Greater Good

A few years back I realized the biggest herald of the holiday season’s arrival was not Santa at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, but the sustained appearance of my own bitchy short-temper. 

That’s when I had to accept that there simply weren’t enough hours in the month, and something had to give.  I didn’t want that thing to be me, set out on the curb like a discarded Christmas tree by my own family.
                                                          —Nancy Kho, Normalarkey

I was going to write a post about how to deal with difficult people during the holidays. So many people I know celebrate this season with relatives who have a track record of irrational behavior.  But then I realized that dealing with difficult relatives can be so hard because it brings up some of our own shortcomings as well—the two are really intertwined.  So here is my advice on both fronts.

(1) Remember that it is not about you. My friend just read me an email that she got from her normally stable mother that essentially said, “You don’t love me enough, and you’re a terrible daughter.”  Another friend, Amy, has a mother who sends her frequent email diatribes at this time of year, usually obsessing about Amy’s life instead of her own.  (Currently, Amy’s mom is worried about Amy’s husband eating meat, when Amy is vegan.  Amy doesn’t care, but strangely, her carnivore mom thinks it is disrespectful.)

This is a stressful time of the year.  When people are upset, they often direct their negative emotions at other people, whether or not that is justified. 

Email is a handy tool for this; research shows that when folks send nasty emails, they are most often acting out the negative emotions they were feeling before they wrote the email.

My advice: Ignore nasty emails.  Don’t fan the flames by defending yourself, or even by responding. Take some deep breaths, and hit delete.  The sender will likely apologize later—and maybe even thank you for not making things worse.

(2) Remember that it is probably all about you.  The flipside of #1, above, is that when you are feeling critical of someone, your feelings are probably motivated by your own insecurities. 

Recently I found myself criticizing another author for blatant self-promotion, saying she made my stomach turn by hounding her readers to buy her book as a Christmas gift. But then I took a step back and realized: I had recently advertised my online class in my holiday card this year and worried that the self-promotion was too much.  Criticizing the other author was just a defense mechanism. Truth be told, I was anxiously criticizing myself. I’ve never seen any research to prove this, but I know that many psychologists consider it a truism that when we feel critical of others, we might want to stop and take a look in the mirror.

My advice: If you find yourself criticizing another person, consider that you are really critiquing yourself.  Then go a little easier on everyone.

(3) Take steps to not be a “stress ball,” as my daughter recently called me.  More than 90 percent of kids know when their parents are stressed, and for most kids, it makes them feel sad, worried, frustrated—and a whole laundry list of other negative emotions.  Moreover, teen girls report that they are increasingly responding to stress at home by drinking and taking drugs like marijuana and cough syrup. 

My advice: Take a little moment for yourself. Meditate.  Get more sleep tonight. Check out James Baraz’s recent Greater Good article for more tips on de-stressing during the holidays.

(4) Practice forgiveness, of yourself and others.  Do this for yourself, and for your children.  Forgive your mother for sending you that horrible email—it will make YOU feel better.  And when you are happier, your children will be too.  Forgive YOURSELF if aren’t able to reduce your stress (see #3, above) and you yell at a family member—guilt isn’t going to help.  Forgive your ex-husband for all his many irritating ways—it will make your kids happier. (Also, forgive his new wife.) 

My advice: Zero in on a few people who have aggravated you lately—or who typically get on your nerves during the holidays—and consciously try to practice forgiveness toward them. Clear your heart and mind so that they aren’t fertile ground for the negative emotions that come with holding a grudge.  (For tips about how to forgive, and to teach forgiveness to your children, see this post or this one).

(5) Make New Year’s Resolutions.  I LOVE New Year’s Resolutions.  What better way to clear the air than the blank slate of a New Year!  Model the growth-mindset by spending some time with your family, dreaming of all the ways you can lead a more meaningful life in the coming year.  Thinking big like this often makes the more trivial irritations of the holidays melt away.

My advice: Create a blueprint for happiness by wring down resolutions that will bring you greater happiness.  For example, a resolution to lose 10 pounds will not make you happier—but exercising will!  And don’t forget to help kids make a plan for how to succeed in fulfilling resolutions.  (More on this coming soon!)

How do you cope with holiday irritations and year-end stress?  What do you need to forgive this year in order to have more fun?  What happiness resolutions will you make?

© 2010 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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Although I have frequently touted the evils of materialism and consumption during the holidays, Santa still makes an annual trip down our chimney.  And believe me, not all of my gifts are homemade.

Like most of you, I have been buying gifts like mad for the many kids in my life, and I could tell you almost to the minute how much more time I have to get free shipping on all those things I should have ordered a month ago.

Stressful, isn’t it?

Here’s the kicker: No part of me believes that the bead kit or foursquare ball or peace sign reading lamp so politely wished for on Santa’s lap will bring my children more than momentary happiness.

But we, the gift givers—madly purchasing parents—should get some joy out of giving.  Research is clear that giving to others improves our health and well-being.  When we are generous, our outlook on life changes, and ironically, we begin to “perceive others more positively,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky in this Science of a Meaningful Life video.

So if giving and generosity boosts our happiness, the Season of Giving ought to bring nothing but joy.  Right?

I was thinking about this last week when I was about to buy gift cards for the kids I still hadn’t found Hanukkah gifts for.  I was also thinking about the research that shows that even though people believe that they will be happier spending money on themselves, it turns out that they find greater happiness by spending on others or giving the money away.  In the study, people got $5 or $20 and were happier spending it on others or giving it away than spending it on themselves. When different people were told of this scenario—spending on yourself or another—they predicted the spending on themselves would bring more happiness.

And then it occurred to me: I’ll give the kids money that they can give away themselves.

I found this website, www.TisBest.com, which made the whole thing a piece of cake.  I was able to print a great gift card for the kids I was going to see that night and order custom plastic gift cards for others.

My gifts were opened with—let’s be honest—polite, faux enthusiasm.  There was nothing to play with after our Hanukkah meal.

But then the kids got home and were able to search the TisBest website for charities that appealed to them.  Based on the Thank You emails I’ve received, it seems making donations did make kids happy.  Here is what an eight–year-old boy wrote me:

Thank you for this card. It feels good to donate to charitys [sic]. Just one dollar can make a diffrance [sic]. Happy holidays.

And here is what his 10-year-old sister wrote:

Thank you!! It feels great to donate to different causes. I think we should do this more often! This is a great program, and I am happy with my choice of charities. It seems that even a small donation can make a difference or even a large change. I also enjoyed the picture on the form you gave me! Very cute! 


And so, I’ve solved my holiday gift-giving woes, and have a new standard for myself in gift-giving: Does it make me feel generous?  Because if it does (rather than just checking something off of my to-do list), I know I’ll get a little holiday joy out of it. 

And better yet, does it offer the opportunity for the receiver to feel generous? 

What ideas do you have for gifts that bring joy?  What makes you feel most happy—and most generous—at this time of year?

© 2010 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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As 2010 comes to a close, I am once again profoundly grateful that I am able to write this blog for the Greater Good Science Center. This work—so fulfilling for me, and I hope meaningful for you—is made possible by donors like Lee Hwang and his Quality of Life Foundation, and Tom & Ruth Ann Hornaday.

As a valued member of this blog community, your support and enthusiasm brings greater happiness to children (and their parents!) in a very real way.  December is the most important fundraising month at the Greater Good Science Center. During this time we encourage all those who believe in spreading happiness and compassion to express their generosity by supporting us financially.

This year I hope you will consider giving to the Greater Good Science Center in support of Raising Happiness.  Making a gift is easy, and, of course, tax-deductible: just CLICK HERE.  (At the very bottom of the online form in the “special instructions” box, please note that your gift is in support of Raising Happiness, if that is your intention.)  Many, many thanks!

I hope that your gift, along with this blog, brings you great joy both now and in the coming year.

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OUR APOLOGIES: We are aware of the technical difficulty on iTunes with yesterday’s podcast, “Why Parents are Unhappy.”  We are hoping to get this problem resolved today!

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We have no right to ask when a sorrow comes, “Why did this happen to me?” unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way.  - Author Unknown

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.  - Thornton Wilder

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.      - G. K. Chesterton

Even if you are new to this blog, I think it’d be hard to miss that I’m a huge fan of consciously practicing gratitude.  The science behind it is robust, and there is little more that I want for my children than for them to be, as Wilder says above, conscious of their treasures.

So I love love love Thanksgiving, and not because of the food.  Here are my two favorite Thanksgiving gratitude traditions.

1) Every year my friends travel to a small town in Northern California the weekend before Thanksgiving to celebrate together.  The core members of this group have been gathering like this for more than twenty years!  The highlight of the weekend comes during our Thanksgiving dinner—yes, I have turkey two weekends in a row, despite my vegetarian leanings—when everyone gives a toast to the past year, and of course what they feel grateful for.

My friends are a particularly appreciative bunch, and the go-around the table can often last an hour or more.  The main focus, year after year, is on the others at the table.  Husbands give tearful tributes to their wives; friends detail all the ways that people at the table supported them through surgeries, kid mishaps, and job changes.  Most people only hear toasts like these at their weddings—or they never hear them at all, as often we only celebrate people so publicly in memoriam, when the person being honored is no longer alive to revel in the love of their friends. 

Ben Zelazny

“Appreciation is a wonderful thing,” wrote Voltaire.  “It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.” Well, I feel lucky each year to get to “own” what is excellent in my friends, as Voltaire suggests, by appreciating them.

2) Back at home I also have a favorite Thanksgiving tradition.  The kids fold pieces of construction paper in half, and make them into humongous place cards, gluing leaves to the front and doing their best to spell everyone’s names.  Then, when the turkey is still in the oven, each family member finds time to sneak away from football and silently saddle up to the dining room table. There they write on the inside of the place cards, noting what they are thankful for about each person named on the front of the card.

At Thanksgiving dinner, we go around the table and read out loud one or two things that someone else has written about us.  What I love about this is that there is both a private and a public component to our gratitude. 

This Thanksgiving, here is my toast to you:

Deep, heartfelt thanks for your presence, for your wonderful comments, and for your stimulating discussion.  I feel great gratitude that I get to write this blog for the Greater Good Science Center, and for the faculty and staff there that make my work possible, like Ann Shulman, Dacher Keltner, and Susan Fassberg.  I’m particularly grateful to Jason Marsh, who makes the whole Greater Good website happen and swiftly edits my columns each week, to my research assistant Rachel Lee, and to Janine Kovak, who created and now moderates the community gratitude journal.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Thanks as well to Linda Graham for the quotations; you can subscribe to her weekly emails, loaded with inspiring quotations, by going to www.lindagraham-mft.com.

© 2010 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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