More Than A LISTENING

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Viktor Frankl, one of the great psychiatrists of the twentieth century, survived the death camps of Nazi Germany. His little book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is one of those life-changing books that everyone should read, SEVERAL TIMES

Frankl once told the story of a woman who called him in the middle of the night to calmly inform him she was about to commit suicide. Frankl kept her on the phone and talked her through her depression, giving her reason after reason to carry on living. Finally she promised she would not take her life, and she kept her word.

When they later met, Frankl asked which reason had persuaded her to live?

“None of them”, she told him.

What then influenced her to go on living, he pressed?

Her answer was simple, it was Frankl’s willingness to listen to her in the middle of the night. A world in which there was someone ready to listen to another’s pain seemed to her a world in which it was worthwhile to live.

Often, it is not the brilliant argument that makes the difference. Sometimes the small act of listening is the greatest gift we can give.

WHEN YOU HOLD SOMEONE’S SPACE; when you unconditionally accept, listen, hear, validate, affirm, you just don’t hold their space, you hold something even more sacred: THEIR SOUL.           .            .
THEY have trusted you with their whole, wounded, vulnerable Soul for the price of your offering to A LISTENING they never before had but desperately needed.        .        .

ANXIETY BUSTER

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I threw this out to a group that I was presenting to recently:
“HEY, HAVE ANY OF YOU WORRIED ABOUT WORRYING?
Everyone kind of laughed and began hushing to a few mufflecd chuckles as hands went up in the air.          .           .
WELL,
ARE YOU GUILTY?
I mean, it’s kind of hard to
BE THERE
for someone if you’re worrying about worrying
even you’re worrying about them.          .          .

If You’re Feeling Anxious,
Try This 2,000-Year-Old, Neuroscience-Backed Hack.  .  .

Julia Hotz from Time Magazine took a deep dive into our worrying.  She reported that some 2,000 years ago, in the throes of a targeted chase to his death, a Roman philosopher named Seneca had a thought: “what’s the worst that can happen?”

Today, a growing body of research finds that a Seneca-inspired exercise—inviting the worried brain to literally envision its worst fears realized—is one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety. In scientific terms, that exercise is called imaginal exposure, or “facing the thing you’re most afraid of” by summoning it in your mind, says Dr. Regine Galanti, the founder of Long Island Behavioral Psychology, and a licensed clinical psychologist who regularly integrates imaginal exposure into her therapy.

As a subset of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), imaginal exposure relies on simple logic. Just as anxiety is created in your head, it can also be squashed in your head. And even though the most effective anxiety treatment is administered by a mental health professional over a long period of time, a growing brigade of psychologists are finding ways to help people do imaginal exposure in their own homes, on their own Two thousand years before imaginal exposure would be proven one of science’s strongest anxiety treatments, dozens of Greek and Roman philosophers had the same intuition about the theoretical value of putting worry in perspective.

In a letter to his friend Lucilius, around 64 A.D., Seneca wrote: “There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. What I advise you to do is, not to be unhappy before the crisis comes, since it may be that the dangers before which you paled as if they were threatening you, will never come upon you.”

Dr. Marc Antoine Crocq, a psychiatrist at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire in eastern France, says that worldview had to do with their religious beliefs.

“They believed in a god (Zeus or Jupiter) who was rather distant and not interested in the daily life of humans,” says Crocq, who has researched the topic. “So they tried to understand the world and human functioning with a more materialist scientific approach.”

The philosophers’ conclusion, Crocq says, was that “pathological anxiety is a mental representation”—and therefore, something that humans can address themselves.

Dr. Stefan Hofmann, a professor of psychology and director of the Psychotherapy & Emotion Research Laboratory at Boston University, has proven this empirically and, like Crocq, has studied the theory’s deep historical roots. He references the ancient Greek philosopher, Epictetus, who wrote: “Men are not moved by things, but the view they take of them.”

As Hofmann explains, “The idea [behind that quote] is that we are always engaging with our environment to make sense of it, and so it really matters how we perceive things. Anxiety itself is a healthy, adaptive response to an environmental threat, but sometimes, those perceptions are maladaptive, if they’re not actually putting you in danger.” He points to the way people commonly fear spiders or snakes, or even social situations. “Sometimes we respond with emotional distress in situations where it doesn’t make sense to feel emotional distress.”

Correcting those maladaptive perceptions, Hofmann says, is at the heart of CBT, a practice he describes as “toning down the intensity of the emotional states” that follow anxiety, in order to feel better. When Dr. Aaron Beck, who died last week, coined the approach in the 1960s, he was interested in helping people recognize how their thoughts were often separate from reality.

And though each therapist may differ in precisely how they administer CBT, the elements of imaginal exposure—confronting the source of anxiety-provoking thoughts, and developing healthier thought patterns around them—is a common entry point.

In the decades since, CBT has consistently been considered one of the most effective practices to manage anxiety in the long term. Hofmann conducted one of the most widely cited literature reviews on its efficacy. And imaginal exposure, the small Seneca-inspired slice of CBT, is associated with a wide spectrum of mental health gains, including reduced worry and negative emotion, improved symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorderand increased ability to engage in the once-feared activity

Still, not all people have access to professionally-administered cognitive therapy. One study of 2,300 psychotherapists in the U.S. found that only 69% use CBT when treating anxiety and depression. And then there’s the problem of access: one Census Bureau survey indicates that more than one-third of Americans live in areas lacking mental health professionals. The problem has worsened over the past year. Just as the pandemic triggered unprecedented rates of anxiety, it also led to a shortage of therapists available to treat it. But even without professional supervision, psychologist Dr. Regine Galanti says there are simple CBT-informed techniques anyone can integrate on their own.

Before encouraging people to actively confront their worry, Galanti starts with a simple question: why is it there in the first place?

“People don’t often stop and think about what it is that they’re afraid of, or even that they’re afraid at all,” she says, describing a patient who’s scared of dogs and, as a result, avoids them.

After identifying the cause of someone’s fear, Galanti focuses on validating the emotion—not diminishing it or reassuring the patient. “We think naturally when someone’s anxious to say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay,’ but anxiety is not logical,” she says. “Often when we feel anxiety coming on, we do everything we can to get away from it, but we’re rarely successful, since we don’t follow it through to its logical conclusion. So these little worries just pile up, and you never actually give it the time and space to see what happens when it is there.”

Take, for example, the patient afraid of dogs. Galanti did something that perhaps seemed counterintuitive: inviting the woman to spend time with a dog, so she could face the fear head on. That worked well, Galanti says, but what about when people’s fears—like the death of a loved one—aren’t as plainly testable? “It’s about learning to handle uncertainty that we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. “But how can we orient ourselves to the present to say it’s not happening now?”

That advice was particularly apt during the early days of the pandemic, when uncertainty skyrocketed. At the time, Galanti advised people to set aside 15 minutes of worry time for themselves.

“Anxious thoughts tend to take over your thinking, and it ends up being a game of whack-a-mole—when you knock one down, another pops up,” she says. “So this strategy focuses on not postponing your worries, [instead] setting up a time where you can worry all you want.”

Through this strategy, Galanti encourages people to jot down whatever is causing them anxiety, and then to pick a dedicated time—ideally not before bed—to revisit those concerns. “The reason why this works is that it sets boundaries, so when a worry comes up at 9 a.m., you can say, ‘Hey, not now, your time is coming.’”

She says people rarely use the full 15-minutes of allotted worry time, but it helps put anxiety into perspective. ”Sometimes when you hit your worry list, you might find that the thing that bugged you at 9 a.m. that you thought would be the end of the world is actually not bugging you anymore at all.”
SO.          .          .
are you worried about worrying.     .     .     ?
WHAT’S THE WORST THAT CAN HAPPEN
Psssssssssssssssssssssssst:
SAYING IT WON’T HAPPEN
doesn’t make it so
.      .      .THINK ON IT
for a solid planned 15 minutes
not an out-of-control-anxiety-filled
24 hours
and then
RINSE & REPEAT

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man