The Purpose of a Spouse

Not too long ago in a couples group I heard one of the members state that the "purpose and function" of his wife was to keep their house neat and him well fed. I was aghast at what seemed to me his painfully blatant male chauvinism. I thought I might demonstrate this to him by asking the other members of the group to state how they perceived the purpose and function of their spouses. To my horror the six others, male and female alike, gave very similar answers. All of them defined the purpose and function of their husbands or wives in reference to themselves; all of them failed to perceive that their mates might have an existence basically separate from their own or any kind of destiny apart from their marriage. "Good grief," I exclaimed, "it's no wonder that you are all having difficulties in your marriages, and you'll continue to have difficulties until you come to recognize that each of you has your own separate destiny to fulfill." The group felt not only chastised but profoundly confused by my pronouncement. Somewhat belligerently they asked me to define the purpose and function of my wife. "The purpose and function of Lily," I responded, "is to grow to be the most of which she is capable, not for my benefit but for her own and to the glory of God."

M Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

How long does it take to Read a Person’s Emotions?

Psychology professor William Ickes found that our ability to read strangers during a six-minute interaction is limited, but other experiments showed that we have much greater accuracy when reading our friends’ behavior. That’s not really shocking, but what is surprising is that when study subjects spent just a little more time with a stranger, their ability to read that person was just as good as their ability to read close friends. The magic time span? Thirty minutes. Time, or at least the amount of information acquired over time, is crucial to empathy. That is not only the case for real-life encounters, but also for stories.

Lene Bech Sillesen writing in the Columbia Journalism Review

A King Gives Away His Crown

A Texas high school football player gave fans another reason to cheer, after turning over his homecoming king crown to a friend with cerebral palsy. Fossil Ridge Panthers quarterback Max Akin stunned the crowd during a halftime ceremony when he kneeled and presented his crown to team equipment manager K.L. Norwood, who was also nominated for king. “What I did wasn’t as admirable as how K.L. treats everyone,” says Akin. “Loving everybody and having a heart like K.L. is what really matters in this world.” 

Read more at CNN

Empathy is a Choice

Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us — a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain — it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. … This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.

Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams 

Free yourself from negative people

Spend time with nice people who are smart, driven and like-minded. Relationships should help you, not hurt you. Surround yourself with people who reflect the person you want to be. Choose friends who you are proud to know, people you admire, who love and respect you – people who make your day a little brighter simply by being in it. Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.

Renee Jones, read more here

How To Make Someone Truly Feel Heard

Be intentional about learning what the other person wants to communicate and respond to their feelings.

Listen to what they’re telling you and suppress the urge to fix the issue, problem solve, or change the way they are feeling about the situation.

Put your own feelings aside to create a space where another person can speak his or her mind—which requires staying calm.  

Suspending judgment and simply taking in what is being said can go a long way towards helping someone feel heard or diffusing an argument.

Show that you are actively listening and are truly understanding what the other person is saying by mirroring back what someone has said. Include phrases like ‘it sounds like’ or ‘it seems like.’

Take the time for silence in a discussion, showing that you’re processing what is being talked about and giving it the space that it needs to sink in properly. 

Edited from Jeremy Brown writing in Fatherly

If I Really Cared

If I really cared . . .
I’d look you in the eyes when you talk to me;
I’d think about what you’re saying rather than what I’m going to say next;
I’d hear your feelings as well as your words.

If I really cared . . .
I’d listen without defending;
I’d hear without deciding whether you’re right or wrong;
I’d ask you why, not just how and when and where.

If I really cared . . .

More of Ruth Senter’s poem

Get inside your box!

Do you know one of the "box people"? When they meet someone new, the “box people” immediately ask a question to identify which box the person belongs inside. "What do you do?" “Where are you from?” the “box people” want to stick a label on each person. Once they know the "box" (based on class, politics, religious affiliation, race, etc.), they can avoid the work of getting to know someone and treating them as an individual.

Meeting someone living outside the set of predetermined boxes is a challenge to the arrangement of tidy little containers. This affront will be met with increasing demands to "Get inside a box!” There’s a difference between asking honest questions to understand someone because you see them as an end in themselves, and asking questions as a result of treating people as means to an end.

Each of us has the same decision to make: Whether or not to treat others as unique individuals.

Stephen Goforth

Observed Behavior is Changed Behavior

When the lead singer at the concert asks you to scream as loud as you can, and then he asks again, going, “I can’t hear you! You can do better than that!” have you ever noticed that the second time is always louder?  Why wasn’t everyone yelling at the top of their lungs the first time?  Some really cool scientists actually tested this in 1979. (They) had people shout as loud as they could in a group and then alone, or vice-versa. Sure enough, the overall loudness of a small group of people was less than any one of them by themselves. You can even chart it on a graph. The more people you add, the less effort any one person does.

If you know you aren’t being judged as an individual, your instinct is to fade into the background. To prove this, psychologist Alan Ingram ruined tug-of-war forever. In 1974, he had people put on a blindfold and grab a rope. The rope was attached to a rather medieval-looking contraption that simulated the resistance of an opposing team. The subjects were told many other people were also holding the rope on their side, and he measured their efforts. Then, he told them they would be pulling alone, and again he measured. There were alone both times, but when they thought they were in a group, they pulled 18 percent less strenuously on average.

This behavior is more likely to show up when the task a hand is simple. With complex tasks, it is usually easy to tell who isn’t pulling their weight. Once you know your laziness can be seen, you try harder. You do this because of another behavior called evaluation apprehension, which is just a fancy way of saying you care more when you know you are being singled out. Your anxiety levels decrease when you know your effort will be pooled with others’. You relax. You coast. 

David McRaney, You are Not so Smart

The Value of Awe

By becoming less attuned to ourselves and more attuned to the rest of the world, awe helps us re-contextualize ourselves. It helps make you feel like there’s more going on in the world than just you. And it gives you that sense of being a part of something much bigger than yourself.   

Paul Piff quoted in the Washington Post

Inviting Joy

“Too often, we think of joy passively,” psychologist Marisa Franco said. “We see it as something that comes to us, instead of something we can generate.” But you don’t need to wait for someone else’s good news to exercise freudenfreude, she explained.

Cultivate joy by inviting others to share their victories. You might ask: “What was the bright spot of your day?” or “I could use some good news. What’s the best thing that happened to you this week?” Asking about other people’s wins turns you into a joy spectator, giving you a chance to witness them at their best.

Juli Fraga writing in the New York Times

Random Acts

Research (published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology) found that people who perform a random act of kindness tend to underestimate how much the recipient will appreciate it. And they believe that miscalculation could hold many of us back from doing nice things for others more often.  “We have this negativity bias when it comes to social connection. We just don’t think the positive impact of our behaviors is as positive as it is,” said Marisa Franco, a psychologist.  “With a study like this, I hope it will inspire more people to actually commit random acts of kindness,” she said.

Catherine Pearson writing in the New York Times

Is it Hard for You to Ask for Help?

If you are inclined to avoid requesting help, it’s important to examine any thoughts or beliefs that might be getting in your way. These could include: 

·      Negative associations: you might think that someone is lazy if they can’t do something themselves.

·      Self-criticism: you could think that asking for help means you are incapable or weak.

·      Concerns about how you will be perceived: you might worry that someone will think less favourably of you if you ask for help.

·      Self-sacrificing beliefs: you might worry about burdening someone with your needs.

·      Overestimating the likelihood of rejection: ‘No one is going to want to help me out,’ you might assume – ‘why would they?’

Research suggests that we tend to underestimate the likelihood of someone saying yes to a request for help. Most people feel good when they do helpful things for others, and prefer to think of themselves as generous and willing to help when they can. If you fear that someone will like you less if you ask them for help, consider the opposite possibility: people might actually like you more if they’ve done you a favour. Expressing vulnerability and openness, by acknowledging that you could use help, can lead to deeper connection.

Debbie Sorensen writing in Psyche

How to Make Friends (a video)

What is Kurzgesagt about?

How Many Friends Do You Really Need?

If your goal is simply to mitigate the harmful impact loneliness can have on your health, what matters most is having at least one important person in your life — whether that’s a partner, a parent, a friend or someone else, said Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. 

The best-known theory of how many friends people can (though not necessarily should) have comes from British psychologist and anthropologist Robin Dunbar. What has come to be known as Dunbar’s number contends that humans are only cognitively able to maintain about 150 connections at once (subsequent research has put the number higher). That includes an inner circle of about five close friends, followed by larger concentric circles of more casual types of friends.

The amount of time you actually spend with your friends matters, too. Dr. Hall’s research suggests that on average, very close friendships tend to take around 200 hours to develop. Quantity and quality go hand-in-hand.

Catherine Pearson writing in the New York Times

Be your imperfectly perfect self

In this crazy world that’s trying to make you like everyone else, find the courage to keep being your awesome self. And when they laugh at you for being different, laugh back at them for being the same. Spend more time with those who make you smile and less time with those who you feel pressured to impress. 

Marc & Angel Chernoff

The value of soft skills

A soft skill enables you to interact well with others. It’s nontechnical and typically falls into categories such as communication and negotiation, adaptability and learning, teaching and training, and interpersonal abilities, including empathy. For organizations, developing and rewarding soft skills is becoming all the more crucial in our ever-automated world. Machines are getting smarter, and as they take over more basic, repetitive, and even physical tasks, the need for workers with social, emotional, and technological skills will be higher than ever.

McKinsey & Company

And the prison door will swing open

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu wrote, “Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.” He no doubt intended it as a dire warning. But as the years have passed, I have come to interpret it as more of a promise and an opportunity. 

I have learned that the prison of others’ approval is actually one built by me, maintained by me, and guarded by me. This has led me to my own complementary verse to Lao Tzu’s original: “Disregard what others think and the prison door will swing open.” If you are stuck in the prison of shame and judgment, remember that you hold the key to your own freedom.

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

They Probably Aren’t

Studies show that we consistently overestimate how much people think about us and our failings, leading us to undue inhibition and worse quality of life. Perhaps your followers or neighbors would have a lower opinion of you if they were thinking about you—but they probably aren’t. Next time you feel self-conscious, notice that you are thinking about yourself. You can safely assume that everyone around you is doing more or less the same.  

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

When Optimization Rules

A focus on optimization can lead technologists to believe that increasing efficiency is inherently a good thing. There’s something tempting about this view. Given a choice between doing something efficiently or inefficiently, who would choose the slower, more wasteful, more energy-intensive path?

The problem here is that goals such as connecting people, increasing human flourishing, or promoting freedom, equality, and democracy are not goals that are computationally tractable. 

Rob Reich, Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein, System Error