What quality does the Buddha share with Luke Skywalker and Joan of Arc? What links Harriet Tubman with Harry Potter?

It has nothing to do with enlightenment or magic. It has to do with struggle.

These heroes share a key quality: GRIT. 

There has been some discussion in the media recently about grit, but many people, especially parents, have been asking me what the term actually means.

I think the best way to describe grit is by starting with Joseph Campbell and his classic analysis of the “hero’s journey.” Campbell explains how the journey always begins when the hero leaves home and all that is familiar and predictable. After that, Campbell writes, “Dragons have now to be slain and surprising barriers passed—again, again, and again. Meanwhile there will be a multitude of preliminary victories, unretainable ecstasies and momentary glimpses of the wonderful land.”

It is grit that makes our heroes face down their dragons and persist in the face of difficulty, setbacks, failure, and fear. They fall down and get back up again. They try their hardest, only to fail miserably. But instead of giving up, they try again and again and again.

And it isn’t just historical or fictional heroes who need to be gritty to rise to the top. Recent psychological research has found that grit is one of the best predictors of elite performance, whether in the classroom or in the workforce. Defined by researchers as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals,” grit gives us the strength to cope with a run-of-the-mill bad day (or week or season) as well as with trauma or crisis.

It turns out that grit predicts performance better than IQ or innate talent. Grit makes us productive and successful because it allows us to reach our long-term goals despite life’s inevitable setbacks. This ability to overcome challenges makes us stronger and more masterful at our tasks. Moreover, the ability to cope with difficulty—or to be resilient after tragedy—paves the way for our long-term happiness.

Grit is not really a personality trait as much as it is a facet of a person’s character that is developed like any other skill. Babies are not born with grit any more than they are born with the ability to speak their mother’s native language. We humans develop grit by encountering difficulty and learning to cope with it.

And with that in mind, here’s some perverse “good” news: No life is free from challenges or difficulties—in other words, we’ll all have plenty of opportunities to develop grit. Out of our setbacks and failures grow the roots of success and happiness. Grandmaster chess players, great athletes, scientific geniuses, and celebrated artists learn, in part, by losing, making mistakes, and failing. Consider this quote from Michael Jordan (who, incidentally, was cut from his high school basketball team):

I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

The even better news is that most people have the capacity to develop grit. This summer I will be posting more articles about how to foster grit in yourself and others. But for starters, let yourself star in your own hero’s journey. Instead of making excuses and giving up when things don’t go well, dig in. How can your passion help you persist, despite adversity? How can this hard time make you stronger? What unseen benefit might be lurking around the corner?

I’m not suggesting that you invite misery into your life, or force yourself always to focus on the bright side. But I do think we’re better off when we see a challenge not just as an inconvenience or injustice but as a chance for what Campbell calls a “boon,” or dramatic win.

Although it might feel hoaky or even arrogant at first, putting yourself on the trajectory of a hero can give you a new perspective on life’s challenges—and new strength to deal with them. (If you want hoaky, choose a theme song! I have a whole “Be Gritty” playlist for when I need to persevere in the face of a setback; my favorite is from one of Ennio Morricone’s soundtracks).

There are drawbacks to the hero’s journey, of course. For example, you won’t be able to go back to the place where you started: Once you’ve faced down a particularly difficult challenge, you will have grown so much you might hardly recognize yourself. But the advantages to developing grit are great, and the “boon” is almost certainly worthwhile.

How do you foster grit in yourself? In your children or co-workers?

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Duckworth, Angela Lee, and Patrick D Quinn. 2009. “Development and validation of the short grit scale (grit-s).” Journal of personality assessment 91(2):166–74. Retrieved March 5, 2013 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19205937).

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

But truth be told, I rarely get all, if any, of these Mother’s Day treats. I know this shouldn’t surprise me, and it shouldn’t irritate me… but it kinda does, or it has in the past. It’s a horrible confession for someone like me to make, but I’m rarely as cranky as I can be on Mother’s Day.

I know I’m not the only one feeling blue on on the second Sunday in May. In fact, I’m bracing myself for a series of phone calls from disgruntled friends again this year. “All I wanted was to picnic on the beach with the kids,” one friend lamented last year. Her often-charming but rarely-helpful-with-the-kids husband couldn’t get it together—the waves were looking good, and he thought he’d sneak a quick surf into the schedule, right when he should have been securing picnic supplies. Her kids, two of whom were old enough to take the day into their own hands, didn’t rally either. She felt abandoned, and taken for granted.

I know how she felt. One year my kids didn’t do anything for me but make very, um, hasty, cards on scrap paper, an effort so effortless it brought tears to my eyes.

Not the happy kind of tears.

The problem isn’t the kids, though. It is my focus on myself and what I’m entitled to. Even though I really do believe that we moms deserve a day to be treated like goddesses—at least one day!—I don’t think it sets us up for the happiest of Mother’s Days when we expect this to happen.

Although we think that indulging ourselves is going to make us happy, it generally doesn’t: Studies show that we’re happier after spending money on others than after spending on ourselves—yet when people are asked, they expect the opposite will be true.

I see this play out on Mother’s Day (for myself, and some of my friends). After we spend so much time caring for those around us—our kids, our partners, our parents—we think that a quick ticket to a happy Mother’s Day will come from being pampered. But we’re inevitably disappointed when we find that focusing on ourselves is not always, or even usually, a sure route to happiness.

The solution to this sticky-wicket is deceptively simple: We can set ourselves up to be happy on Mother’s Day—to feel gratitude and awe and deep love instead of frustration and disappointment—by simply helping other people. People who help others tend to be less stressed, more joyful, and healthier; less stress, more joy, and greater health all sound good to me this Mother’s Day.

So this year, even though I often long for a break from caring for others, I will make Mother’s Day all about other people. (I know that this strategy isn’t for everyone; those of you suffering from caregiver or compassion fatigue won’t want to try this from home.)

We’ll celebrate the grandmothers in our family, of course, with a big brunch or a fun family dinner (or both, for both sides of the family). But for months, I’ve been wanting to try what this guy does for his birthday: spend a day or two doing dozens of little good deeds—and bring my kids along for the ride.

We’re finally going to do it—for Mother’s Day instead of my birthday—as a way to honor my own mother, Sylvia. She just turned 70 and is as beautiful and vibrant as ever. We’d like to help one person for each year that she has been a mother (41 years). Since her mother, my Oma, passed away this year (at the amazing age of 104!) we’d also like to honor her by helping at least one person for each year Oma was a mother (71 years). Silly math, but we’re aiming to do kind acts for 112 or more people.

We started our “kindness scavenger hunt” this weekend, but to be honest, we didn’t get as far with it as I’d hoped. Personally, I could have powered through the whole list, but my kids fatigued after checking just a few things off the list. We agreed we’d do some more on Mother’s Day, and each week thereafter, until we think we’ve helped more than a hundred people.

Here’s our “Kindness Scavenger Hunt” list:

1. Pick the lemons from our elderly neighbor’s tree, make lemonade, and deliver it to her.
2. Bring food to the food bank.
3. Do a loving-kindness meditation for all those that we love and are concerned about—and also for those that bother us.
4. Leave flowers for a widow who is grieving the man she was married to for 59 years.
5. Give vegetables from our garden to neighbors.
6. Pick up trash in our local park.
7. Stop for everyone looking to cross the street or merge.
8. Make a larger-than-comfortable donation to Tipping Point, a group that is striving to eradicate poverty in our area.
9. Fill a thred up bag full of like-new clothing to benefit Teach for America.
10. Give out extra hugs to the grandmothers in our lives, who really appreciate them.
11. Write a thank-you note to the kids’ preschool teacher: one of those “other mothers” that really made a difference in their lives.
12. Make and deliver “care-kits” to as many homeless people in Berkeley as we can, and give the extras to our friends and family to distribute in their travels.
13. Send someone a book I think they will enjoy, totally randomly.
14. Send all the pregnant women I know some of my favorite parenting books.
15. Write a letter our beat cop thanking him for all he does for our neighborhood.
16. Help a friend with some work on Sunday morning (instead of sleeping in).
17. Visit people at the old age home where my father-in-law used to live (and bring the dog, who despite also being quite old, tends to light up their day).
18. Babysit for the neighbors that have little kids, so that they can have a date-night.
19. Deliver Challahs to temple congregants who are grieving or ill.
20. Serve dinner to homeless and hungry people in San Francisco’s tenderloin neighborhood (Glide Memorial allows kids to volunteer).

What do you think we should add to our list? Please add your suggestions as a comment below!

Happy Mother’s Day, all. Cheers to all the work you and the mothers you love are doing to raise happiness.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

Read

Five Ways to Raise Kind Children
Research shows that kindness is a sure route to greater happiness and, in some cases, improved health.

How to Raise a Hero
How we can make it more likely we raise heroes than bystanders.
 

Watch

3 Ways to Raise Kind Kids
Quick Tips for Fostering Kindness

Listen

Bullies, Bystanders, and Really Kind Kids
Is your kid a bully? Even if you’ve taught your children right from wrong, sometimes the kids of kind and compassionate parents can still be…mean. Rona and I discuss strategies for raising children who don’t bully others.

Uh, I don’t know about you, but 2050 doesn’t seem that far away. That doesn’t seem like slow change to me; it seems dramatic, and tragic.

This really lit a fire under my SUV-driving, tuna-eating self*. But seeing an oncoming train and actually stopping it are two entirely different matters. I could list a hundred—no, a thousand—small things that we could all do today to stop the climate change train-wreck from happening. But will we actually do them?

For most of us, changing our habits—reducing our reliance on disposable water-bottles, for example—is a lot like intending to lose weight or exercise more. We may have a very strong desire to be thinner, or a deep conviction to hit the gym regularly, but most people don’t actually succeed in eating less or working out more often over the long term.

Why is it so hard to change, despite our good intentions?

Because change takes willpower, and our willpower is limited. Our brains are more or less hard-wired in a way that makes it difficult to change our wasteful ways.

Thankfully, research has been shedding light on many of the brain mechanisms that tend to foil us, so we CAN outsmart our brains. Here’s how.

1. Beware of moral licensing. Moral licensing occurs when we behave virtuously and then “cancel out” our good deeds by doing something naughty. When we behave in-line with our goals and values—whether it’s as large as trading in our truck for a Prius or as small as not taking a plastic bag at the grocery store—ironically, we risk back-sliding.

Consciously or unconsciously, we tend to feel that healthy or virtuous activities entitle us to partake in less-good (for us or for the earth) activities. Smokers will smoke more, for example, when they believe they’ve just taken a Vitamin C pill. Similarly, philanthropists tend to give away less money after they’ve been reminded of their humanitarian attributes. One study even found that after people buy eco-friendly products, they’re more likely to cheat and steal! (New research suggests that some of us are more prone to moral licensing than others. My GGSC colleague Emiliana Simon-Thomas explains here.)

Instead of giving yourself a pat on the back for your own good behavior, avoid the “licensing effect” by reflecting on your goals and values rather than your accomplishment. Why did you ride your bike instead of drive? What larger mission are you trying to fulfill? Questions like these can help us stay focused on what we are trying to achieve instead of sabotaging our own efforts.

2. Structure your environment to minimize the number of decisions you need to make. Every little decision we make takes a little out of our willpower reserve. Low willpower means that you are likely to do what is familiar rather than something more earth-saving.

Outsmart this brain boobie-trap three ways: First, pre-decide as much as you possibly can (where you will go, how you will get there, what you’ll bring with you, etc.). So instead of deciding whether to drive or walk to work in the morning right before you leave, commit to the decision to walk the night before.

Second, and this is the critical part: Structure your environment to support your decision. Put your work shoes deep in your backpack and your walking shoes by the door. Knowing that you are going to be tempted to drive, put your car keys in an inconvenient place you won’t want to venture to the morning. (Have access to a dusty attic? That’d be perfect.)

Finally, make a specific plan for what you will do when challenges arise (and they will). If you wake up to find it raining, pre-decide that you’ll wear your blue rain jacket and take that huge golf umbrella your dad left in the closet. If you wake up late, pre-decide that you’ll ride your bike instead of drive. Etc.

3. Reduce your stress. To boost follow-through on our good intentions, we need to relax. When we are stressed, our brains (kindly) try to rescue us by activating our dopamine systems. A dopamine rush makes temptations more tempting. Think of this as your brain pushing you toward a comfort item… like that easy taxi to work rather than the less-than-comforting subway commute.

As Kelly McGonigal writes, “Stress points us in the wrong direction, away from clear-headed wisdom toward our least-helpful instincts.” When we’re relaxed, we’ll choose the locally grown organic apple. When we’re stressed? Personally, I have a weakness for chips and queso.

The takeaway: Sometimes the best thing that we can do for the environment is reduce our own stress. Read this post for more stress-reduction tips.

Want more tips for how to make a change this Earth Day? Post the earth-saving habit change that you’d like to make by April 22nd at midnight in the comments below (I can see your email address, but no one else can), and I’ll enroll you in my 21-Day “Cracking the Habit Code” online class for free!

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*For the record: my SUV is a hybrid, and I try to eat wild-caught tuna when possible. But I’m not patting myself on the back, because that might lead to moral licensing (see tip #1).

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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You, with your switching sides,
And your walk by lies and your humiliation
You, have pointed out my flaws again,
As if I don’t already see them.
I walk with my head down,
Trying to block you out cause I’ll never impress you….

                          —Taylor Swift, “Mean”

“Why you gotta be so meeaann?” Taylor Swift croons in my car, accompanied rather loudly by five kids who are singing their hearts out. The song resonates with me, too, so much so that I find myself madly rummaging through my purse for my sunglasses, not wanting the carpool to see me choked up.

(Honestly, I’m not sure why I cry when I hear that song. I think I’m moved because it tells of a kid succeeding despite difficulty. If you haven’t heard it, listen here. I particularly like the end of this version.)

Anyway, one of the girls in my car (let’s call her Sally) has just revealed that she was once again the butt of a mean comment in PE. Everyone in the car feels her pain; unfortunately we’ve all been there.

Most of us use avoidance as our chief strategy for dealing with unkindness, steering clear of the mean person at all costs. But this strategy is neither practical nor effective, as it is often impossible to avoid a person completely and usually leaves us cowering in fear.

Fortunately, there is a better approach. From research on social and emotional well-being, here’s what I’ve learned about how to cope when someone gets nasty.

First, remember that you can control your response when someone does or says something mean. We may not be able to control much about our life circumstances, but with practice we can control how we respond to those circumstances.

I once got a horrible voicemail from a neighbor. In it, she called me a fraud and my blog a joke, and told me to stay away from her children. Though she seemed high-functioning to the outside world, she seemed pretty unstable to me.

My instinct was to fight back—to expose her craziness to the world, to tell everyone how insanely mean she was.

Sally had the opposite instinct around the girl who teased her in PE. She let this particular mean girl boss her around, hoping against hope that she would eventually relent.

Neither of these responses—attacking back or becoming a spineless doormat—are constructive ways to cope. The most effective response to meanness is compassion. Where there is meanness, there is often a lot of pain, both in the unkind person and for the person on the receiving end of a mean joke, comment, or email.

Take care of your own pain first. When I got the crazy-neighbor voicemail, I was shocked, and hurt (I cared what she thought of me), and, frankly, scared. Researcher Brene Brown, in her fantastic book Daring Greatly, advocates a response to a situation like this that I’ve been using instinctively since I was a kid: Before you attack back, let yourself feel what is going on. You can simply repeat to yourself, “Pain, pain, pain,” and breathe. Sometimes I have to say it out loud.

The key is not to deny what we are feeling, but rather to accept it. Take a moment to be mindful and narrate your emotions: This embarrassment is excruciating. I am so frightened right now. Hang in there with unpleasant feelings at least long enough to acknowledge them.

Often we don’t want to admit we are hurt by another person’s meanness; we want to let it go without letting it get to us. If you can do this, more power to you. But if you can’t, that’s okay, too. You will survive the discomfort of your hurt feelings. It is perfectly normal to feel bad when someone wounds you.

Once you practice this sort of self-compassion, take the next step: See mean people for what they really are—wounded and tiny and probably threatened. Frightened mice masquerading as roaring lions. When I suggested to Sally that her unkind classmate was probably insecure or threatened by her, Sally insisted that just the opposite was true. “She’s the most confident person I know!” The other kids in the car agreed.

But then I had them recall the last time each of them was a little mean to a classmate or sibling. How did you feel right before you did it? The unanimous answer: They felt small, or frustrated, or humiliated, so they did something that might make them feel big or important or powerful. We began to imagine what might have made Sally’s mean-girl feel threatened or small, and the kids came up with a dozen possibilities.

Finally, fight fire with water by sending loving thoughts to the people who hurt you. This is an advanced technique, but I can almost promise that it will make you feel better. I use a traditional loving-kindness meditation, and say things like “May you be happy. May you be healthy and strong. May you be free from suffering” while imagining the person who tried to hurt me.

When we send well-wishes to the hurting people who want us to share their pain, we are able to rise above their suffering. We regain our true power.

After all, it is only when mean people actually are happy and free from suffering that they will stop trying to take us down with them.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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Research convincingly shows that it actually puts people on “trajectories of growth,” leaving them better able to ward off depression and “become ever more satisfied with life.” This is probably because it increases a wide range of those resources that make for a meaningful and successful life, like having an increased sense of purpose, stronger social support, and less illness. Research even shows that loving-kindness meditation ““changes the way people approach life”” for the better.

Moreover, doing a simple loving-kindness meditation can make us feel less isolated and more connected to those around us: one study showed that a SINGLE SEVEN MINUTE loving-kindness meditation made people feel more connected to and positive about both loved ones and total strangers, and more accepting of themselves. Imagine what a regular practice could do! For more information about loving-kindness meditation, check out this posting.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

They were fighting about status: Did Janet have bragging rights? Or was she upgrading her Target underwear to Victoria’s Secret sexiness “to get attention,” as my daughter thinks?

These girls are 12 years old. Why are they arguing about this?

I am in the thick of raising adolescent girls. In addition to my own two daughters, there are a dozen other girls—the daughters of close friends—whose backs I’m trying to protect. Because I love these girls and see how vulnerable they are, the locker-room argument about Victoria’s Secret underwear makes my blood boil.

You may have heard that Victoria’s Secret blatantly targeted teens and tweeners at their fashion show a few months ago, complete with an appearance by Justin Bieber. Now they’ve gone one step further with the launch of its “Bright Young Things” campaign to appeal to young teens. “When somebody’s 15 or 16 years old, what do they want to be?” company CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer quipped at a news conference. “They want to be older, and they want to be cool like the girl in college, and that’s part of the magic of what we do.”

Advertising and marketing does work like magic. That is what is so scary. An advertising campaign like this one affects young girls in deep and often harmful ways—and new scientific research suggests just how deep and harmful these effects may be. Drawing on this research, I’ve identified three of the more pernicious messages Victoria’s Secret is sending our daughters.

(1) Slutty is status. One of the brain changes that occurs during adolescence is a heightened attention to social hierarchy. Teens and tweeners begin taking risks in order to gain social status (like lying about where your underwear comes from). What’s more, they tend to take risks in the areas that have meaning to their peers: For the drama geeks, getting a big part in a play is status. For the “in-crowd,” partying is status. And for the fashionistas (and the Justin Bieber fanatics, and tweeners that look up to college kids), slutty-little-girl is now status.

(2) Your body is not good enough. When they put supermodels in high heels, little-girl costumes, and bubble-gum underwear on stage with Justin Bieber, they create an impossible ideal for our girls to emulate, which in turn makes them feel inadequate. Consider these statistics from the University of Washington’s Teen Health and the Media website:

• In a study of fifth graders, both girls and boys told researchers they were dissatisfied with their own bodies after watching a music video by Britney Spears or a clip from the TV show “Friends.”
• 53 percent of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies.” This reaches 78% by the time girls reach 17.
• In a survey of girls nine and 10 years old, 40 percent have tried to lose weight.

As our daughters go through puberty—a time of intense body changes—they start to care much more about their bodies. These biological and developmental changes are amplified by advertising. They don’t call it neuromarketing for nothing: When advertising sends our girls messages about what their changing bodies should look like—and it’s not what they do look like—the ad causes a dopamine rush in our daughters’ brains that, in turn, creates intense desire for what is being advertised.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my daughters to think of their ideal selves as uber-sexy barbie-dolls with “call me” on their panties, and I don’t want them to feel inadequate compared to this brightly-colored exemplar.

(3) Girls are objects—for boys. When I saw that fashion show I couldn’t help but think of the Steubenville gang rape, in which a teen girl was used as a sex toy and dragged, unconscious, from party to party. Where do boys learn that girls are objects, accessories for their entertainment? Look no further than the media, where objectified women are the norm rather than the exception.

The media’s influence is so great that a new study from the European Journal of Social Psychology shows that our brains tend to process photos of regular, everyday women as a collection of sexualized body parts, while our brains process photos of men as whole people.

I want my girls to have boyfriends who see them for the whole people that they are, boys who treat them as individuals, not objects or a bunch of sexualized body parts. I want my girls to have meaningful intimate relationships. When they are ready to be sexually active, I want them to feel loved and cherished by their sexual partners and empowered by their sexuality—not used and discarded like last year’s Christmas present.

I know that Victoria’s Secret is not our only, or even our biggest, problem when it comes to protecting our girls from eating disorders, rape, and devastatingly low self-esteem. Dozens of other companies taunt our youth with hyper-sexualized images, of course; the tween market is worth “$335 billion of spending power,” retail analyst Hitha Prabhaker told the TODAY show Tuesday morning.

Large consumer products companies, with their gazillion-dollar marketing budgets, are influencing our kids in profound ways. As parents, we can protect them by not letting them watch commercials and by not letting them shop in (or, frankly, even near) stores like Victoria’s Secret. We can—and should—write letters and hope that our righteous anger goes viral on Facebook.

But honestly, these tactics feel profoundly inadequate compared to the marketing machines that we face. Can we win a war by boycotting the companies that hurt kids, or by simply hiding our children from the enemy?

I hope so. But I welcome other ideas if you’ve got them—please post below. In order to stand up to Victoria’s Secret and other retailers preying on our children, I think we parents are going to have to be committed, creative, and well-organized. I hope comments on this post, and this blog as a whole, can help support that movement.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

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This technique, which has been proven effective in clinical psychology, is particularly useful when we want to influence our teens or tweeners to change their behavior.

I learned about motivational interviewing from UC Berkeley professor Ron Dahl, an expert on adolescents. From my conversation with Ron, and from reading his written work, I gleaned 10 tips for getting through to teens and tweens. For the first five tips, see this post. Here are the next five:

(6) Surf their resistance like a wave. Say you want your teens or tweeners to get to bed earlier, or to spend more time on their homework. It’s normal for adolescents to resist you on these things, especially if they are feeling pushed to do something they are not ready to do—even if they agree with you on some level. For example, they might recognize that they are not doing as well in school as they’d like, but they aren’t ready yet to commit to spending more time on homework and less time on video games.

Sometimes (often?) we parents cause kids to dig in their heels when we argue our own position more forcefully. This is like trying to be understood in a foreign country where we don’t speak the language: When we ask a question to a local who doesn’t understand English, we may get frustrated and ask again—but this time louder: “WHERE IS THE TRAIN STATION?” Similarly, with teens, it doesn’t help to make the same argument again, but louder. We’ll just annoy them.

Instead of trying to persuade kids, we need to accept their resistance as normal and take with a different tactic—like one I list below, or in my last post.

(7) Genuinely appreciate their position and their participation in the discussion. Used sparingly, affirmations build connections. You might be shocked (or depressed) by what your teen is telling you, and tempted to point out the mistakes that could ruin their lives forever. Instead, appreciate how hard the conversation might be for them, and thank them for their honesty: “I can only imagine that this is an awkward conversation for you. I’m so grateful that you are willing to talk with me about your sex life. Thank you for explaining why you’ve been sneaking out with your girlfriend. Your honesty says a lot about who you are as a person.”

Don’t overdo this one, though, or say anything you don’t actually mean, or you’ll come off as inauthentic and manipulative.

(8) Shift the focus of your discussion. Offer a little relief by changing the topic ever-so-slightly. Perhaps you’ve been talking about how your daughter’s boyfriend sometimes makes her feel unattractive by making jokes about her weight. You might temporarily shift the focus of your discussion by saying something like, “You’re pretty confident that you’re in love with Pete, though, and you say he’s ‘the one.’ Tell me more about that.”

(9) Side with their negative position. When my kids were toddlers, their dad and I used to laugh at how well “reverse psychology” worked, and if you are particularly skilled (meaning, you can do this without sounding critical or sarcastic) it might work with your teen or tweener, too.

For example, your teen might be ranting about how her other parent is really bugging her to try out for soccer; she wants him to back off and let her do her own thing. You could agree with her negative position by saying something like, “Maybe he should just leave you alone, even if it means that he isn’t involved in your college applications, which is what he’s trying to help you with.” Or you could say, “Yes, you both might be better off if he focused his energy on your brother.”

(10) Help them make a behavior plan if your teen or tweener indicates that they are ready to make a change. Do this only if you suspect that they won’t be able to make a plan on their own, and if they indicate that they would like your help. Have them list:

-the changes they would like to make
-the most important reasons for those changes
-the specific steps they plan to take
-the people who can support them—and precisely how those people can help
-the challenges or potential barriers to their success—and specifically what they will do when they encounter these difficulties.

Have them tell you their vision for their success—how will they (and you) know that they have been successful, or if the plan is working?

In what areas do you want to guide your teen or tweener toward better decisions? Which of these techniques do you think will work best?

Read Part 1 of this posting here.

Gold, Melanie A. and Ronald E. Dahl, “Using Motivational Interviewing to Facilitate Healthier Sleep-Related Behaviors in Adolescents.” In Behavioral Treatments for Sleep Disorders. Edited by Michael Perlis, Mark Aolia, and Brett Kuhn, Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2011, Chapter 38, pp. 367-380.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

Kids say they want to get into a good college, for example, but then they miss school because they’ve stayed up half the night watching movies. Or they say they’d like to keep taking guitar lessons so that they might be able to join their friends’ rock band, but they refuse to practice on a regular schedule or to show up to their lessons.

The first thing to accept is that it is your adolescent’s developmental job to take the irrational position, the position that they know you’ll disagree with. Teens are driven to individuate, or to gain autonomy and independence by differentiating themselves from us, their loving parents. This is why they sometimes take positions we just know they couldn’t possibly really believe. (Except that they do really believe in their take on things, at least emotionally.)

Once we understand that adolescents are highly likely to take seemingly irrational stances on things, there are strategies for us to influence our adolescent children without endangering their need to individuate. This post is based on a conversation that I had with Ron Dahl about raising teenagers, as well as some of Dahl’s written work.

I asked Dahl what he does with his children when he wants to influence them.

His answer? He uses techniques from a clinical method called “motivational interviewing.” Motivational interviewing has proven effective in motivating behavior change in teens in difficult arenas, like drug and alcohol abuse, disordered eating, and risky sexual behavior. Dahl’s advice was to learn to use it as a parent for the more mundane areas where we’d like to see growth in our children, so that if we need it for a bigger problem we know what we are doing. Here are five motivational interviewing techniques that decrease kids’ resistance to our influence:

(1) Express empathy. Kids and teens are much more likely to listen to us if they feel understood. Resist the urge to give advice or to “finger-wag”—two things that tend to create defensiveness and resistance to our great ideas. Instead, reflect back to adolescents their position on things.

(2) Ask open-ended questions to understand their position. We want to encourage our teens to share with us their innermost motivations. To do this, we can phrase our questions non-judgmentally in ways that will prompt the adolescent to elaborate. Even if we are giving kids a choice about what to talk about (“Do you want to talk about what it is like when you lose your temper at school, or do you want to talk about what makes it difficult for you to eat a healthy lunch?”) Dahl recommends that we always also throw in a super-open-ended question like, “...or maybe there is something else you would rather discuss? What do you think?”

(3) Reflect what they are saying, not what we wish they were saying. This can be a simple restatement:

Adolescent: You say that I have to do all these things to make the team, but I think I’ll make the team even if I don’t jump through those hoops.
Parent: You’re not sure all this work is necessary.

Or, you can reflect what they mean but use different words:

Adolescent: I’m not an alcoholic!
Parent: That label really doesn’t fit you.

Or, try reflecting what they are feeling:

Adolescent: I’m not an alcoholic!
Parent: It really makes you angry when you think you are being labeled in that way.

Finally, try amplifying or exaggerating—without sarcasm!—what they are saying if the adolescent clearly expresses some ambivalence about their resistance to your influence:

Adolescent: I’m really not sure that I need help or treatment to deal with this.
Parent: Your life is really fine right now, just the way it is.

(4) Show them their inconsistencies—gently. One thing that we can reflect back to our teens, using the above strategies, are their conflicting motivations—the inconsistencies between what they say their goals or beliefs are, and their current behavior.

What to say, then, to that teen who wants to join the garage band, but has not been practicing regularly or learning the music? First, ask her permission to tell her what you see.

If she says she’s willing to listen to your perspective, gently point out the discrepancy between what she says she wants and what she’s doing to make that happen in a non-judgemental, factual way: “You really want to join Jack’s band, but before they’ll let you audition, you need to learn all the songs on their playlist. You haven’t started learning those songs yet. It seems like the play is taking up a lot of the time that you might spend practicing, and that when you get home from play practice, you just want to chill out in your room instead of practicing more or starting your homework.”

(5) Support their autonomy and emphasize their personal choice and control. Teens are most likely to change when they recognize the problem themselves, and when they are optimistic about their ability to solve the problem. We can help by expressing our confidence in their abilities, and by emphasizing that we can’t change them—that the choice about whether or not to change is the adolescent’s alone. Dahl recommends saying something like this: “Whether or not you make any changes in your activities or your behavior is entirely up to you. I definitely would not want you to feel pressured to do anything against your will.”

All of these techniques take practice. (At least for me. The only thing that seems to come naturally to me is bossiness.)

Check out the next five tips in this follow up post, here.

I drew heavily on this chapter for this posting:
Gold, Melanie A. and Ronald E. Dahl, “Using Motivational Interviewing to Facilitate Healthier Sleep-Related Behaviors in Adolescents.” In Behavioral Treatments for Sleep Disorders. Edited by Michael Perlis, Mark Aolia, and Brett Kuhn, Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2011, Chapter 38, pp. 367-380.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

On another note: Rona and I are going to take a break from recording these podcasts for a little while while I work on another book. If you’ve just found this podcast, we encourage you to start at the beginning—there are over a hundred episodes on a wide range of topics. And if you’ve been listening for years, THANK YOU—from the bottom of our hearts. This podcast has been rewarding for us both because of listeners like you!

Warmest regards,

Please check out my podcast with Rona Renner either here on the Greater Good website, or here on iTunes. Happy listening!

Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

Please check out my podcast with Rona Renner either here on the Greater Good website, or here on iTunes. Happy listening!

Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.

And those people who didn’t have a great Valentine’s Day? Well, we do know that calls to divorce lawyers peak right around now. One reason? Our expectations of our spouses are often too high, and Valentine’s Day punctuates all the ways that we feel let down.

I’ve been blogging about relationships for several years now, and something always strikes me when I revisit research related to what makes happy couples happy: It is possible to feel more in love. No, I don’t think every relationship should be saved. But I am a huge believer in knowing what little things I can do to make my romantic relationship more fulfilling.

This newsletter is an index to a few of my favorite relationship blog posts that contain tips and techniques for feeling more in love. And if you haven’t already, check out the “Family and Couples” tab on Greater Good for even more resources.

May you be happy,

Watch - Short Videos

Relationship Tip: Say—or Just Think—Thanks
An easy way to feel more in love.

How to Fight
Tips for how to fight with your partner in a way that won’t damage your children.


Read - Written posts

Enthusiastic Spouses Have Happy Marriages
Why cheerleaders live happily ever after. 
 
Is Happiness Actually Important?
Is it worth staying in a marriage that makes you unhappy?

A Surprisingly Simple Way to Feel Madly in Love
Love Potion No. 9: Gratitude in Relationships.

Five Simple Sex Tips for Parents
The happiest couples do the no-pants dance frequently. 

How to Pick a Fight
Three tips for starting an argument that won’t damage your relationship.

Listen - short podcasts

Finding Happiness in Intimacy
How do you bring up problems in your relationship with your partner?

Is Your Spouse Right for You?
The hard work of BEING the right partner, rather than always trying to FIND the right partner.

Are You Your Partner’s Equal?
What do you need out of your relationship? What are your priorities?


And on Greater Good

How Love Grows in Your Body
The places where romantic love abides in our bodies—and the role each one plays in sustaining love over time.

The Love Upgrade
A new definition of love that realistically accounts for the ways we experience the emotion in our bodies and minds.

Gratitude is for Lovers
New research says thankfulness, not romance, might be the key.

Please check out my podcast with Rona Renner either here on the Greater Good website, or here on iTunes. Happy listening!

Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.

Today kids have a longer period of time to figure out who they are, to develop skills, to go to school. “There are huge advantages to this from a learning perspective,” Dahl told me, “but there are also liabilities” when the brain is developing out of sync with a kid’s role in society.

#2: Kids don’t necessarily want to feel happy.

“You have this idea that people just want to be happy,” Dahl pointed out, “which just is not true. There are tremendous differences in what people want and like to feel.” Indulge me in the following thought experiment:

You go into a machine where you can feel anything you want to feel by playing with a set of knobs. Turn one dial a little bit and feel a little calm. Turn it a lot and feel really calm. Turn another dial and feel disgust. Another to feel joy. Every emotion imaginable is there for you to feel at any intensity, just by turning a knob.

What individuals want to feel differs dramatically, and in a way, this thought experiment is running all the time in our real lives. We are continually “turning knobs” in our attempt to influence our emotional lives. Teenage boys typically want to turn every knob up as high as it goes, to feel a range of emotions intensely. Many people like to experience righteous anger (which is why so many people listen to Rush Limbaugh). Other people would do anything to avoid feeling their own anger.

Similarly, we all know people who are “adrenaline junkies”—they like to turn the knobs on excitement. My pre-teen girls love to feel frantic excitement—or “hyper,” as they put it. Brain imaging studies show that pre-adolescent boys love disgust (which explains why they can be so gross).

Though the data show that most people do prefer happiness and positive emotions to unhappiness and negative feelings, it is naïve to think that we all want to feel happy all the time.

#3: Puberty makes many kids seek conflict—and this is a good thing. 

When my own pre-teen children are feeling mope-y and weepy, I try to help them feel better. “What do you feel grateful for?” I’ll often ask. “Let’s have a dance party!” I’ll exclaim as I put on their favorite dance tunes. “Let’s go for a walk to shake this thing off!”

Uh, back off, mom.

Talking to Dahl made me realize just how unhelpful I am being. When pubescent kids are sad, for example, it’s sometimes better to see them as experimenting with sadness. Instead of trying to cajole them out of it, let them learn that they can cope with even very intense negative emotions. Let them listen to sad music, call their most sad friend, and watch a movie that makes them cry. Let them deepen their sadness so that they can practice recovering from it.

Most pubescent kids like turning up the volume on their own feelings, even if their feelings aren’t positive. I never really thought about this before talking with Dahl, but even intense sadness can be novel and exciting for kids.

“This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective,” Dahl explained. Part of the developmental task of teenagers is to learn how to control their intense emotions. “Think about someone in a hunter-gatherer society who has to kill their first animal with a spear in order to become an adult. That is an incredibly dangerous, frightening thing. If you can’t control your fear and stay on task, if you can’t navigate intense feelings when the stakes are high, you might be killed yourself.”

So experimenting with intense feelings is adaptive—it’s a way to learn how to cope with them. Here’s the kicker: When kids hit puberty, many start creating conflict to experiment with high-intensity behaviors and the high-intensity emotions they create.

Understanding all of this—that my pre-teen girls, despite being only 10 and 12, are better thought of as adolescents than children, that they don’t necessarily want to feel happy, that they are innately driven to do things that will make them feel bad—makes me feel profound compassion for them.

It also makes me feel profound hope, even as they are creating conflict all around me. When I step back, I can see that they’re on a path toward leading the most colorful lives they can imagine—because they know which knobs to turn, and how far to turn them.

© 2013 Christine Carter, Ph.D.

Like this post? We hope you’ll become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook, or sign up for the Raising Happiness monthly newsletter.

Please check out my podcast with Rona Renner either here on the Greater Good website, or here on iTunes. Happy listening!

Become a fan of Raising Happiness on Facebook.
Follow Christine Carter on Twitter
Subscribe to the Happiness Matters Podcast on iTunes.