A toast before champagne; blowing out candles and making a wish before tucking into birthday cake; ceremoniously carving a turkey or saying grace before digging into Thanksgiving dinner. Ever stop to think if there’s a reason for all this tradition steeped on tradition?
Research showsthat we savor and appreciate food and drink more when a ritual precedes it. Delayed gratification, more enjoyment and a sense of deeper meaning contribute to the enhanced experience. By linking rituals to beneficial behaviors like healthy eating or exercise, those positive behaviors are more likely to be experienced as pleasurable and thus, more likely to be practiced.
My favorite traditions for the season: a long family walk after Thanksgiving dinner and delivering meals to the elderly with Citymeals-on-Wheels in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The stylish and successful Fashion & Beauty Director at ESSENCE discusses pet peeves, her collection of crystals, true beauty, and what she wears to make her feel strong.
A nurse who worked in palliative care listened to the final words of those on their deathbeds. She recorded their thoughts and put them in a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
There is no mention of making more money, spending more time watching television, updating Facebook, or responding to email. All five regrets reflect a longing for more meaning and connection. Somehow the hustle and bustle of daily life got in the way of what truly mattered.
Avoid this happening to you by creating a weekly work/life check-in. Here is how Qualtric CEO Ryan Smith, master of the universe, created a weekly ritual:
Think of it as a check engine light to ensure you are spending your time according to your priorities and living a life in concert with your values. Never let the things you want make you forget the things you have.
Why do some people love to be afraid? Psychologists tell us we are pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding creatures and yet many are drawn to scary movies and other hair-raising experiences:
Audience members of an effective horror film often appear to react in much the same way as they would if they were confronted with a terrifying and disgusting situation outside the theater. They grimace, cower, dig their nails into their armrests, cover their eyes, and plead in vain for someone to make it stop. When they leave…many of them speak of the experience they just had with great enthusiasm and express eagerness to return for more of the same.
We humans are a strange species indeed. Psychologists call the enjoyment of painful emotions like disgust and fear, the “paradox of horror.” It turns out happiness and horror can go hand in hand. This makes no sense at all…or does it?
Aristotle believed people are drawn to scary stuff because it provides a safe way to purge themselves of aggression and other negative emotions. A more modern interpretation is that artificially scary situations provide vicarious thrills, excitement, and an experience of being fully alive. Certainly some people are more arousal seeking than others and these adrenaline junkies are typically the same types who love roller coasters and bungee jumping. (Full disclosure: I would rather watch paint dry than sit through a Chuckie or Freddy Krueger film.)
Watching a scary film can also be a bonding experience and cultivate connections between moviegoers for “surviving” the horror together. Fright facilitates canoodling and removes barriers that might otherwise inhibit close physical contact. A scary moment is the best excuse to grab someone’s hand or literally jump into their lap. Perhaps this helps explain why scary movies are so popular with couples on date nights.
While there may be benefits to facing one’s fears in a horror movie, a study showed how watching a scary movie impacts subsequent decision-making. In the study, they showed half of the participants horror movies while the other half watched documentaries about Vincent Van Gogh and Benjamin Franklin.
Afterwards, they were all asked to participate in a stock market simulation experiment. Those who watched horror movies were far more likely to sell early. The belief is that a scary experience triggered lingering fear and that this fear was projected onto decisions later on.
Arthur Conan Doyle famously said:
“Where there is no imagination – there is no horror.”
Just don’t let your imagination run away with you.
“Do you ever feel that people are out to get you?”
I ask new patients this question. I am trying to assess whether the person has paranoid ideation—an exaggerated belief that they are being harassed or treated unfairly. A paranoid person might interpret a seemingly benign as confirmation that they are being targeted. Bird poop landing on their head is proof of a conspiracy.
Paranoid ideation may suggest something serious like schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, especially when it is observed in combination with additional odd or unusual thoughts. That said, there are many people who feel like the universe is conspiring against them who do not suffer from a serious mental illness. They may simply be pessimists or, as they call themselves, realists.
Sometimes people feel this way when they are stressed out or feeling overwhelmed. When each day seems like a game of Wac-a-mole, it is easy to become defensive or take things personally. Every negative experience is seen as further evidence that the world is a hostile place full of selfish people. Even an ambiguous interaction or incident gets interpreted negatively. Daily stress reduces willingness to give someone the benefit of the doubt. If the barista doesn’t put enough milk in their latte, she is incompetent. If a spouse forgets to pick up the laundry, he is self-centered.
It’s a slippery slope. When someone thinks this way, it is challenging to convince them otherwise. Every rain drop is a personal affront. As one patient put it, “it’s me against the world.”
For those who are stuck in a me-versus-the-world mindset, I have found it is sometimes helpful for them to imagine an entirely different orientation. Instead of paranoia, I ask them to consider the concept of “pronoia”—the unshakable belief that others are out to help them. It’s a fundamental belief in the goodness in others and in the world.
Pronoia may be detrimental if taken too literally, but overall, it is a useful concept. I find it is most helpful when we use it, not to challenge beliefs about ourselves, but when we use it to challenge the way we view others. It is tempting to assume negative intent and that people do not wish us well. As children, we learn not to trust other people and to guard against being taken advantage of or harmed by malicious strangers. These feelings are amplified when we are stressed out and in survival mode. For most of us, our default mode is to assume the worst.
As a child, I assumed the worst about the nurse who worked in my pediatrician’s office. She was the one who gave me shots. I am told that I bit her on one occasion (I swear I don’t recall) so I imagine she wasn’t particularly fond of me either. In my mind, she was a heartless and cruel woman who loved jabbing needles into the bony upper arms of defenseless sweet children like me. Looking back, I recognize that her hostility was probably all in my head.
Studies show that how we read other people’s intentions shapes our experience of the world. When we assume negative intent, as I did with the nurse, our experience is far more unpleasant than when we perceive that they wish us well.
A study by University of Maryland’s Kurt Gray underscores the power of perception: in the study, entitled The Power of Good Intentions, three groups were given identical unpleasant electric shocks by a person they were paired with. The first group was told that the shock was by accident and beyond their partner’s awareness. The second group was told that they were being shocked on purpose but for no reason. The third group was told that they were being shocked on purpose because another person was trying to help them win money. Those in this third group experienced significantly less pain than those in the other two groups.
Assuming positive intent has implications beyond this experiment and my interactions with a pediatric nurse. As Gray explains:
“To the extent that we view others as benevolent instead of malicious, the harms they inflict upon us should hurt less, and the good things they do for us should cause more pleasure…Stolen parking places cut less deep when we think well of others.”
I wish I had known this years ago. The shots from the pediatric nurse might have hurt less and I probably wouldn’t have bitten her.
Yes, life is definitely a little better when we assume positive intent. Pepsi Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi underscores the benefits of this mindset in the workplace and beyond:
My father was an absolutely wonderful human being. From him I learned to always assume positive intent. Whatever anybody says or does, assume positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a person or problem becomes very different. When you assume negative intent, you’re angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed.
