by Greater Good Magazine | Jun 29, 2023 | Reflections
By KAREN BLUTH | Greater Good Magazine
Self-compassion can help teens who are struggling with toxic perfectionism.
My friend’s teen daughter, Belen, had a big upcoming exam this past semester. Starting a week before the exam, she studied incessantly. Every possible available moment. The night before the exam, she hardly slept—she was too nervous, tossing and turning in bed, going through in her mind all the facts that she needed to know, and worrying that she missed something important. When she finally went in to take the test, she was practically paralyzed with fear, and was barely able to think clearly.Please join me in this blog on spiritual development as I look at spiritual development in young children through reflections of my research and changing thoughts and experiences. Here is a look at what I call the system of spiritual development.
This is a really tough time for teens. I know what you’re thinking—the teen years have always been tough. But according to the U.S. Surgeon General in his advisory released in December, the pressure that teens are facing today is unprecedented. Youth mental health is in crisis. And it’s not just from the pandemic: According to the 2019 CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance survey, mental health among youth did a nose-dive over the last decade, with depression and sadness increasing by 40%, and those with a suicide plan increasing by 44%.
What’s been going on?
Of course, there are many external factors that play a role. Lockdowns and school closings have kept teens isolated—at a time when the developmentally appropriate thing to do would be connecting with their peers. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2018 report on Stress in America, teens and young adults are stressed from what they hear in the news: gun violence (particularly school shootings and mass shootings), political discord, climate change and global warming, separation and deportation of immigrant families, and sexual assault and harassment.
But here I’d like to focus on something more internal: the exceedingly high standards many teens have for themselves. Whether it’s a desire for straight As, flawless skin, or athletic stardom, the quest to stand out as “the best” often drives teens to be relentlessly hard on themselves, which can lead to feelings of unworthiness and depression. Yet knowing that there is a way out—that they don’t have to relentlessly beat themselves up in order to be successful and happy—can be enormously relieving for teens.
Perfectionism in teens
When my daughter was in high school, she insisted that she take every AP class that was available. Both her dad and I encouraged her to be a little easier on herself, and just take the AP courses in her favorite subjects. We assured her that she’d get into a good college without taking every one. But she insisted, and gave me that classic teen eye roll, which says undeniably, “Mom, you just don’t know…”
Many teens feel like they aren’t good enough unless they are at the top of their class and excel in their sport of choice and are the best at the instrument they play and have a ton of friends and have hundreds of “likes” on whatever they post…you get the idea.
Some of this feeling of not being “good enough” comes from comparing themselves with others, or social comparison. Although it’s perfectly natural to measure yourself against others—it is rooted in our inherent need to belong and be accepted—it isn’t necessarily good for our mental health. The reason is that we become stuck in an impossible conundrum: We feel we can’t be worthy unless we’re better than those we’re comparing ourselves to and—get this—we must be better in everything. In every domain of our lives. Of course, it’s impossible for all of us to be better than everyone else in everything!
For teens, determining your value by comparing yourself with others is perpetuated in schools with grades and GPAs, which make it easy to see precisely how you measure up to your competition. I can still remember what my rank was in my high school graduating class—over 40 years ago! Even worse, social comparison is fueled by social media, where the number of “likes” you receive is a clear indicator of how popular you are. So there’s no hiding or pretending; if you get only a few “likes,” clearly you’re a social failure in the eyes of others. And it’s out there for the world to see. No wonder Franklin Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
Comparing oneself to others and striving to be perfect is a recipe for mental health problems. We know from research that self-critical perfectionism—the kind of perfectionism where you set high standards for yourself and criticize yourself when you don’t meet them, where you focus on your failures and constantly doubt yourself—is linked to depression and anxiety. This is a different kind of perfectionism than what researchers call “personal standards perfectionism,” which is unrelated to depression and anxiety, and simply means setting high goals for yourself without the harsh self-criticism. We also know from research that those with self-critical perfectionism worry and ruminate even on weekends and holidays when they should be relaxing, whereas those with the good kind of perfectionism don’t and, as a result, have better overall mood.
What can we do? How can we help teens see that it’s possible to have high standards for themselves, while at the same time treating themselves kindly? That they don’t have to beat themselves up with harsh words and unrelenting self-criticism in order to excel at school and get into a good college? That they can encourage themselves, speaking to themselves kindly—the way they speak to their friends—and, in so doing, keep anxiety and depression at bay?
Ways to combat perfectionism in teens
Simply put, teens can learn how to be more self-compassionate. Self-compassion teaches us to treat ourselves with kindness and support. As defined by Kristin Neff, self-compassion is being aware that you’re struggling, understanding that difficult emotions like hurt, anger, disappointment, and loneliness are part of the human condition, and then taking an active role in supporting and comforting yourself when you’re feeling this way.
In other words, teens can encourage themselves by using the carrot and not the stick. And guess what? Research has shown that the carrot works better.
In one study among teens in Australia, for example, when teens were more self-compassionate, being perfectionistic was less likely to lead to depression. Self-compassion actually protected the teens with perfectionist tendencies from becoming depressed. The same thing happened in another study among Chinese undergraduates: Those who were more self-compassionate were less likely to be depressed, and self-compassion buffered the effects of unhealthy perfectionism on depression.
As Neff has said, self-compassion is the same as being compassionate to others, but doing a U-turn: turning that compassion that we readily give others toward ourselves. If we can be compassionate toward others, there’s no reason we can’t also be compassionate toward ourselves. We’re just not used to it; we haven’t learned how.
But it is possible for teens to learn to be more self-compassionate. Self-compassion can be cultivated and nurtured, and various self-compassion programs have been developed and tested. One is Mindful Self-Compassion for Teens, the teen adaptation of Chris Germer and Kristin Neff’s Mindful Self-Compassion program. Formerly called Making Friends with Yourself, the program (which I co-created) has been found to result in lower anxiety, depression, and stress and, most recently, lower risk factors for suicidal ideation among transgender teens.
In the self-compassion program, teens learn that they don’t have to treat themselves harshly in order to motivate themselves. This is quite eye-opening for teens who think that they won’t get anywhere in life if they are nice to themselves. Second, they learn about common humanity—that other teens are struggling just like them. Although this may be obvious to adults, teens often feel like they are the only ones struggling, and that their peers are confident happy campers, strolling through the teen years with nary a care.
Teens learn short meditation practices that they can do on the spot, whenever they’re feeling upset or anxious, and longer meditation practices that they can do when they have the time. Most importantly, teens learn that they have the ability within themselves to treat themselves with kindness, and that they don’t have to wait for someone else to treat them kindly. Furthermore, they don’t have to be perfect to be deserving of being treated well; they’re reminded that all of us roaming on this planet are imperfect, and being imperfect is, well, perfectly OK.
As for Belen, my friend’s daughter, she’s learning to be more self-compassionate. Of course, she still has to study—self-compassion doesn’t let you off the hook from doing your work. In fact, she’s studying just as much, but doesn’t have the same fear of failing as she once did. She knows that if she fails a test, it doesn’t mean that she’s not a worthy and valuable good person; failing doesn’t change who she is. She’ll just have to regroup, and think of what’s her best and most effective strategy going forward with the subject—or her life. And that’s self-compassionate.
by Greater Good Magazine | Jun 29, 2023 | Reflections
By JEREMY ADAM SMITH | Greater Good Magazine
Are you struggling to discover your purpose? That may be because you feel isolated from other people. Here’s how you can overcome that.
Do you have a sense of purpose?
For decades, psychologists have studied how long-term, meaningful goals develop over the span of our lives. The goals that foster a sense of purpose are ones that can potentially change the lives of other people, like launching an organization, researching disease, or teaching kids to read.
Indeed, a sense of purpose appears to have evolved in humans so that we can accomplish big things together—which may be why it’s associated with better physical and mental health. Purpose is adaptive, in an evolutionary sense. It helps both individuals and the species to survive.
Many seem to believe that purpose arises from your special gifts and sets you apart from other people—but that’s only part of the truth. It also grows from our connection to others, which is why a crisis of purpose is often a symptom of isolation. Once you find your path, you’ll almost certainly find others traveling along with you, hoping to reach the same destination—a community.
Here are six ways to overcome isolation and discover your purpose in life.
1. Read
Reading connects us to people we’ll never know, across time and space—an experience that research says is linked to a sense of meaning and purpose. (Note: “Meaning” and “purpose” are related but separate social-scientific constructs. Purpose is a part of meaning; meaning is a much broader concept that usually also includes value, efficacy, and self-worth.)
In a 2010 paper, for example, Leslie Francis studied a group of nearly 26,000 teenagers throughout England and Wales—and found that those who read the Bible more tended to have a stronger sense of purpose. Secular reading seems to make a difference, as well. In a survey of empirical studies, Raymond A. Mar and colleagues found a link between reading poetry and fiction and a sense of purpose among adolescents.
“Reading fiction might allow adolescents to reason about the whole lives of characters, giving them specific insight into an entire lifespan without having to have fully lived most of their own lives,” they suggest. By seeing purpose in the lives of other people, teens are more likely to see it in their own lives. In this sense, purpose is an act of the imagination.
Many people I interviewed for this article mentioned pivotal books or ideas they found in books.
The writing of historian W.E.B. Du Bois pushed social-justice activist Art McGee to embrace a specific vision of African-American identity and liberation. Journalist Michael Stoll found inspiration in the “social responsibility theory of journalism,” which he read about at Stanford University. “Basically, reporters and editors have not just the ability but also the duty to improve their community by being independent arbiters of problems that need solving,” he says. “It’s been my professional North Star ever since.” Spurred by this idea, Michael went on to launch an award-winning nonprofit news agency called The San Francisco Public Press.
So, if you’re feeling a crisis of purpose in your life, go to the bookstore or library or university. Find books that matter to you—and they might help you to see what matters in your own life.
2. Turn hurts into healing for others
Of course, finding purpose is not just an intellectual pursuit; it’s something we need to feel. That’s why it can grow out of suffering, both our own and others’.
Kezia Willingham was raised in poverty in Corvallis, Oregon, her family riven by domestic violence. “No one at school intervened or helped or supported my mother, myself, or my brother when I was growing up poor, ashamed, and sure that my existence was a mistake,” she says. “I was running the streets, skipping school, having sex with strangers, and abusing every drug I could get my hands on.”
When she was 16, Kezia enrolled at an alternative high school that “led me to believe I had options and a path out of poverty.” She made her way to college and was especially “drawn to the kids with ‘issues’”—kids like the one she had once been. She says:
I want the kids out there who grew up like me, to know they have futures ahead of them. I want them to know they are smart, even if they may not meet state academic standards. I want them to know that they are just as good and valuable as any other human who happens to be born into more privileged circumstances. Because they are. And there are so damn many messages telling them otherwise.
Sometimes, another person’s pain can lead us to purpose. When Christopher Pepper was a senior in high school, a “trembling, tearful friend” told him that she had been raped by a classmate. “I comforted as well as I could, and left that conversation vowing that I would do something to keep this from happening to others,” says Christopher. He kept that promise by becoming a Peer Rape Educator in college—and then a sex educator in San Francisco public schools.
Why do people like Kezia and Christopher seem to find purpose in suffering—while others are crushed by it? Part of the answer, as we’ll see next, might have to do with the emotions and behaviors we cultivate in ourselves.
3. Cultivate awe, gratitude, and altruism
Certain emotions and behaviors that promote health and well-being can also foster a sense of purpose—specifically, awe, gratitude, and altruism.
Several studies conducted by the Greater Good Science Center’s Dacher Keltner have shown that the experience of awe makes us feel connected to something larger than ourselves—and so can provide the emotional foundation for a sense of purpose.
Of course, awe all by itself won’t give you a purpose in life. It’s not enough to just feel like you’re a small part of something big; you also need to feel driven to make a positive impact on the world. That’s where gratitude and generosity come into play.
“It may seem counterintuitive to foster purpose by cultivating a grateful mindset, but it works,” writes psychologist Kendall Bronk, a leading expert on purpose. As research by William Damon, Robert Emmons, and others has found, children and adults who are able to count their blessings are much more likely to try to “contribute to the world beyond themselves.” This is probably because, if we can see how others make our world a better place, we’ll be more motivated to give something back.
Here we arrive at altruism. There’s little question, at this point, that helping others is associated with a meaningful, purposeful life. In one study, for example, Daryl Van Tongeren and colleagues found that people who engage in more altruistic behaviors, like volunteering or donating money, tend to have a greater sense of purpose in their lives.
Interestingly, gratitude and altruism seem to work together to generate meaning and purpose. In a second experiment, the researchers randomly assigned some participants to write letters of gratitude—and those people later reported a stronger sense of purpose. More recent work by Christina Karns and colleagues found that altruism and gratitude are neurologically linked, activating the same reward circuits in the brain.
4. Listen to what other people appreciate about you
Shawn Taylor with his familyGiving thanks can help you find your purpose. But you can also find purpose in what people thank you for.
Like Kezia Willingham, Shawn Taylor had a tough childhood—and he was also drawn to working with kids who had severe behavioral problems. Unlike her, however, he often felt like the work was a dead-end. “I thought I sucked at my chosen profession,” he says. Then, one day, a girl he’d worked with five years before contacted him.
“She detailed how I helped to change her life,” says Shawn—and she asked him to walk her down the aisle when she got married. Shawn hadn’t even thought about her, in all that time. “Something clicked and I knew this was my path. No specifics, but youth work was my purpose.”
The artists, writers, and musicians I interviewed often described how appreciation from others fueled their work. Dani Burlison never lacked a sense of purpose, and she toiled for years as a writer and social-justice activist in Santa Rosa, California. But when wildfires swept through her community, Dani discovered that her strengths were needed in a new way: “I’ve found that my networking and emergency response skills have been really helpful to my community, my students, and to firefighters!”
Although there is no research that directly explores how being thanked might fuel a sense of purpose, we do know that gratitude strengthens relationships—and those are often the source of our purpose, as many of these stories suggest.
5. Find and build community
As we see in Dani’s case, we can often find our sense of purpose in the people around us.
Many people told me about finding purpose in family. In tandem with his reading, Art McGee found purpose—working for social and racial justice—in “love and respect for my hardworking father,” he says. “Working people like him deserved so much better.”
Environmental and social-justice organizer Jodi Sugerman-Brozan feels driven “to leave the world in a better place than I found it.” Becoming a mom “strengthened that purpose (it’s going to be their world, and their kids’ world),” she says. It “definitely influences how I parent (wanting to raise anti-racist, feminist, radical kids who will want to continue the fight and be leaders).”
Of course, our kids may not embrace our purpose. Amber Cantorna was raised by purpose-driven parents who were right-wing Christians. “My mom had us involved in stuff all the time, all within that conservative Christian bubble,” she says. This family and community fueled a strong sense of purpose in Amber: “To be a good Christian and role model. To be a blessing to other people.”
The trouble is that this underlying purpose involved making other people more like them. When she came out as a lesbian at age 27, Amber’s family and community swiftly and suddenly cast her out. This triggered a deep crisis of purpose—one that she resolved by finding a new faith community “that helped shape me and gave me a sense of belonging,” she says.
Often, the nobility of our purpose reflects the company we keep. The purpose that came from Amber’s parents was based on exclusion, as she discovered. There was no place—and no purpose—for her in that community once she embraced an identity they couldn’t accept. A new sense of purpose came with the new community and identity she helped to build, of gay and lesbian Christians.
If you’re having trouble remembering your purpose, take a look at the people around you. What do you have in common with them? What are they trying to be? What impact do you see them having on the world? Is that impact a positive one? Can you join with them in making that impact? What do they need? Can you give it them?
If the answers to those questions don’t inspire you, then you might need to find a new community—and with that, a new purpose may come.
6. Tell your story
Amber CantornaReading can help you find your purpose—but so can writing,
Purpose often arises from curiosity about your own life. What obstacles have you encountered? What strengths helped you to overcome them? How did other people help you? How did your strengths help make life better for others?
“We all have the ability to make a narrative out of our own lives,” says Emily Esfahani Smith, author of the 2017 book The Power of Meaning. “It gives us clarity on our own lives, how to understand ourselves, and gives us a framework that goes beyond the day-to-day and basically helps us make sense of our experiences.”
That’s why Amber Cantorna wrote her memoir, Refocusing My Family: Coming Out, Being Cast Out, and Discovering the True Love of God. At first depressed after losing everyone she loved, Amber soon discovered new strengths in herself—and she is using her book to help build a nonprofit organization called Beyond to support gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Christians in their coming-out process.
One 2008 study found that those who see meaning and purpose in their lives are able to tell a story of change and growth, where they managed to overcome the obstacles they encountered. In other words, creating a narrative like Amber’s can help us to see our own strengths and how applying those strengths can make a difference in the world, which increases our sense of self-efficacy.
This is a valuable reflective process to all people, but Amber took it one step further, by publishing her autobiography and turning it into a tool for social change. Today, Amber’s purpose is to help people like her feel less alone.
“My sense of purpose has grown a lot with my desire to share my story—and the realization that so many other people have shared my journey.”
by Greater Good Magazine | Jun 29, 2023 | Reflections
By LOREA MARTÍNEZ | Greater Good Magazine
Developing cultural competence can help teachers create more trusting relationships with students and a more positive learning environment.
Effective teachers cultivate positive relationships with students every day, no matter if the classroom is physical or virtual. They foster emotional connections among students, and help them to feel a sense of belonging and purpose.
This is not a small task. In fact, it is possibly one of the most difficult but important things an educator can do. According to the latest research in developmental science, relationships between and among children and adults are “a primary process through which biological and contextual factors influence and mutually reinforce each other.”
This means that when children experience positive relationships, they are not only creating the pathways for lifelong learning, adaptation, and integration of social, emotional, and cognitive skills, but also making qualitative changes to their genetic makeup. In other words, children’s brains change in response to their life experiences, relationships, and the environments they encounter from birth into adulthood.
Positive relationships also foster resilience, and reduce the impact that negative factors—such as adverse childhood experiences (ACE)—may have on children’s healthy development. Researchers from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University suggest that these positive experiences, along with support from adults and the development of adaptive skills, can counterbalance the lifelong consequences of adversity.
Unfortunately, differences in social and cultural backgrounds can make it harder for students to trust teachers. For instance, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) students and their families may have a hard time trusting their white teachers, given America’s history and current reality of institutionalized racism. At the same time, white teachers may not be inclined to trust their BIPOC students due to their own bias and learned beliefs. This trust gap may hinder their ability to establish meaningful relationships, and can affect students’ academic success.
While an increasing number of schools are adopting social-emotional learning (SEL) programs and practices to create positive learning environments, many fail to incorporate cultural competence as an essential building block to foster these trusting relationships. However, educators still need to gain awareness of their own cultural identity, consider their biases, and how they use their power and privilege with students. Cultural competence also means that educators develop their ability to learn about and build on the varying cultural and community assets of students and their families.
In my new book, Teaching with the HEART in Mind: A Complete Educator’s Guide to Social Emotional Learning, I discuss why educators need to build their cultural competence in order to nurture positive relationships—and how they can ensure that students feel respected, seen, and affirmed. At the root of developing a culturally responsive classroom lies the belief that students’ diverse cultural practices and ethnic backgrounds are assets in the learning process, that should be celebrated and incorporated into academic content and pedagogy. “Culture is central to student learning,” writes education consultant Zaretta Hammond. “Cultural practices shape students’ thinking processes, which serve as tools for learning in and outside of school.” Therefore, students’ languages, cultures, and life experiences should be acknowledged as meaningful sources for learning and understanding.
Considering that almost 80% of teachers in public schools are white, while almost half of public elementary and secondary school students are people of color, it is essential that educators create a space where students can bring the pride they feel for their race and ethnicity, and develop an appreciation for diverse racial and ethnic identities. This will support BIPOC students to succeed in school as individuals—and it can help plant the seeds for a more equitable and just world. Here are five strategies for developing cultural competence in the classroom, adapted from my book.
1. Develop an awareness of your own racial and cultural identity
This entails identifying the historical roots of your identity, as well as beliefs, values, the way culture has influenced your life, and the things that motivate and matter to you. It also involves considering implicit biases, and the privileges and disadvantages afforded to you based on your race or ethnicity. This process is especially important for white educators, since research suggests people of color will commonly begin developing their racial identity before white people. According to author and University of Georgia professor Dr. Anneliese Singh, developing a positive racial identity entails cultivating nonjudgmental curiosity—questioning old ideas and remaining open to new ones.
Once educators engage in this process of developing their racial and cultural identity, they can consider their internalized perceptions toward other racial and ethnic groups and decide to challenge or maintain these perceptions. As educators intentionally engage in developing their own racial identity, they will be better equipped to support students in doing the same.
2. Learn about each student and incorporate this knowledge into classroom instruction
The quality of teacher-student relationships has been repeatedly linked with students’ academic, social, and emotional outcomes. These relationships can be established when educators take the time to know their students individually; learning about students’ historical roots, ethnic group, home language, religion, or immigration story can provide teachers with valuable information. Even if students identify with a single racial or ethnic group, educators shouldn’t make assumptions about their values or beliefs, since there is great variability within communities. Getting to know students individually, while learning about the history and culture of their identities, sets up the foundation to establish meaningful relationships with students.
Once educators have learned about the varying racial and cultural assets of students, they can try to connect academic instruction with students’ prior knowledge and experiences. Teachers can spark students’ motivation for learning by contextualizing the content and making it relevant to students’ lives. When students are able to bring what they already know into their classrooms, deeper connections can be made with new academic content.
3. Promote an inclusive and equitable classroom that proactively works to counter bias
In order for classrooms to be inclusive and equitable, educators need to understand the larger sociopolitical context that shapes individual experiences. Many BIPOC, LGTBQ+, or neurodiverse students, and those coming from low-income backgrounds, experience insults and denigrating messages in and outside of school on a regular basis. When students have to face hostile environments, they use most of their cognitive and emotional skills for dealing with these challenges rather than for learning.
When safe and supportive environments are created, and students’ unique traits and life experiences are acknowledged, celebrated, and used to enrich the learning environment, students are more likely to feel a sense of belonging and be able to engage with the classroom content in meaningful ways.
This takes work. It requires a commitment to proactively dismantle racism and discrimination, and intentionally work to counteract and reverse implicit bias.
4. Get to know students’ families and invite them to the classroom
Parents also experience emotions about their children’s school and teachers. They may fear their child is being mistreated or bullied, or they may distrust a teacher whose culture is not the same as theirs. They may question a teacher’s suitability because the classroom doesn’t look like the classroom they attended when they were kids. Whatever their feelings toward teachers or the school, educators should remember that parents’ emotions are real and valid. They may not agree with them, but understanding these feelings will help educators to connect with these families.
Educators can invite parents to participate in virtual or physical classrooms. This can take the shape of a family potluck, a getting-to-know-you back-to-school night, home visits, or phone calls to celebrate students’ accomplishments. The goal of these interactions is for educators to develop important connections with families: to learn about their beliefs, hopes, and dreams and to learn how they perceive their role in supporting their children’s education.
Elena Aguilar, author and founder of Bright Morning Consulting, encourages teachers to let families know that they want to learn about their individual cultures, acknowledging the differences that exist. Many immigrant parents worry that their home culture will be forgotten when kids go to school. For parents, it can be a big relief knowing that their child’s teacher wants to learn about their culture. Inviting parents into the classroom is also a great way to celebrate and share students’ cultures.
5. Learn about the community
This is an extension of knowing students and their families. Walking around a neighborhood and understanding the community’s assets—the food, music, traditions, or history of the neighborhood—as well as some of the issues they face can provide educators with important data to connect with students and inform teaching practices.
- How does the community celebrate special holidays?
- How has the neighborhood changed in the last decade?
- Are some of the parents facing unemployment or housing challenges?
- How is that affecting the student population that the school serves?
Educators can approach this process with curiosity and without judgment, searching for insights that can help them better serve students. As educators engage in this process, their immediate reactions to the neighborhood can provide valuable data to examine and counter their own biases. If educators notice they only see the deficits in the community, while having a difficult time seeing the assets, that can be an indicator that additional exploration and reflection is needed. As Hammond says, “You need to put yourself in a place where you are not the majority.”
Teachers can shape children’s growth and development in constructive ways through the power of relationships. They can make a positive impact in a child’s life by first developing their cultural competence and considering their learned beliefs and implicit biases, and then by recognizing the assets and greatness in their students and families, with the ultimate goal of creating emotional bonds, celebrating a sense of shared humanity, and nurturing trusting and meaningful relationships.
by Greater Good Magazine | Jun 29, 2023 | Reflections
By JILL SUTTIE | Greater Good Magazine
After a short mindfulness practice, people are more willing to admit to transgressions to help repair their relationships, a new study finds.
It’s not always easy to apologize. When we hurt someone, we may be loath to acknowledge our transgression because it makes us feel guilty, conflicts with our beliefs about being a good person, or means accepting that we are imperfect human beings. We may want to excuse our behavior and blame the other person, minimizing our role in hurting them.
How can we be better at apologizing and so promote better relationships? One new study suggests that practicing mindfulness could help.
In the study, researchers asked 120 undergraduate students to recall a time when they’d offended or hurt someone else (a friend, family member, colleague, or romantic partner) and the conflict remained unresolved. Then, participants were randomly assigned to either a 15-minute guided mindfulness exercise focusing on their breath or a guided mind-wandering exercise, where they were encouraged to let their minds wander.
Afterward, they were asked to report how much they felt like apologizing to the person versus not apologizing or offering excuses or rationales for their behavior. Then, they were asked to craft a note to the person, without instructions to apologize or not.
In analyzing the notes, the researchers found that people who practiced mindfulness were more likely to apologize than those who mind-wandered—meaning, they were more likely to include statements like “I’m sorry” or “I apologize” in their notes. They also had a stronger motivation to apologize, as measured by their survey responses.
Lead author Sana Rizvi says this suggests that mindfulness could help people apologize more.
“One way in which we can foster apologies is by having people think in the present moment,” she says. “We can teach individuals to be mindful of their present states, and it can be done as little as in 15 minutes.”
Why might this be the case? Rizvi isn’t sure, as there has been very little research on how being more mindful might affect us when we hurt others. Prior research has found that being more mindful helps victims of transgressions to be more forgiving, she says, and it seems to improve relationships, generally.
As one possibility, she points to the work of Eric Garland of the University of Utah, showing that being mindful helps us not be so reactive to negative circumstances, which allows us to be more open to positive, relationship-enhancing feelings and thoughts—in other words, to have better “emotional regulation.” She and her team wondered if something similar might be happening in her study.
To help figure that out, she recruited participants from the community outside of the university and surveyed them on how mindful they are, in general, as well as how much they tend to apologize when they offend someone. The participants were also asked to recall a time they’d hurt another person and to write about what had happened.
Afterward, they reported on how much they wanted to justify their behavior (how much they agreed with statements like, “It’s OK to show my anger even if there is a risk of rising hostility,” or “It’s not necessary to control myself to prevent the conflict from escalating”) versus how concerned they were about preserving their relationship (agreeing that “It’s better to not show my anger rather than to risk the rise of hostility,” or “Cooperation with this person still must be maintained during this conflict”). They also indicated how motivated they were to apologize in this situation.
After analyzing the results, Rizvi found that people high in mindfulness tended to have a lower need to justify themselves or let their negative emotions run free and, in turn, had more concern and care for others—a pattern that seemed to increase their motivation to apologize.
“When mindfulness reduces negative states, it seems to increase positive states, too, and that then leads to apologizing,” she says. “It seems there has to be a shift from negativity to positivity.”
Overall, her results suggest that being more mindful may increase our motivation to apologize. This may happen because mindfulness makes us feel less defensive and, therefore, helps us consider the importance of the other person in the conflict more, as her study suggests. Or there could be some other reason that was not considered in her study. More research needs to be done, says Rizvi, before they will totally understand what’s going on.
On the other hand, it’s encouraging to think that teaching simple mindfulness techniques (like focused breathing) could increase apologies, especially in places that are often rife with interpersonal conflict, like workplaces or other organizations. Perhaps, encouraging people to slow down and pay attention to the present moment could improve interpersonal interactions, helping people move forward more easily from a place of conflict to understanding and forgiveness.
“I hope that, with our journal article, we are able to convince people that mindfulness ought to be considered when looking at ways to manage and resolve transgressions,” she says. “Getting offenders to apologize by focusing on the present moment, we can really reap the benefit associated with apologizing, allowing individuals to have more benevolent interactions with one another.”
by Greater Good Magazine | Jun 29, 2023 | Reflections
By SCOTT SEIDER, ANNA CARPENTER, CHARIS KANG, DEREK TITCHNER, HEHUA XU, YEZI ZHENG | Greater Good Magazine
There are more multiethnic and multi-faith families than ever. A new study reveals how their values and traditions are coming together.
Rishi Mehta and Nora Saperstein decided before they even had children that they wanted to integrate both Rishi’s Sikh religion and Nora’s Jewish religion into their family life. When their twin daughters turned 13 years old—the age at which Jewish children typically participate in Bar or Bat Mitzvahs—Rishi and Nora put together a coming-of-age ceremony that combined elements of both Sikhism and Judaism.
“It was a very public sort of community-based way to make our kids feel part of the multiple communities they were part of,” explained Rishi.
In the months leading up to the event, Rishi and Nora worked with their daughters to study important tenets of both religions. Rishi noted that the event pushed him and his wife to learn and think more about their own faith traditions than they had since childhood—and also allowed Rishi to learn more about Judaism and Nora to learn more about Sikhism.
Stories like Rishi and Nora’s are increasingly common because the number of children growing up in multiethnic and multi-faith families has been skyrocketing in the United States. Gallup recently reported that 94% of Americans now express approval of interracial marriages—a shift from nearly universal disapproval in just over six decades. It is no exaggeration to say that the millions of young adults leading diverse families today are carrying out a version of parenting that many of their grandparents and great-grandparents could hardly have imagined.
Yet despite this growing diversity among American families, there is surprisingly little research on parental socialization in multiethnic and multi-faith families—the practices by which parents share values, practices, and beliefs from their cultures or faith traditions with their children. Moreover, a number of the studies that have been conducted focus on negative outcomes, such as the lower likelihood of parents in multi-faith families successfully transmitting their religious beliefs to their children or the ways in which the parental role can become a “catalyst for conflict” among adults leading multiethnic families.
Over the past year, our research team has conducted more than 120 interviews with parents leading multiethnic or multi-faith families and young adults raised in multiethnic or multi-faith families—including with Rishi, Nora, and their twins. Our goal has been to identify ways in which these families navigate differences and draw upon both parents’ faith traditions or cultural backgrounds to support their children’s character development. Here is what we’ve discovered so far about how families can combine cultures and faiths to thrive in the 21st century.
Melding differences creates new value
In his 2019 one-man show Springsteen on Broadway, musician Bruce Springsteen observes that “the primary math of the world is one and one equals two,” but that “the essential equation of life is 1 + 1 = 3”—in other words, two pieces coming together to form something even greater than their sum.
Many of the parents and young adults participating in our study described the opportunity to incorporate the values of two different cultures or faith traditions into their families as just such a case of one plus one equaling three.
For the coming-of-age ceremony they designed, Rishi and Nora both identified six to eight values that they believed were fundamental to their respective religious traditions, and that they felt their children would benefit from learning about and reflecting upon more deeply. The core Sikh values they chose included honest and hard work, sharing with others, remember God, and be gentle and act with humility. The core Jewish values they chose included welcoming guests, respecting differences, and pursuing justice.
In the coming-of-age ceremony, Rishi and Nora’s daughters each prepared and delivered a short speech in which they shared thoughts about the relevance of these core values in their own lives and the world they lived in. Rishi and Nora had also invited friends and family members attending the coming-of-age ceremony to come prepared to share a story about how they have sought to live out one of the Sikh or Jewish values. In asking their guests to share these stories with the twins, Rishi and Nora hoped their daughters would benefit from the wisdom and experiences of the assembled friends and family.
Looking back on the ceremony, Nora observed: “It reflected who we as a family are far more than something that sort of runs in parallel with [both religions].” Her husband and daughters likewise expressed their belief that the coming-of-age ceremony exemplified their efforts to meld Rishi’s Sikhism and Nora’s Judaism into something new and unique to their family. In so doing, they offer an example of a family blending the principles and values of their respective faith traditions into something even greater than their sum—one plus one equaling three.
Rishi and Nora’s family is representative of a number of families we interviewed who sought out ways to incorporate the value systems from both parents’ cultures or religions into their families. Interestingly, a smaller number of parents we interviewed were so attuned to the benefits of exposing their children to multiple cultures that they actually sought out additional cultural systems, beyond their own, to integrate into their families’ traditions and practices.
For example, one of the young adults we interviewed, Yousra, had an Egyptian father and Chinese mother who actively introduced their children to their own languages and cultures, but also chose to send their children to schools that immersed them in French and Italian language and culture. The cosmopolitanism of this family and others we interviewed felt in many ways like a natural extension of the 1 + 1 = 3 approach to thoughtfully mixing cultures.
Strengthening empathy and conflict resolution
Writer and activist Audre Lorde once observed: “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” In numerous interviews, parents and young adults echoed Lorde’s emphasis on the importance of honoring difference.
Take the Zeitawi family, for example. One might describe Connie and Abdel Zeitawi’s childhoods as mirror images of each other. Connie is a Polish American woman who spent her childhood and adolescence in Colombia. Though her family is not ethnically Latino, she describes herself as Colombian at heart and deeply influenced by Latin culture. Abdel Zeitawi grew up in Israel as an Israeli citizen, but, as a Palestinian and Muslim, his feelings of connection to Israel felt complex and tumultuous.
Connie and Abdel met in the United States as young adults and formed a multiethnic family with the birth of their two children, Ramy and Lisa.
Lisa is now in her late 20s. She told us that she acquired powerful values from both sides of her family, such as her mother’s deep valuing of family connection and interaction, and her father’s insistence that even very small children can do chores and contribute to the operation of the household. However, she also observed her parents having to work through ways in which their cultural values differed from one another when it came to parenting.
Both Lisa and her mother described Abdel’s Palestinian family as embracing a patriarchal culture that expected men and women to play very traditional gender roles, and offered much greater autonomy to boys than girls. Lisa described her father expecting her older brother to help him outside with chores, such as mowing the grass, whereas she was expected to contribute to cooking and cleaning inside the house.
Lisa’s mother, Connie, added that her husband also had different expectations for his children when it came to romantic relationships. According to Connie, their son received the message, “Go ahead, you know you’re a boy, you can do whatever you want, but Lisa, you’re not going to date. You can go in a group with friends, but you’re not going on a date.” Lisa added that when she did go out with friends, her father “did not want me wearing a tank top or you know shorts that were too short. It was always a little bit of a fight because he just wanted [me] to be like more conservative-looking.”
According to Connie, these inequitable expectations created a lot of contention with her husband. However, she explained that she approached these disagreements from the perspective that “you can’t break family bonds because of [differences in] culture” and that such cultural beliefs “are ingrained, so you have to accept that and just find ways to work around that if you want to make it work.”
Ultimately, the family found their way to a middle ground where Lisa engaged in many of the dating behaviors typical of American teenagers, but she and her mother honored her father’s preference to remain uninformed of the details. “Sometimes, ignorance is bliss,” said Connie.
Whether or not this compromise would work perfectly for other families, what Lisa took away from watching her parents work through these differences in their cultural values was that people can love and respect each other while still holding divergent beliefs, and that those divergent beliefs can be recognized, acknowledged, and negotiated.
From growing up in a multiethnic family, Connie Zeitawi observed of both her children: “I think they’re way more open-minded. They have a better sense of acceptance of people who are not exactly like themselves—both religion [and] culture.” As Lisa looked ahead to her own upcoming marriage to a Greek American, she believed her multiethnic family also offered her a useful blueprint for contending with differences in values that may arise in the union of their two cultures.
Synthesizing competing perspectives
Other young adults participating in our study described ways in which the values introduced by the different sides of their families offered useful guidance and insights, even when those values seemed to be in conflict with one another.
Twenty-one year old Kimiko was raised in the United States by her Chinese mother and white American father. She described her mother’s actions as driven by a “collectivist idealism” while her father was guided by an ethic of individualism.
When the COVID-19 pandemic began leading to supply shortages, for example, her father’s instinct was to purchase as much toilet paper as he possibly could, even if it meant circumventing a store’s per-person limits. In contrast, her mother didn’t want the family to purchase any more than they absolutely needed “for the benefit of civilization.” Kimiko described herself as possessing both of these impulses because “it’s like, I know that I could get away with a lot of things, and, often, like I’m very conscious of the fact that, like, I don’t want to do that.”
Kimiko generally regarded her mother’s collectivist orientation as a healthier one for her to take on than her father’s more individualistic philosophy; however, she also noted there were times when she benefitted from adopting her father’s impulse to go after something she personally wanted rather than deferring to others. Kimiko acknowledged other benefits to growing up in a family that introduced both of these value systems. “I’m one of those people who, when I hear a story or something like that, I always wonder what the other sides are,” she told us. “I always try to think about where other people come from.”
Twenty-year-old Sophie also described learning from the distinctive value systems of her African American mother and Italian American father.
Sophie’s mother, Camille, pushed her daughter to pursue academic excellence because she felt keenly aware of the educational opportunities denied to their relatives and ancestors. Sophie’s father, Jerry, took a very different view of elite education. He had grown up in a working-class Italian American family that valued education but was highly distrustful of elitism. He was proud of the multiple degrees he had earned at relatively little cost from public colleges and universities, and the successful career he had been able to build upon a modest foundation. When his wife urged their daughter to apply to the most elite universities in the country, he expressed concern about his daughter turning into an entitled young adult who looked down on people with less prestigious institutions on their resumes.
Ultimately, Sophie turned down the elite private university that admitted her in favor of one of the top public universities in the country—a decision that represented a middle ground between her parents’ positions on higher education. In reflecting on this decision, Sophie observed of the tonier institution: “I just decided it wasn’t a good fit. Especially in high school, I was always striving for that sort of level, and then when I achieved it, when I got in, I realized that I didn’t actually want to do that.” Similar to Kimiko, Sophie described herself as benefiting from synthesizing the distinct sets of cultural values that her parents had introduced to her.
While these insights might seem most valuable to parents in multiethnic and multi-faith families, we believe educators can learn from them, as well. Over the past 25 years, teachers have put more emphasis on culturally relevant and sustaining educational practices that treat young people’s cultural knowledge and ways of being as assets to be valued and nurtured in school. For educators working with increasingly diverse student bodies, the efforts of multiethnic and multi-faith families can offer valuable insights about how to draw upon and integrate the multiple cultural systems their students bring with them into their classrooms.
In an increasingly diverse world, parents and educators alike will benefit from asking: What opportunities are there for us to acknowledge and share our different value systems with our children rather than trying to conceal or paper over these differences? In what ways can we show our children how those differences can be enriching and enlivening? These are questions we are only just starting to answer—and that makes this an exciting time to ask them.
