Is there some way to nurture the positive aspects of imagination while minimizing the problematic? According to Cassandra Vieten, director of research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, there is. In her new book, Imagine That, she explains imagination’s importance in our everyday lives—a way to understand our past, navigate the present, and explore future possibilities. If we learn more about its inner workings, she argues, we can use it more consciously and deliberately to create the kind of life we want.

“Imagination is something we all possess, something we can all practice, for free and with equal opportunity,” says Vieten. “When someone develops this capacity, they gain something almost magical: the ability to see multiple futures simultaneously and navigate toward the preferred ones.”

Imagination as part of everyday life

Many of us tend to conflate imagination with creativity, thinking that being able to imagine new ideas is the same as bringing them to fruition. While the two may indeed be related, this is far too limited a view of what imagination can be, writes Vieten.

“Imagination is an essential, foundational capacity that allows us to simulate reality and transcend it to explore possibilities beyond the known,” she says.

In our everyday lives, imagination is what helps us make predictions as well as come up with novel (or creative) ideas. For example, we might imagine how stopping for a coffee on our way to work will help us focus (simulation imagination, based on past experience). But we might also use our imagination to transcend what’s known and come up with a totally new innovation or product idea once we arrive at the office (generative imagination).

“Imagination weaves throughout the fabric of our cognitive, sensory, and relational lives—you are constantly speculating, visualizing, rehearsing, wondering,” she writes.

These types of imagination show up differently in the brain, writes Vieten. Simulation is primarily centered in the default mode network (DMN), a part of the brain that remains active when we aren’t engaging in a specific task. The DMN is where we tend to mull over future interactions, plans, or options, often subconsciously (or even unconsciously).

Generative imagination, on the other hand, comes by freeing ourselves from the DMN’s limitations (or, some would say, tyranny). If we can get out of the everyday chatter and let our minds truly wander freely around disparate parts of the brain, making new neural connections, we have a better chance of generating something truly unique.

“Rather than simulating or iterating, comparing and contrasting, generative imagination is focused on combining, reconfiguring, or transcending existing knowledge to generate novel outputs,” writes Vieten.

Either way, imagination isn’t frivolous, she writes; it’s important for our everyday functioning as well as creative self-expression. It helps us solve problems, while also expanding possibilities of what could be, giving us “the gift of wonder, whimsy, and surprise, the whoas and the wows of our lives,” she writes.

Imagination’s darker side

Imagination can sometimes be problematic, though. For example, we might imagine that our spouse is mad at us and worry about what might happen when she gets home from work when, actually, she’s not mad at all. This can cause us needless worry, not to mention potentially trigger a fight.

We can also imagine that other people are unpleasant or even dangerous based on untested biases. These can be formed in part via our imagination, which tries to prepare us for unknown encounters, often behind the scenes at an unconscious level.

“We regularly imagine entire narratives, scenes, and interactions without intending to or even knowing we’re doing it,” writes Vieten.

Our imagination is often busy filling in the missing parts of our memories and perceptions, which are by nature incomplete. Memories, rather than being etched in our minds, are recreated (and often changed) each time they’re recalled. Similarly, we can’t perceive everything at once, so our imagination completes the picture for us, adding interpretations, too. This means it’s easy to corrupt memories or miss details of a situation—which can sometimes lead to problems (think eyewitness accounts of crimes, for example).

Understanding these darker sides of imagination can help us tame them somewhat, says Vieten. “You can practice bringing greater attention to what you are imagining, recognize it as imagination, and decide whether it holds useful information, is irrelevant, or is actually causing harm.”

How to increase your imaginative capabilities

While the book covers the neuroscience behind imagination, it’s also about how to harness our imagination more effectively. Your personal imagination style may depend, in part, on your genetics (such as neurodiversity), culture, and life experiences. Understanding this can help you figure out where you might want to try moving the needle one way or the other.

To assess your own imaginative strengths and weaknesses, here are some key imagination modes Vieten outlines in her book.

1. Receptiveness. “How willing you are to imagine—and how receptive you are to whatever bubbles up.” If you are high in receptivity, you may find it easy to do guided visualizations, for example; if low in receptivity, you may be less willing to imagine unknown scenarios.

2. Presence. How much do you embody your imagined experiences? If you tend to be absorbed, immersed, and emotionally involved in imagined scenarios, you’re high in presence; if you tend to observe these imaginings from a distance, you’re less so.

3. Embellishment. “How vivid, detailed, and elaborate people make their imaginings.” Those high in embellishment can imagine intricate scenarios with much more detail, clarity, nuance, and complexity. Those low in embellishment might be more “big picture” folks, who may not be able to conjure up details as much.

4. Originality. How much your imagination is fueled by what is or could be, based on reality, versus how much it veers from that and is based more on fantasy and novelty.

5. Temporality. How much your imagination is associated with time (in other words, assessing the past or projecting into the future) versus how much it is agnostic around time (not based on any particular time). (Vieten admits the science on this mode is not completely settled, but says there appear to be some differences in how people engage with time while imagining.)

Each of these modes has pros and cons, she argues. For example, being high in receptivity may mean you’re more cognitively flexible and open to new experiences, but can also mean you’re overly compliant and easily manipulated. Similarly, the upside of being high in originality is that it can fuel advancements in art and science, though it can lead to boredom with everyday life.

Considering my own strengths and weaknesses, I noticed that I seem to be high in receptivity and embodiment, but low in embellishment and originality (and mixed when it comes to temporality). Recognizing this makes me think about paying more attention to details in my environment and playing around with more fantastical ideas, especially if I’m wanting to fuel my creativity.

To that end, Vieten provides avenues for stretching our imagination in different ways. Some ideas for accessing different aspects of imagination deliberately include rehearsing something before doing it, brainstorming ideas, engaging all of our senses when imagining something, reframing an idea from a different perspective, and freewriting.

Vieten also suggests creating environments conducive to being more spontaneously creative. Setting time aside to daydream, being in solitude where your mind can wander, taking walks in the woods to de-stress, or, possibly, taking psychedelic drugs (in a safe, controlled environment) can all help us disengage our DMN and allow creative thoughts to enter more freely.

“One of the key ways to make imagination welcome is to remove the practical pressures of the world,” she writes.

Beyond self-help

Imagine That is full of suggestions for unleashing your imagination, all based on the emerging science of imagination that Vieten and her colleagues (and others) are exploring.

But while the book reads mostly as a self-help guide, there’s also an important message about why using our imagination is beneficial to society as a whole. Too many of us are experiencing the hopelessness and despair that come with being alive right now, writes Vieten. It’s too easy to get lost in the negative news cycles and focus on all of the problems in the world, making it more difficult to imagine anything better for our collective future.

Learning how to engage our imagination more readily can create a sense of hope in our current situation. Not only can it bring more joy and aliveness to our individual lives, countering malaise, it can also lead to new ways of collaborating with others and innovating to solve societal problems, thereby providing a better life for everyone.

“So many of the issues facing us locally and globally are rooted in our collective inability to imagine new solutions, alternative futures, creative pathways forward that could build a world that promotes thriving for all,” writes Vieten. “My deepest hope is that [you] take a deeper dive into the science, the practice, and the magic of imagination and [see] how it can re-enchant your life and our world.”

“From my work with elders, I learned stories, games, and how to become a better person,” said a student named Mya. It even relieved despair for one resident, Jodi, who said, “I went from a daily dread that I was still alive and breathing . . . to anticipat[ing] an awesome day that was full of life and joy.”

Many extracurricular activities, sports, meetups, and other community programs bring people of similar ages together: children with children, teens with teens, adults with adults, seniors with seniors. But new research on an intergenerational program known as iGen suggests that these initiatives may be especially beneficial to our health and well-being.

Finding meaning in connection

For the study, the 25 participating students—as well as three elders and eight long-term care staff members—completed a variety of surveys. At the end of the day, they rated how meaningful their interactions with different groups of people were, how much fun and positive and negative emotions they had, and the quality of their physical health that day. They also reported how many kind and helpful actions they performed, and how strong their social connections and sense of belonging were.

Everyone completed surveys for 10 straight school days in late September and early October, and then again in June.

The results suggested that people were experiencing meaningful interactions between generations, and highly meaningful interactions with their peers of similar ages. While people didn’t become happier, healthier, or more kind overall over the course of the program, the researchers did observe changes on a daily basis.

On days when people had more meaningful interactions, they tended to feel better, more connected, healthier, and kinder. This was true for both interactions with people the same age (like students with students, or elders with elders) and intergenerational interactions—although the benefits seemed more pronounced between generations than with peers.

This link appeared even stronger toward the end of the program than near the beginning. In June, having meaningful interactions through iGen seemed to have an even bigger impact on people’s well-being than it did in the fall. The researchers, led by Jason D. E. Proulx, suggest this might be because students had deepened their relationships with elders by that point, or they were savoring their last few weeks together.

The length and depth of this program—spending whole days together over 10 months—may have contributed to how powerful it was, the researchers suggest.

Although this research only reflects one program, with a majority of white participants, it offers promising evidence that programs like this can help young and old alike, and comprise a valuable part of students’ education. Other research finds that interacting across generations can improve mental health and cognitive function in older people, and a sense of purpose for all of us.

“Programs like iGen may be one effective and scalable intervention to foster more inclusive, meaningfully connected, and happier communities,” write Proulx and his colleagues.

Mya’s mother Tanya said that she “built long-lasting friendships with the residents . . . but also learned the value and appreciation of life.”

“It took those sixth-grade kids to bring life back into focus for me,” said Jodi, who had thought her life was over and sometimes wanted it to be. “iGen saved me.”

But as time passes, is it helpful to hold on to feelings of distress or ill will? While avoiding someone, stonewalling them, or plotting revenge can feel natural, are the feelings that drive these kinds of reactions good for health and well-being in the long run? 

Research suggests not. Letting go of anger and extending goodwill to the people who harmed us tends to restore our internal equilibrium and help us sleep better and live longer.

But why do some things still feel unforgivable—like holding a grudge is the right thing to do? 

Forgiveness and the nervous system

The human body is built with two main branches of the nervous system that are below the neck: the sympathetic branch (SNS) that mainly supports faster “fight or flight” drives and reflexes, and the parasympathetic branch (PNS) that is more involved in gradual “rest and digest” and “tend and befriend” motivations and behaviors. These systems are in constant dialogue, dynamically shifting physical resources like oxygen, glucose, and hormones back and forth to equip us to do whatever is best for our survival in any situation.

When we sense threat or are reminded of something hurtful, the SNS is dominant. When we feel safe and beloved, the PNS prevails. It feels right when these systems give us the energy, wherewithal, and focus to do the right thing, like hustling to catch a bus, train, or airplane when we’re late, or enjoying a deep, loving conversation with a friend after a nice meal.

Sometimes, though, there’s a mismatch, like late-night restless worrying even in the comfort of a safe and warm bed, or procrastinating on an important, time-sensitive task. Mismatches often involve miscalculating time, either focusing on the short term when a long-term view would be more helpful, or ignoring the present moment in favor of the unchangeable past or unknowable future. The “negativity bias,” which is our mental tendency to privilege information from the past, present, or future that could be threatening in any way, also feeds into this mismatch by getting us ready to escape or defend, even when we’re safe.

Without conscious deliberation, our first urge in many situations is to avoid what’s costly and gain what’s immediately desired, even at long-term loss or at the expense of lasting benefit. For example, we may refrain from waving another driver into a convenient parking space to avoid walking a relatively short distance ourselves, though the generosity would feel nice and the walk would be pleasant and better for our health. Or we might hold back from apologizing for an unintentional offense to avoid being vulnerable and go on with our day uninterrupted, though offering the apology would initiate reconciliation that could relieve stress and strengthen our relationship.

So what does this have to do with forgiveness and grudges? Studies of forgiveness and physical health suggest that unforgiveness (in other words, holding a grudge) may be one of these mismatches. Grudges may feel valid in the moment, but are problematic when held long-term; forgiveness feels unsteady and tender in the moment, but ultimately helps you feel better.

Why do we hold grudges?

According to forgiveness scholar Everett Worthington at Virginia Commonwealth University, forgiving means reducing negative thoughts, emotions, and behaviors toward someone who committed harm and replacing them with positive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Forgiveness does not mean pardoning, condoning, excusing, or justifying harm, nor does it require reconciling with the person. This is an important distinction, because believing that forgiveness does mean “getting back together” can make it feel unfair, like it invalidates our pain and suffering, which can make holding a grudge feel more sensible and appealing.

Forgiving is also not a strategy for becoming complacent when we’re being treated poorly; it does not mean rationalizing or justifying harmful conduct so that we can continue to endure it. When we forgive, we honor and remember that we felt badly in order to move forward more wisely, while letting go of ongoing, unbidden anxious and unpleasant feelings. 

Unforgiveness can also feel like a better choice because it seems easier. It is uncomplicated and unequivocal: “I am right and the person who committed harm is wrong.” This view is simple and certain, and does not require additional consideration—in other words, it carries low cognitive cost. One of the costs some people perceive of forgiveness is losing face and the possibility of applying consequences. Deciding to surrender the certainty of “an eye for an eye” logic can be challenging because it feels asymmetrical and ambiguous.

Unforgiveness can also feel protective because it motivates absolute avoidance: no further encounters or contact with those who commit harm. No more bad feelings from being reminded of the harm. Forgiveness, on the other hand, requires emotional labor—or acknowledging the hard feelings linked to a past harm and working to shift them toward a gentler, more nurturing stance. Forgiving means being open to the possibility of remembering or even encountering a harm doer again and readying ourselves to offer ease and goodwill.

Finally, studies have documented that seeing a cheater or harm doer get punished activates reward pathways in our brain, the “altruistic punishment” or “schadenfreude” signal, a motivator of the basic human preference for restoring justice. When we anticipate satisfaction as we imagine holding someone accountable or exacting revenge, it may strengthen the urge to hold a grudge.

What is left out of all these mental justifications for grudge holding, however, is the long-term detrimental impact. While feeling mad, afraid, sad, or otherwise unpleasant or upset about being harmed are healthy emotional responses in the short term, they are naturally time-bound and fluctuating. Emotions emerge in real time to guide our responses to the current context and inform our long-term knowledge, and then subside. A grudge, on the other hand, keeps these feelings pervasive and enduring. They remain intense and they recur, sometimes unexpectedly, in response to associations and reminders in our life. Lingering, recurring negative emotions overactivate the SNS, which amounts to a type of chronic stress that can increase our blood pressure, impair our immune response, increase our cardiovascular risk, and disrupt our sleep.

“Forgiveness of others is associated with risk for all-cause mortality, and the mortality risk of [forgiving someone] may be conferred by its influences on physical health,” writes Laurent Toussaint.

Two ways forgiveness is good for your health

Embracing, labelling, disclosing, and accepting difficult and unpleasant feelings about past harms enable us to be resilient. Seeking social support, to process negative feelings—which can be part of forgiving if we involve a friend, ally, supportive person, or even the perpetrator of harm if it makes sense—helps us learn, grow, and find ease and meaning from them. A recent study by Marilyn Cornish reported that forgiveness helped medical patients adapt to life changes after suffering a spinal cord injury, suggesting that accepting ambiguity as part of forgiving may benefit our response to other unforeseen circumstances.

Forgiveness improves physical health by reducing and untethering our negative emotional reactions about a prior harm or any reminders of it from our day-to-day experiences. Reducing “hard feelings” about a past harm helps restore balance between the SNS and PNS, instead of keeping us in stress overdrive.

According to a systematic review of multiple studies on forgiveness in aging and advanced illness, “Forgiveness should be taken into account among holistic care professionals as a considerable contributor to the resolution of stress associated with conflicts over the lifespan to promote well-being and health outcomes.” 

Forgiving also frees up mental and emotional resources for us to be trusting, optimistic, and self-compassionate (i.e., kind toward our own inadequacies and flaws), and promotes friendlier behaviors like participating in social gatherings, activities, and community events.

While several large-scale studies have reported that people who are more forgiving are less likely to die of any cause, and attributed the lifespan gain to the benefits of forgiveness on physical health, correlation cannot be interpreted as causal. Are forgiving people healthier, or are healthier people more forgiving?

In a recent study led by Songzhi Wu at Columbia University, participants who forgave rated stimuli that reminded them of a past harm (like a photo of an unfaithful romantic partner’s favorite restaurant) as less unpleasant. These findings suggest that forgiving someone reduces the intensity of negative emotion linked to reminders of a past harm. Another 2020 study published in BMC Psychology measured forgiveness one year, and positive emotions, social integration, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, hopelessness, and loneliness five years later. Those who forgave more often fared better in all these areas, suggesting a more direct impact of forgiveness on health. A third study published in Psychology and Health revealed that people who are more forgiving of both themselves and other people sleep better:

Because forgiveness is associated with better sleep, it capitalizes on the powerful role that sleep plays in good health. If forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness can help people cope with the day’s psychological and emotional burdens in a way that frees one’s mind and promotes a more restful mental state for sleep, then they support the health-related process of sleep in meaningful ways.

When I teach the science of forgiveness, there is often a contingent of people who proudly refuse it—from a place of defiance and perceived empowerment. The rigidity, distrust, and emotional compartmentalizing that go into unforgiveness, however, amount to greater enduring cost mentally, socially, and physically than the lesser, yet significant, upfront effort that goes into deciding to forgive and emotionally shifting toward mercy and grace. Forgiving is not a gift to people for the hurt they have caused. Forgiveness is a physiologically balancing, resilience-building lifesaver for us.

Liudmyla Herasymenko, an associate professor at the Ukrainian State Flight Academy in Kropyvnytskyi, Kirovohrad, Ukraine, is one of the millions of educators carrying the invisible weight of supporting her students’ social and emotional well-being despite the turmoil that surrounds them every day.

“Because of the existing threat, which is hanging, you cannot plan your day in advance,” Herasymenko says. “You can have some plans, but everything can be changed in one second, and you need to adapt to be flexible about it. We have alerts, so that means we need to go to the shelter, then schedules of electricity, which means you need to find power and Wi-Fi. So, it’s a lot of stress that we are experiencing.”

Herasymenko is not alone—a rising number of children and educators are currently facing unprecedented disruption and stress due to living in conflict-affected areas. More than 473 million children live in or are fleeing settings of conflict and crisis around the world, and approximately 204 million people worldwide live in areas controlled or contested by armed groups.

Educators in these spaces are navigating burnout, secondary trauma, and constant uncertainty, while they simultaneously hold space for students’ fear, grief, and hope. In these conditions, the question is not whether teachers and students need support, but rather what kinds of support are actually feasible, sustainable, and relevant to them.

Small practices that make the day possible

Despite years of disruption, Ukrainian educators have found creative ways to help students stay connected and engaged. They adapt lesson plans around air raid alerts, maintain routines that foster belonging, and cultivate community across distance and displacement. Social-emotional learning (SEL) practices have become one more tool in that effort, helping educators strengthen the care and support they were already providing.

According to a recent journal article, SEL Kernels—short activities and strategies that are used to support the growth and development of social and emotional skills and competencies—helped support teachers and students in wartime Ukraine. These include games, routines, and activities that target specific skills like emotional regulation, conflict resolution, and building relationships.

When SEL practices are not adjusted to be responsive and relevant to a particular culture, they’re less likely to have benefits. These SEL Kernels, developed by Harvard University’s Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning Laboratory, were modified to fit the evolving needs of educators and teachers in Ukraine. How? Rebecca Bailey and her colleagues started with landscape research to identify what challenges students and educators in Ukraine were actually facing.

“Building on these findings, we engaged in a collaborative co-design process with Ukrainian teachers and a team of LEGO Foundation Ukraine Master Trainers to adapt and refine the Kernels for local relevance and usability,” they write.

They conducted a survey and organized focus groups for teachers to discuss their concerns about student well-being and mental health. Teachers identified areas where additional support could strengthen the work they were already doing, including helping students regulate emotions during air raid alerts, rebuild social connections, and navigate prolonged uncertainty.

Based on the survey and focus group discussions, the researchers identified five priorities for the Ukraine Kernels materials, including cooperation, mindfulness, cognitive skills, emotional intelligence, and teacher well-being.

“Finally, we piloted the adapted Kernels materials in diverse classroom settings, gathering data on implementation, feasibility, and relevance,” they write.

After the final revision of materials and rollout of the Kernels, Bailey and her colleagues found that teachers viewed the SEL Kernels as beneficial for both their own and students’ well-being. Teachers reported that the activities helped support emotional and psychological health, made learning more engaging and meaningful for children, and provided practical tools that eased the demands of teaching.

For example, Herasymenko has found that short mindful moments help ground both her and her students. Having students name their rose, thorn, and bud for the day—having them reflect on something positive, naming a challenge, and looking ahead to something they’re excited for—have helped them hold on to hope.

Additionally, she leads a five senses grounding practice with students to reconnect the mind and body without taking up a large amount of time during the learning day. In high-stress environments, practices like these work because they are small enough to hold, even on hard days.

“I cannot imagine my teaching being the same as it was before the war,” Herasymenko says. “Everything is different now. So, I prioritize my students’ well-being more than their academic achievements. I think that now it’s more important for them to be OK and to be without stress in my classes. This is my priority now.”

The impact of Ukrainian conflict in neighboring countries

Data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre show that internal displacements—people who have been forced to flee or leave their homeland to avoid the effects of armed conflict, violence, or violations of human rights—increased from 20 million in 2024 to 32 million in 2025.

Schools in Poland have been significantly shaped by the conflict in Ukraine, and many educators are experiencing new emotional and practical challenges while supporting students. Małgorzata Lidacka, an educator in Kraków who works with displaced Ukrainian students ages seven to 10, has had to approach teaching in a much different way to help her students acclimate to the new environment—often slowing down and reminding herself not to rush to solutions while navigating both lesson plans and emotional responsibilities.

“When you’re a subject teacher, no one tells you that you will then have to be a coach, or some kind of therapist,” Lidacka says. “You can make a mistake and then it can influence these kids. So I feel this burden that it’s a lot for one person to combine those roles.”

The cultural barriers have also made it difficult for her to connect with parents, and some students have fallen behind because they refused to learn Polish when they first arrived, thinking that the stay in a new country would have been over much faster. The anger, fear, and hopelessness that her students are experiencing make it increasingly difficult to focus on academics, and Lidacka empathizes.

To support herself and her students while carrying this increased mental load, Lidacka turned to social-emotional learning strategies. She now routinely advocates for play to promote shared joy beyond language barriers and encourages small acts of kindness—like lending a pencil or a book to a classmate. Additionally, when working with parents, she began asking open-ended questions and practicing mindful listening, which she found made a huge difference in connecting and finding common ground.

“During the workshops with parents, I just listen,” Lidacka says. “And they are creating such great ideas about the future—for them and for their families.”

Despite the challenges Lidacka has faced with her students, she has also seen how remarkably adaptable they are. Many have learned to transition between online and in-person learning at a moment’s notice, they support classmates navigating similar disruptions, and most really dove headfirst into learning the new language and culture.

“The best part is small acts of kindness on a daily basis, and also a huge determination from Ukrainian kids to learn Polish,” Lidacka says. “They really wanted to learn very fast. And we have some pupils in the first grade that are fluent in Polish, even though their parents aren’t. So I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ Of course, it was a requirement, but not everyone succeeds.”

Supporting the supporters: Teacher well-being in real time

While searching for additional support and resources for her classroom and her own well-being, Lidacka found the Greater Good Educators Community of Practice (CoP). The CoP offered a space for educators across the globe to connect with one another and learn science-based practices focused on purpose, awe, self-compassion, gratitude, and kindness and compassion for others.

For educators like Lidacka, who had already experimented with small, bite-sized SEL practices, the Greater Good Educators CoP created a space to expand on what she already knew. The practices emphasized that teacher sustainability begins with teacher well-being, and the community conversations helped her see she was not alone.

“After these three years, I see among my peers that we are exhausted,” Lidacka says. “More and more often, we are searching for places to debrief or to just sit and talk about how difficult it still is to manage this.”

Alongside learning SEL practices like mindful listening and self-compassion, the educators who joined the CoP were encouraged to practice the shared community invitations of curiosity, compassion, and respect with each other. These invitations helped create a supportive environment where teachers could connect across experiences and process challenges together.

Herasymenko is one of the many educators Lidacka was able to virtually connect with, and she shared similar sentiments about the importance of having an outlet to support her own mental well-being.

“It’s great to have some kind of community of teachers during all these hardships,” Herasymenko says. “Before the war, I didn’t pay so much attention to my well-being, and now I understand that this is an important part of a teacher’s job. To think about taking breaks, to think about how to recharge yourself.”

Educators like Lidacka and Herasymenko are not waiting for ideal conditions to create caring learning environments. They have continued teaching, adapting, and building community through years of uncertainty. SEL initiatives are not a one-size-fits-all cure for the challenges they face, but they offer additional support for work they are already doing. By investing in educators’ well-being, we help sustain the people who make learning, connection, and hope possible—even in the most difficult circumstances.

As I moved from my early to late 40s, one feeling resonated: I felt great! My smartest, most confident, and healthiest version of myself. 

The disconnect between what I was expecting to feel and what I actually felt was so large that, at the end of last year, I started a Substack to talk about the notion that, yes, we can be Happier in the Middle. It turns out my hunch is beyond anecdotal and actually rooted in scientific research.

Primetime, by Margie Lachman, the director of the Lifespan Lab at Brandeis University, suggests that we are looking at both life and especially life in the middle the wrong way.

Instead of viewing life as one mountain to climb, the foundational perspective of the “downhill” metaphor, it’s more accurately a series of mountains and the middle a pivotal summit where we get to look back at where we’ve been and make decisions about where we want to go next.

Why do we believe in a midlife crisis?

Based on over 30 years of research, Lachman roughly defines the middle as age 40 to 60 (plus or minus 10 years).

She demystifies the origin story of the “midlife crisis,” tracing it to a 1965 article by a Canadian psychoanalyst who noted that the creativity of artists dipped in their mid- to late 30s, which he linked to feelings of a looming end of life. We also have him to thank for the notion that life after 40 goes “downhill.”

The idea of a midlife crisis was later fueled by a 2008 study showing a U-shape to happiness, with it dipping in midlife. However, when Lachman and her colleagues investigated the data driving this study, they found that “while visually compelling . . . the giant dip in the graph isn’t as significant as it appears from the image.” But the damage of a belief in a midlife dip in happiness had already been done. Add to that media uptake, and we have a full-blown cultural phenomenon that lives rent-free in most of our heads.

However, research by Lachman and her colleagues shows that only 10 to 20% of adults report having a midlife crisis. More importantly, what’s termed a crisis is closer to an introspective life challenge, and one of many inflection points experienced throughout the lifespan, not just in midlife.

Another challenge that amplifies concern about midlife is the belief that who we are is relatively stable by then, in terms of our self-concept (what we think of ourselves) and personality (how we show up in the world), both of which are key drivers to change. Self-concept and personality impact the realm of what we feel is possible for our lives: the goals we can achieve, lifestyle changes we believe we can make, and types of experiences we seek out.

Lachman offers scientific research that counters the belief of a stable and immutable self. Specifically: 1) Personality can change well into midlife and typically only begins to stabilize after the age of 50, and 2) the 50s is a pivotal decade marked by increased introspection and self-reflection. “One of the great opportunities of midlife is that we are in a stronger position than ever before to close the gap between who we are and who we want to be. Using personality change as an avenue for improving the way you think, feel, and behave is a new and underutilized tool,” she writes.

We can have what she calls in one section of the book “a midlife personality glow-up”!

What do we lose and gain in midlife?

A big challenge that I have with the popular midlife narrative is that it’s a deficit-only narrative. We only hear about what we may potentially lose in this phase of life and far less about what is available for us to gain or maintain. Primetime balances the scale in this area.

The book covers various tradeoffs in midlife focusing on potential losses and gains. I’ll share three such examples below.

Cognition. A big concern many of us have, me included, is: Will I be able to maintain my intelligence and memory as I age or not? Lachman helps us to reframe this black-and-white way of thinking about cognition through the lifespan by reminding us there are two components of intelligence, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. “Fluid intelligence is about quick thinking and innovation. . . . Crystallized intelligence . . . is the epitome of wisdom . . . which relies on experience, semantic memory, knowledge, and the ability to synthesize them all and apply it to the current problem.”

Yes, fluid intelligence may gradually decline as we age, but our crystallized intelligence gets better as we age, through our 60s and 70s. This explains why I feel so confident now: It’s the culmination of life experience, learned knowledge, and my ability to map it on to new situations, all things that we acquire with time.

But if maintaining fluid intelligence is important to us, we are not powerless. Prioritizing activities that encourage neuroplasticity—like learning a new instrument or language, travel to a foreign country, or developing an artistic habit—can help us to preserve fluid intelligence as we age.

Inflammation. In addition to our cognition, another area that gets a lot of attention around midlife decline is our physical health. Everyone from your doctor to well-meaning friends and partners is likely warning you about the potential uptick in illnesses as you age. Their warnings not only are well-meaning, they can also be true. Research does support that as we age, we become susceptible to more physical health problems like cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative issues.

A major driver of age-related health decline is inflammation. Inflammation is our immune system’s response to injury, infection, or harm. Lachman reminds us that a key driver of inflammation is chronic stress, something that many of us in the middle may experience due to managing child care, work, and aging parents.

Although we may not be able to control all of the stressors we face at this stage of life, we can mitigate them through our mindset, social support, and healthy behaviors. For example, a study Lachman worked on using Midlife in the United States survey data found that we can employ what she calls “psychosocial anti-inflammatories,” such as cultivating a sense of purpose and meaning in our lives, self-efficacy (believing we can impact change in our lives), optimism, and positive social connections—as well as adopting a regular exercise routine, which has been found to benefit both our physical and mental health as we age. 

Combined, psychosocial anti-inflammatories and exercise help reduce stress and the impact of stress-related inflammation.

Social network. Many of us are likely to have a robust social network by the time we reach middle age, largely due to all of the roles we hold during this period: parent, partner, adult child, friend, boss, coworker, community member, etc. In support of this pattern, Lachman shares data from Pew Research Center that shows that 54% of Americans in their 40s are caring for both children and an aging parent.

With our expanded network comes the potential for a rich and supportive tapestry of social support. But social networks can also add strain and stress stemming from the relationship. Our goal should be to minimize this to the extent possible and capitalize on the social support aspects of relationships. Social support can reduce the impact of life stress and positively contribute to our overall well-being.

An interesting turn that midlife presents for our connection to others is generativity. “Research shows that one of the biggest gains we make in midlife is in the realm of generativity, the way we positively contribute to the world through care and concern for others,” Lachman writes. For example, this might include volunteering, community activism, or mentoring.

It’s in this area that our lived experiences pay in dividends, not just for us but for others. While the concept of generativity places a premium on helping younger generations, this form of support can also be extended to peers and those older than you, as well. A good example is an organization highlighted in the book, Seniors Helping Seniors, where older adults help other older adults across a variety of needs.

The biggest takeaways from Primetime are, first, that our mindset is one of our best assets as we age. It can determine the type of life we will live in midlife and beyond. Second, it’s never too late to start making changes to positively impact our health and well-being. I’m living proof of that, having only recently regained a consistent physical fitness routine in the past couple of years, which has contributed to how good I feel right now, with my 50s around the corner.

We have the capacity to shape how our midlife years and beyond look through the right mindset, decisions, and support; we are not powerless.

I woke up two hours later to my baby crying again. This time, he was kicking his feet as if trying to get them through his footie pajamas. I narrowed my eyebrows, got scissors, and carefully cut them off. And like magic, Zade fell back into a peaceful sleep. Today, Zade is 34 years old.

Our middle child, Dury, is now 30. When he was five, we took him and his brother to Walt Disney World. Refusing to walk when tired, I carried him for hours each day. He was a plump little guy, and I came back with my arms feeling detached from my body.

And my little “Nutmeg,” Demi, now 26, loved this bedtime ritual: I would draw gentle circles on her forehead with my thumb, and she would say while fading to sleep, “How does that work?”

What those stories have in common is how my brain was reshaped after becoming a father.

According to a 2022 article in Scientific American, fatherhood triggers significant structural and functional “rewiring” in the male brain, similar to mothers, to support caregiving and attachment. New fathers show changes in gray matter in regions controlling motivation, empathy, and emotion regulation, especially when they are actively involved in child care.

• With Zade crying all night because his feet felt trapped, my motivation heightened to solve the problem and cut off his pajama footies.
• With Dury refusing to walk when he was tired at Walt Disney World, my elevated empathy made carrying his 40-pound body manageable.
• With Demi fading to sleep as I gently rubbed her forehead, my emotional regulation helped me establish a loving bedtime ritual.

I have always wondered about this overwhelming love I have for my children.

From elementary to high school, they would come home with friends, and I would grab them by the cheeks and cover them with kisses for what seemed like eternity.

Their friends would look wide-eyed and ask, “What’s your dad doing?”

And my children would nonchalantly say while waiting for it to end, “He’ll be done in a minute.”

According to another 2022 study in Developmental Psychobiology, the arrival of my children increased levels of oxytocin in my brain, the “love hormone,” suggesting a neuroendocrine change associated with becoming a parent.

In humans, oxytocin is a hormone associated with social bonding and attachment. It doesn’t cause love, but its increase across the transition to fatherhood aligns with research showing changes in neural and hormonal systems that support bonding, caregiving, and emotional attunement.

Becoming a father to my three brilliant and beautiful children has taught me the true meaning of unconditional love—a love unlike anything else, rooted in that place reserved for sacred, sacrificial things. A love so vivid it resembles a river with fierce rapids, its waters brushing the banks, the trees casting dancing shadows in the breeze.

Am I a better human being since I became a father? I believe I am. My three young people matter to me more than life itself. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for them, and the beautiful thing is that they know it and wouldn’t have it any other way.

Becoming a father does not turn me, or any man, into a perfect emotional navigator overnight. But it does explain why late-night lullabies and repeated soothing feel less like chores and more like instinct—our brains learning and adapting quietly.

To me at least, here is what that brain rewiring looks like. (Important to note here that while I mainly list the positive aspects of my becoming a father, I had my difficulties like everyone else.)

Empathy. Empathy and patience were never among my virtues, but I had to learn them when I became a father. The many sleepless nights are a good example. My three kids are four years apart, which means 12 continuous years without decent sleep. It was worth it. Science helps explain this change. Involved fathers experience a drop in testosterone, which is associated with shifts in caregiving patience and sensitivity. These hormonal changes align with broader shifts in brain systems involved in deeply caring about the state and feelings of others.

Tradition. When I was little, I used to hide from my strict mother in my father’s Abbaye (Middle Eastern camel-hair house robe). My children hid in mine when they were young. Another ritual was our pretend books, made-up stories while holding my palm up as the book. And every time I woke them up, I would ask them, “Did you go to the moon?” Most of the time, they would say no. But sometimes they would grin and say, “Yeah.” I trust they will pass similarly sweet traditions on to their own kids. There is a biological component here. Research finds that fatherhood changes levels of hormones such as testosterone and oxytocin and reshapes brain networks related to functions including empathy and emotion regulation, laying the conditions for bonding and the formation of comforting rituals.

Emotional intelligence. Research often finds that, on average, women show higher attunement to emotional cues, shaped by both biology and social experience. This sensitivity can make the emotional landscape of relationships easier to interpret, especially in moments of tension or change. Fatherhood helps here. Becoming a father nudges a man’s brain toward real-time emotional calculation. Studies of new dads show changes in brain regions associated with perceiving another person’s emotional state and responding appropriately. This doesn’t make us experts, but it boosts our capacity to tune in instead of tuning out.

Kindness. Fatherhood has taught me how to be firm without ever letting go of love. When my children broke a rule, reasonable discipline was part of the job, but I learned early to keep it kind. As they got older, it became less about correction and more about conversation, heart-to-heart, eyes locked, no distractions. Over time, I came to understand something science supports: Fatherhood is associated with changes in brain regions involved in attention and caregiving. Research suggests that these shifts, especially in fathers who are more engaged in hands-on care, may help them better attune to their infants’ cues. The result is a greater ability to balance structure with connection in responding to children.

Friendship. As my kids grew older, something shifted between us. We became not only father and children, but something closer and more reciprocal. I wasn’t the most popular father by any means, but many of my kids’ friends seemed to gravitate toward our home. They would linger there, talk, and laugh; over time it turned into a kind of open-door life where we enjoyed spending time together, even through the teenage years. Life feels at its sweetest when your teenage children start asking you deep questions, not out of obligation, but out of needing guidance. And that has continued as they became adults. Scientifically, these relational changes reflect how human bonds evolve over time. We are not built solely for fixed, limited roles, but for enduring attachments that shift as life stages change. Research on parent–adult child relationships suggests that as children mature, bonds often become more reciprocal, marked by greater emotional mutuality.

Perspective. When teenagers, they will do things that make you pause in disbelief, like getting a tattoo from a friend who did it with an electric toothbrush. Or staying out far past curfew and ending up in the emergency room after a night that went too far. Those happened to me. Eventually, my children became productive and stable adults, and somewhere along the way, I learned to lighten up. I once wore those shoes, too. What science now suggests is that caregiving is associated with changes in brain systems involved in social responsiveness. These shifts, shaped by experience and hands-on involvement, can increase a father’s sensitivity to social and emotional cues over time. In that sense, the brain shaped through fatherhood learns to notice both the subtle signals and the broader emotional landscape in which they occur.

And now, the one that matters the most . . .

Love. Show love. Communicate love. Offer love. In the unconditional and abundant offering of loving care, something quietly accumulates. The Center on the Developing Child’s “serve and return” framework describes how responsive back-and-forth interactions between father and child help build the developing brain. Each moment of attunement and each response to a child’s signal strengthens neural systems involved in emotional regulation, attention, and connection.

For fathers, this is not a one-way process. These repeated acts of caregiving also shape the caregiver. Over time, consistent engagement with a child’s emotional world is associated with changes in the brain systems involved in emotional attunement, social cognition, and emotion regulation. The father learns to read cues more finely, respond more steadily, and remain present.

When love flows with no limits, then practiced repeatedly, it becomes embedded in the neural patterns through which both child and father learn attachment itself.

It lingers, this attachment, in the small, ordinary moments long after they stop needing you in the same way. In the silence between conversations. In the way they still look back when they leave the room. In the quiet knowledge that what you built together does not disappear; it settles into a new form, and fatherhood reveals itself as the gift it was always meant to be. And if you are lucky, you realize it was never just something you were teaching them. It was something they were teaching you, too.

When you look closely at the life experience and biology braided together, you begin to see a quiet truth: Fatherhood is not only lived in moments; it is etched into the architecture of love.

Happy Father’s Day, and don’t forget to take the footies off their pajamas so they can fly, even if it means watching them leave the ground without you.

This is what’s known as “anticipatory grief”—a reaction to loss that hasn’t yet occurred. While it’s fairly common to experience it for a loved one facing a terminal illness, you can also experience it in other potential loss situations, like retiring from a fulfilling career, a child going away to college, or divorce. It often involves a liminal state of being, like what I experienced, that can wreak havoc with your well-being and interfere with your ability to be present.

While similar to after-loss grief, anticipatory grief has its own issues and trajectories that can make it hard to manage, says Alan Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition and an expert on the topic. While you may lean toward ignoring or pushing away these complex emotions, denying your grief and suffering silently will probably not help you or your loved ones cope better.

“Too often, people are trying to be happy at times when they should be sad, and that inhibits their ability to fully integrate a life transition into their world,” says Wolfelt. “We can better cope with realities we face by acknowledging them.”

Anticipatory grief, like after-loss grief, can be painful. But by understanding what it’s like and giving yourself permission to explore its many facets, you might be able to mitigate some of the pain and move through it with more intention.

Similar and different from regular grief

Like grief after a loss, anticipated grief can involve strong and varied emotions. You may feel happy, sad, angry, confused, worried, relieved, guilty, and more, and the feelings may arise at seemingly random moments, sometimes overwhelming you. Your feelings can be hard to explain even to yourself, let alone others.

For example, imagine your teenage son is applying to colleges. Suddenly, you’re hit with the reality that he’ll be leaving home soon and your life will change dramatically. You may feel sad anticipating losing your son’s everyday presence, look forward to a new, freer chapter in your life, or both. You may feel pride and joy for his bright future, but fear losing your close relationship and your role as his parent.

These myriad emotions can be disorienting—but it’s important to honor them, however they show up, says Wolfelt.

“The more open acknowledgement you can have of what your genuine, authentic emotions are, the better,” he says.

While grieving a death may seem natural and expected, anticipatory grief may come with some resistance, like telling yourself (or other people telling you) there’s no reason to feel what you’re feeling. However, according to Wolfelt, denying your pain only adds to it, negatively affecting your everyday well-being. A better way to handle anticipatory grief is to own it and process it through mourning.

“Grief is the internal response, the thoughts and feelings inside,” he says. “In contrast, mourning is the shared social response or grief gone public; it’s taking your grief and putting it into action. That creates change or movement.”

The importance of mourning

There are known, socially acceptable ways to mourn someone who’s died, like funerals, sitting Shiva, Dia de los Muertos, and other rituals. While there may be fewer structured ways to manage anticipatory grief, we can help ourselves through the experience by understanding the importance of mourning in processing grief.

“Mourning helps you integrate loss and be transformed by your grief,” says Wolfelt. “You get stuck if you grieve but don’t mourn.”

The very nature of anticipatory grief (or any grief) is that it can feel different from one moment to the next, and from one person to another. That means our mourning needs may change over time. No one needs to follow a specific pattern, says Wolfelt, but we all need to pay attention and take our grief seriously.

This may be easier or harder, depending on several factors. How close you were to a person, your cultural or spiritual beliefs, and differences in your personality and gender can all influence how you mourn and how effective you are at managing grief versus staying stuck in it.

“If you have low social support, a history of anxiety, a history of a [strongly] dependent relationship with the person (for example, you haven’t expanded your social support system beyond the person who’s dying); those are risk factors that research clearly shows can make it more challenging for you,” he says.

A healthier way to mourn

While no one needs to mourn in the same way, Wolfelt suggests in his guidebook on the topic that people try to meet six specific needs to get through the experience:

1. Acknowledge that you are grieving and the reality of your loss. You may feel it’s too hard to acknowledge the impending loss, but denial doesn’t help. Instead, acknowledging all emotions is a better path toward well-being, even in the midst of grief. Facing your reality more squarely can help you figure out what you need.

“Thinking of yourself in this way will help you be both self-compassionate and honest about how challenging your current circumstances are,” he writes.

2. Embrace all of your emotions, pleasant and unpleasant. Anticipatory grief is marked by changing, intense emotions. Naming them can help to tame them, making them less overwhelming. You can also try reframing the meaning of your feelings to make them less problematic, such as recognizing grief as a facet of loving someone deeply.

If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed by grief, Wolfelt recommends dosing it—meaning, letting yourself fully experience your emotions, but limiting how long you do that. When not focusing on your grief, it’s fine to distract yourself, evade thoughts, or do whatever you want to keep your grief from being so dominant, he adds.

“There’s a balance to be had between doing the work of anticipating loss and in balancing that with the ability to stay present in the here and now,” he says.

This may be especially important when taking care of someone you will be losing, as caregiving often requires a more outward than inward focus. Having a way to care for your emotional needs outside of that role can be helpful.

3. Explore memories of the love or attachment you’re losing. This may seem like a step to avoid, but Wolfelt says it’s important for managing anticipatory grief. Reviewing past memories allows you to create a narrative around what is happening, something humans need to help make sense of their lives and feel congruency. Research suggests that allowing ourselves to feel nostalgia for the past has many benefits, including putting us in touch with our authentic selves and what matters in life.

“The more time and attention you devote to exploring memories and sharing and discussing them with others, the more your sense of peace will grow,” writes Wolfelt.

4. Develop a new self-identity. Often our relationships are part of our identity—we are a partner, a mother, a daughter, or a colleague. Our impending loss may make us question who we are in the world. It’s important to recognize that and address it.

For example, if you’re losing your wife of many years, through divorce or death, your friendships may be affected and your social circle may shrink; once-shared activities may no longer appeal or be possible. While you may grieve this transition and the changes it brings, it also opens up possibilities to embrace new roles in life.

“Change is often both a loss and an opportunity, even if it’s an opportunity you would never willingly have chosen,” writes Wolfelt.

5. Search for meaning in the experience. When facing loss, many of us begin to question the meaning of our lives. “It’s important to focus on meaning and purpose, both in the attachment that is ending and in your continued living,” writes Wolfelt. This might take you into spiritual territory, stimulating questions about why you exist, what it all means, and how you can go on.

Seeking meaning from your experience can help one cope in the present with difficult future losses as well as later on, after the loss has occurred. To help explore that, Wolfelt suggests reading inspiring texts, meditating or praying, talking with spiritual advisors, journaling, or spending more time in nature. Whatever puts you closer to your own sense of meaning will help you find peace, and more reasons to get up in the morning if you are feeling dragged down.

6. Reach out to others for support. As mourning is an outward experience of inner pain, finding other people who can listen as you grapple with your emotions, memories, and questions about life’s meaning can be soothing and helpful.

“You might feel undeserving of attention because the ultimate loss hasn’t really happened yet. But I’m here to tell you that your current grief is completely real, valid, and necessary. And there are others who will understand,” he writes.

Look for someone who can listen empathically without trying to guide you (or bully you) into feeling better, he says. No one experiencing anticipatory grief should ever be pushed into something that doesn’t feel right or given pat phrases that discount their pain.

“Cliches can be very painful to somebody who’s experiencing grief—trite comments like, ‘You’re holding up so well, time heals all wounds, think of what you still have to be thankful for,’” he says. “While well intended, they’re often misinformed and are a projection from the outside in.”

Choosing whom exactly to share with can be tricky. But you can look to family and close friends, support groups experiencing the same types of anticipated loss, spiritual advisors, or professional counselors, writes Wolfelt.

“Find people that can walk into the metaphorical wilderness of grief and honor that you’re in a liminal space, without feeling the need to pull you to the left or right or to pull you out,” he says. “Those are the genuine, compassionate people that we need in our lives.”

If approaching someone with your grief feels too daunting, you can still help yourself by just being around people more generally. We all need social connection for our health and happiness, and having a fun night out with friends, small interactions with neighbors, or a coffee at the local café can make you feel less alone, even if you don’t explicitly talk to anyone about your grief.

Dealing well with grief is a life skill

We will all face loss at some point in our lives—but we’ll only anticipate grief when the loss involves someone we love. Love and grief go hand in hand, says Wolfelt, making it central to a life well-lived.

“The capacity to give and receive love means we will likely mourn someday,” he says. But living in a “mourning-avoidant, emotion-phobic” culture, he adds, we don’t always have the right tools handy for guiding ourselves or others through it.

To be better prepared, it’s wise for us all to cultivate the skills that will serve us well in times of grief and loss. Having greater emotional intelligence, mindful attention, meaning and purpose, social connection, and hope can all help, says Wolfelt. Fortunately, these can all be deliberately practiced long before a loss comes along, helping us lead healthier, happier lives overall.

“These are central needs. The more you can befriend those needs, the more you integrate loss into your life,” he says.

You’d think, given my professional focus and personal interests, that I would fall into that 12% of self-aware people. But in some areas of my life, I’m not. For example, I think of myself as a healthy eater. But when I wear a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), which gives me clear data on how my body responds to sleep, stress, and food, I behave differently than when I’m not wearing one.

It’s not that I don’t know that a blackberry cream scone is going to shoot my blood sugar out of range; I do. But if I’m not wearing a CGM, I don’t think about it. I keep that truth conveniently outside of my awareness. If I am wearing a CGM, however, I know I won’t be able to avoid the alarm signaling that my blood sugar is too high, and, therefore, I won’t be able to avoid the truth. I will be aware of what is going on within me, and that awareness will motivate me to skip the scone—rather than avoid the truth.

For all our self-focus, it can be genuinely hard to keep reality in our range of vision. But when we do, we’re much more likely to follow through with our habits for health and happiness.

What self-awareness is not

Self-awareness requires more than navel-gazing. Psychologists draw a sharp line between helpful inward-looking and two unhealthy modes of self-focus. One is rumination—when we replay our failures, rehearse anxieties, and return repeatedly to the same bruising thoughts. Another is closer to narcissism: a preoccupation with our self-image that is mistaken for self-insight. Both feel like self-knowledge, but neither improves our health, habits, or happiness. (To the contrary, both increase depression and anxiety.)

Self-awareness is the capacity to non-judgmentally observe ourselves: what we’re doing, feeling, and thinking. Rumination is a loop of distress; self-awareness asks What is happening for me right now? What am I doing? What am I feeling? Reflective, curious, non-judgmental self-examination predicts personal growth, while rumination and self-consciousness actively undermine it.

There are many reasons we don’t turn inward to mindfully observe ourselves. The demands on our attention from the outside world are loud. It can be painful to look closely at ourselves, our lives, and our habits. We become so practiced at managing the external world that our internal worlds quietly go unexamined. This is unfortunate because people high in self-awareness tend to be happier, have higher self-esteem, and are more resilient.

Self-awareness is a superpower

When we want to get into a new habit, most of us approach it as a willpower problem, willing ourselves to change through sheer force. A more effective path starts with self-awareness. Here’s why:

Self-awareness can help you catch triggers before they catch you. Two-thirds of our daily behaviors happen on autopilot—like mindless snacking, sitting too long, and reaching for our phones. Self-monitoring (a direct application of self-awareness) can bring those automatic behaviors into conscious view. You can’t interrupt a pattern you can’t see, and so a critical first step in changing unwanted behavior is recognizing what sets it off.

As you notice patterns in your thoughts and emotions, you’ll better understand when and why you do certain things. Understanding that you reach for unhealthy snacks when you’re bored versus when you’re anxious opens the door to different solutions. Similarly, understanding that you are more likely to exercise when you do it with a friend can help you follow through more often.

It motivates you. Heightened self-awareness leads people to be more conscious of the gap between where they are and where they want to be—and more motivated to close that gap. This type of noticing isn’t about self-criticism; it’s about being clear-eyed.

Also, research consistently shows that intrinsic motivation—doing something because it aligns with your own values and interests, not because someone else told you to—produces more lasting change. Self-awareness is how you access that intrinsic drive, because you have to understand yourself to know what you genuinely care about.

It rewires your brain’s reward system. When self-awareness allows us to align our behaviors with our deeper values, those behaviors actually feel better to the brain. When a new behavior is encoded as more rewarding, we start doing it more effortlessly.

How to be more self-aware

Measure the behaviors and outcomes you care about. Like me with my CGM, in studies of people trying to change their eating habits, participants who tracked their food reported genuine surprise about their eating patterns, which motivated them to change. Simply tracking what you’re doing is one of the most consistently effective tools for behavior change we have. Wearables like Oura Rings allow us to see and improve dozens of behaviors within our control, and when we pair what we learn from a wearable with self-reflection about how we feel after doing something good for us, we give the brain the information it needs to update its reward system—making healthy choices feel better and easier to repeat.

Practice self-compassion when you fall short. One of the most surprising bridges to genuine self-awareness is self-compassion. BetterUp research shows that it is the single best predictor of a person’s ability to manage stress, with people high in self-compassion showing 26% lower stress, 33% more resilience, and 24% lower burnout. Why? Self-compassion lowers the psychological threat of looking honestly at yourself.

When we approach our struggles, failures, and blind spots with kindness rather than judgment, we no longer need to protect ourselves from our own criticism or embarrassment; a willingness to look without flinching makes hard truths bearable enough to learn from.

Ask yourself “what” questions, not “why” questions. When we want to understand ourselves better, the instinct is to ask why: Why did I do that? Why do I feel this way? But “why” is surprisingly ineffective as a self-awareness question. “Why” questions tend to produce stories and justifications rather than genuine insight, and often send us straight into rumination. “What” questions work differently. Instead of Why am I so stressed?, try What situations are making me feel stressed, and what do they have in common? Instead of Why can’t I stick to this habit?, try What is getting in the way, and what would make it easier? “What” keeps us curious, specific, and forward-facing—which is the posture self-awareness requires.

Ask a coach or trusted friend what they see. The path to self-knowledge is often interpersonal: Feedback from people who know us well and have our best interests at heart can reveal aspects of ourselves that introspection alone cannot. We all have blind spots, and no amount of looking inward will show us what we can’t see. Seeking honest observations from others is a reliable way to close the gap between how we see ourselves and how we actually are. It can be as simple as asking a friend or a spouse after a hard week: What do you notice about me right now that I might not be seeing?

Try meditation. Meditation has many cognitive benefits and can lead to brain changes that increase self-awareness. Even a few minutes of sitting quietly, noticing what you’re thinking and feeling without trying to change or suppress it, trains the helpful kind of inward attention needed to truly “know thyself.”

Self-awareness is a skill that improves with practice. But we don’t need to overhaul our lives or spend hours in meditation to develop it. We just need to be curious and nonjudgmental about what we’re doing, feeling, and thinking in any given moment.

In a world that rewards busyness and performance, turning inward can feel indulgent or even risky. But self-awareness isn’t a detour from your best life; it’s the fastest route to it.

Given these pressures, it’s no surprise that parental stress is on the rise. In 2023, nearly 50% of parents surveyed reported feeling overwhelmed most days.

That stress doesn’t just affect parents—it can ripple outward. Research suggests that stress can take a toll on well-being, contributing to depression, heightened anxiety, and strain in relationships. And its effects don’t stop there.

A recent review from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which analyzed 153 studies, found that high levels of stress in a child’s environment can shape their development in lasting ways. Chronic stress can influence brain development, strain parent-child relationships, disrupt learning, and even contribute to physical health problems.

The good news, however, is that interventions, even small ones, can make a meaningful difference—for both children and their caregivers.

Greater Good spoke with Nicki Bush, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UCSF and the lead author of the review, about how stress affects families—and what can help.

Juli Fraga: How does exposure to stress affect children’s ability to regulate their emotions?

Nicki Bush: When children are highly stressed, especially for long periods, it can lead to chronic activation of their biological stress response systems. This stress response helps us all cope with threats in the short run. But when this activation system goes on for too long, a child is at greater risk of developing behavioral, emotional, and learning challenges.

For example, children might become hypervigilant about potential threats or respond with anger in neutral situations, such as when another person asks them a benign question.

Notably, many stress-affected processes that impact emotion regulation also affect our immune system and bodily repair and growth. So, chronically stressed children may become physically ill, or the stress may exacerbate prior medical conditions (like asthma) due to overactivation of their stress biology without sufficient time for the body to rest and recover.

JF: Can you talk about how parents’ stress might affect their children’s response to stress?

NB: Children, especially when they are young, rely on caregivers to help them manage their interpretations of threat, as well as their bodily and behavioral responses to stress.

When parents manage their own responses to adversity in a healthy manner, a child is more likely to feel safe. We also know that modeling healthy coping helps children learn these skills and fare better.

Healthy stress management helps parents prevent overwhelm and work through their own life challenges and emotions in an adaptive manner. And when the stress volume and negative reactions get turned down, parents and caregivers have greater bandwidth to respond to their child’s emotional needs. This, in turn, protects kids from the health and behavior risks linked to experiences of adversity.

JF: What are some ways parents can manage their stress, especially when families are facing many hardships?

NB: In an ideal world, our society would support caregivers and children through policies and programs that meet families’ needs. The current lack of resources is one reason the former U.S. surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, declared parental stress a public health issue.

As we work towards that goal, there are many tools parents can use to handle stress. And I want to clarify that coping doesn’t need to be a heavy lift for overly burdened parents. Not every parent has a lot of financial resources or time flexibility, but even a few minutes of slow breathing, listening to an uplifting song, a short walk, or calling a friend to troubleshoot a problem can have a powerful impact on your mental well-being.

This is especially important to try right before picking up your child from day care or school. Taking time to rest and reset better equips parents and caregivers to hold space for what their child needs and enjoy the interaction more themselves!

In today’s busy world, it’s easy for parents to overlook their own well-being in order to prioritize their children. But self-care isn’t selfish. By tending to your own needs, you model healthy ways to cope with stress and optimize your capacity to be a better parent.

JF: After adverse life experiences—such as divorce, family violence, or serious illness—how can parents support their children in working through their stress so it doesn’t negatively affect their physical and mental health?

NB: The most critical thing is to ensure that children feel safe and to acknowledge the trauma or major stressors that may be ongoing, such as from divorce or loss of a loved one.

Since it’s painful to talk about loss and trauma, many parents may believe that doing so will upset their kids. Acknowledging what happened and their child’s emotions about it validates their reality and reminds kids that the entire family can work together through hard moments.

Furthermore, addressing trauma directly while supporting a caregiver’s capacity to have a positive relationship with their children is a powerful component of a child’s healing. Science also shows that supportive relationships with caregivers, friends, teachers, and peers can buffer children from the effects of adversity.

While stress can be particularly harmful to children, adversity isn’t destiny, explains Bush. Not all children experience long-term harm. Our bodies evolved to manage stress responses and many children are remarkably resilient.

Still, if children have been exposed to major trauma or seem to be struggling even after relatively minor events, the key is to seek support. Trauma-informed therapies like Child-Parent Psychotherapy can improve children’s behavior, mood, and biology, which can prevent kids and their parents from developing more serious stress-related conditions over time.

In places like California, many families can receive family-focused trauma-informed therapy that is covered by their insurance. Some programs even support families in accessing such care without a formal diagnosis—recognizing that support shouldn’t come only after problems become severe.

“Investing in the well-being of parents and children improves the lives and health of our population,” says Bush.

Minor annoyances like this happen all of the time in life. We’re on a long hold with a customer service rep, forget our wallet at the store, stub our toe on an uneven surface, or find ourselves in a traffic jam. Whatever the cause—ourselves or someone else—these small hassles upset our peace of mind.

While we can’t avoid daily nuisances, we can change how we respond to them—and evidence suggests we should. The way we react to annoyances can be more important than how many we actually face. If we don’t know how to lessen the impacts, it hurts our personal well-being in the moment and it can affect our long-term health and relationships.

“It’s surprising, but research shows that [daily hassles] have as much, and sometimes more, effects than major life events on our well-being,” says Melanie Greenberg, clinical psychologist and author of the book The Stress-Proof Brain.

The likely reason for this is that major life events, like a divorce or death, are rare, while minor hassles can occur every day. Learning how to let go of our annoyance more easily is good for us and for others. Indeed, letting go can be an act of kindness to the people we love.

How daily hassles affect us

There’s no such thing as a stress-free life—and that’s a good thing. Moderate amounts of short-lived stress can help us to perform better and become more resilient.

But if we characteristically react poorly to minor annoyances—if we let them get the best of us—it can it affect our physical, mental, and social well-being.

Feeling irritated sets off the release of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, that prepare our bodies to respond to danger. While not problematic in itself, a stress response than happens too frequently or doesn’t dissipate quickly can cause wear and tear on our bodies and exhaust us. That’s why daily annoyances may harm our well-being, lead to depression, worsen our long-term health, and decrease our overall life satisfaction.

Less direct, but no less consequential, is how feelings of irritation can spill over into our relationships. If we’re stressed out by minor things, we may react badly, says Greenberg, by “saying the wrong thing or taking things the wrong way.”

“If we’re not calming to be around, people may not feel as close to us,” she says, which could lessen the kind of social support we need for good health. Lashing out at others when we’re annoyed is more likely to backfire than help make an irritating situation better. It can even be dangerous, like when our inability to curb our frustration over a reckless driver turns into road rage.

Not taking out our frustration directly on other people can have social consequences, too, though. For example, wallowing in a bad mood, muttering to ourselves, or slamming a door in frustration is bound to put the people around us on edge. Even those folks we don’t interact with much—like the barista at your coffee shop—may read our tense body language and behave differently, says Greenberg.

“We [humans] react to the way others respond to us. So, if we emanate a more chronically stressed-out vibe, I think we’ll get more stressed out or negative responses in return,” says Greenberg.

Trying to keep our irritation bottled up and letting it simmer isn’t the answer, either. Repressing our feelings stops us from recognizing what we need in the moment and can lead us to disconnect from others—or, worse, result in outward aggression.

Luckily, there are better ways to handle everyday annoyances that protect us and the people around us from harm.

How to handle annoyances more wisely

It’s important to note that we can’t always control how much we will experience hassles in life or how we’ll respond to them. Individual differences in our age, gender, education, environment, genetics, and past experiences may all contribute to how many everyday annoyances we’ll face and how we’ll react in the moment.

But even when our individual characteristics or experiences make annoyances harder to handle, there are tools we can use to soothe irritation before it creates more problems. Here are four suggestions for doing that.

1. Practice mindful acceptance. Mindful acceptance entails recognizing present thoughts and feelings and accepting them as they are. If we can mindfully tune into our bodies when faced with minor stressors, it can help us relax and manage the hard feelings better.

“At the first sign of going into an activated, stressed-out state, you can pause and do a mindful check-in—ground yourself, feel your feet on the ground, slow your breathing,” says Greenberg. “The earlier you catch yourself, the easier it is to do something about it.”

Research suggests that people who practice mindful awareness may be less triggered by everyday frustrations and better able to let them go. This can help our interpersonal interactions.

“When we’re mindful, when we’re present, we can soothe each other and connect. When we’re in a state of stress, it’s much harder to do that,” says Greenberg.

2. Reframe the little things. The second major technique is to reframe annoyances. Part of the reason a minor hassle can become more upsetting is that we overlay it with harmful interpretations. For example, if I take my husband’s lapse as a sign that he doesn’t care about my feelings, I may become more upset than if I put it down to something innocuous, like fatigue and distraction. Not every annoyance, however it feels, is a personal affront.

“A lot of the stuff [couples] argue about is just stupid stuff,” like replacing the toilet paper roll or how to load the dishwasher, says Greenberg. “But it takes on this huge significance because of how they’re seeing it as evidence that person doesn’t care about them or they’re not being heard.”

Reframing is similar to a technique used in cognitive-behavioral therapy, where patients are taught to question their negative interpretation of events and consider alternate explanations. While reframing won’t change the annoying situation itself, it can help negative feelings dissipate more quickly.

Another way we can reframe our experience is by seeing an annoyance as just an unavoidable facet of life or small in the face of other concerns, says Greenberg. When triggered, she suggests asking ourselves, What’s the big picture here? How important is this, really, especially compared to everything going on in my life? Is this something I even have control over? Asking questions like these helps us see our situation more objectively, as a small blip that doesn’t need to hijack our mood.

“Trying to take a step back and broaden our view can help us be like a fly on the wall, giving us a more distanced [perspective],” says Greenberg.

3. Practice self-compassion and empathy. When things go wrong, we can sometimes be overly critical of ourselves. Greenberg warns about the problems with being perfectionistic and assuming the world will always run smoothly when that’s just not realistic.

“Sometimes we’re stressed out by the small stuff because we are being hard on ourselves,” she says. “Instead, taking a step back and telling yourself that you don’t have to do it all perfectly, that you’re doing a pretty good job given all that you’re facing, can calm the nervous system.”

Practicing self-compassion—being mindfully kind to ourselves and recognizing our common humanity, where no one is perfect—can help us let go of perfectionism and manage our everyday hassles better, keeping us happier, too.

Similarly, we should remember that other people are also imperfect and need our empathy.

For example, if a customer service person is keeping you on a long hold and you feel your frustration rising, you can try to think of the situation from their point of view: Maybe they’re trying to solve your problem and it’s taking more time than they thought. Perspective taking can go a long way toward diminishing our negative feelings in an annoying situation.

4. Don’t forget the good and practice gratitude. Coping with hassles is always easier if we can keep in mind that there is also good happening around us. Yes, I picked the longest checkout line at the grocery store, but look at the amazing produce I’m buying. Yes, I stubbed my toe on the bed frame, but at least it’s not broken and I can still walk. Opening the lens of our experience and seeing what we can be grateful for can help take the sting out of common annoyances.

If this seems too Pollyanna or trite—or just too difficult to do in a moment of agitation—try practicing gratitude in the rest of your life. Having a grateful attitude can lessen the effect of daily hassles on our life satisfaction and improve your mood. This is likely because the positive feelings gratitude engenders help us broaden and build our personal resources for coping with common stressors when they arise.

Letting go for the good of everyone

Of course, there are other ways we can manage our minor upsets better besides these. Taking good care of our bodies (by eating right and getting enough exercise and sleep), heading out into nature when we can, practicing awe, and spending time with supportive people can all help keep our nervous system calmer and in better shape for managing daily stressors.

Some tactics might work better than others for you, and that’s fine. The key isn’t perfection, but intent. The next time you’re annoyed, try calming yourself rather than cursing for missing a tennis shot, or tailing a slow driver, or stewing over your friend being late. Doing your best to let it go, using whatever tools work for you, is an act of love that others will appreciate.

“We’re living in such very stressful times—antagonistic, hostile times—and people are under a lot of stress,” says Greenberg. “We need to try to think of ways, even just in your own network, to help people feel better.”

If we could all do that, think of how much kinder and more loving our world could be.

Modern clinical trials appear to support this. Several studies suggest that the intensity of a “mystical-type experience” during a psychedelic session predicts the degree of improvement in depression, anxiety or addiction. A recent review, for example, reports a consistent statistical link between mystical experiences and improved mental health.

It is an enticing idea: that healing comes through a profound encounter with unity, sacredness or ultimate reality. But do we really need mystical experiences to get better?

To understand why this question matters, it helps to step back. Long before psychedelics entered psychiatry, philosophers and theologians were fascinated by mystical states. In the early 20th century, the psychologist William James argued in his book The Varieties of Religious Experience that mystical states should be judged “by their fruits, not by their roots”–meaning by their effects on people’s lives rather than by debates about their metaphysical truth.

Others, including the British writer on Christian mysticism Evelyn Underhill and the philosopher of religion Walter Stace, developed what later became known as “perennial philosophy”: the idea that a common core experience lies at the heart of the world’s religions.

This way of thinking has quietly shaped modern psychedelic science. In 1962, the psychiatrist Walter Pahnke conducted the Good Friday Experiment, giving theology students psilocybin in a church. Many reported experiences that were strikingly similar to those described by classical mystics.

Around the same time, British-born psychiatrist Humphry Osmond–who coined the word “psychedelic”–developed treatment approaches designed to induce powerful “peak experiences” that could trigger lasting psychological change.

Today, large clinical trials at universities such as Johns Hopkins and Imperial College London have revived this approach. Researchers routinely measure whether participants have had a “mystical-type experience” using a standardized questionnaire known as the mystical experience questionnaire, or MEQ.

Participants are asked to rate statements such as “I had an experience of unity with ultimate reality” or “I had an experience which cannot be described adequately in words.” The higher the score, the more likely someone is classified as having had a full mystical experience.

But this raises a conundrum. If an experience is supposedly “ineffable”–beyond words–how accurately can it be captured by ticking boxes on a survey?

Some critics argue that the MEQ builds in assumptions drawn from perennial philosophy. By asking about “ultimate reality” or “sacredness,” it may reflect a particular interpretation of mystical experience rather than a neutral description. As one analysis notes, there is a risk that the scale partly reproduces the very theory it aims to test.

Complicating expectations

Many participants in psychedelic trials arrive already primed for transcendence. They have read glowing media coverage, listened to podcasts or watched documentaries promising life-changing breakthroughs. Research shows that such expectations can significantly shape subjective drug experiences.

My colleagues and I saw just how powerful suggestion can be in a study nicknamed “tripping with the god helmet.” Participants wore a sham brain-stimulation device that we described as capable of activating their “mystical lobes.” In reality, no stimulation was delivered. Yet nearly half reported mystical-type experiences, some describing them as deeply meaningful.

In another experiment, placebo psychedelics administered in a carefully staged environment–complete with evocative music and imagery–produced strikingly similar reports. These findings suggest that context and expectation are not minor side notes. They can play a central role in shaping what people experience.

None of this means psychedelic therapy is “just a placebo.” The drugs clearly alter brain activity and experience in powerful ways. But it does raise the possibility that mystical experiences are not the sole or even primary driver of therapeutic change.

After all, correlation does not equal causation. A large body of psychiatric research warns against assuming that because two things occur together, one must cause the other. Mystical experiences may simply be one visible marker of other processes, such as increased emotional openness, the development of new neural connections or changes in entrenched beliefs.

Super placebos

Some researchers have even described psychedelics as super placebos: substances that amplify expectancy effects rather than bypass them. That may sound dismissive, but it points to something important. Expectations, beliefs and meaning-making are not incidental to healing; they are often central to it.

When used carefully in structured settings, psychedelics may act less like magic bullets and more like catalysts. They intensify whatever psychological processes are already underway.

For some, that may include feelings of unity and transcendence. For others, it may involve confronting grief, fear or long-buried memories. Stanislav Grof, a pioneer of psychedelic therapy, once compared these substances to microscopes for the mind–tools that reveal otherwise hidden aspects of experience.

The key point is this: while mystical experiences often go hand in hand with improvement, they may not be essential. And on their own, they may not be enough to create lasting change.

Lasting therapeutic benefits appear to emerge from a web of interacting factors: brain changes, emotional breakthroughs, supportive settings, skilled therapists and the integration work that follows the session. Focusing too narrowly on whether someone scored above a mystical threshold risks oversimplifying a complex process.

The psychedelic renaissance has opened exciting possibilities for mental health treatment. But if the field is to mature, it may need to move beyond the assumption that transcendence is the secret ingredient.

The future of psychedelic therapy may depend less on chasing mystical peaks and more on understanding the conditions that help people translate intense experiences–mystical or otherwise–into durable, meaningful change.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.