What Is The Ultimate Luxury?
The best things in life aren’t things.
-Art Buchwald
While nice things may be nice, the relentless pursuit of material goods leaves people feeling empty. More money, a faster car, a brand new dress and a bigger house don’t bring happiness. What is striking is how bad most of us are at predicting what will.
The offices of Park Avenue psychiatrists are filled with people who have “everything” but feel empty inside. Philosophers and religious teachers have known this forever and research confirms it. Study after study shows that materialism is bad for wellbeing. It actually undermines happiness.
The good news is that there are proven strategies to reduce materialism. In one study, a group of adolescents were asked to participate in three sessions where they learned about consumer culture. Then they were asked to think about what they value most in life such as friendship, family, giving back to the community and connections. The adolescents became less materialistic, showed greater self-esteem and were more content than those who didn’t participate in the sessions.
By focusing on what was intrinsically meaningful to them, they gained perspective and were able to distance themselves from the “more is more” rat race. As the researcher commented:
Intrinsic goals tend to be the ones that promote greater well-being and act as a kind of ‘antidote’ to materialistic values.
In other words, when people live their lives in concert with their values, they are inoculated against the unyielding lure of luxury.
Arthur Brooks says it best:
Love people, not pleasure.
I wish you all the best,
Dr. Samantha Boardman
Backfire: Is the Pursuit of Happiness Making You Unhappy?
Are you happy?
The moment someone asks you this question, you start analyzing how happy you are. “Am I happy? Am I really happy?” you ask yourself. Existential angst creeps in. The more you think about it, the more anxious you become.
Studies show that the more we think about happiness and how to pursue it, the less likely we are to find it.
Valuing happiness may be self-defeating. Leading people to value happiness more made them feel less happy.
The problem may stem from the way we view happiness. The emphasis on personal happiness – like buying the best stuff and finding the best job leads to too much self-focus.
As Palmer Thomson points out:
No one ever died saying, ‘I’m sure glad for the self-centered, self-serving and self-protective life if lived.’
Indeed, there is more to life than being happy all the time. Having a sense of meaning may be the secret sauce of a life well lived.
Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided. If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.
Bottom Line: doing good is more important than feeling good.
Eleanor Roosevelt said it best:
Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.
I wish you all the best,
Dr. Samantha Boardman
Stop Telling People What to Do: Try This Game-Changing Strategy Instead
Stop telling me what to do!
How many arguments grow out of this rebellious sentiment? Nobody likes to be bossed around. Most of us want to defy any finger-wagging, self-appointed, self-righteous authority. For the record, nagging and barking orders doesn’t actually work.
So, if you cannot change someone’s behavior by telling them what do, what can you do to change their behavior? A study spanning 40 years of research offers a game-changing solution: Ask them a question.
Asking people about performing a certain behavior influences whether they will do it in the future. The effect is powerful—it has been shown to last more than six months after the initial questioning.
The phenomenon is known as the “question-behavior effect.” For example, asking, “Will you exercise?” instead of saying, “You should exercise today” is far more effective.
The recycling example below explains the psychology behind the technique:
The basic idea is that when people are asked ‘Will you recycle?’ it causes a psychological response that can influence their behavior when they get a chance to recycle. The question reminds them that recycling is good for the environment but may also make them feel uncomfortable if they are not recycling. Thus, they become motivated to recycle to alleviate their feelings of discomfort.
Research shows this technique works across a variety of domains including exercising, volunteering, reducing cheating in college, and recycling.
The effect is strongest when the questions are simple, requiring a “yes” or “no” response. The researchers also suggest inquiring about positive behaviors. Avoid asking about vices because it can backfire and make them more likely to do it. In other words, don’t ask your teenage children, “Are you going to skip class?”
On that note,
Will you share Positive Prescription with a friend?
I wish you all the best,
Dr. Samantha Boardman
How Pressing Pause Improves Performance
What is the best strategy to increase productivity? It is a question on everyone’s minds these days. Most people assume that we improve performance by doing more and working harder. Research shows that the opposite is true. Rather than cramming more work into a given day, it is better to take some time to reflect on the lessons of the day.
As Phil Race, psychologist, professor and learning specialist said:
The act of reflecting is one that causes us to make sense of what we’ve learned, why we learned it, and how that particular increment of learning took place. Moreover, reflection is about linking one increment of learning to the wider perspective of learning – heading towards seeing the bigger picture.
In a recent study, Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance, the authors demonstrate how taking time to reflect on work improves job performance. In the first part of the experiment, 202 participants were asked to solve a number of brainteasers and then were divided randomly into one of three groups: a control group, a reflection group and a sharing group. The control group went on to take another set of brainteasers. The reflection group was instructed to take a few minutes to reflect on the first round of brainteasers and to write notes about the strategies they used, what they would have done differently and what they did well. Then they were given a second round of brainteasers to complete. The third group—the sharing group—received the same instructions as the reflection group but they were told that their notes would be shared with future participants.
What were the results? The reflection and sharing group performed 18 percent better on the second round of brainteasers than the control group. Interestingly, there was no significant difference between the reflection and sharing group, suggesting that sharing on top of reflection doesn’t seem to have additional benefits.
The researchers performed a similar study in a real world setting in a business-process outsourcing company and found similar results.
As one of the co-writers, Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino, states:
Now more than ever we seem to be living lives where we’re busy and overworked, and our research shows that if we’d take some time out for reflection, we might be better off.
Bottom line: press pause. Even grownups need a time out.
I wish you all the best,
Dr. Samantha Boardman
