What’s the most important virtue of all?

Maya Angelou and Samuel Johnson insist that it’s courage. 

 Said Maya Angelou: “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

 Said Samuel Johnson: “Courage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.”

Courage may top the list for some, but other candidates abound. Aristotle said that pride is the crown of all virtues while others maintain that it’s humility or patience or cheerfulness (said B.C. Forbes: “Cheerfulness is among the most laudable virtues. It gains you the good will and friendship of others. It blesses those who practice it and those upon whom it is bestowed”). And the scriptures say that charity (love) is the greatest of all virtues. 

But a new player has taken center stage of late, and science is fast confirming the physical, psychological and social benefits of acquiring, and practicing daily, this virtue. 

It’s gratitude.

Comedian Louis C.K. might have said it best. In a TV appearance some years ago that went viral, the comedian said that when he’s at the airport, and people complain about sitting on the runway for an extra 30 minutes, he feels compelled to ask:

“Oh really, what happened next? Did you fly through the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight?”

It’s easy to forget all that we have, and all that we take for granted. 

Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

Psychology Professor Robert Emmons, one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, believes that gratitude is the “forgotton factor” in happiness research.  The professor has examined gratitude for decades (his work is captured in his book: Thanks! How The New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier) and has found that people who view life as a gift and consciously acquire an “attitude of gratitude” will experience multiple advantages. Explained Emmons: “Without gratitude, life can be lonely, depressing and impoverished. . . . Gratitude enriches human life. It elevates, energizes, inspires and transforms. People are moved, opened and humbled through expressions of gratitude.”

And clinical psychologist Melanie Greenberg, writing for psychologytoday.com, explains that experiencing and expressing gratitude “opens the heart and activates positive emotion centers in the brain.  Regular practice of gratitude can change the way our brain neurons fire into more positive automatic patterns. . . . Gratitude is an emotion of connectedness, which reminds us we are part of a larger universe with all living things.” Added Greeenberg: “Gratitude can lead to feelings of love, appreciation, generosity, and compassion, which further opens our hearts and helps rewire our brains to fire in more positive ways.”

Both Greenberg and Emmons acknowledge that cultivating the virtue of gratitude can be difficult, which is why they both recommend keeping a gratitude journal.  Said Emmons: “Gratitude journals and other gratitude practices often seem so simple and basic; in our studies, we often have people keep gratitude journals for just three weeks. And yet the results have been overwhelming. We’ve studied more than one thousand people, from ages eight to 80, and found that people who practice gratitude consistently report a host of benefits.”

Why might gratitude have these transformative effects on people’s lives? Said Emmons:

“1. Gratitude allows us to celebrate the present. It magnifies positive emotions.”

“2. Gratitude blocks toxic, negative emotions, such as envy, resentment, regret – emotions that can destroy our happiness.”

“3. Grateful people are more stress resistant” and

“4. Grateful people have a higher sense of self-worth.”

"We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures." - Thornton Wilder

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." – Epictetus

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Attractive people: are they also beautiful inside?

It’s a common notion – when you see an attractive person, you tend to judge them to be kinder, more gentle, more understanding and sympathetic. But is it true?  Do attractive people have more positive traits and values? In short, do beauty and goodness go together? 

Possibly not, according to one recent study conducted by two Israeli professors. They concluded: “. . . our findings suggest that the beautiful strive for conformity rather than independence and for self-promotion rather than tolerance.” The study was conducted by Sonia Roccas of the Open University of Israel and Lilach Sagiv of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (One notable caveat: the study involved only women, yet the study abstract spoke in terms of “attractive people,” leading to the obvious question: do these results hold for men as well?). 

Psychologists call the phenomenon the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype, and it’s well documented.  People tend to perceive attractive adults as more social, successful and well-adjusted.  To test the stereotype, Roccas and Sagiv sought to answer two related questions: 1. How does perceived attractiveness relate to perceived personality? and 2. How does perceived attractiveness relate to actual personality. To examine this, they asked study participants to self-rate their own traits and values.  Here’s what they found, according to a write-up at sciencedaily.com (study participants, or “judges,” were asked to evaluate women (the “targets”) on video, doing a weather forecast):

“Women who were rated as attractive were perceived as having more socially desirable personality traits, such as extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness, just as the researchers hypothesized. . . . But when the researchers looked at the targets' actual self-reported traits and values, they found the opposite relationships. . . .Women who were rated as attractive were more likely to endorse values focused on conformity and submission to social expectations and self-promotion."

Surprising results?

In a comment forum at the web site unexplained-mysteries.com, one person asked whether the inverse might be true, that is, do people perceive unattractive people to have unattractive traits. 

Another commenter, surprised at the study findings, posed this view: “You would think self-promotion would be less needed if one is attractive, so that was a surprise to me.  The attractive people I know in a professional capacity are more quiet about themselves.  The conformity trait does ring true though. In my experience very attractive people get a lot of positive feedback no matter what they do.  That surely screws them up in the head in many ways.”

Life success: Does it matter where you go to college?

Apparently not, according to a first-of-its-kind nationwide survey, conducted by Gallup and Purdue University. After interviewing more than 30,000 U.S. adults nationwide, the authors came to this surprising conclusion: to succeed in life, it doesn’t matter where you go to college – what matters is what you do there, what experiences you have and how engaged you are.

The promise is clear: if we pursue a college education, it will lead to a better life. And the natural extension is that the more prestigious the school, the more successful we’ll be.  But the Gallup-Purdue survey finds that the school itself doesn’t matter.  And they have the numbers to back it up. 

Said the authors:   

“. . . [W]here graduates went to college – public or private, small or large, very selective or not selective – hardly matters at all to their current well-being and their work life in comparison to their experience in college.” 

Gallup-Purdue evaluated a person’s life in two broad categories: workplace engagement and personal well-being.  Some key findings:

·         Living the great life (well-being).  The survey found that only 11% of graduates are thriving in all five areas of well-being (sense of purpose, financial security, personal health, close relationships and community involvement), leading the authors to conclude that “many graduates are still waiting to experience that ‘great life’.”  And, apparently, it doesn’t matter what college you attended. For the top 100 schools listed by U.S. News & World Report, just 12% of their graduates are thriving in all five elements, just a single percent higher than the overall average. 

·         Workplace engagement – While college graduates are enjoying their work more than non-graduates, the survey found that only 39% of college graduates are engaged at work (49% are “not engaged” and 12% are “actively disengaged”). Statistically, graduates who majored in the arts and humanities (41%) and the social sciences (41%) were slightly more engaged at work than either science (38%) or business majors (37%). And “[t]here were no differences in employee engagement by race or ethnicity, or by whether the graduates had been the first in the family to attend college.”

Great Jobs, Great Lives – do universities help us achieve them?

The study authors maintain that, despite universal agreement that college is designed to help adults thrive in the workplace, and in their lives, “. . . there is not a single college or university in the U.S. that has rigorously researched and measured whether their graduates have ‘great jobs’ and ‘great lives’.”

Accordingly, the authors urge us to focus on the college experience, given that these six "experiences" are directly linked to workplace engagement and well-being later in life:

1.       Mentor – having a mentor who encouraged them to pursue their dreams;

2.       Support – knowing that a professor cared about them;

3.       Excitement – having at least one professor who made them feel excited about learning;

4.       Internship – having an internship or job that was connected to their classroom learning;

5.       Long-term project – working on a project that took a semester or more to complete; and

6.       Extracurricular activities – being active in pursuing extracurricular activities.

Said the authors: “Feeling supported and having deep learning experiences means everything when it comes to long-term outcomes for college graduates.”

A final word from Gallup-Purdue:

“A national dialogue on improving the college experience should focus on ways to provide students with more emotional support, and with more opportunities for deep learning experiences and real-life applications of classroom learning.”

 

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Do you have many (ok, any) 50/50 friends?

“True companions in life walk side by side.” – psychologist Marie Hartwell-Walker

 Some months ago a good friend posed this question to me, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. What exactly did he mean by 50/50?

To my friend’s way of thinking, 50/50 is the essence of a balanced relationship – a relationship where two friends balance their effort, their interest (in each other’s lives) and their talk time.  Two people, two listeners, two questioners – two people who care deeply about each other, yet two individuals who recognize that, at times, one friend needs more nurturing than the other, as life circumstances dictate.

It also means two individuals willing to open up to each other, in a meaningful way – allowing each other to pull the curtain back on their private lives, and private thoughts, in a way that says, in essence: “I trust you to understand, to listen to my triumphs and challenges, and not to judge me in any way.  To simply support me.” 

That, I suppose, is a 50/50 friend.  It’s not about literal talk time (though over time, I suppose, a 50/50 balance sounds desirable). Instead, it’s probably more about a genuine interest in the other person’s life, and daily travails. 

Now, knowing that, I re-pose the question to you: Do you have many 50/50 friends?  And how do you go about cultivating those relationships?

As a lifelong reporter, I was trained to ask questions, and that certainly has carried over to my social life.  A friend once told me that I ask more questions that anyone he knows (I wasn’t sure if he was complimenting me, or criticizing me, so I decided to assume the former).  My professional training aside, my desire in asking questions* is simply to learn – to learn more about what goes on in other people’s lives (as I often share, I already know what I’m doing, so sharing it with others isn’t particularly growth-producing).

For good or for bad, in social settings, my ear is attuned to what I call the “bounce-back,” that is, when a person bounces back a question to you, and listens with interest (side note: as I’m sure you’ve experienced, a bounce-back question doesn’t always connote true interest – sometimes it simply serves as a personal segue – for example, try to recall a time when someone asked you: “Have you seen any good movies lately?” and immediately told you about the movie they just saw, in notable detail).

On the subject of relationships, Dr. John Grohol (founder and CEO of PsychCentral) explained:

“Relationships tend to function best when they are in a state of balance (or homeostasis); however, the task of achieving a healthy balance in our relationships is more easily said than done — especially if we didn’t grow up with healthy role models in these areas.”

Offered psychologist Marie Hartwell-Walker, writing for PsychCentral.com:

“Real friends are obligated to each other in a meaningful way. To be a friend is to accept the gift of another’s trust with the appreciation and trustworthiness such a gift deserves. It requires the willingness to devote time, energy, and thought to the other person’s needs and desires as well as to our own.”

Hartwell-Walker offers 7 tips for maintaining strong friendships:

1.       Keep in contact;

2.       Don’t keep score;

3.       Keep it balanced;

4.       Be loyal;

5.       Remember their birthday (little things count);

6.       Deal with conflict; and

7.       Be a fan.

Added Hartwell-Walker:

“Good friends feel equal in the relationship. When a friendship is healthy, roles shift easily. They share stories. They listen attentively. They treat and are treated. They look to each other for wisdom without feeling inferior for doing so. They share their opinions without feeling superior. Neither person feels taken for granted, put down, or put on a pedestal. True companions in life walk side by side.”

*of late, two of my favorite open-ended questions are: “What’s new in your world?” and “What’s best?” This second question flows from a passage in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in which the author explains the illimitable difference between “What’s new?” and “What’s best?”

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Marriage: it takes two (a parable)

In honor of the institution of marriage, we offer the following parable, drawing liberally on more than 50 idiomatic pairs (55 to be exact). Enjoy.

They’d had their ups and downs.  For the better part of two years, their relationship was touch and go. 

He left bright and early for work, she an hour later, first attending to household odds and ends, then dropping the kids at day care before arriving at the office. Traffic, as always, was hit or miss, so when she arrived late she could count on her boss reading her chapter and verse about punctuality, and corporate policy. 

She was born and bred in the South, a prim and proper woman who put heart and soul into the marriage.  To him, life was more cut and dried.  He had some hard and fast rules (a list of do’s and don’ts, if you will), none more important than telling his kids to mind their p’s and q’s.

Year after year he complained about the wear and tear of his job.  He knew the ins and outs of his work, and fought tooth and nail to climb the corporate ladder (how else was he going to earn the family’s bread and butter?).

Day after day she encouraged him to leave, to search far and wide for a new position. He was sick and tired of mistreatment at work (not to mention the daily aches and pains), and his displeasure was growing in leaps and bounds. Twice his raise was denied (“just wait and see” his colleagues told him), but he was tired of the non-stop song and dance from management.    

At home, she was at his beck and call (“a life on pins and needles,” she once told a friend). But she too was suffering from the hustle and bustle of life.  It was time for a change.  And money was tight. They’d debate the facts and figures, but rarely saw eye to eye.  Now and then they’d agree (e.g., on that new set of pots and pans, for example), but with everything costing an arm and a leg, opportunities to save were few and far between. 

Whenever he was down and out, she’d search for that magic elixir. They’d talk through the pros and cons (volleying back and forth), and though her message was short and sweet, his ire grew. Round and round, they went, on and on he complained. He finally shared: “All I really want is a moment of peace and quiet.”

Was life ever fair and square?  Rarely, of course, but it was time, she insisted, to stop the ranting and raving. The kids were safe and sound (witness their endless game of hide and seek), and the house was always neat and tidy (she kept everything spic and span).  Challenging days, she told him, are part and parcel of life.  Greet every day, she urged, as a chance to live and learn. 

First and foremost, she reminded him, the family was alive and kicking.  Through thick and thin, they had managed to build a life together. Abandon the path?  No rhyme or reason to do so. It was time to forgive and forget. Time to yield to the notion that life, in all its glory, is not meant to be free and easy.

Between sink or swim, she told him, it was time to swim. 

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When you go to the bathroom, do you take your Smartphone with you?

If you do, you may (emphasis on “may”) have nomophobia (fear of being without mobile phone coverage).  

Laugh, if you must, but a recent article in telegraph.co.uk made this remarkable statement: “According to recent surveys, more than half of people in the UK suffer from it.”  The article continued: “The phobia is brought on by the fear of losing signal, running out of battery or even losing sight of a mobile phone.” And it’s an international phenomenon.

Explains Michael Carr-Gregg, an adolescent psychologist, as quoted in a cnn.com article: “I have clients who abstain from school or their part-time jobs to look for their phones when they cannot find them in the morning.” He adds: “Many of my clients go to bed with their mobile phones . . .  just like how one will have the teddy bear in the old days . . . . the phone has become our digital security blanket.”

Added psychiatrist Eric Yu Hai Chen, in that same cnn.com article: “One could look at this as a form of addiction to the phone. . . . The fear is part of the addiction. The use of the hand phone has some features that predispose this activity to addiction, similar to video games . . . .”

Nomophobia joins a long list of phobias suffered by man (leading us to wonder: do animals have phobias?  I know that our dogs won’t eat when we leave the house for a few hours – perhaps they’re autophobic – the fear of being alone or isolated). Reportedly, roughly 10% of Americans have bonafide phobias.

Nearly 200 phobias to choose from

Reviewing a list of nearly 200 phobias, I suddenly realized that, for most of my life, I’ve been tetraphobic (fear of the number 4).  Who knew that was on the list? 

And how about papaphobia (fear of the Pope), koumpounophobia (fear of buttons), or turophobia (fear of cheese). 

Who knew? 

As I read through the list, I started to wonder: where’s the line? That is, what’s the difference between a fear, and a phobia? Here’s how the folks at www.hudpages.com described it: “When you avoid something to the point that it negatively impacts your life, you’ve developed a phobia – a persistent fear of an object or situation which you go to great lengths in avoiding. Your fear of the danger posed by that thing is typically disproportional to the actual danger.”

Reasonable enough.  But now the question begged: how do we get rid of them?  How do we dissipate their impact?  Apparently, “thinking good thoughts” won’t do the trick – it’s more complicated than that. The article at Hudpages.com explained:

“When you have a phobia, you have a pattern within your brain; a linkage between certain thoughts, certain feelings, and certain physical reactions. This is why phobias tend to be resistant to simply ‘thinking good thoughts’. Exposing you to your triggering object or situation unleashes a cascade of intense emotion and physical sensations of fear. This is very hard to ‘think’ your way out of when you're in the middle of it.”

Overcoming Phobias: 6 principles

So what do you we do?  Dr. Fredric Neuman, writing for psychologytoday.com, outlined six principles to guide us in overcoming our phobias:

1.       “In order to overcome a phobia, the affected person has to spend time publicly trying to do things that everyone else can do effortlessly.

2.       “Practicing to overcome a phobia takes time, sometimes a lot of time. And repetition.

3.       “The things phobics are afraid of are not so awful when they do happen.

4.       “You can judge progress by what you can do, not how you feel. If you are not panicky, but you are not doing something a little more difficult than what you did yesterday, you are not getting better. [Conversely], if you are nervous or panicky all the time, but you are going further and further into the phobic situation, you are getting better.

5.       “Phobics run into ‘stuck points’ from time to time. Using an aide or a helper makes all the difference.

6.       “Sometimes the very things phobics are afraid of give them the most satisfaction when they are no longer afraid.”

And psychologist John Grohol, writing for www.psychcentral.com (which he founded), outlined a host of cognitive-behavioral techniques that are available for overcoming phobics – the trick is finding the one that works for you (e.g., gradual exposure, sudden exposure or “flooding”, the partnership method, keeping a daily mood log, positive imaging and distraction, to name a few).

I do anticipate that, in the days ahead, I can easily avoid spiders (arachnophobia), snakes (ophidiophobia) and  clowns (coulrophobia), but I have been known, of late, to suffer from bormaphobia (fear of boring meetings) and narsaphobia (fear of listening to narcissists).  But I manage. 

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Was your attitude about money formed when you were a child?

Maggie Baker thinks so, and Baker is something of an expert when it comes to our relationship with money.  Baker, a psychologist and author of the book “Crazy About Money,” explains: “We all have a relationship to money just as we have a relationship to food.” 

What’s your relationship?  If you were sitting down with Baker, she would probably ask you: “What does money mean to you?  Does it rule you, or do you rule it? How much of it do you want and what current habits help you achieve that?”

Enter the world of financial therapy, an up and coming field that now boasts hundreds of “financial therapists,” or financial psychologists.  There’s even a Financial Therapy Association, formed four years ago to help individuals and families cope with economic challenges (on their web site, FTA posts a list of recent financial therapy articles, including: “What’s Mine is Mine: 10 couples on how they arrange their finances,” “7 Financial Issues Couples May Stumble Over” and “Find Out What Your Money Personality Is." 

Americans aren’t feeling particularly confident about their finances these days, with 76% of Americans naming money as their No. 1 source of stress, according to an American Psychological Foundation study.  And a separate study by TD Ameritrade and LearnVest, reported in the Omaha World-Herald, found the following:

·         43% of couples don't have a budget. The average couple discusses money less than two times a month and fights over money five times a year;

·         40% of respondents said they do not completely trust their partner to manage their combined finances; and

·         20% said they sometimes hide their spending from their significant other.

What’s your attitude toward money?  An article at freefrombroke.com lists these four “money attitudes” that they say will lead to financial failure: “1. I’ll start saving when I make more money;” 2. “Consumer debt is OK because it’s normal;” 3. “I have plenty of time to get my finances in order;” and 4. “Stuff = money.” On this last point, the article adds: “While it’s sometimes pleasant to have nice things, don’t make the mistake of thinking that it’s the same as having actual financial resources available to you.”

Financial psychologists Brad and Ted Klontz, a father-son team who co-authored "Mind Over Money,” describe the 12 most common “money disorders” and explain how to identify them and ultimately overcome them (disorders include: financial dependence, underspending, financial infidelity, money avoidance, financial rejection, compulsive shopping and financial enabling). 

In a piece by Michelle Crouch, for creditcards.com, Brad Klontz pointed out: "People feel more shame around money than they do around sexual problems. . . . People are ashamed they have too much money or ashamed because they have too little. They think their problems with money are because they're lazy or stupid, so they don't look for help. They stick their heads in the sand."

Interestingly, Klontz explains, many people experience a “financial flash point” in their life, that is, according to Crouch: “An experience early in life that leaves a lasting impression about how money works.” Crouch goes on: “One of Klontz's clients, for example, had a grandmother who gave $20,000 at the last minute to save the client's family home from foreclosure. The lesson she took from the experience? No matter how bad her financial troubles got, she believed someone would be there to rescue her.”  Crouch quotes Klontz again: "The craziest money behaviors make a lot more sense when you figure out what someone's financial flash points are.”

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