A LITTLE SAINT NICK(Y) IN ALL OF US
D I S C L A I M E R
THIS NOT MY STORY
uhhhhh but I’m hoping in someway somehow it just might be!
A very Dear Friend sent this to me, please take a few moments during this busy time to read it. . .
“In 1979, I was managing a Wendy’s in Port Richey, Florida. Unlike today, staffing was never a real problem, but I was searching for a someone to work three hours a day only at lunch. I went thru all my applications and most were all looking for full time or at least 20 hours per week. I found one however, buried at the bottom of a four-inch stack that was only looking for lunch part-time. His name was Nicky. Hadn’t met him but thought I would give him a call and see if he could stop by for an interview. When I called, he wasn’t in but his mom said she would make sure he would be there.
At the accorded time, Nicky walked in. One of those moments when my heart went in my throat. Nicky had Downs Syndrome. His physical appearance was a giveaway and his speech only reinforced the obvious. I was young and sheltered. Had never interacted on a professional level with a developmentally disabled person. I had no clue what to do, so I went ahead and interviewed him. He was a wonderful young man. Great outlook.
Task focused. Excited to be alive. For only reasons God knew at that time, I hired him. 3 hours a day, 3 days a week to run a grill. I let the staff know what to expect. Predictably, the crew made sure I got the message, “no one wants to work with a retard.”
To this day I find that word offensive. We had a crew meeting, cleared the air, and prepared for his arrival. Nicky showed up for work right on time.
He was so excited to be working. He stood at the time clock literally shaking with anticipation. He clocked in and started his training. Couldn’t multi task, but was a machine on the grill. Now for the fascinating part…..
Back in that day, there were no computer screens to work from. Every order was called by the cashier. It required a great deal of concentration on the part of all production staff to get the order right.
While Nicky was training during his first shift, the sandwich maker next to him asked the grillman/trainer what was on the next sandwich. Nicky replied, “single, no pickle no onion.” A few minutes later it happened again. It was then that we discovered Nicky had a hidden and valuable skill.
He memorized everything he heard! Photographic hearing! WHAT A SKILL SET. It took 3 days and every sandwich maker requested to work with Nicky. He immediately was accepted by the entire crew. After his shift he would join the rest of his crew family, drinking Coke like it was water!
It was then that they discovered another Rainman-esque trait. Nicky was a walking/talking perpetual calendar! With a perpetual calendar as a reference, they would sit for hours asking him what day of the week was December 22, 1847. He never missed. This uncanny trait mesmerized the crew.
His mom would come in at 2 to pick him up. More times than not, the crew would be back there with him hamming it up. As I went to get him from the back, his mom said something I will never forget. “Let him stay there as long as he wants. He has never been accepted anywhere like he has been here.” I excused myself and dried my eyes, humbled and broken-hearted at the lesson I just learned.
Nicky had a profound impact on that store. His presence changed a lot of people. Today I believe with every fiber of my body that Nicky’s hiring was no accident. God’s Timing and Will is Perfect.
This Christmas, I hope we all understand what we are celebrating. We are all like Nicky. We each have our shortcomings. We each have our strong points. But we are all of value. God made us that way and God doesn’t make mistakes. Nicky certainly wasn’t a mistake. He was a valuable gift that I am forever grateful for.
We are celebrating the birth of the ONE that leveled the playing field for all of us. God doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, republican or democrat or black or white. He doesn’t care if your chromosome structure is perfect. He doesn’t care what level of education you have attained.
He cares about your heart. He wants us all to love and appreciate the gift HE gave us on Christmas, His son, the Savior, our salvation. His Son that was born to die for our sins. To pay our debt. To provide us a path for eternity. So this Christmas, let’s check our hearts. There is a little bit of Nicky in all of us and I suspect there is a Nicky somewhere in your life that is looking for the chance to be embraced. Be grateful for that!”
NO
THIS IS NOT MY STORY
it most likely isn’t your’s either. . .
but it
COULD BE
Reflect on these words from Donna Cameron:
Being kind—truly kind—is hard. Nice requires little effort. I can be nice while also being indifferent, critical, and even sarcastic. But I can’t be kind and be any of those things. Being kind means caring. It means making an effort. It means thinking about the impact I’m having in an interaction with someone and endeavoring to make it rich and meaningful—giving them what they need at that exact moment, without worrying about whether I get anything in return. It means letting go of my judgments and accepting people as they are. Kindness requires me to do something my upbringing discouraged—it demands that I reach out and that I take a risk . . . [that I] might be rebuffed, ignored, or disrespected.
A life of kindness is not something that I live only when it suits me. I’m not a kind person if I’m kind only when it’s easy or convenient. A life of kindness means being kind when it’s neither convenient nor easy—in fact, sometimes it might be terribly hard and tremendously inconvenient. That’s when it matters most. That’s when the need is greatest and transformation dances at the edge of possibility. That’s the time to take a deep breath and invite kindness
GETTING POOH’D
It’s almost a very shameful confession but. . .
I’ve never been a very big Winnie the Pooh fan
and yet even though I’ve never been able to explain or defend it
I also have to admit
I LOVE THE GENTLE LIFE LESSONS
that are often offered up
L I K E:
Piglet?” said Pooh.
“Yes?” said Piglet.
“I’m scared,” said Pooh.
For a moment, there was silence.
“Would you like to talk about it?” asked Piglet, when Pooh didn’t appear to be saying anything further.
“I’m just so scared,” blurted out Pooh.
“So anxious. Because I don’t feel like things are getting any better. If anything, I feel like they might be getting worse. People are angry, because they’re so scared, and they’re turning on one another, and there seems to be no clear plan out of here, and I worry about my friends and the people I love, and I wish SO much that I could give them all a hug, and oh, Piglet! I am so scared, and I cannot tell you how much I wish it wasn’t so.”
Piglet was thoughtful, as he looked out at the blue of the skies, peeping between the branches of the trees in the Hundred Acre Wood, and listened to his friend.
“I’m here,” he said, simply. “I hear you, Pooh. And I’m here.”
For a moment, Pooh was perplexed.
“But… aren’t you going to tell me not to be so silly? That I should stop getting myself into a state and pull myself together? That it’s hard for everyone right now?”
“No,” said Piglet, quite decisively. “No, I am very much not going to do any of those things.”
“But-“ said Pooh.
“I can’t change the world right now,” continued Piglet. “And I am not going to patronise you with platitudes about how everything will be okay, because I don’t know that.
“What I can do, though, Pooh, is that I can make sure that you know that I am here. And that I will always be here, to listen; and to support you; and for you to know that you are heard.
“I can’t make those Anxious Feelings go away, not really.
“But I can promise you that, all the time I have breath left in my body…you won’t ever need to feel those Anxious Feelings alone.”
And it was a strange thing, because even as Piglet said that, Pooh could feel some of those Anxious Feelings start to loosen their grip on him; could feel one or two of them start to slither away into the forest, cowed by his friend, who sat there stolidly next to him.
Pooh thought he had never been more grateful to have Piglet in his life.
Ever feel like Pooh?
Ever been a Piglet?
The world is filled with both. . .
A GULP OF KINDNESS
And just like
T H A T
we are quickly into the Season of Auld Lang Syne
and hopefully doing just a little bit more than raising a
CUP OF KINDNESS
as we take a sip
and share a Gulp. . .
I recently re-read the Commencement Address author George Saunders gave which reads well in all Seasons, as each day brings us to a Commencement Ceremony. He shares:
What I Regret Most Are Failures of Kindness
(–by George Saunders, syndicated from theladders.com, Jul 28, 2018)
Down through the ages, a traditional form has evolved for this type of speech, which is: Some old fart, his best years behind him, who, over the course of his life, has made a series of dreadful mistakes (that would be me), gives heartfelt advice to a group of shining, energetic young people, with all of their best years ahead of them (that would be you).
And I intend to respect that tradition.
Now, one useful thing you can do with an old person, in addition to borrowing money from them, or asking them to do one of their old-time “dances,” so you can watch, while laughing, is ask: “Looking back, what do you regret?” And they’ll tell you. Sometimes, as you know, they’ll tell you even if you haven’t asked. Sometimes, even when you’ve specifically requested they not tell you, they’ll tell you.
So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs […] Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.
But here’s something I do regret:
In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.
So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” — that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”
Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.
And then — they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.
One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.
End of story.
Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.
But still. It bothers me.
So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in yourlife, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.
Now, the million-dollar question: What’s our problem? Why aren’t we kinder?
Here’s what I think:
Each of us is born with a series of built-in confusions that are probably somehow Darwinian. These are: (1) we’re central to the universe (that is, our personal story is the main and most interesting story, the only story, really); (2) we’re separate from the universe (there’s US and then, out there, all that other junk – dogs and swing-sets, and the State of Nebraska and low-hanging clouds and, you know, other people), and (3) we’re permanent (death is real, o.k., sure – for you, but not for me).
Now, we don’t really believe these things – intellectually we know better – but we believe them viscerally, and live by them, and they cause us to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others, even though what we really want, in our hearts, is to be less selfish, more aware of what’s actually happening in the present moment, more open, and more loving.
So, the second million-dollar question: How might we DO this? How might we become more loving, more open, less selfish, more present, less delusional, etc., etc?
Well, yes, good question.
Unfortunately, I only have three minutes left.
So let me just say this. There are ways. You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter. Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend; establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition — recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us.
Because kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, everything.
One thing in our favor: some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish — how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”
And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit. That’s one reason your parents are so proud and happy today. One of their fondest dreams has come true: you have accomplished something difficult and tangible that has enlarged you as a person and will make your life better, from here on in, forever.
Congratulations, by the way.
When young, we’re anxious — understandably — to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you — in particular you, of this generation — may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can . . .
And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously — as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.
So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.
Do all the other things, the ambitious things — travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
And someday, in 80 years, when you’re 100, and I’m 134, and we’re both so kind and loving we’re nearly unbearable, drop me a line, let me know how your life has been. I hope you will say: It has been so wonderful.
Congratulations, Class of 2013.
I wish you great happiness, all the luck in the world, and a beautiful summer.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Kind of makes you a little thirsty for a good gulp of Kindness
B O T H
one that refreshes as it renews
some much needed
and appreciated
K I N D N E S S
FRIENDLY(LESS)
Come on everybody. . .
Let’s break out in a robust chorus of TOY STORY’S
YOU’VE GOT A FRIEND IN ME
o r
did the Pandemic take care of
T H A T,
t o o?
Did the Pandemic Make Us Less Friendly?
A new study observed rapid changes in personality during the pandemic, with people becoming less open, conscientious, agreeable, and extraverted. . .
For many of us, some personality traits stay the same throughout our lives, while others change only gradually. However, evidence shows that significant events in our personal lives that induce severe stress or trauma can be associated with more rapid changes in our personalities.
A new study, published in PLOS ONE, suggests the COVID pandemic has indeed triggered much greater shifts in personality than we would expect to have seen naturally over this period. In particular, the researchers found that people were less extroverted, less open, less agreeable, and less conscientious in 2021 and 2022 compared with before the pandemic.
This study included more than 7,000 participants from the U.S., aged between 18 and 109, who were assessed before the pandemic (from 2014 onwards), early in the pandemic in 2020, and then later in the pandemic in 2021 or 2022.
At each time point, participants completed the “Big Five Inventory.” This assessment tool measures personality on a scale across five dimensions: extroversion versus introversion, agreeableness versus antagonism, conscientiousness versus lack of direction, neuroticism versus emotional stability, and openness versus closedness to experience.
There weren’t many changes between pre-pandemic and 2020 personality traits. However, the researchers found significant declines in extroversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness in 2021/2022 compared with before the pandemic. These changes were akin to a decade of normal variation, suggesting the trauma of the COVID pandemic had accelerated the natural process of personality change.
Interestingly, younger adults’ personalities changed the most in the study. They showed marked declines in agreeableness and conscientiousness, and a significant increase in neuroticism in 2021/2022 compared with pre-pandemic. This may be due in part to social anxiety when emerging back into society, having missed out on two years of normality.
Personality and well-being
Many of us became more health-conscious during the pandemic, for example by eating better and doing more exercise. A lot of us sought whatever social connections we could find virtually, and tried to refocus our attention on psychological, emotional, and intellectual growth—for example, by practicing mindfulness or picking up new hobbies.
Nonetheless, mental health and well-being decreased significantly. This makes sense given the drastic changes we went through.
Notably, personality significantly impacts our well-being. For example, people who report high levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, or extroversion are more likely to experience the highest level of well-being.
So the personality changes detected in this study may go some way to explaining the decrease in well-being we’ve seen during the pandemic.
If we look more closely, the pandemic appears to have negatively affected the following areas:
- our ability to express sympathy and kindness toward others (agreeableness);
- our capacity to be open to new concepts and willing to engage in novel situations (openness);
- our tendency to seek out and enjoy other people’s company (extraversion);
- our desire to strive toward our goals, do tasks well, or take responsibilities toward others seriously (conscientiousness).
All of these traits influence our interaction with the environment around us and, as such, may have played a role in our well-being decline. For example, working from home may have left us feeling demotivated and as though our career was going nowhere (lower conscientiousness). This in turn may have affected our well-being by making us feel more irritable, depressed, or anxious.
What next. . . ?
Over time, our personalities usually change in a way that helps us adapt to aging and cope more effectively with life events. In other words, we learn from our life experiences and this subsequently impacts our personality. As we age, we generally see increases in self-confidence, self-control, and emotional stability.
However, participants in this study recorded changes in the opposite direction to the usual trajectory of personality change. This is understandable given that we faced an extended period of difficulties, including constraints on our freedoms, lost income, and illness. All these experiences have evidently changed us—and our personalities.
This study provides us with some very useful insights into the impacts of the pandemic on our psyche. These impacts may subsequently influence many aspects of our lives, such as well-being.
Knowledge allows us to make choices. So you might like to take the time to reflect on your experiences over the past few years, and how these personality changes may have affected you.
Any changes may well have protected you during the height of the pandemic. However, it’s worth asking yourself how useful these changes are now that the acute phase of the pandemic is behind us. Do they still serve you well, or could you try to rethink your perspective?
QUESTIONS WORTH EMBRACING
as we go about
not so much discovering
A n S w E r S
as actually
LIVING THEM
in new ways. . .
As we
Caring Catalysts
help others along
Their W a Y s
The Power of TEARS
Sometimes it’s not the
OCEAN’S WAVE
but the think stream of an ongoing
T E A R
running down your face
that’s the saltiest. . .
DOES IT MAKE IT ANY LESS
S A L T I E R
IF IT HAS A MEANING. . . ?
How Tears Help Us Overcome Barriers to Empathy
A new study reveals how tears shed by members of socially disadvantaged groups can elicit empathy and support. . .
Recent data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shows that the number of refugees seeking asylum has more than doubled in the past 10 years, with an estimated 84 million people displaced from their homes. Many of these refugees have immigrated to new countries where they may struggle to assimilate and learn the language. In some places, refugees and immigrants become the target of hate crimes: In the United States, for example, crimes targeting people of Asian descent jumped 339% in 2021.
How can we improve empathy and increase kindness toward newcomers? That’s the question tackled by a new study published in the journal Emotion. Magdalena Bobowik and her colleagues investigated a particularly overlooked aspect of behavior toward underprivileged groups: the role that tears play in evoking empathic responses.
The study took place in Spain, where Romanians and Moroccans are dominant immigrant groups. Participants (all native-born Spanish undergraduates) were split into three groups, each of which was shown a Romanian man displaying either neutral, sad, or tearful expressions. The results revealed that participants seeing the tearful expression reported more warmth toward the man, but not more discomfort.
In a similar fashion, researchers then asked participants to rate the face of a Moroccan man—but this time with a fourth expression, where the man was displaying happiness by smiling. In this experiment, researchers found that people were more likely to want to approach the man when he was smiling, and when he was shedding tears. However, they rated the man as less competent when he was sad.
A final experiment involved Syrian refugees. They showed participants a man who was introduced as being from either the same Spanish province as the participant, or as an immigrant who had just moved to the country from Syria. This man displayed either a neutral, sad, or tearful expression, like before.
The results? Whether the man was Spanish or Syrian, participants reported increased feelings of warmth toward him when he was crying. Participants were also more willing to approach and donate money when the Syrian man was crying, compared to when he simply looked sad.
Thus, the study suggests that tears from a member of an underprivileged group are able to heavily influence the emotional response of those who may not normally be so sensitive to socially disadvantaged groups in their country. This may be explained by the way in which “emotional tears shift the perception of a person from being a member of another social group to being included in one’s group category (possibly at a higher level of abstraction, as ‘a human’),” as the authors speculate in the paper.
These findings are in line with other studies that show how exposure to a tearful face increases people’s willingness to share resources. This may be due to the fact that tearful faces are rated as more trustworthy than neutral faces with no tears.
It may also be significant that the researchers asked the participants to see one man, not many. “We have an easier time feeling empathy for one person than for large groups of people,” says Diana Concannon, a psychologist and crisis response expert, in a recent interview. This is likely a result of our brains being unable to comprehend numbers above a certain threshold—so, for instance, the difference between 1.1 million and 1.2 million becomes increasingly difficult for us to visualize. Increased exposure to negative events can also contribute to feelings of desensitization.
This is what makes the findings of the study on tears so valuable: because it recognizes that we still retain the power to empathize with those who may be different from us, and that perhaps this effect is strengthened when we focus on one individual at a time.
It seems like the World has given THE WORLD lots of reasons to cry lately, doesn’t it?
WHICH MEANS
IT HAS GIVEN US LOTS OF REASONS TO NOT JUST NOTICE
BUT ACTUALLY FEEL EMPAHTY
AND TO ACT
or. . .
IS THE EVIDENCE BASED DATA
w r o n g
YOU MAY BE THE PROOF
(either way)
WITH A LITTLE HELP
What would you think if I sang out of tune
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song
And I’ll try not to sing out of key
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel by the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you’re on your own?)
No I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
(Do you need anybody?)
I need somebody to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love
(Would you believe in a love at first sight?)
Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time
(What do you see when you turn out the light?)
I can’t tell you, but I know it’s mine
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm I get high with a little help from my friends
Oh I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends
(Do you need anybody?)
I just need someone to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Oh I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends
This song by the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon is a classic and on several of my personal playlists, not just because I love the tune, not just because I love the lyrics or even the message, so much as the truth that I’m better for having OTHERS in my life. . .
uhhhhhhhh, WE ALL DO
To get through life, we all need to ask for
help — here’s how NOT to do it
Social psychologist Heidi Grant shares 4 common ways that we inadvertently make things weird for other people when we request their assistance. Read this before your next ask.
Asking for help isn’t just about what you say and do; it’s also about what you don’t say and do. In her research, she found there are specific things you can say that can really backfire on you. Heidi shares here are 4 of the most common ways that well-intentioned people screw up and make things weird for their helper when they’re asking for help.
Wrong way #1: Emphasizing how much the other person will enjoy helping
“You’re going to love it! It will be so much fun!” One of my collaborators has a friend who has a habit of phrasing requests this way. “Any chance you could help me repaint the living room? We can totally drink beers and catch up! Girl time!” she might say.
Or, “Hey, could you pick me up at the auto mechanic? I haven’t seen you in ages! Road trip!” It’s a testament to the strength of their friendship that it survives this kind of request.
Don’t ever try to explicitly convince someone that they’ll find helping you rewarding. While it’s true helping makes people happy, reminding them generally drains their joy out of helping. First, it reeks of control, undermining their autonomy. Second, it’s presumptive as hell. Don’t tell them how they’re going to feel — that’s for them to decide.
It’s OK for you to point out the benefits of helping if you can be subtle. But you must be careful not to pile it on and mix egotistic reasons with altruistic reasons, because this makes your manipulation noticeable.
In one study, just under 1,000 alumni who had never donated to their college were contacted by fund-raisers via email. They received one of three versions of the appeal: (1) egotistic: “Alumni report that giving makes them feel good”; (2) altruistic: “Giving is your chance to make a difference in the lives of students, faculty, and staff,” and (3) a combined appeal. Researchers found both the egotistic and altruistic appeals were equally effective, but the combined appeal? It saw donation rates cut in half.
Wrong way # 2: Portraying the help you need as a tiny, insignificant favor
One common tactic is to portray the help we need as a piddling, negligible, barely there favor. So, we might emphasize the lack of inconvenience, as in, “Could you drop these contracts off at the client’s? It’s practically on your way home.” Or, we might stress how little time it will take: “Would you add these updates to the database? It won’t take you more than five minutes.”
The thing is, by minimizing our request, we also minimize the other person’s help — and minimize any warm feelings helping might have generated in them. There’s also the risk that we’ve miscalculated the size of our favor, especially if the person does work we don’t fully understand. For instance, Heidi’s book editor occasionally gets an email from an old friend asking her to take a look at his writing. It’s usually phrased as a small request, such as, “I think it’s pretty clean; maybe just give it a quick proofread? It shouldn’t take you very long!” Then, when she opens the attachment, the item is invariably a 6,000-word academic article. Oh, except for the time it was an entire book.
If you’ve been guilty of making this kind of ask, I don’t think it’s because you’re selfish. You’re just clueless. You have no idea of the hours of work you’re asking. But what you’re inadvertently doing is conveying that you think the work the other person does is easy, quick, trivial and not very taxing. And that’s not a great way to enlist help.
Chances are, you work every day with people whose duties you don’t understand that all, whether it’s IT, HR, compliance, sales or marketing. If you don’t quite get what goes into another person’s job, do not presume it won’t take them very long the next time you ask them for help.
Wrong way # 3: Reminding people that they owe you
“Remember when I took over that really tough client of yours?”
“Remember the time I babysat your screaming child?”
“Remember how you always used to forget your house key, and I always had to come home and let you in?”
Because asking for help makes us feel icky, we might be tempted to remind the potential helper how we’ve assisted them in the past. This, too, is fraught with awkwardness. For example, when Heidi’s book editor received that book in her inbox, she wanted to say no. But, for all the reasons that saying “no” is painful, she felt she couldn’t do that — not completely.
So, she wrote back, explained politely that he was asking her to do about 40 hours of work, and asked if there was one chapter he was particularly worried about. When he replied, he reminded her that he’d edited her writing back when she was a columnist. In theory, this might make sense. He had done her a favor and they were old friends, so she should do him one in return, right? Hmmmmmmmmmm. . .
While reciprocity does make people more likely to say “yes” to an ask, it also makes us feel controlled, which takes all the fun out of helping. Reciprocity works best when the acts of help are roughly equal. In this case, editing a few 500-word columns and editing a 50,000-word historical treatise are not equivalent. In addition, they should also be proximate in time — unless someone has done you a truly massive favor such as saving your life, they won’t feel they owe you anything 10 years down the line.
When you’re calling in a favor, you should try to tap into one of the specific types of reciprocity that psychologists have identified: personal, relational or collective. For example, Heidi’s editor is glad to edit for her neighbor, a carpenter who writes how-to articles for magazines, because they’ve helped her with house projects on numerous occasions. That’s an example of personal reciprocity; the exchange is a fairly clear trade. She’s also happy to edit her husband’s essays on fly-fishing (relational reciprocity) and proofread the grad-school application of her cousin’s boyfriend even though she doesn’t know him well (collective reciprocity).
The bottom line on reciprocity is this: If you have to remind someone they owe you one, chances are they don’t feel that they do. Reminding them that they owe you a favor makes the other person feel as if you’re trying to control them — which, let’s be honest, you are. It’s not particularly generous, and it doesn’t create good feeling. It’s like going out for pizza with a friend, only to be told you should pay more since you ate two extra slices. It makes the other person feel as if you’re keeping a scorecard, and scorekeeping is fundamentally bad for relationships.
Wrong way # 4: Talking about how much their help will benefit you
We all know we need to express gratitude and appreciation for other people’s help. Yet many of us often make a critical mistake when doing this: We focus on how we feel — how happy we are, how we have benefited from the help — rather than focusing on the benefactor.
Researchers Sara Algoe, Laura Kurtz and Nicole Hilaire at the University of North Carolina distinguished between two types of gratitude expressions: “other-praising,” acknowledging and validating the character or abilities of the giver (i.e., their positive identity), and “self-benefit,” describing how the receiver is better off for having been given help.
In one study, they observed couples expressing gratitude to one another for something their partner had recently done for them. Their expressions were coded as other-praising or self-benefit. Examples of expressions included:
Other-praising
“You’re so responsible …”
“You go out of your way …”
“I feel like you’re really good at that.”
Self-benefit
“It let me relax.”
“It gave me bragging rights at work.”
“It makes me happy.”
The benefactors rated how responsive they felt the gratitude giver had been, how happy they felt, and how loving they felt toward their partner. The researchers found that other-praising gratitude was strongly related to perceptions of responsiveness, positive emotions, and loving; self-benefit gratitude was not.
This is worth thinking about, because most of us get gratitude wrong. Human beings are, more often than not, egocentric by nature. We have a tendency to talk about ourselves, even when we should be thinking and talking about others. Naturally, when we get high-quality support, we want to talk about how it made us feel. And we assume it’s what the helper wants to hear, that they were helping to make us happy so they want to hear how happy we are. Well, this assumption isn’t quite right.
Yes, your helper wants you to be happy, but the motivation to be helpful is intimately tied to your helper’s identity and self-esteem. We help because we want to be good people — to live up to our goals and values and to be admired. Helpers want to see themselves positively, which can be difficult for them to do when you won’t stop talking about you. You’re making it all about you, and it should be about them.
(Excerpted with permission from the book Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You by Heidi Grant. Published by Harvard Business Review Press. Copyright © 2018 by Heidi Grant.)
I have a very hard time
G E T T I N G
R E C E I V I N G
ASKING FOR HELP
but
I am at my best
my most blessed
when I am severely benefitted
c o m p l i m e n t e d
by ANOTHER
who can do for me
what I can’t or won’t do
for myself
which lets me know
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Oh I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends. . .
Let me hand it to you,
F R I E N D
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
Sometimes. . .
there’s no need for the
Moral of the Story
Sometimes. . .
we are the
MORAL OF THE STORY
which is. . .
________________________________________________________________________
(GO AHEAD, FILL IN THE BLANK)
Sometimes. . .
it really is this simple:
OR
(even more simply):
(that is all)
THE KINDNESS OF
EVEN IF
ESPECIALLY IF
it’s not worth your attention
it’s not worth your watching
it’s at least worth your effort
to specifically be more
K I N D
to
family
friend
foe
foreigner
(and yourself)
No matter what
the Clock
the Calendar
shows. . .
The Sandbox
C O M P A S S I O N
never leaves with clean hands. . .
and the only time
OUT OF THE BOX
isn’t so great
is when it’s a
s a n d b o x
. . .just how much sand
is still in your sandbox
or has it all
l i t e r a l l y
been thrown away. . . ?
THE WORLD
is upside down
and off its axis
seemingly with no hope of
r i g h t i n g
itself
everyone seems to be grabbing for anything
that even remotely looks like
T H E I R S
(especially opinions)
JUST WEARING A MASK
(or not)
will get you labeled
and that’ll negate you
in blink-of-the-eye-quickness. . .
CASE IN POINT:
(from two acquaintances in a Facebook Discussion)
(ROB WROTE):
This shouldn’t be a political post, but offending people appears almost as easy as blinking these days and seems to happen with a near similar frequency.
Today I met with my neurologist via zoom. We discussed the current condition of my health and the reality that heat is a destructive force in my life. Overheating complicates my already fragile central nervous system and causes frequent pseudo exacerbations and tailspins that are difficult to describe. I won’t bore you with the details, but the Dr. told me that I can’t risk going out and being near people who aren’t wearing masks in these ongoing days of Covid. If I were to get a fever, it would be “very, very bad” for me, let’s just leave it at that.
Now I don’t know each of your views pertaining to mask wearing and, honestly, I marvel at its political ties, though I know that I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m just trying to send a reminder that some of us aren’t in a position to ponder the political angles, we are just trying to keep our heads above water and would like to not be permanently confined to our homes, where it sometimes ironically seems that we might drown for lack of oxygen.
I encourage you to think of adorning a mask as if it were an empathy enhancer, regardless of any other benefits it may or may not have.
Stay healthy, friends. One day we will hug again
(WENDY REPLIED):
I think what is interesting about this conversation is that your highly trained doctor says to wear one, but my highly trained doctor says not too. It is what makes this part of the mask conversation so hard. I too, am considered extremely immune compromised but my doctor does not believe they protect us and in fact believes they are harming us more and providing an environment for more virus to grow. I work as an essential employee, have not been sick, wear mask in limited capacity and have stayed healthy. Many doctors believe that this is why we are seeing virus transmission go up in areas that are mandating it. Also on the flip side of this, my mother, who is asthmatic and my uncle who has COPD, cant wear them without getting deathly sick. It is a unique conversation to each individual, their unique situation and their health care providers feelings on it. It should not be mandated by any government entity for that reason. I respect what your doctor is telling you for you, but it can’t be something that is mandated for everyone. We do not know each person’s unique situation which why judgement to wear or not wear should be something we as individuals should not be passing and should be an individuals decision to do or not to do based on these specific factors. What could save your life, might take my mom’s life. This is a very real thing we need to see in the true light for what it is. It does mean that many people like you can’t be out in the general population right now, but it should not mean everyone has to wear a mask because of that. If you wear one and stay socially distant, you will stay safe. I am sorry that the health factors make life more difficult for you during this time
(ROB REPLIED)
Wendy – Thanks for a thoughtful reply. I am of the opinion that some of your examples are the exception to the rule, but none the less, thanks for addressing the argument rather than attacking the individual. Tip of the cap to you.
Playing in the sandbox without getting
G R I T T Y
is not just possible or plausible
but actually
providential
Sand in the box
is never the problem
It’s always the sand
the seemingly unremovable sand
on the hands
between the toes
in the shorts
in the eyes
that causes the
not-so-nice-play
in the sandbox
GRIT
has its place(S)
but purposely
recklessly
deliberately
in the eyes
is never one of them
Sand in the box
is never the problem
as much as
s a n d
out of the box
We are way past the time
of playing nice
. . .it’s now time
to just
BE NICE
(ALWAYS)
(ALL-WAYS)