What Multicultural Families Can Teach Kids About Character

What Multicultural Families Can Teach Kids About Character

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.

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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.

The Case for Discussing Spirituality in Schools

The Case for Discussing Spirituality in Schools

By VICKI ZAKRZEWSKI | Greater Good Magazine

Research suggests that spirituality may be a natural developmental process—so what does this mean for secular schools?

“I believe in reincarnation because it just makes sense!” exclaimed 10-year-old Jesse in the middle of a lesson that was on anything but reincarnation.

This wasn’t the first time one of my students had brought up a topic related to spirituality or religion. In fact, I found during my years of teaching that most of my students were both curious about and eager to discuss these subjects—a bit of a conundrum when schools generally consider these to be taboo subjects.

Interestingly, however, scientists are beginning to find that just like cognitive, physical, and emotional development, spirituality may also be a universal developmental process—which, given that teaching is informed by child development, raises the question: Can spirituality play a role in secular education?

What is spirituality?
Before I go any further, though, I want to fully acknowledge how divisive and tricky the topic of spirituality in education can be for very legitimate reasons. That is why I am approaching the subject through a scientific lens.

© princigalli

To start, there is no definitive agreement among researchers on the separation between spirituality and religiosity. In general, however, spirituality is viewed as beliefs, practices, and experiences that shape and create a way of knowing and living that may or may not be informed by religious ritual, tradition, and doctrine. A person often inherits religion, but makes the conscious choice to practice spirituality by seeking answers about the self, universe, and meaning of life.

While numerous scientists propose that spirituality is a developmental process, they disagree on how the process occurs. Some suggest we are born with spiritual capacity that is cultivated (or not) through interaction with parents, teachers, and/or our culture. Others think spiritual development occurs in stages as we integrate our beliefs with our feelings and actions.

To determine if there is a universal developmental process of spirituality, the Search Institute—led at the time by Peter Benson, an expert in positive youth development—collaborated with scientists from around the world to study the spiritual and religious beliefs and practices of young people. The Search Institute took their definition of spirituality from a paper published in 2003 by the journal Applied Developmental Science:

Spiritual development is the process of growing the intrinsic human capacity for self-transcendence, in which the self is embedded in something greater than itself, including the sacred. It is the developmental “engine” that propels the search for connectedness, meaning, purpose, and contribution. It is shaped both within and outside of religious traditions, beliefs, and practices.

Almost 7,000 persons aged 12-25 from Australia, Cameroon, Canada, India, Thailand, Ukraine, the U.K., and the U.S. took part in the study that included surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews. The sample represented a broad range of educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, and every major religion as well as Paganism, Sikhism, Native or Traditional Spirituality, atheism, agnosticism, other religions, and those who did not identify as religious.

What they found strongly suggests that a spiritual development process exists that transcends the boundaries of culture and religion and that does not necessarily require engagement in religious practices.

For example, approximately 64 percent of the sample indicated that they were actively pursuing spiritual development without strong adherence to a religious path—with more than half stating that they had grown in their spiritual identity in the last two years. Their main means for spiritual growth included creating positive relationships through prosocial (kind, helpful) beliefs and actions, discovering meaning in life, practicing mindfulness, and aligning values with actions.

Findings also suggested that the majority of young people would welcome the opportunity to explore the topic of spirituality in a safe, caring, and non-judgmental setting.

What does this mean for teaching?
Many consider the sole purpose of schools to be cognitive development. Yet, any effective teacher will tell you that every student is a “whole package” of thoughts, emotions, beliefs, family, culture, economics, etc., (and now, potentially, spirituality)—all of which directly influence a student’s learning. For example, science has clearly determined that a child’s social and emotional skills impact academic success.

So here comes the tricky question: If spirituality is indeed a universal developmental process, how do teachers account for this process in their classroom where separation of church and state is paramount? Interestingly, many teachers are probably already doing it—without even realizing it.

If we use the definition of spiritual development given above, then teachers who…

  • provide experiences of awe for their students through art, music, nature, or studying great people are helping their students connect to something larger than themselves.
  • teach prosocial skills such as gratitudecompassionempathymindfulness, and altruism are helping their students develop positive relationships.
  • relate the content of their classes to students’ lives and who take the time to get to know and cultivate their students’ interests and passions are helping their students develop meaning and purpose.
  • incorporate service learning into their curriculum are providing opportunities for students to make a worthwhile contribution to society and grow their empathy and compassion for others.

How to talk about spirituality with students
But what about the finding that says young people are deeply interested in discussing spirituality? When students do bring these topics up, understanding that spirituality may be developmental can help teachers respond in ways that are both respectful and affirming to students’ growth process.

© marekuliasz

For example, a simple response to Jesse’s newfound belief could include first asking him how he came to that conclusion and then validating his thinking about the larger questions of life as a positive and natural thing many people do.

A more formal example is the Passageworks program developed by the late Rachael Kessler. After years of listening to students’ stories and questions, Kessler wrote in her book The Soul of Education that “certain experiences—quite apart from religious belief or affiliation—had a powerful effect in nourishing the spiritual development of young people.”

These experiences came through students’ needs for connection, silence, meaning, joy, transcendence (sometimes mystical, but also through extraordinary arts, athletics, academics, or relationships), and initiation into the next stage of life. Passageworks helps teachers establish a classroom environment in which students feel safe to explore these needs.

Spirituality in education is a potentially contentious area, and yet recent scientific findings on spiritual development encourage us, at the very minimum, to ask the question: Do we need to pay attention to this? Perhaps it is apropos of the topic that there are no definitive answers—only big questions.

How to Practice Gratitude When You’re Not Feeling Thankful

How to Practice Gratitude When You’re Not Feeling Thankful

One way to feel more thankful for things is to imagine life without them. Our guest tries a practice for seeing the bright side, even when you feel down.

One way to feel more thankful for things is to imagine life without them. Our guest tries a practice for seeing the bright side, even when you feel down.

Episode summary:

We know that gratitude is good for us. But what can we do when we’re struggling to actually feel thankful? Our guest this week is author and podcast producer Stephanie Foo. Foo built a network of close friends around her in California, where she grew up. As a survivor of child abuse and Complex PTSD, her friends in California became her chosen family. And since she’s moved to New York City, she finds herself often pining for the Golden State and the people she loves there. This week, Foo tries a practice in mental subtraction, which gratitude researcher Ernst Bohlmeijer describes as an antidote to taking things for granted. Imagining her life if she didn’t live in New York helps Foo tap into gratitude even in the depths of winter – when she misses California the most. She even discovers her particular skill in getting the benefits of this practice by leaning into one of her PTSD symptoms. Later in the show, Ernst Bohlmeijer breaks down how keeping a gratitude practice can alter the emotions you’re likely to experience in a given day, and maybe even change you as a person.

Practice:
Find the full Mental Subtraction of Positive Events practice at our Greater Good in Action website: https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/mental_subtraction_positive_events

  1. Take a moment to think about a positive event in your life. It could be a career or educational achievement or a special trip you took.
  2. Imagine yourself back in the time of this event. Think about the circumstances that made it possible. Ponder on the ways in which this event may never have happened and write them down. For example, if you hadn’t learned about a certain job opening at the right moment.
  3. Imagine what your life would be like now if you had not experienced this positive event and all the fruits that came from it.
  4. Remind yourself that this positive event did happen and reflect upon the benefits it has brought you. Allow yourself to feel grateful that things happened as they did.

Today’s guests:

Stephanie Foo is a radio producer and author of the book What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma.

Learn more about Stephanie and her book: https://www.stephaniefoo.me/

Follow Stephanie on Twitter: https://twitter.com/imontheradio

Follow Stephanie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foofoofoo/

Follow Stephanie on Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/yx6pwdnf

Ernst Bohlmeijer is a psychology professor who studies gratitude at the University of Twente in The Netherlands.

Learn more about Ernst and his work: https://tinyurl.com/2p92p6vn

Resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

More Resources for Mental Subtraction of Positive Events:
Tell us your thoughts about this episode. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

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Transcript:

Stephanie Foo I think February’s the worst month in New York because you’ve been cold for like five months. I get really, um, bad seasonal affective disorder too. It’s just being inside and there’s no leaves on the trees and everything is gray. It’s just gray. Everything’s gray.

I’ve lived here since 2014, and before that, I lived in California my whole life. In my head I have, like, the bright red of the redwoods, and the bright green, and leaves, and sun, and flowers, and my friends, and all of us going out to eat.

I think that’s why one of the reasons why I miss California so much is ‘cause my closest friends all live in California. These are friends that I’ve had most of my life or friends that I’ve at least had for like, you know, 15 years. It’s hard to miss that ease of when you’re just around someone and you don’t have to put on airs, and you don’t have to pretend, and it’s just simple. When you don’t have family, which I don’t, it’s your friends become family, and you build these really sort of lifelong, deep, profound relationships with friends. It feels like this deep longing ache where, as I put on, like, another layer of socks, I’m like, “Oh my god. How do I survive this?”

Dacher Keltner I’m Dacher Keltner, Welcome to The Science of Happiness.Today we’re talking about feeling more grateful for the things in your life by imagining your life without them. Our guest today, Stephanie Foo, lives in New York City, but she often finds herself pining for her home state of California. She joins us today after trying a practice of mental subtraction, where she tried to cultivate more gratitude for her life on the east coast. Later in the show, we’ll hear about how gratitude can boost your overall well-being, even when you’re feeling down.

Ernst Bohlmeijer You reset yourself morally and in a sense, you get a fresh perspective on life.

Dacher Keltner More, after this break.

***

Dacher Keltner Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltnter. We’re talking about how to find gratitude for people and things in your life by imagining life without them. Our guest today, Stephanie Foo, is a journalist and author of What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma.

Stephanie built a rich network of friends and chosen family around her in California, where she grew up. Nine years ago, she moved to New York. And she still yearns for home.

But what would life be like if she didn’t live in New York? That’s what Stephanie asked herself for our show. She tried a practice in mental subtraction – where you imagine your life without something that you really treasure, in order to cultivate more gratitude for it. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us on The Science of Happiness.

Stephanie Foo Yeah, Thanks for having me.

Dacher Keltner I want to congratulate you on your incredible book, “What My Bones Know,” And we learn from this science that if we put those complex experiences into narratives. If we share them with people in the right context, in a safe space, we gain insight and it’s beneficial. And I’m curious about your thinking about the role of things like writing and gratitude as we face the different traumas of life.

Stephanie Foo Yeah, so I was diagnosed with complex PTSD in 2017. So with, um, classic PTSD, you can get that from a single traumatic event, like a brutal car crash or something. Complex PTSD is when you experience the trauma over and over and over for many, many years. Um, so. Common causes for complex PTSD might be child abuse. I survived pretty extreme child abuse and neglect or living through a war zone or an abusive relationship. And so I told myself that if I was able to heal from complex PTSD, I would write about that journey of healing and how I was able to do it.

I wrote about keeping a gratitude journal, in order to sort of be more cognizant and aware of good things and happening in my life, but also particularly complex PTSD can often sort of damage the ability to trust people and make you feel like you’re constantly unloved or that the people around you don’t wanna be around you. There was a lot of other stuff happening. I was definitely going to therapy and trying EMDR and doing hallucinogenics. Like I don’t think anyone is gonna heal from complex ptsd, from gratitude journaling.

But it, I think it was a tool in the toolbox that was helpful in terms of complex PTSD is a relational wound because if you have experienced trauma so many times over the course of years, probably it’s either because you’re tremendously unlucky or people who were supposed to love and care for you, like, people let you down. And that gratitude journal really focused me or allowed me to focus on even small things like text messages that friends would send every day to check up on me and really let the love that I was receiving sink in.

Dacher Keltner So for our show you chose a practice where you imagined what your life would be like without something. What’d you do?

Stephanie Foo I was in California. I was there visiting friends. And I was, like, jet-lagged still. And everyone was still asleep. And I was, like, on a lawn in the dew in the morning. So I was like, “Yeah, what if this was just my life?”

And I decided to do this mental subtraction of events, which is, like, envisioning what it would be like if I didn’t have New York. I just envisioned, what if I moved back and I didn’t have any of the things that I have in New York.

But then, you know, I thought about my husband and how much he loves me and how much he cares for me and how lucky I am to have somebody who prioritizes my happiness so muchEven though my friends are wonderful and I’m grateful for them forever, you know, we have our separate lives and they’re not, like, making me breakfast every morning. And his family here, we’re all so close. We have these almost, like, weekly family meetups where it’s, like, everyone eating cake and talking and joking with each other and, just like, his siblings all have keys to our house and they’re constantly just coming in and out.

I belong to this very tight-knit family unit. I feel like, you know, if I ever needed anything, I could ask for it. If I needed help moving or if I needed a ride from the airport, I wouldn’t need to feel bad at all just asking for it. There’s something so safe to that.

Dacher Keltner What did you subtract?

Stephanie Foo I was, like, subtracting. I was like, “What if I didn’t have Joey, my husband?” You know, “What if I didn’t have his family? What if I didn’t have, like, the lovely apartment that I love? What if my life was just this lawn in these palm trees and this perpetual warmth and sun?”

And I was like, “Well, yeah. I mean, the honeysuckle is sweeter. The jasmine is more fragrant. The succulents are better. The redwoods are great. The Vietnamese food is incredible, but I think my life would be better for walks, but it would be worse in so many ways. In just terms of, like, the day-to-day small acts of love that I get here in New York. And so I was like, “Yeah, alright. Right. All right. All right. Alright. Alright…

Dacher Keltner “I give up!”

Stephanie Foo …New York is pretty good, I guess. It’s alright.”

Dacher Keltner Indeed. Did anything surprise you about the experience?

Stephanie Foo I think it surprised me how much my ideas changed from being very, very grumpy about fall coming in New York, to being, like, “Okay, well there’s all this like community warmth that I can be excited for.” And that it did change my mood quite a bit.

Dacher Keltner One of the things I love about these practices is not only the immediate effects but they kind of stick with you. And I’m wondering if the practice that you did for us, and thank you, is there anything you’ll take with it in your continuing life in New York City?

Stephanie Foo I feel like this is a lesson actually that I have learned a few times. Like, your life is kind of really good in New York. And then I forget it, and then I have to remember it again. So iit has stuck with me in, you know, the several weeks since I’ve done it. I don’t know. If I’ve learned anything in this life it’s, I don’t think you can count on a lesson sticking forever, but it’s good to know that this is, a, another tool in the toolbox, as I said.

Dacher Keltner Yeah we’ve got lots of tools. I’m curious, Stephanie, about your sort of take on the gratitude approach more generally. Just coming out of the deep experiences of your life and, writing “What My Bones Know,” you know, there’s a study in Japan that compared just simple gratitude, like, appreciate that lawn in California versus the mental subtraction exercise you described, and it actually is stronger to do this mental subtraction exercise to imagine losing things. What, What’s your take on gratitude?

Stephanie Foo I think you see the stakes. You see the stakes of what you could lose

Dacher Keltner Hmm.

Stephanie Foo I think it’s really easy to take for granted things when every day you’re just like, “Yeah, I love my husband. Yeah,I love my friends. Yeah, I love my cat.” Whatever. Like, yeah, every day you’re like, “Yep, you’re a good cat.” But when you imagine life without the cat, it’s quite horrific. And I think it goes back maybe to that science that you were talking about of survival of looking out for threats everywhere you go. That is the body’s natural reaction I think, and particularly with people who have PTSD, it’s very much our reaction constantly scanning for threats. And so it’s weird. Like, I actually was able to lean into that scanning for threats, right? And be like, what is the worst case scenario if I was able, if I lost this right? And immediately then your body goes like, “Wait, no, that’s good stuff. You don’t wanna lose that.” And weirdly, yeah, it’s kind of like a strange hack to use that trauma brain to actually feel grateful.

Dacher Keltner Well, Stephanie Foo thank you so much for being on our show and thank you for your new book, “What My Bones Know.” And thank you for your work. It’s a privilege to talk with you today.

Stephanie Foo Thank you for having me

Dacher Keltner The practice Stephanie Foo tried for our show has been shown in the lab to help us feel more gratitude. Later in the show, we’ll hear about how gratitude can boost your overall well being, even when you’re feeling down.

Ernst Bohlmeijer Emotions are very ‘fluctuous.’ So they come and they go, and you have little control. But if you’re in a positive mood, in a grateful mood, you tend to notice positive events more so, you will experience more positive emotions during the day.

Dacher Keltner Welcome back to The Science of Happiness, I’m Dacher Keltner. We’ve been talking about how imagining your life without something or someone you love can make you feel more grateful for them. Gratitude can benefit our relationships and our kindness towards others and the state of our bodies and overall well-being

Our producer Haley Gray reports that gratitude can also lift our spirits when we’re feeling down.

Haley Gray There’s a lot of research on why gratitude is good for us: it helps us focus more on the good in life – and really savor those things instead of ruminating on the bad. You feel more content, more joyful. And it’s good for your body. Studies suggest gratitude helps to boost your immune system and lower your risk of heart disease.

Ernst Bohlmeijer There are some findings that show that it also improves quality of sleep. And gratitude is of course related to positivity, having a positive mood.

Haley GrayThat’s Ernst Bolmeijer, a psychology professor who studies gratitude at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. He wanted to know if you’d get even more out of gratitude if you tried practicing it in different ways for several weeks. So he and his team did an experiment.

Ernst BohlmeijerWe ask people, “Well, do you need a boost for your happiness? Well, you can try out these positive psychology interventions for free.”

Haley Gray He recruited 217 Dutch adults who reported they were just doing okay – but not exactly thriving. First, he had everyone fill out questionnaires that measured things like their mood, how distressed they felt, and how grateful they’d been feeling recently.

Ernst Bohlmeijer “How grateful are you about your life? How grateful are you to other persons, for what they have done to you?”

Haley Gray: He assigned some of them to do a short gratitude practice five days a week, for six weeks. And each week they’d get new instructions.

Ernst Bohlmeijer And the first exercise would be the more classic gratitude exercise, that is journaling.

Haley Gray They had to write three good things that happened that day.

Ernst Bohlmeijer Yeah, to take another perspective. And that’s called mental subtracting.

Haley Gray That’s the practice Stephanie Foo tried, our guest from New York City who was missing California.

Ernst Bohlmeijer And that’s a very powerful exercise to really, promote, a sense of appreciation. It’s an antidote for taking things for granted.

Haley Gray One week, everyone had to express gratitude to another person.

Ernst Bohlmeijer Writes him or her a letter.

Haley Gray Another week they had to think back over their whole lives, and write about the things they’re most grateful for.

Ernst Bohlmeijer And the last one is to really try to create a grateful mood during the day, and that’s one of the most exciting exercises. You can do that in the morning when you wake up, take five minutes and think, “Okay, how do I want to live my day to day? Do I want to live in a hurry and or can I really try to live with a sense of appreciation?” And you create, during the day, a lingering grateful mood.

Haley Gray Bolmeijer measured their moods again after the six weeks, and one more time after the six months.

Ernst Bohlmeijer We asked people, “How grateful did you feel in the past 24 hours?” And we find very strong effects, especially on this gratitude as mood.

Haley Gray They were also better at noticing the simple pleasures in life, and overall, had a greater sense of abundance – like they had everything they needed.

Ernst Bohlmeijer If you’re, in a positive mood, in a grateful mood, you tend to notice positive events. You will experience more positive emotions during the day. So it seemed to change people in a sustained way. So you could say they have become a little bit different kind of person, a new person

Dacher Keltner Thanks, Haley. I’m Dacher Keltner, thanks for joining us on The Science of Happiness. If you’d like to try using mental subtraction practice, you can find instructions in our show notes. Share your thoughts by emailing us at happiness pod-AT-Berkeley dot E-D-U, or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

 

Our Executive Producer of Audio is Shuka Kalantari. Our producer is Haley Gray. Sound designer Jennie Cataldo of Accompany Studios. And our associate producer Zhe Wu. Our editor in chief is Jason Marsh. The Science of Happiness is a co-production of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and PRX.

Self-Compassion Could Help You Be More Tolerant of Others

Self-Compassion Could Help You Be More Tolerant of Others

By ELIZABETH SVOBODA | Greater Good Magazine

A new study finds that when you’re warm and accepting of yourself, those feelings may extend to other people, too.

Launched into public awareness by the psychologist Kristin Neff, the practice of self-compassion has emerged as a proven way to boost well-being and resilience amid life’s challenges. “With self-compassion,” Neff writes, “we give ourselves the same kindness and care we’d give to a good friend.”

new Rutgers University study suggests that self-compassion has another, counterintuitive benefit: It helps you to become more accepting of other people who are not like you. Being kind to yourself, the study reports, can broaden your tolerance of others—so long as your self-compassion is rooted in “common humanity,” a belief that life’s joys and struggles are part of the shared human condition.

“People who are viewing themselves and their failures and their suffering as normal parts of human experience are more likely to have compassion for others,” says H. Annie Vu, a psychology graduate student at Rutgers and lead author of the study. “That is linked with less prejudice.” She aims to develop training programs that foster people’s sense of common humanity, which she hopes will deepen their compassion for themselves and others—and, as a result, promote social acceptance.

Self-kindness that reflects outward

Self-compassion, the quality Vu explored in her study, is distinct from self-esteem. Self-esteem involves how you answer the question “How much do I like myself?,” and it often crumbles when others criticize you. But self-compassion is a form of self-regard that persists no matter what others are saying. It means accepting yourself even when you fumble or fail.

As Neff defines it, self-compassion has three major components: mindfulness, awareness of your own feelings and thoughts; self-kindness, a commitment to caring for yourself in tough times; and common humanity, a sense that everyone experiences highs and lows in life just like you.

Vu’s study looked at how different components of self-compassion related to people’s attitudes toward others. The study’s 163 student participants took Neff’s 26-item survey to assess their self-compassion, including statements like, “When I’m down, I remind myself that there are lots of other people in the world feeling like I am.” The students also took a self-esteem survey and a test that evaluated their feelings about “outgroups” often marginalized by society, such as unhoused people or members of minority groups.

The analysis by Vu’s team found that people’s self-esteem did not meaningfully predict how they felt about outgroup members. Self-compassion, on the other hand, did—but it was people with greater feelings of common humanity, not self-kindness or mindfulness, who were more accepting of others not like them.

While self-kindness and mindfulness involve more of a focus on yourself and your emotions, common humanity “involves perception of others, and that connectedness between self and others,” Vu says. “That explains why it’s the only self-compassion component that is associated with low prejudice.”

Common humanity, in other words, helps you assess your own experiences against the failures and triumphs shared by everyone else on the planet. When you do that kind of comparison, it may be harder to look down on those different from you, because you’re focused on what unites you rather than what sets you apart. A sense of common humanity may also make your self-compassion more durable, because when you understand how your struggles reflect the shared human experience, it’s less tempting to blame yourself for them.

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2018 study by Italian researchers had also found that self-compassionate people were more accepting of others, but Vu’s study goes further, showing that this connection holds up independent of people’s self-esteem. (Previous research has shown that people with high “me first” self-esteem are sometimes less accepting of people different from them.)

Vu’s finding also builds on reports from political scientist Kristen Renwick Monroe, who found that what set Holocaust rescuers apart from peers was their strong sense of common humanity. Even if (as was often the case) rescuers came from a different background or culture than the people they were helping, they recognized just how similar they were to those being persecuted, which motivated them to act.

Underscoring what connects us

Vu’s study is among the first to combine what have long been two distinct branches of research: studies on how people feel about themselves, and studies on how they perceive members of other groups. Through further study of how inner states affect outer attitudes, Vu and her Rutgers colleagues hope to create training programs that build up people’s sense of common humanity—and thereby broaden their acceptance of others.

Such programs could reinforce existing efforts to protect marginalized people’s rights and dignity, notes Rutgers psychologist Luis Rivera, Vu’s graduate advisor and a coauthor of the study.

“We’ve already seen historically how changing structures, laws, policies, et cetera, can lead to changes in prejudices. But what Annie’s work also suggests is that you can turn back to the individual,” Rivera says. “That could be another opportunity, complementing structural-level interventions with individual-level interventions.”

Developing and testing these educational programs could take years, Vu says. Yet people can start now to shift their focus toward what links them to all humanity—and observe the real-world benefits for themselves.

“The more you realize you are connected to other humans—and that other humans are humans—the more you’re able to regard them with dignity and respect,” says social worker and empathy educator Kristen Donnelly, founder of the Abbey Research firm. “The work of understanding your humanity is deeply connected to the work of understanding our connectedness. Difference is not a threat, but an opportunity.”

Three Ways to Help Your Students Cultivate Their Inner Lives

Three Ways to Help Your Students Cultivate Their Inner Lives

By VICKI ZAKRZEWSKI | Greater Good Magazine

Providing space for young people to explore their spirituality may benefit everyone.

As a human family, we’re asking ourselves some big questions in the face of social, political, and technological change: How can we honor the innate dignity and worth of ourselves and each other? How can we overcome selfishness and the isolation and conflict it breeds, and connect to each other through kindness, understanding, and generosity? How can we overcome this chaos and create a healthier and more harmonious planet?

While we adults can’t necessarily give our youth the answers, we can provide the space for spiritual inquiry and development, which research suggests may help buffer them against the mental challenges they face. Let’s take a look at what spirituality is, why it can be good for young people, and how to cultivate it in secular education.

What is spirituality?

This is the million-dollar question for many people. Indigenous scholars argue that spirituality within their cultures is “as fundamental to being alive as the air we breathe.” In general, Western scientists differentiate organized religious practices from the inner drive for three things that they suggest constitute spirituality:

  • cultivating a sense of connection and belonging, including to something larger than oneself;
  • developing awareness of the self and the world; and
  • living a meaningful life.

So are these three things innate to who we are? A number of researchers from a variety of disciplines—such as genetics, psychology, biology, and cognitive science—suggest that the answer is yes.

For example, spirituality may be found in our genes. A study of several thousand twins showed that 29% of spirituality (in this case, a sense of personal devotion) is genetic. While this is an exciting finding, some researchers argue that twin studies are not generalizable to everyone. For that, we need to look to evolutionary psychology, which, for several decades, has been examining our innate capacity for positive emotions to form deep connections—an aspect of spirituality.

Hardwired emotions such as gratitudecompassion, and awe—which some researchers label as spiritual—make us feel more connected to others, and awe goes one step further by helping us feel a sense of self-transcendence, or connection to something larger than ourselves. Evolutionary scientists argue that these feelings of connection encourage generosity and helpfulness, which may have helped our ancestors to survive and reproduce.

In addition to our emotions and our genes, spirituality may also be found in the ways we see and think about the world. Cognitive psychologists have conducted experiments that demonstrate our natural capacity for spirituality starting from infancy as we develop our awareness of ourselves, others, and “something beyond the immediate everyday of life.”

For instance, scientists have found that children and adults, atheists and religious believers, and even well-trained scientists at Ivy League institutions look for design and purpose in the world—in other words, the “meaning and why” of things—even though how we do so may differ by culture. Westerners often attribute the design and purpose of nature-based objects to a single source—that is, belief in God/gods or conscious life within the natural world. Some Indigenous cultures look at these same objects through a relational lens; for example, birds have homes in trees that help protect the trees from harmful insects and that help to disperse the seeds for additional trees.

Some scientists take this research one step further by asking why, regardless of culture, we look for the “why,” and they have discovered that it may be because of our deep-seated need for meaning in the face of our inevitable mortality.

These findings make a strong case that spirituality is part of the fiber of our being. We are wired to question who we are, our place in the world, and the meaning of it all. We are also wired to connect deeply with others and with something that is greater than our little selves. So what does this mean for our youth?

Young people are interested in spirituality

In the early 2000s, researchers reached out to thousands of young people ages 12–25 from all over the world, wanting to know what they thought about spirituality and how it manifests in their lives, and whether spirituality was something they were interested in cultivating. The participants came from many different religious and non-religious backgrounds, such as Islam, Hindu, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and others.

Using surveys and focus groups, the researchers discovered that most of the young people felt that life has a spiritual aspect that is “a part of who you are.” As one youth from South America described, “I believe that every person has some spirituality within themselves because they believe in something, whatever it is they believe in.”

Most saw themselves as spiritual, and also believed in the transcendent. In addition, they tended to separate spirituality from religion. “Spirituality is experienced in your own being,” said one youth from Africa. “Most of religion is forced. Being spiritual means standing on a mountain with the wind blowing through your hair, and the feeling of being free.”

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They also viewed spiritual development as a choice. A young person from South Africa stated that if a person isn’t spiritual, they won’t struggle with things and ask why things happen to us. “If you are not spiritual,” they explained, “you will never learn anything . . . [this] goes together with wisdom . . . you have to reflect on what’s happening to you.”

Perhaps most importantly, the youth wanted opportunities to talk about spirituality—but they wanted to do so in a safe place, without the fear of being judged. Another researcher and head of school, Kai Bynum, found something similar when working with teen boys. In his study, he described how when one of the boys used the word “spiritual” to describe his relationship to other people and to nature, other boys quickly volunteered to share their thoughts about spirituality.

“Their eyes and ideas were alive with promise and connection because,” Bynum writes, “they were, somehow, given the freedom to seek themselves within an idea that helped them situate their lives in a much broader context of existence.”

The benefits of spirituality in youth

Perhaps the most compelling reason for providing space for the spiritual development of our young people is how they benefit from it.

In the same study with the youth from all over the world, the researchers discovered that young people with high levels of spiritual development fared better physically and mentally, were more civically engaged, had greater academic success, and were overall more satisfied with life. They also took care of the environment, looked for peaceful ways to resolve conflict, volunteered more, and were more engaged in school.

Other cross-cultural studies have had similar findings. In Portugal, a study of 10th-grade students found that the more hopeful and spiritual they were, the greater their life satisfaction up to one year later. In Zambia, spirituality also predicted children’s life satisfaction. Among sixth-grade Black American youth living in an urban setting, having a spiritual orientation to life increased their focus on cooperation, empathy, and justice. And in a study with Latino teens in a poor, urban neighborhood, high levels of spirituality protected them from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from exposure to violence.

Interestingly, scientists have also found that more spiritual adolescents may also be more depressed. They surmise that because adolescence is a time of searching for identity, for meaning, for the “why” of life, not having concrete answers may also leave some youth with a sense of uncertainty that is challenging to navigate.

However, researchers suggest that having a strong sense of spirituality in adolescence may provide mental health protection in the long run.

What does this mean for education?

Spiritual development is a conundrum for many educators. They see the need and value of it, but think their hands are tied to do anything, especially in countries that separate church and state. I’ve asked a number of both private and public school educators how they do it. Many of them say, “I don’t call it spirituality, but I know that’s what I’m doing.” They suggest a few steps to take.

1. Help your students develop a relational consciousness. In other words, provide opportunities for them to develop deeper connections with themselves, their peers, and life itself. In a study across 15 countries, over 3,000 students from various religious and non-religious backgrounds were taught a curriculum with topics such as identifying and maintaining meaningful relationships, locating oneself in the context of the larger universe, and understanding unconditional love—namely, relational consciousness. Students who received this training (in comparison to those who didn’t) showed increased altruistic behavior.

Amy Chapman is executive director of the Collaborative for Spirituality in Education. In a 2021 paper, she and her coauthors explain that these kinds of deeper connections are similar to what physicist Martin Buber meant when he described an “I-Thou” relationship. “Each person recognizes and supports each person’s wholeness. It affirms the inherent value of the self.”

To illustrate this, the study includes a school in which the staff intentionally recognize the innate goodness in every student. Teachers describe a “look” that is affirming and joyful to students. As one educator explained, “That deeper way of beholding the student, I feel like they’re seen into existence.”

2. Bring the bigger questions of life into the classroom. When the purpose of education is reduced to college and career readiness, as is often the case in the U.S., the human experience is reduced to grades and money. Yes, we need to have the skills to support ourselves, but life is about so much more than that. Students already know this—perhaps more so than the adults who are just trying to survive day-to-day living.

This is why they ask the big questions. Who am I? What is my purpose? Does life have meaning? What is happiness? What is real love? And so on…and these big questions can be asked in any subject, even math. What is infinity? Is our universe truly just chaos and chance, or is there a mathematical beauty to it all? The Greater Good in Education practice Finishing Math Word Problems based on the work of Jamal Matthews has students “finish” math problems by making connections between solutions to problems to thinking about the larger systemic implications of the solution.

  • Finishing Math Word Problems

    Finishing Math Word Problems

    Students will “finish” math problems by making connections between solutions to problems and everyday life, with the goal of seeing themselves represented in the math.

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And for teachers who are still skeptical, neuroscientist Mary-Helen Immordino-Yang and her coauthors argue that abstract systemic-thinking that is emotionally meaningful to students actually helps them build their brains. This kind of transcendent thinking engages a part of the brain called the default mode network (DMN), or the posteromedial cortices, that involves activities such as thinking about values-based goals, constructing a sense of self, admiring others for their virtuous behavior, and “processing sacred values.” Scientists propose that when students link concrete goals, like getting into veterinarian school, to more transcendent ones, like becoming a vet to make the world safer for animals, the process may strengthen the connection between the reward system of the brain and the abstract thinking system.

3. Encourage a self-transcendent purpose for learning. Think back to the academic topics that were just sheer drudgery to learn. You didn’t know why you had to learn this or how it could possibly be relevant to any aspect of your current or future life. You just knew you had to get through it…with a lot of pain. Apologies to all math teachers, this was geometrical proofs for me.

Imagine, though, if before introducing a topic, your teacher asked you about what was important to you, and how you thought you could best make a difference in the world. In other words, helped you think of a self-transcendent purpose for learning. All of a sudden those geometrical proofs would become a little less painful.

This is exactly what researcher David Yeager did. He tested the impact of a self-transcendent purpose for learning—one that affects people or the world beyond the self—versus a self-oriented purpose for learning, such as an interesting or enjoyable career. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he found that students who linked their learning with a purpose that was greater than themselves spent more time on tedious academic tasks, which led to increased academic success. They also “literally saw learning tasks differently” by linking them directly to their personally meaningful academic goals.

The Greater Good in Education practice Making Science Meaningful very simply asks students to write a short reflection on how their science learning is useful and relevant to their lives. This research-based practice, which can increase both science grades and interest in science, can easily be adapted to any subject.

  • Making Science Meaningful

    Making Science Meaningful

    To cultivate interest and motivation in science class, students write a short reflection on how their science learning is useful and relevant to their lives.

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I recently came across one of the most hopeful news items that I’ve seen in a long time. The Berkeleyan reported that humanities majors are on the rise at UC Berkeley, up 43% from five years ago, and 73% from 10 years ago. And first-year humanities majors are up a whopping 121% from last year.

Why? One student who switched from political science to philosophy felt that the humanities could help him understand why people had such apathy toward reducing the causes of climate change—his own self-transcendent purpose for learning.

“Philosophy asks more fundamental questions that seem to transcend global topics in terms of their everyday importance,” he explained. “The problem largely has to do with how people have such a hard time comprehending the size and magnitude of the environmental crisis that they often turn apathetic toward it, in response.”

In other words, he realized that the answer to climate change will be found within us—a spiritual task, indeed.

Happiness Break: Awe for Others

Happiness Break: Awe for Others

By SERENA L. KROMBACH | Sideways School

The communities we create are one of the most awe-inspiring parts of our lives. Host Dacher Keltner guides us in a meditation on awe and togetherness in this week’s Happiness Break.

How to Do This Practice:

1. Find a comfortable, safe, place where you can close your eyes and relax. Notice your breathing and begin to take deep, intentional breaths.

2. Think about a community you are a part of – work, recreation, spiritual, any group you’re a part of. Cultivate a sense in your mind of being with that community.

3. Reflect for a few minutes on the faces of the people in this community; bring them into your mind’s eye and notice the details of their eyes, smiles, perhaps even their tones of voice or the sounds of their laughter.

4. Think about this remarkable quality of communities: That all of these separate individuals create one hole.

5. Think about how each person contributes to this community to create that whole.

6. Contemplate how everyone in this community is connected, and how they’re mutually influencing each other.

7. Think about what value unites all these people share, what they have in common.

8. Imagine yourself within this network of connected individuals. Cultivate a sense of what connects you with them, think of them as threads of mutual influence. It doesn’t all have to be good; tension is a part of being a community, too.

Today’s Happiness Break host:

Dacher Keltner is the host of the Greater Good Science Center’s award-winning podcast, The Science of Happiness and is a co-instructor of the GGSC’s popular online course of the same name. He’s also the founding director of the Greater Good Science Center and a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

His new book is Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

More resources from The Greater Good Science Center:

Why Do We Feel Awe? https://tinyurl.com/3xms3dm2

How Awe Brings People Together: https://tinyurl.com/2p8m2tyk

Eight Reasons Why Awe Makes Your Life Better: https://tinyurl.com/2p8ccav2

Six Ways to Incorporate Awe Into Your Daily Life: https://tinyurl.com/3emucdez

How Music Bonds Us Together: https://tinyurl.com/329scmf6

Can a Sense of Awe Improve Our Arguments? https://tinyurl.com/pb2eh8c6

We love hearing from you! Tell us about your experience contemplating your communities. Email us at happinesspod@berkeley.edu or use the hashtag #happinesspod.

Find us on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

Help us share Happiness Break! Leave us a 5-star review and copy and share this link: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap

 

We’re living through a mental health crisis. Between the stress, anxiety, depression, loneliness, burnout — we all could use a break to feel better. That’s where Happiness Break comes in. In each biweekly podcast episode, instructors guide you through research-backed practices and meditations that you can do in real-time. These relaxing and uplifting practices have been shown in a lab to help you cultivate calm, compassion, connection, mindfulness, and more — what the latest science says will directly support your well-being. All in less than ten minutes. A little break in your day.

Transcript:

Dacher Keltner I’m Dacher Keltner. Welcome to Happiness Break, a series where we take a short break in your day to try a practice that brings greater calm and resilience and kindness. Today we’re gonna do a practice called the awe of community, that has of course, many benefits, not only from cultivating awe, which can benefit your immune system, your reasoning, your sense of social relationships, but also it really brings in a focus, our sense of being supported and connected, which of course adds 10 years to your life expectancy, shifts your nervous system and brings about all manner of happiness benefits.

It calms the threat regions of the brain. It actually can make us a little bit more altruistic and more civil in our daily interactions.

Let’s now do the practice, The Awe of Community. Find a nice, comfortable, safe place where you can sit or stand in, in a relaxed position with a nice posture. Close your eyes, rest your hands somewhere at ease, maybe on your knees. Just take a nice deep breath in.

And breathing out, following the air through your nose and your throat. Another nice deep breath in expanding your rib cage and your chest. And breathing out.

On this next breath in, just feel relaxation. Settle in, in your face, in your shoulders, in your hands. And that relaxation, as you breathe out. Move to your legs, your feet.

On this breath in, I would like you to think about a community you are part of, a small work community, a recreational community, a spiritual community, a yoga group, whatever it is, some group of people you’re a part of. Get a sense in your mind of being with that community—at work, out at play, in a class.

Now, I’d like you to reflect for a minute or two just about the faces of the different people in this community. Their eyes, their smiles. Maybe you’ll hear their tone of voice, their laughs. We’re bringing into awareness just the images of these people who are part of your community.

Now I want you to just think about this remarkable quality of communities that these separate individuals so different in many ways are really a whole.

Breathing in, imagine how in their own way, each person is contributing to this sense of whole, this sense of community. Some may contribute quietly, others more vocally. Everybody contributes to this community.

Now, as you’re enriching this image of your community, think about how everybody is connected. We know this scientifically. We literally are connected in our physiology and our minds, our thoughts, our feelings, contagiously spreading through community. Develop a sense of how members of this community are connected and mutually influencing each other.

Now focus your attention as we breathe in on the fact that as part of a community, the individual shares something in common with others, right? There’s something about their values or purpose or desires that brings them together. It may be to relax, to reduce suffering, to do some kind of work. Just get a sense of the common humanity of the individuals within this community.

And then finally really having developed this very rich image of community. Just imagine yourself within this network of individuals connected. And get a sense of what threads you share with these other people, how you’re connected to them.

Just feel those threads, what you overlap in interests with others. How you influence them and they influence you. Just get a sense of this interconnectivity. Not always good, can be tense, but that’s part of being a community. We are connected.

It is remarkable as we close out to think about all the ways in which you’re interconnected with others: at work, in family, in communities, like a political community or a spiritual community, walking the streets, going to a yoga class, you’re connected.

The Western mind often encourages us, exhorts us to think that we are separate and different from others. But in point of fact, I think the deeper truth is that we are always mutually influencing one another, and there are all these opportunities to recognize these senses of community that we’re part of as we move through our day. So good practice to remind ourselves that we are part of larger networks that make up our community.

Thanks for joining me. This is Dacker Keltner. This is a Happiness Break. Contemplating the awe of the community, contemplating the awe of community, and how many communities we are part of.

 

Happiness Break is produced by UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and PRX. Thanks for practicing with us.