Greater Good - The Science of a Meaningful Life

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically…on children than the unlived life of the parent. — Carl Jung

The full truth of this quotation (provided in a comment on my last posting, Confessions of a Selfish Mother) is up for debate, but it certainly captures the central point I was trying to make: parents need to take care of themselves—finding their own inner peace and joy—in order to best take care of others.

Last week readers raised the question of whether or not it would be better to, say, save the planet or take care of women in a shelter, than to spend time on yourself this Mother's Day. I am all for altruism as a route to lasting happiness, and spend a good deal of time volunteering myself. But, perhaps because I am not surrounded by the "hopelessly idle" mothers one reader criticizes, I tend to see the parents around me giving and doing for everyone else first before taking care of their own needs. Depression is a not-uncommon outcome when, for whatever reason, we are unable to take care of our own emotional needs.

I say take the advice of the airlines: put on your oxygen mask first and THEN help those around you. I'm not saying don't help those around you, but rather, that should you become faint from lack of oxygen, you won't be much good to anyone at all. Speaking for myself, I've found that a certain core of peace and centeredness is necessary before I can really be engaged in raising happy, compassionate, and altruistic children.

So if you are thinking of buying the mother in your life gobs of stuff this Mother's Day, consider this: stuff won't make her lastingly happy, but there are other things that you can do that can. And if you are a mother, consider taking the matter into your own hands rather than waiting for a present to make your Mother's Day a good one. Here are some things you can do to that are more likely to bring you real joy:

(1) Go out with your friends and have a few laughs.
The most persistent finding we have from 50 years happiness research tells us that our well-being is best predicted by how connected we feel to other people. Do we have lots of friends? Know our neighbors? Are we close to our extended family? Care about our co-workers? People with a lot of social connections are less likely to experience sadness, loneliness (duh), low self-esteem, and problems with eating and sleeping.

So to bring on some lasting happiness, we need to nurture our social connections. But a girls' night out can—not surprisingly—bring us instant happiness as well, and I'm not talking about the kind you imbibe. The laughter we share with our buddies (or anyone, really) literally changes our body chemistry by retarding that pesky fight-or-flight stress system. A good guffaw—or even little giggle—causes our heart rate and blood pressure to drop and our muscles to relax.

Laughter is contagious, so hang out with a couple of friends or family members who are likely to be laughing themselves. Their laughter is likely to get you laughing too, but it doesn't even need to in order to lighten your mood. Neuroscientists believe that hearing another person laugh triggers mirror neurons in a region of the brain that makes a listener feel as though she is actually laughing herself.

(2) Have your kids or partner give you a massage or pedicure.
There really is such thing as a magic touch. Like laughter, being touched in a positive way can also trigger biochemical reactions that make us feel good. Getting a massage or being touched—even just briefly—by a loved one can increase activation in the orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where we feel the pleasure in a reward, as when we eat a piece of chocolate or win a pile of money. It also reduces the cardiovascular stress response and decreases our levels of stress hormones like cortisol. Touch is essential to our physical and mental well-being—without it we wither and perish.

So an at-home spa day is a VERY APPROPRIATE and highly recommended (hint, hint) Mother's Day gift. Dacher Keltner's research shows that touch is the primary language of compassion, trust, love and gratitude—so dads and kids reading this might want to consider giving mom a massage or pedicure with a leg rub yourself. This will promote the release of oxytocin in mom, which will make her feel more bonded to you or the person giving the massage.

(Here's the thing about that last suggestion: if you can afford to get the mom in your life a professional massage, she might actually prefer that despite the benefits of feeling more connected to the at-home masseuse. Could be that she feels touched enough by you or the kids and is looking for a bit more of a vacation. I love it when my kids give me "a massage," but it lasts more like 8 seconds than 80 minutes. Execution counts. Ask her what she wants.)

(3) Take some quiet time for yourself.
The appeal of spa time for me doesn't just come from the positive effects of touch—it comes from the possibility of some quiet time for reflection or meditation. Want to turn your brainwaves that signal stress into those that indicate bliss? Start meditating. Do it enough and research suggests that you will increase activity in the area of your brain that is active when you feel happiness (the left prefrontal cortex).

Neuroscience of yester yore held that our brains were pretty much done growing when we reached full height. Now we know that our brain is more like a muscle—use a particular area a lot and it will grow. As science writer Sharon Begley describes in her book Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, studies of Tibetan monks show that meditation is a particularly effective way to grow the part of your brain that registers positive emotions. We Westerners freely accept that if we want to excel at something like music, or athletics, or learning a new language, we will need to train and practice hard. However, we rarely think that we can also train and practice to be happier—something Buddhists have long known. Meditation is concentrated happiness training. If you don't know how to meditate but are interested in learning, Martha Beck outlines a whole chapter of different techniques in her book The Joy Diet.

If you just read that part on meditation and thought, "Huh. I'm sticking to the pedicure," don't give up on taking some quiet time altogether. Take some time to yourself to begin a gratitude journal. Writing about things you feel grateful for is a simple way to bring more joy into your life. People who "practice gratitude" feel considerably happier (25%) than those in a control group—they are more joyful, enthusiastic, interested, and determined. In one study, researchers had people list five things they felt thankful for once a week for 10 weeks. At the end of the study, participants "felt better about their lives as a whole and were more optimistic about the future."

Those benefits are all the evidence you need to have a guilt-free pass to nurture your own happiness—whether it is by meditating or practicing gratitude, spending a little more time with your friends, or by indulging yourself with the nurturing touch of another person. Do these things this year in celebration of Mother's Day with the intention that they will become a regular part of your activities (we all know one day isn't enough!). For the sake of your kids.

Christine Carter, Ph.D., is a mother of two and the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Find more tips for raising happy kids at greatergoodparents.org.

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Mother's Day is that one time of year that moms are allowed indulgence—in our household this usually involves breakfast in bed and a rare opportunity to read the paper. For me this breakfast-in-bed "indulgence" is, not surprisingly, messy and a little on the chaotic side. (Though definitely fun and cute, trying to balance coffee on a tray with two excited kids encouraging me to eat the toast they made—daddy scraped off the burned stuff—is just not that relaxing.)
But here's the thing: I don't really care if I experience bliss on Mother's Day because I take a lot of time for myself. I regularly travel to Los Angeles for my work, where I stay overnight to hang out with my brother, who is single and fun. I spend a half day every other weekend with a friend in the city—a world away from my family—working on paintings and talking about music. I regularly go out for food, belly-laughs, and soulful confessions with my good friends. I always try to be training athletically for something, which means I can often be found at the gym or on a long run or at a surf clinic. When we go swimming, I lounge in the shade and read (because my skin-cancer prone complexion conveniently can't tolerate much sun) while my kids' dad plays with them for hours on end.

I do feel guilty about taking all this time to myself. Am I being selfish? Should I be making more personal sacrifices for my children? Would my kids benefit from more time with me? Would they be happier or better prepared for adulthood if I joined them riding bikes at the local elementary school instead of painting on Sunday afternoons? (Or is it narcissistic to think that?) I even feel guilty that I'm privileged enough to make such choices—that financially I can afford not to work full-time, that my parents are nearby and often pick up the kids from school while I'm off running or am in LA, and that my kids have a very involved dad who picks up the slack. Shouldn't I be doing more of the parenting myself?

Truth is I start to feel bored and anxious if I spend too much time doing laundry, mediating sibling arguments, and reading Biscuit Goes To School. I don't really like playing Sorry! with my kids, especially if I have to do it all the time. And I just can't seem to make myself fully participate in the pretend play that so engages the endless imaginations of my daughters. (I mean really, how many cups of pretend coffee can a woman drink enthusiastically in the span of an hour?) Go ahead, judge me. I'm a bad mother.

GUFFAW. Of course I'm not a bad parent, and neither are you. I love being a mom. Clearly I think a lot about what it means to be a good parent, and though I'm not perfect I try hard. I find deep joy in a nose-to-nose snuggle with a child who puts off sleep by saying, "Mom, I want to tell you one more thing. So I had this idea…" And I really think that my own personal happiness—nourished by the time I take for myself—benefits my children.

Happy Mothers, Happy Children?
Although I haven't seen good research to substantiate this theory that mothers' happiness directly influences the happiness of their children, a fairly extensive body of research has established a substantial link between mothers who feel depressed and "negative outcomes" in their children, like acting out and other behavior problems. As you might imagine, when we mothers feel depressed it is not good for our children's happiness.

Maternal depression affects kids in two ways. One way is direct—maternal depression actually seems to cause behavior problems in kids. The other way is that depression can also affect the way people parent—making their discipline less effective, for example—and so it creates behavior problems in kids that way as well. Depressed mothers tend to be less sensitive and proactive in responding to their children's needs, and they are less likely to play with their children in emotionally positive ways. The children of mothers who are chronically depressed—those whose feelings of sadness and despair persist—perform more poorly on tests of school readiness, they use less expressive language, and they have poorer social skills. And it isn't just depression: anxiety in mothers (something I'm prone to) is associated with increased anxiety in children.

So for goodness sake, take care of yourself or the mothers in your life this Mother's Day! "Indulge" in those things that will make you lastingly happy, knowing that when you do the things that nourish you as a whole person—one with more interests and needs than just being a good parent—you are also doing something good for your children. Next week I'm going to blog about those things that will bring you real joy on Mother's Day. If you aren't a mom but you know one—and I'm betting you do—let this be your gift guide for her! In the mean time, please post comments about those things that make you happiest as a person, and how you feel when you are "indulging" in those things.

Christine Carter, Ph.D., is a mother of two and the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Find more tips for raising happy kids at greatergoodparents.org.

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The last post was about why we parents should foster optimism in our kids. In a nutshell: there is a close link between how optimistically kids think and how healthy and happy they are—and how they perform academically and athletically, for that matter. This post explains a little more about what it means to be optimistic or pessimistic and so that we parents can better foster optimism in our kids.

Martin Seligman has been doing research on optimism for decades, and his book The Optimistic Child is a great resource for parents. According to Seligman and other researchers, how optimistic or pessimistic we are amounts to how we explain life's events, be they good or bad. There are three basic dimensions to an explanation: permanence, pervasiveness, and personalization. The OPTIMISITIC way of understanding why something GOOD happened would explain:

The cause of what just happened as Permanent (so it will reoccur);
And Pervasive (it will affect many other circumstances, too);
And Personal (I made it happen).

On the other hand, the PESSIMISTIC way of explaining why something GOOD just happened would illustrate that:

The cause of what just happened is Temporary (something short-lived caused it – probably won't happen again);
And Specific (affecting only this situation);
And Impersonal (I didn't have anything to do with what happened, other people or the circumstances did).

The reverse is also true when something bad happens. A kid trips on the sidewalk and skins her knee, dirtying her new dress. The pessimist thinks: "I'm so clumsy – I'm always tripping everywhere, and now I look stupid." The cause of her fall is (1) permanent—she sees it as a personality trait, and therefore it is both (2) pervasive and (3) personal. On the other hand, the optimist thinks: "Dang! Someone oughtta fix that crack in the sidewalk!" She's thinking that a flaw in the sidewalk, not her own inherent clumsiness, caused her to trip. That crack is (1) temporary; (2) specific to that moment; and (3) impersonal—she had nothing to do with it.

Growth mindset, praise, and optimism
This seems to fly in the face of an earlier post about praise, as Rebecca points out in her comment. Praise is important for kids, but it really needs to be growth mindset praise rather than fixed mindset praise. The growth mindset puts the emphasis on EFFORT and hard-work as the key to success—research shows that it makes kids more resilient and persistent in the face of challenges. Fixed mindset praise points to inborn traits as the cause of kids' successes, which seems very optimistic because it is permanent, persistent, and personal. But, as I've written about before, fixed mindset praise ultimately makes kids insecure, causing many kids to avoid taking risks (lest they lose their special label). So the key is to keep our praise both growth mindset AND optimistic: focused on effort (rather than innate ability) as well as personal and pervasive. For example, praising my daughter's artwork I could say, "I can tell you worked really hard on that painting, Fiona – your passion for art really shows!" As Carol Dweck, the woman behind all the mindset research, has explained: "When we praise children for the effort and hard work that leads to achievement, they want to keep engaging in that process. They are not diverted from the task of learning by a concern with how smart they might—or might not—look."

Personally I'm not going to worry too much about being optimistic when I praise my kids—focusing on the growth mindset is good enough. I AM, however, going to watch any pessimistic explanations I may have for misfortune or misbehavior: kids really pick up on this. We can teach our children to be optimistic, but remember, the reverse is also true: we can also teach our children to be pessimistic. For example, say my daughter Molly hits her sister, or says something nasty. A pessimistic reaction to this would be, "Molly, why are you so mean!? You are not going to have any friends at school if you behave that way." Assigning her the character flaw of being mean is permanent, pervasive, and personal. Optimistic reaction: "You sure are having a hard time right now, Molly. I think you might be hungry. Please apologize to your sister, and let's go get you something to eat." This makes the bad behavior temporary and specific to the situation—she'll behave better once she's not hungry. Furthermore, the situation will be over with an apology, and it's nothing personal—it's more about her blood sugar than her personality.

A word about genetics
But aren't some kids just born pessimistic or sunny optimists, as Joy asks in her comment? Of course! But genetics aren't everything; in fact, they probably don't account for more than 25% of why a person tends towards optimism or not (according to studies of identical twins reared apart). We want to be careful before we label a child a born pessimist. Although this is our culture's most frequent explanation for why people are the way they are, assigning a negative personality trait to someone is both fixed-mindset and a pessimistic way of thinking (considering something bad as permanent, pervasive, and personal). Better to focus on teaching our kids the skills they will need to overcome pessimistic tendencies, as well as the skills they'll need to lead joyful lives as adults. If you've got a determined pessimist in your midst, I'd recommend Seligman's book – it's got a whole section on changing a pessimist into an optimist. It also gives lots of good tips and exercises for kids at different ages.

Frankly, I think good ol' Pollyannaishness is missing in all this research on fostering optimism in our kids. (Academics tend to eschew anything reeking of Pollyanna; for that matter, many have real disdain for happiness. Word is still not out that cheerfulness and the ability to see a silver lining does NOT equal stupidity.) The other day I was parked in a crime-riddled part of San Francisco, right next to some unseemly activity involving a different sort of crack on the sidewalk. My friend Brett, a self-proclaimed pessimist, started worrying for me about my car. What if someone smashes the window to break in? "Maybe then I'll finally be able to get a new car," I thought out loud. "Geez, you really are an optimist," Brett said, shaking his head. Yup, I really am. But I wasn't always: I have practiced finding the silver lining in things so often that it now comes to me reflexively. And that is something I hope to pass on to my children.

Christine Carter, Ph.D., is a mother of two and the executive director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Find more tips for raising happy kids at greatergoodparents.org.

Join the Campaign for 100,000 Happier Parents by signing this simple pledge.

Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.

Follow Christine Carter on Twitter

Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.

Sign up for the Raising Happiness CLASS!