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Ever wish you had a switch you could just turn whenever you needed to be focused and productive?

While getting in the zone is something we all hope and strive for — whether it’s at work, at home, at school — it’s critically important for athletes.

In episode three of TED’s podcast “Good Sport,” host Jody Avirgan speaks to NBA All-Star Steph Curry and sports psychologist Dr. Nicole Detling to find out about getting there. Read an excerpt below, and listen to the entire episode here.

Jody Avirgan, host of “Good Sport” podcast: In sports, there’s a lot of talk about a magical place called THE ZONE.

You probably know it. It’s that place where everything clicks, where no matter the weather or the crowd or the sweat in your eyes, nothing can break your focus. Where you just do everything perfectly, you sink every shot and nothing can stop you. Steph, do you believe in the zone?

Steph Curry, Golden State Warriors point guard and nine-time NBA All-Star: I do believe in the zone, because it’s the one time that everything kind of goes on autopilot. And there’s just synergy with everything that you’re trying to do. Even your intentions are then validated by the atmosphere around you. Where it seems like everything else is going right at the same time, you kind of get lost in that moment. But here’s the thing about “the zone” — almost by definition, it’s special and fleeting and you can’t force it.

You can’t control any of that. It’s just for me, when it goes away, it’s the reflection on the feeling you just had. I think it’s just a natural experience.

I don’t think you can train yourself to appreciate it more than just you naturally do. ‘Cause if you do, then you start to distract yourself from what’s actually happening.

Jody: So you heard it directly from Steph Curry. Nice as it is when you find yourself in the zone, obsessing over getting there — and listen, there’s a lot of obsessing about the zone — will get in the way of what you’re trying to do.

Enter Dr. Nicole Detling, an expert on the mental side of the game. She’s a sports psychologist who’s worked with Olympic skiers and skaters, pro baseball and football and soccer players, college gymnasts — athletes at the very top of their sports.

As she starts to work with athletes, she tries to shift their thinking. She tells them to not think about the feeling they’re trying to capture but instead to work on building a solid and reliable skill.

That skill is mental resilience, which means being able to find whatever version of calm and focus you can, even when things aren’t going your way. It’s not elusive or magical; it’s a habit.

Dr. Nicole Detling, sports psychologist: We have these thinking processes and patterns and skills that we’re teaching people to eventually get it to automate. So it’s an automatic process. Rather than having to turn on that mindset, you become that mindset.

Jody: So much of mental resilience is realizing that everything isn’t going to go perfectly. I’ve worked on that. I’ve worked on — and here’s one of my favorite cliches — getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

The good news, Dr. Detling says, is that you can train for that.

Nicole: Some of the things that we’ve done with some of the skiing Olympians that I’ve worked with is we’ve not waxed their skis and they’ve had to train with unwaxed skis. Same with speed skating — you know that your blades aren’t quite as sharp as you would want them to be. Train that way, train with forgetting there’s a little tiny little tear in your suit. Train without your goggles.

That’s why a lot of teams will pipe in crowd noise so they can’t hear during training sessions. Because at the end of the day, we all want to show up and feel great but yet there will be days — sometimes the biggest competition of your life — and you show up feeling like crap. If you’ve trained feeling like crap, then you know you can compete feeling like crap.

Everyone — yes, everyone, not just sports fans — can learn something from listening to the “Good Sport” podcast, from how to debate better (sportscaster-style!) to how stadiums could be built more equitably. Discover more about yourself and the world around you as host Jody Avirgan talks to star athletes and eye-opening experts, including psychologists, journalists, economists and more. Listen here, or wherever you stream your podcasts.

Watch Jody’s personal intro to the episode — and also catch the episode itself — in this YouTube video: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hayley Caldwell is a copywriter on the Audience Development team at TED.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Alamy

Every one of us has mental health in the same way that every one of us has physical health.

Yet despite the prevalence of mental health struggles, there is still so much stigma around them. Worldwide the leading cause of disability is depression, according to the World Health Organization, and in the US alone, nearly 1 in 5 of adults lives with a mental illness.

As a mental health therapist-in-training and the founder of Brown Girl Therapy, the largest mental health community for children of immigrants living in the West, I regularly get asked this question: “How can I support a loved one who is struggling with their mental health?” With the multiple crises we’re currently living through, it can feel like more and more people we know are currently hurting.

Maybe you’ve noticed that a friend’s behavior or demeanor has changed and you’re concerned, or a family member is opening up to you for the first time about their anxiety. I know it’s challenging to know what to say or do. Here are eight things that you can do and eight things you should not do when you’re supporting someone who is struggling with their mental health.

First, the dos:

DO listen and validate

Be curious about what your friend is struggling with and how it’s impacting them. Instead of asking yes-or-no questions, ask open-ended questions to allow them to share their experience with you — questions like “What’s going on?” or “How long have you been experiencing this?” or “How are you coping?”

When they respond, use validating statements that will help them feel heard and accepted just as they are. Many people who struggle with their mental health may often blame or judge  themselves about what they’re going through; some may feel that their struggles aren’t valid because they’re all “in their head.”

Even if you can’t completely understand or relate to their feelings or experiences, you want to communicate to your loved one that they’re perfectly OK — this can be as simple as saying “That sounds really difficult”.

Support looks different for everyone, and what you may need when you’re struggling may not be what someone else needs.

DO ask what they need from you

Instead of making assumptions about what would be helpful to your loved one, ask them directly: “How can I support you?” or “What would be helpful to you right now?” Remember: Support looks different for everyone, and what you may need when you’re struggling may not be what someone else needs when they’re having a hard time.

DO offer to help with everyday tasks

A lot of people who struggle with their mental health may find it incredibly difficult to make basic decisions or perform even seemingly small chores. Instead of using the generic phrase “I’m here if you need me,” try to be specific about what you’re offering so your friend won’t have to bear the burden of reaching out or figuring out what they need in the first place.

If you visit them, take a look around and see what they could use assistance with — like doing the dishes, weeding, vacuuming or folding laundry. If you talk to them, offer to take them to a doctor’s appointment or do a grocery or drugstore run for them; you might also consider sending them a gift card for their meals.

DO celebrate their wins, including the small ones

When a person is struggling with their mental health, every day can be full of challenges. So cheer on their accomplishments and victories. This can help affirm their feelings of agency and efficacy. This could look like thanking them for being so honest and vulnerable with you or  congratulating them for going to work or for taking their dog out for regular walks.

Many people who struggle with their mental health already feel a baseline level of guilt for being a drag on other people’s time, energy and mental space.

DO read up on what they’re struggling with

There’s another important burden you can remove from their plate: Having to teach you about mental illness. Instead, take the time to educate yourself on what they’re going through — for example, learning more about depression, panic attacks or anxiety — so you can understand their lived experience and be aware of severe or risky behaviors or symptoms to look out for.

Today, there are so many places online to find informative, helpful content, from peer-reviewed journals and articles by mental health professionals to posts in digital communities and personal essays by people who share in your loved one’s mental-health challenges.

DO check in with them regularly

Many people who struggle with their mental health already feel a baseline level of guilt for being a drag on other people’s time, energy and mental space. Consistently check in (a quick text is fine) with them, keep them company when you can, and remind your friend that you love them and you’re on their side.

DO recognize that not all mental health struggles look the same

Not all mental health challenges or mental illnesses look the same. Some people might struggle as the result of a specific event or circumstance, while other people may be living with a chronic mental illness. If the latter is true for your loved one, don’t expect them to “get over” it as they would with a flu or broken bone.

Meet them where they are, reminding them you understand it’s something they are living with. This can take different forms depending on what they need — this could mean understanding when they cancel plans on you because they’re having a particularly tough day or adapting your plans with them to reflect what they’re able to do.

It’s important we remove the stigma from taking care of our mental health and talk about it just like we’d talk about going to a physician for a physical illness.

DO normalize talking about mental health

Don’t wait for them to bring up their struggles, or shy away from being direct with them. It’s important we remove the stigma from taking care of our mental health and talk about it in the same way we’d talk about going to a physician or taking medication for a physical illness. You might even consider opening up and being vulnerable when talking about your own mental health so instead of feeling judged, your loved one feels safe being honest with you.

Now, the don’ts:

DON’T compare their experience to others

I really want to drive one point home: Everyone experiences their mental health struggles and mental health illnesses differently. In the guise of trying to make a loved one feel better, you may be tempted to tell them “everyone deals with anxiety [or depression etc] sometimes” or bring up an acquaintance who had the same illness but benefited from a specific strategy, treatment or therapy.

Resist this temptation. Even though saying those things can be helpful in terms of normalizing their experience and making them feel less alone, they can also have the unintended effect of pressuring them to get over it or minimize what they’re feeling.

Another thing to avoid — reminding them of what they have or should be grateful for. Toxic positivity and comparison to others can reinforce the narrative that your loved one’s problems aren’t important.

Avoid using stigmatizing words like “crazy” or “cuckoo”, or saying things like “that’s so OCD” or “take a Xanax”

DON’T use stigmatizing language

Be careful how you talk about mental health around your friend (and in general!). Avoid using stigmatizing words  like “crazy” or “cuckoo”, or using clinical diagnoses or medications flippantly in conversation — like saying “that’s so OCD” when someone is very organized or telling someone to “take a Xanax” when you want them to calm down. Check your own assumptions surrounding mental health issues, professional mental health care and medication so you aren’t causing your loved one unnecessary pain.

DON’T take their behavior personally

People’s mental health struggles are often not linear or predictable. Maybe your friend is less talkative one day, and maybe your sister keeps rescheduling your phone dates. While you may feel hurt or offended by their actions, don’t automatically assume that they are reflections of how your loved one feels about you.

Instead, use their cues as moments to check in on them, ask what you can do to support them, and remind them that you’re here for them when and if they need.

You want to be with your loved one while they’re navigating their own struggles, not steering them or pushing them.

DON’T be confrontational or try to control the situation

When you’re faced with a loved one in pain or distress, it can be really difficult not to get in the metaphorical driver’s seat and forcefully do what you think will relieve their suffering. But in doing this, you’re diminishing their sense of agency. You want to be with your loved one while they’re navigating their own struggles, not steering them or pushing them. So don’t be aggressive about what they should or shouldn’t do, and don’t give them ultimatums.

DON’T get discouraged

You may feel helpless when you’re helping and supporting a loved one who is struggling, and you don’t see them making progress. Just because you feel helpless doesn’t mean you can’t be helpful. Your loved one does not expect you to find them the magic solution or to be perfect; instead, they just need you to be present.

DON’T burn yourself out trying to support your loved one

The better you take care of yourself, the better you can be of support to your loved one. Make sure to keep taking care of yourself, doing the things you love and recharging your own batteries while being there for your loved one. Be clear and direct about your boundaries, and find ways to honor what you need to do in order to be able to show up for them.

People who are struggling with their mental health are not broken, and they do not need to be fixed.

DON’T try to fix them

People who are struggling with their mental health are not broken, and they do not need to be fixed. By jumping in with solutions and advice when they don’t explicitly ask for it, you’re sending them the message that what they’re going through is wrong or bad when in fact you are projecting your own discomfort with what they’re going through. Realize that your impulse to dive into a fix-it mode can actually be a coping mechanism to ease and absolve your own discomfort or anxiety. Which brings me to my next point …

DON’T avoid the feelings that come up for you

When we see our loved ones grappling with something difficult, chronic or hard to comprehend, it can often bring up our own difficult feelings and our own discomfort or anxiety. When this happens, it’s important not to shove that stuff under the rug. Spend time reflecting on what’s coming up for you.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself: Are you anxious because you’re scared of what’s going to happen to your loved one? Are you avoiding them because you feel helpless? Are you carrying around your own biases or stigmas around mental illness? Are you on edge because you’re resentful, burned out or just plain confused?

It’s important to get clarity on what’s coming up for you and why, so you can take care of yourself and still be there for your friend. Don’t be ashamed if you find that you could use some support or professional care. One great US-based resource is the National Alliance on Mental Illness, which hosts free support groups for people who love someone that’s struggling with their mental health.

Watch Sahaj Kaur Kohli’s TED Conversation now:

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sahaj Kaur Kohli is the founder of Brown Girl Therapy, the first and largest mental health and wellness community of its kind for children of immigrants living in the West, where she works to promote bicultural identity and destigmatize therapy. She is also currently pursuing her master’s in clinical mental health counseling. Kohli’s passion lies at the intersection of narrative storytelling and mental health advocacy. A former journalist, she is currently working on a book to be published by Penguin Life.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

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How do you deal with immense change?

Be honest with yourself: Are you someone who embraces it and evolves with it? Or, do you tend to retreat and stick with what you know?

In our tumultuous times, adaptability — defined as “how well a person reacts to the inevitability of change,” according to venture investor and writer Natalie Fratto in a TED Talk — is a must-have trait. Organizations want team members who can take on new responsibilities and acquire new skills as needed in an uncertain world. Not only is it a quality that you should learn to spot so you can hire and retain the right people, but it’s also one that you should build so you can remain indispensable and employable.

In a typical year, Fratto meets with hundreds of start-up founders and she must determine in the course of a brief conversation whether she wants to invest in them and their company. Adaptability is a characteristic that distinguishes many of those who go on to succeed, according to Fratto.

Adaptability is not just useful in the tech world, but for everyone else, too. “Each of us, as individuals, groups, corporations and even governments are being forced to grapple with more change than ever before in human history,” she points out. And there’s good news ahead: “Adaptability is not fixed,” she adds, noting that everyone has the capacity to measure, test, and improve their ability to adapt to new circumstances.

Here’s her advice on how to assess adaptability in others — and how you can boost it in yourself.

When interviewing people, try asking “what if” questions

Fratto says these force a person to picture multiple possible versions of the future and make their decisions accordingly. Some examples of these questions might be “What if your main revenue stream were to dry up overnight?” or “What if a heat wave prevented customers from visiting your store?” Fratto gets a sense of a candidate’s adaptability based on how many scenarios they’re able to come up with and how strong their vision is.

“People often ask too many questions in an interview,” says Fratto in an interview with TED, “but it’s better to ask four questions and then go deeper” with follow-up questions. One example of a question could be “Describe a difficult change that you’ve recently undergone at work” and a natural follow-up might be: “What would have happened if [different change X] had occurred instead?” This forces the interviewee to consider an alternative past and future.

“Tell me about a time when you were wrong” is another interview question that can yield insights. You can follow it up with “What is the most compelling argument of those who disagreed with you?” Fratto says you can often tell if people are willing to change their minds — and therefore are more adaptable — by asking them to honestly share a time when they believed they were wrong, not when others perceived they were wrong.

Instead of learning, look for signs of “unlearning”

“Unlearning” is another important sign of adaptability, according to Fratto. “Active unlearners seek to challenge what they presume to already know and instead override that data with new information,” she says.

One physical example of unlearning can be found on the ski slopes, where beginner downhill skiers are taught the “pizza” method. When you’re at the top of a hill, you point your skis toward one another — like the tip of a slice of pizza — and holding that shape will stop you from sliding down. But as you grow more comfortable, you can’t become a great skier with the pizza method; you must unlearn it. It’s necessary only to use for a short time until you get comfortable enough to take risks.

While it’s difficult to unlearn certain skills that have been drilled into our brains, it is possible to do so — and embrace change, too. “A person can also unlearn by taking a new vantage point or shifting to another perspective,” says Fratto. Layering on additional learnings can also show a person’s adaptability. “Playing at the intersection of areas where you’re not an expert can together build a new set of skills as a building block,” she adds.

This mindset is especially useful for people who are looking for a new job. If you’re seeking to switch industries, you can embrace unlearning or adjacent learning to find a new position in a different field. By looking at the individual components and pieces of your job — instead of the overall title or position — you can see where your skills might be applied in a different environment. Then, ask yourself, “In which industry is this one skill being underutilized?” and you can move forward, bringing your individual pieces of expertise with you.

Look for signs of exploration

An exploratory mindset can yield clear benefits. As an example, Fratto says after she moved to a new neighborhood, she needed to find a grocery store. She walked out of her apartment, arbitrarily turned left, and found a store a few blocks away which she began to frequent. A few months later, she turned right and stumbled into a grocery store not much further away with a better produce section. In an effort to be efficient, she had stuck with the same-old — and had missed out on something better.

How often do you do that in your own life?

“The path becomes so much more interesting when you wander,” says Fratto. “It’s better to explore and find ways to break habits that you already have, whether that’s trying to watch a movie in a different language, cooking a different cuisine, or walking an alternate route,” she says. These seemingly minor changes allow for crucial vantage point shifts and create the ability for unlearning to happen.

A person’s adaptability isn’t fixed — you can always improve it

“I believe all of us have a strong inherent capability to react to change differently,” says Fratto. “However, adaptability has to be proactive, not reactive. We have to seek it out, exercise it and flex it like a muscle.”

So how can we become more adaptable?

First, play at the intersections. Let’s say you’re an expert at marketing, for instance. If you can also make yourself knowledgeable about podcasts, you can become the translator between these teams. Seek out opportunities to bridge existing gaps at your organization.

Second, occasionally take a devil’s-advocate role at work. In some situations — stay away from high-stakes ones — you might adopt the position of respectful dissenter. This will allow you, your boss and your teammates see things from the other side. This strategy can also help you from getting too attached to your personal ideas and views.

Fratto says in the tech world, there’s an oft-repeated motto “I like leaders who have strong opinions, weakly held.” An important component of adaptability is having the ability to form a strong opinion but release it when new information becomes available and makes it obsolete.

Third, keep a failure resume or log. “It’s helpful to write down the times where you were wrong, changed your mind, or made mistakes,” says Fratto. While many of us view these things with shame or embarrassment, you can start to see them in a positive light — as steps you’ve taken on your professional journey — and learn from them instead.

Watch her TED Talk now: 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kara Cutruzzula is a journalist and playwright and writes Brass Ring Daily, a daily motivational newsletter about work, life and creativity.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Priya Mistry

Tough times are inevitable. Wellbeing and resilience expert Lucy Hone shares the three straightforward tactics that she used to get through her darkest days.

I’d like to start by asking you some questions.

Have you ever lost someone you loved? Had your heart broken? Struggled through an acrimonious divorce or been the victim of infidelity?

Have you ever lived through a natural disaster? Been bullied? Or made redundant from a job?

Ever had a miscarriage or an abortion, or struggled through infertility?

Finally, have you or anyone you loved had to cope with mental illness, dementia, some form of physical impairment, or suicide?

Chances are, you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, and that’s true for most people. Adversity doesn’t discriminate.

If you are alive, you are going to have to deal with some tough times.

I started studying resilience a decade ago at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. It was an amazing time to be there, because the professors who trained me had just picked up a contract to train 1.1 million American soldiers to be mentally fit as a complement to their physical fitness. You don’t get a much more skeptical, discerning audience than American drill sergeants returning from Afghanistan. For someone like me whose main quest in life is trying to work out how we take the best of scientific findings out of academia and bring them to people in their everyday lives, it was a pretty inspiring place to be.

I finished my studies there and returned home to Christchurch, New Zealand, to start my doctoral research. I had just begun that study when the Christchurch earthquakes hit, so I put my research on hold and I started working with my community to help them through that terrible post-quake period. I worked with all sorts of organizations — from government departments to building companies and all sorts of community groups — teaching them the ways of thinking and acting that we know can boost resilience. I thought that was my calling, my moment to put all of that research to good use.

Sadly, I was wrong. My own true test came in 2014 on Queen’s Birthday weekend. We and two other families had decided to go down to Lake Ohau. At the last minute my beautiful 12-year-old daughter, Abi, decided to hop in the car with her best friend Ella, also 12, and Ella’s mom, Sally, a dear friend of mine.

On the way down, a car sped through a stop sign, crashed into them, and instantly killed all three of them. In the blink of an eye, I found myself flung to the other side of the equation, waking up with a whole new identity. Instead of being the resilience expert, I became the grieving mother, trying to wrap my head around unthinkable news with my world smashed to smithereens.

Suddenly, I was the one on the receiving end of all the expert advice — and I didn’t like what I heard one little bit. In the days after Abi died, my husband, Trevor, and I were told we were now prime candidates for family estrangement, we were likely to get divorced, and we were at high risk of mental illness. “Wow,” I remember thinking, “Thanks for that.”

Leaflets described the five stages of grief: anger, bargaining, denial, depression, and acceptance. Victim support services arrived at our doorstep and told us we could expect to write off the next five years to grief. I know the leaflets and the resources meant well but in all of that advice, they left us feeling like victims, totally overwhelmed by the journey ahead and powerless to exert any influence over our grieving whatsoever.

I didn’t need to be told how bad things were; I already knew things were truly terrible. What I needed most was hope. I needed a journey through all that anguish, pain and longing. Most of all, I wanted to be an active participant in my grief process.

I decided to turn my back on their advice and instead to conduct something of a self-experiment. I’d done the research, I had the tools, and I wanted to know how useful they were now in the face of such an enormous mountain to climb. But I have to confess: At this point I didn’t really know any of this was going to work. Parental bereavement is, after all, widely acknowledged as the hardest of losses to bear. But, five years on, I can tell you that you can rise up from adversity — that it is utterly possible to make yourself think and act in certain ways that help you navigate tough times.

The following are my go-to strategies that I relied upon and saved me in my darkest days. These three tactics underpin all of my work, and they’re readily available to all of us.

1. Know that suffering is part of life.

This doesn’t mean resilient people go so far as to welcome it in — they are not delusional. However, when the tough times come, they seem to know that suffering is part of every human existence. Knowing this stops you from feeling discriminated against when challenges arrive.

After Abi died, never once did I find myself thinking, “Why me?” In fact, I remember thinking, “Why not me? Terrible things happen to you just like they do everybody else. This is your life now — time to sink or swim.”

The real tragedy is that not enough of us seem to know this any longer. We live in an age where many of us feel entitled to perfect lives. Shiny, happy photos on Instagram are the norm when, as all of us know, the very opposite is true.

2. Carefully choose where you’re directing your attention.

I’ve found that resilient people have a habit of realistically appraising situations, and typically they manage to focus on the things they can change and learn to accept the things they can’t. This is a vital and learnable skill.

As humans, we are good at noticing threats and weaknesses. Being wired in this way is important for us and has served us well from an evolutionary perspective. When we were cave people, our ability to ignore a beautiful rainbow and to concentrate on an approaching tiger instead ensured our survival.

The problem is we now live in an era where we are bombarded by different kinds of threats — from unrealistic deadlines and toxic colleagues to mounting bills or just someone stealing a parking lot from us — all day long and our brains treat every single one of those as though they were a tiger. Our stress response is permanently dialed up.

Resilient people have worked out a way of tuning in to the good around them. One day, when doubts were threatening to overwhelm me, I distinctly remember thinking, “You cannot get swallowed up by this — you’ve got so much to live for. Don’t lose what you have to what you have lost.”

In psychology, we call this “benefit-finding.” In my new world, it involved trying to find things to be grateful for. At least, our dear girl hadn’t died from a terrible, long, drawn-out illness. She died suddenly, instantly, sparing us and her that pain. We also had a huge amount of social support from our family and friends to help us through. Most of all, we still had two beautiful boys who needed us and deserved to have as normal a life as we could possibly give them.

When you’re going through a difficult time, you might need a reminder or permission to feel grateful. In our kitchen, we’ve got a neon-pink poster that says “Accept the good.”

In their work with the US Army, psychologists framed it a little bit differently — they phrased it as “hunting the good stuff.” Find the language that best works for you. Whatever you do, make an intentional, deliberate, ongoing effort to tune in to what’s good in your world.

3. Ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing helping me or harming me?”

This immensely powerful question is used a lot in therapy, and it was my go-to question in the days after the girls died. I’d ask it again and again.

For example, I asked myself: “Should I go to the trial and see the driver? Would that help me, or would it harm me?” For me, the answer was a no-brainer; I chose to stay away. However, Trevor eventually decided to meet with the driver at a later time.

Late at night, I’d often find myself sometimes poring over old photos of Abi and getting more and more upset. At a certain point, I’d ask myself: “Is this helping you, or is it harming you?” I realized it was far kinder to myself to put away the photos and go to bed.

This question can be applied to so many different contexts. For example, you might ask yourself: “Is the way I’m thinking and acting helping me or harming me in my bid to get that promotion? To pass that exam? To recover from a heart attack?”

I write a lot about resilience, and this one strategy has prompted more positive feedback than any other. I’ve gotten scores of letters and emails from people saying what a huge impact it’s had on their lives. By asking yourself whether you really need to drink that extra glass of wine, spend another hour on social media, or rehash the same old argument with a family member, you’re putting yourself back in the driver’s seat. It gives you control over your decision making.

Contrary to what many of us think, resilience isn’t a fixed or elusive trait that some people have and some people don’t. In reality, it requires the willingness to try basic strategies like these.

We all have moments in life — when the path we thought we were taking veers off into some terrible direction that we never anticipated and certainly didn’t want. It happened to me, and it was awful beyond imagining.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think “There’s no way out I’m coming back from this,” I urge you to lean into these strategies. Know that struggle is part of life, don’t let your attention get fixated exclusively on the negative, and consider if the way you are thinking and acting is helping you or harming you.

I won’t pretend that thinking like this is always easy and it also doesn’t remove all the pain. However, during the last five years, I’ve learned that thinking this way really does help. More than anything, it’s shown me that it is possible to live and grieve at the same time.

This piece was adapted from a TEDxChristchurch Talk. Watch it now:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lucy Hone is a codirector at the New Zealand Institute of Wellbeing & Resilience and a research associate at AUT University in Auckland. She is also the author of the book Resilient Grieving.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Krystal Quiles

Most of us intuitively know that having close, supportive relationships is important to our general happiness and well-being.

Decades of scientific research confirm that human connection not only affects our mental health but is also a key determinant to how long we’ll live and how physically healthy we’ll be during those years.

As Robert Waldinger PhD, the director of the long-running Harvard Study of Adult Development (aka “the longest study on happiness”), says in his TED Talk, “People who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier; they’re physically healthier; and they live longer than people who are less well connected.”

And we’re not just talking about your intimate, family and spousal relationships. All types of human connection — from the social to the professional, from the people you volunteer with to the man behind you in line at the grocery store — count.

The good news: Making small changes in our relationships can yield big results. Below, I’ve pinpointed six relationship resolutions to consider that could improve your bonds.

1. Change the words you’re thinking about other people

Words matter. Not only the words we use when we speak to others, but the words we say to ourselves about others.

Our internal narrative — especially the story we tell ourselves about other people, their decisions, behaviors, quirks and irritating habits — has a profound effect on how we interact with them. When you tell yourself “they’re so controlling” or “they never listen to me” or “they’re so self-centered” before or during a conversation with a partner, colleague or sibling sets you up to be more likely to find evidence of their controlling/non-listening/self-centered behavior because you’ve primed yourself to spot it.

By creating micro-moments of positivity, you’re starting a wave of good feelings that spreads through your life and through the lives of those you encounter.

There are three simple steps you can take here. The first is to recognize when one of these judgmental thoughts enters your head that reinforces a negative narrative. Next, stop yourself from telling this story. Finally, replace it with a more positive word or phrase.

No, I’m not asking you to think something that is just plain untrue — as in “they always listen to me” or “they respect that I’m my own person.” Instead, pick a word or phrase that reminds you to show some compassion (“They’re trying their best”), acknowledge the journey you’re on (“We’re all works in progress”) or capture what you want to do more of in your relationships (“Listen — really listen”).

You’ll be surprised how quickly changing your words can also change the quality of your relationships. One of my favorite phrases, which I’ll be recommitting to in 2022, is “They might just be right.” Thinking those five words reduces my need to win arguments and can even prevent me from getting into them in the first place.

Make this phrase or word your screen saver, set a daily reminder with them or leave sticky notes with the phrase or word on the bathroom mirror, your laptop or next to the kitchen sink.

2. Create tiny moments of positivity during your day

Want to experience more connection in your day-to-day life and a healthier and more connected sense of being in the world?

Turns out, you can do this wherever you are and wherever you go. Just take five seconds to learn the name of that nice person in the orange apron at Home Depot who helped you find the particular nail you needed and tell them they made your day. Or, look your pharmacist in the eye and thank them for showing up during this challenging time, or stop by your coworker’s office and ask how her aging parents are holding up.

Indeed, whenever you share a tiny, positive moment with another human — even if it’s just a warm smile or your eyes meeting as you acknowledge each other for existing on this planet — you unleash a cascade of positive reactions in you and them.

And that feeling you experience when you do this? It’s love.

While it might not be the kind of love that brought together, say, Romeo and Juliet, this kind — unlike what drove that doomed pair — will help you live a longer, happier, healthier life. And it has ripple effects. By creating micro-moments of positivity with strangers, acquaintances, colleagues or your close connections, you’re starting a wave of good feelings that spreads through your life and through the lives of those you encounter.

I once interviewed a couple with an unusual rule: Whenever they argued, they both had to be fully undressed. Unsurprisingly, they reported their conflicts never lasted long!

3. When you and your partner argue, hold hands with them (really!)

When couples are in conflict, it’s important for them to remember they’re on the same team despite their differences. One of the easiest ways to do so is to agree to hold hands while you argue. This simple gesture helps couples feel more connected and, as a result, they’ve been found to be less destructive as they fight.

If this doesn’t work for the two of you, come up with your own way to reinforce your bond.

Maybe you and your partner decide to interrupt each disagreement — at least once — with a 10-second kiss. Or, you could both agree, while fighting, to hold up three fingers at the beginning, middle and end of a tense discussion, a nonverbal symbol that means “I love you.” I once interviewed a couple with an unusual rule: Whenever they argued, they both had to be fully undressed. Unsurprisingly, they reported their conflicts never lasted long!

4. Ask an open-ended question of someone in your life every day

As a relationship social scientist with a PhD in communication, I’ve got a personal pet peeve — when people say “Communication is the secret to successful relationships.”

OK, they’re not completely wrong. But communication is complicated, and not all communication is created equal. Yelling is communication, for example. And so is lying.

Actively listening while letting someone else speak is also communication, and it’s one of the most undervalued methods of building relationships with others. This means listening simply to better understand the other person and giving them space to share their story, express their fears, articulate their hopes or just tell you what irritated or delighted them today.

One of the easiest resolutions you can make to improve any of your close relationships is to listen more, speak less and ask open-ended questions. Once a day, invite someone you care about to share. Ask the colleague who sits near you: “What’s been the best part of your week so far?”; ask your neighbor when you’re both out walking your dogs: “What’s keeping you going these days?”; or ask your kid over dinner: “What are you most afraid of happening in the next year?”

Then, be fully present with them as you listen to them answer, without interrupting them with your own response or turning away. When we do this, we show the people in our lives that we really care about them.

Friendships have been shown to be key to our happiness and longevity, especially as we age, but even the best of them will wither if we don’t nurture them.

5. Schedule time to spend with your best friends

Strong, quality relationships require maintenance and ongoing investment. Friendships have been shown to be key to our happiness and longevity, especially as we age, but even the best of them will wither if we don’t nurture them.

One easy way to do this is to carve out time in your weekly or monthly schedule to connect with your friends. If you can, meeting them in person is best, but even a regular Zoom or phone call is enough to provide you with benefits. And whenever you’re invited to do something with someone who is not one of your key connections, ask yourself this before you say yes: “Is this best for me and the relationships I value?”

These small, regular investments of attention made regularly in our relationships are essential to growing and sustaining them.

6. Deliver an overdue apology

Many of us — because we’re only human and imperfect — have ended a relationship in a clumsy or careless way. Or, maybe we’ve been on the receiving end. Regardless of which role you played, we walk around with grudges or resentment towards a colleague, boss, cousin, roommate, neighbor, ex-partner, etc.

Why not start the year by picking one of the people in your life with whom you had a falling out and write them a note or send them a voice memo? Keep your apology short and simple, and accept responsibility for what you did or didn’t do well. When we embrace our humility, we’re not only more likely to forgive and be forgiven but we can get a significant boost in our happiness as well.

However, if you choose to do this, don’t expect to get a response. If the other person takes in your words and says they forgive you, that’s great. But keep in mind that forgiveness is partly an internal process when you can lighten your load by letting go of unnecessary emotions weighing you down.

Watch her TEDxMinneapolisSalon Talk now: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Bruess PhD Carol Bruess (rhymes with “peace”) is professor emeritus at the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota; resident scholar at St. Norbert College, Wisconsin; and forever passionate about studying and improving relationships. She is fluent in emoji, loves parentheticals (it’s what all the cool kids are doing), and is happy-dancing her way through empty-nesting (although don’t tell her kids; they think she’s all weepy). Check out her five books and sewing/design shenanigans over at www.carolbruess.com

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Fernando Cobelo

As a psychologist who’s been in private practice for 25 years, I’ve seen that there are as many kinds of relationship problems as there are humans on this planet.

But one issue that keeps coming up is about irritability — or what to do when a close connection seems to be in a bad mood all the time.

Take this letter from a reader, for example:

Every day, my sister seems to wake up irritable and then stay that way. She has an edge to her voice and responds to friendly questions like, “How was your day?” or “Do you have plans for the weekend?” curtly and with a sharp tone. What can I do?

Indeed, there’s been a lot of irritability experienced these past couple of years, with the pandemic making it a stressful time for all. Irritability is defined as a mood or state in which one has a heightened propensity to respond to frustrations, even small ones, with anger that is excessive given what might be expected in the situation.

Of course, irritability is not abnormal in and of itself. Every one of us can be irritable at times and have irritable moods that may last for hours or even a few days. But when periods of irritability last for months on end and characterize a person’s mood more often than not, it could be associated with an underlying disorder such as clinical depression, anxiety or ADHD. In that case, it should be considered as a broader mental health issue that requires the advice of a mental health professional. Indeed, if the person in your life is being treated for one of these conditions and seems to be chronically irritable, you might consider suggesting they speak with a mental health provider about their mood.

However, regardless of whether a person’s irritability involves an underlying mental condition or not, it can still have a big impact on their quality of life and that of the people around them, and when that is the case it should be addressed.

Irritability impacts us psychologically in a number of ways. It makes us far more sensitive to small frustrations so we have a harder time shrugging them off or moving past them. This can make us distracted since our attention ends up being constantly redirected towards trivial incidents and remarks and away from important tasks or relationships. This constant churning or annoyance in the back of our mind also takes up intellectual resources, leaving us with less mental bandwidth with which to do our jobs and manage our lives.

Why does irritability sometimes linger?

Irritability can be a hard mood to break out of because it often creates a negative feedback loop that is self-reinforcing in ways that can deepen its hold on our state of mind. It works this way:

— Irritability reinforces our negative mood such that we’re much more likely to fixate on anything even mildly upsetting or annoying (we might even do so unconsciously as a way to validate our bad mood).

— Focusing on all these annoyances then fuels our irritability further, which in turn, focuses us even more intently on validating our irritable mood by continuing to scan our environment for external frustrations and overreacting to them.

— At the same time, we are less likely to notice the positive events and experiences that could have otherwise mitigated our frustrated state of mind and improved our mood.

— Indeed, the urge to indulge our irritability and give in to it can feel extremely compelling, and we can become resistant to any efforts from our nearest and dearest to break us out of our mood. This is why, when a close friend or family member suffers from irritability, you may often feel as though you can’t win.

— Any effort to engage with them is likely to garner an impatient, hostile or aggressive response, so you end up just keeping a distance.As a result, your relationship may become strained and distant and the irritable person become isolated, adding to their irritability and their feeling that no one else seems to understand what they’re going through.

Further, negative moods can sometimes be contagious and irritability is one that can be quite obvious to other people, making it harder for them to ignore or overlook and making it more likely for their own mood to be negatively impacted by it. Indeed, irritable bosses often create significant stress in their teams, and irritable household members often create significant stress for the people who are around them most.

So what can you do if someone you care about suffers from chronic irritability?

1: Bring it to their attention

Start by asking them to have a talk, so they know you want to discuss something serious (rather than say, doing it casually as you’re getting ready for work because you want their full attention so they can take your concerns seriously). Tell them you’re concerned because they seem to be in a bad mood more often than not, and they’ve been responding to you as if you’re constantly annoying them.

2. Let them know how their mood has been impacting you

They might be surprised to hear it — in which case they might try on their own to be more mindful going forward. If they seem receptive, the next time they respond irritably, you can simply remind them by saying something like “Please don’t respond with such a sharp edge in your tone, I’m just asking about your day because I care about you.”

If they’re aware they’ve been irritable but they feel their mood is justified because of the external stresses in their life (for example, “You know how hard it’s been at work!”), you can acknowledge their stress but let them know that as you sympathize with what they’re going through, their moods have a big impact on you as well (as your moods do on them). Then suggest you discuss ways to cope with their stress that might reduce their irritability, which would be best for them as well as for you.

3. Ask them to consider trying one of the following techniques that have been shown to lower irritability

Gratitude exercise: Spend 10 minutes each morning journaling about three things for which they’re grateful and why—what that thing means to them and why it makes them feel thankful

Mindfulness meditation: Focus on breathing, feeling the air flow in and out of your lungs—and when thoughts enter your mind—which they will—label them factually and without any judgment or emotionality (e.g., ‘A worry about work’ or ‘frustration with a friend’) and refocus on your breathing. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to lower emotional reactivity to upsetting and distressing thoughts.

Reframing: Also known as cognitive reappraisal, reframing is a form of emotional regulation in which one changes one’s perspective/story to take the sting out of an annoying/upsetting/frustrating situation. Reframing is an effective emotional regulation technique that’s been shown to lower emotional distress and irritability. By helping the person explore why they’re irritable and how they might reframe their story, you’re not only demonstrating concern and compassion for them, you could help them find a silver lining that can reframe their situation more positively.

What’s more, reframing, mindfulness and gratitude are techniques from which you too can benefit as they can help mitigate your own elevated stress and irritability when they’re affected by the moods of the people around you. As such, you could consider suggesting to the irritable person in your life that the two of you practice them together. Doing this may also make them feel less defensive and more open to considering your request.

4. Acknowledge that you’re asking them to do something that isn’t so easy

Irritability can feel very compelling and justified, and the urge to just lash out at someone can be strong. As such, let them know that if they were willing to work on minimizing the severity and or frequency of their irritability you would be very appreciative and be truly grateful for the work they would have to put forth to do so.

However, if you’ve attempted to address these issues with the other person and they are either uninterested or incapable of adopting them, you might consider, when possible, limiting your contact with them so you’re less impacted by their irritability. Moods come and go and even underlying conditions tend to manifest in cycles, so it might be wise to take a step back until the person is in a better place emotionally.

That said, by addressing the issue with the person directly, the hope is that they’ll take steps to improve their mood and irritability and that the next time you feel yourself becoming irritable, you can take these steps yourself before your partner or friend sits you down for a talk about your bad mood.

To read his “Dear Guy” columns, go here. Watch his TEDx Linnaeus University Talk now: 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Guy Winch is a licensed psychologist who is a leading advocate for integrating the science of emotional health into our daily lives. His three TED Talks have been viewed over 20 million times, and his science-based self-help books have been translated into 26 languages. He also writes the Squeaky Wheel blog for PsychologyToday.com and has a private practice in New York City.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Angus Greig

Overwhelm.

That word doesn’t feel very pleasant hanging there, does it? It brings up feelings of failure and isolation. I’m a professional organizer, and it’s the word that I hear the most from new clients.

I have a friend and client who runs a successful business, is very active in the community, and is the most positive person you will ever meet. Yet at our first consultation, she told me that not only did she feel overwhelmed, she felt paralyzed. When I asked her to elaborate, she brought up words like shame, failure, fear and isolation.

I assured her that she is not alone.

In fact, in our homes, businesses and relationships, “overwhelm” is our society’s dirty little secret. We fill everything. We fill our houses, our cars, our storage units, our offices, our phones, our minds and our hearts with more than we can manage.

We think that more will lead us to happiness, but all it does is perpetuate the overwhelm. Because of this, the word “clutter” is everywhere.  But what people don’t realize is clutter is not just our stuff. Yes, it can be the physical things that clog up our homes, but it can also be digital, mental, emotional or even spiritual.

I define clutter as anything that keeps you from living the life that you were meant to lead, anything that keeps you from living the life that you want to lead and anything that stops you from accomplishing your work and enjoying your life.

Physical clutter is the typical stuff we think of — the closets that are overflowing, the garages that can’t hold cars, the storage units that have become a billion-dollar industry in the US alone.

Digital clutter are things like the 10 or 200 or 50,000 emails in inboxes — something I see on a very regular basis. It’s also all the files saved on your computer without naming conventions so you don’t know what they are and you spend a lot of time looking for the ones you want.

Mental clutter could be your fears, your to-do list, what’s going on in the news or anything else that’s filling your head at night.

Emotional clutter can be the negative patterns and beliefs you don’t even realize that you’re carrying around. It can be all those “I can statements that run through your head like “I can’t lose weight” or “I can’t quit my job and own my own business”.

Spiritual clutter can be a lack of forgiveness or a lack of peace.

Those last two — emotional and spiritual clutter — can be very subtle, and they can also be the most paralyzing.

While it may not seem possible, I believe that all the different types of clutter I’ve listed here have one main cause. My wonderful friend, mentor and business coach Barbara Hemphill has trademarked a phrase that sums it up: “Clutter is postponed decisions.”

Think about that for a minute.

Take physical clutter, for example. When you look at your closet, perhaps there’s a whole section of clothes that we don’t wear and the postponed decision there is: “Am I really going to put in the effort or time to lose that last 10 pounds and fit into this whole stuff?” Or maybe the postponed decision is: “Am I going to clean out my storage area so I can take these things, put them into bins, and rotate them in and out every season?”

Paper is a huge source of the clutter I deal with. We pick up a piece of paper; we put it back down and one pile becomes 10 piles. Then when you have family coming over for dinner, you push them all in a bag and put them in the closet.

And we do the same thing with email that we do with paper. We open it but we’re not making any decisions about it. Sometimes our decisions are easy — we just delete, reply or put it in a folder, but quite often we postpone making a decision until we get to the point where we don’t even want to open up our computer.

I always had a very good handle on the first two: physical and digital clutter. And I understood how the other ones worked with my clients, but I didn’t truly understand how those could affect me in my own life until I got stuck.

In 2012, I had heart surgery. My whole life I’d had a valve defect, and I’d always been told: “You’ll live into your 80s with no medical intervention; you’re fine.”

Well, that year, my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given a very short time to live, and my oldest son was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. My heart figuratively and then literally broke.

By April 2012, I was in heart failure so I had to have surgery.

I flew through it, and I was the model patient. I was only in the hospital for 48 hours. Afterwards, I was up walking and doing things in record time. I completed a half marathon 11 months after heart surgery.

My life looked great and I was getting a lot of compliments, but I felt stuck. Why? I had massive amounts of emotional clutter. It consisted of fears, questions like:
“What if the surgery didn’t work?”
“What if my heart breaks again?”
“Why am I having these dizziness spells?”
“Why do I still need a nap every single day a year later?”

And also guilt. I asked myself: “Why am I still here while other people aren’t?”

And — let me tell you — those two combine to make some pretty big spiritual clutter.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that my house is very, very neat and clean almost all the time. At the time, I had a client who was the opposite. She was depressed by her townhouse and hadn’t had people over in years — except for me, to try to work on it. We became very close very quickly.

One day, I was commenting to her that besides this stuff that was dragging her down, she had a vibrant life, was doing fun things, continuing her education, going on trips. I tried to prompt her a bit by saying: “Imagine what you could do without all this stuff weighing you down!”

She zinged me and said, “Look who’s talking. You keep telling me about ideas that you have for your business and things you want to do, and you’re not doing any of them. You are also stuck.”

So we challenged each other, and we both started facing our issues. I stopped postponing my decision to look at my fear and postponing the need to deal with my guilt.

Now I don’t know what your postponed decisions are. Do you have a fear you’re not facing?  Or is there someone you need to give forgiveness to?

To move forward, you need to make a decision.  Some are easy — for instance, you could say, “Two weeks from today and I will clean out this garage!” Some are grand — “I’m going to drop out of school, move to California, and write a novel!” And some are minuscule — “Every week I’m going to unsubscribe from two store emails.” Having clutter does not make you a bad person; it is not a moral sentence. And feeling guilty about your clutter is not going to help you, whether it’s guilt from someone else or from yourself.

There’s a saying I like that goes: “Change is a result of action, and action is the result of a decision.” You have the power — even in the midst of feeling horrible overwhelm to the point of being paralyzed — to create change by making a decision. It all starts with an action.

With the physical clutter, you’ve got to box it up, bag it up, take it to the donation center or the curb or wherever it goes. For the other kinds of clutter, you also need to take an action — it might be talking to a good friend, getting out in nature, meditating or journaling. In other words, do something, move forward, make a decision and take an action, even if it’s tiny. The universe will reward you with momentum.

And yes, some clutter is going to come back; that’s just life. But if you keep making decisions and don’t postpone them, you’ll ultimately move from overwhelm towards something that all of us want — peace.

This post was adapted from Kerry Thomas‘s TEDxAshburn Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kerry Thomas is a professional organizer and the owner and founder of Conquer the Chaos. She is passionate about helping business owners and leaders with ADHD organize their environments and clear all forms of clutter from their lives, so they can experience productivity and peace of mind. Thomas is also the author of the soon to be released book Less Clutter, More Peace: A Dog’s Teachings. She is based in Leesburg, Virginia.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Nata Schepy

I’d like you to take a moment and imagine you’re four years old.

You’re building a tower, and you’re really proud of it. But then the next minute another child comes running along and kicks over your tower. You are outraged, and you feel all these feelings bubble up inside — hurt, panic, frustration and helplessness. Just then, an adult comes by.

They get close, get down to your level, and ask: “Honey, what happened?”

In their eyes, there’s compassion and you feel that their body is calm and regulated. And then all those feelings come bubbling out of you — frustration, anger, helplessness.

This adult says: “Tell me all about it.” They don’t try and fix it, and they don’t say to you: “Don’t worry, you can build another one.” They just let you feel all that you’re feeling. Then they open their arms and you snuggle, take another deep breath, feel better and go back to building your tower.

If you were lucky, the adults in your life gave you lots of space to express how you feel without trying to fix what was going on.

Now I’d like you to try and remember being four years old and a time when you felt angry or sad or scared or you didn’t understand what was going on.

How did the adults in your life respond to you? If you were lucky, they gave you lots of space to express how you feel and listened to your worries and hurt without trying to fix what was going on.

But many of us probably had the opposite experience. Maybe we were told “Stop being so stupid” or “You don’t need to cry.” You might have been sent to your room or to the corner or even been hit for making a mistake.

We still value IQ far more than we value EQ.

Why am I talking about children and feelings? We’ve seen a steady increase in psychological distress among adults — in Australia and around the world. And I see this increase in distress as being rooted in part in the messages we received as children around how to express feelings and emotions.

Of course, it’s easy to blame our parents for what they did or didn’t do. But the real issue is the lack of emotional literacy in our culture. We don’t teach parents how to respond to children’s feelings and emotions with empathy and compassion. We also don’t teach it in our kindergartens; we don’t teach it in our schools. We still value IQ far more than we value EQ.

My work over the last 16 years with families around attachment, trauma and connection has shown me that there are usually three ways we learn as kids to deal with feelings and emotions.

You might have been labeled as “naughty”, “too much” or “trouble” when all you were doing was responding to your environment.

The first way is repression. Perhaps as a child, you learnt that it wasn’t safe to express your feelings. You might have gotten shut down and told to stop crying. Or you were given a look that made you draw everything inside and push them down deep. The impact of repression on a child is that those feelings stay there.

And then as adults, those feelings can turn up again when life throws us a curveball. Those same feelings come up, but this time, we respond by having another glass of wine or spending hours mindlessly scrolling through Facebook or making ourselves so busy at work that we don’t have time to feel .

The second way is aggression. As a child if we felt really powerless or scared and we grew up in an authoritarian environment where we didn’t have a voice and couldn’t say how we felt, then those feelings would again bubble up inside us. At the point where they would tip over when we felt most frightened or threatened, then they might come out in the form of aggression, rage, loud words. You might have been labeled as “naughty”, “too much” or “trouble” when all you were doing was responding to your environment.

And then as adults, those tendencies show up in bullying behavior. Or they can turn up in harsh critical thoughts about ourselves and others. Or it can show up as violence.

The third way is expression. If we grew up with an imprint that said “Feelings are welcome. I will accept all of you — the happy bits, the sad bits, the joyous bits, the bits that are angry. I’m not going to try and fix them; I’m just going to hold you,” then as adults when things feel hard, we reach for our journal and write down our thoughts. Or we call a friend and say: “Hey, can you listen to me?” Or we might go for a run, do some yoga, speak to our therapist and find a way to lean into the feelings, we feel them and let them go.

When I was a new parent, my game plan was “I’ll just keep them happy all the time.” But that’s a ridiculous thing to do.

I am a mother to three beautiful teenagers. When I first became a parent, like many of you, I had absolutely no clue about what I was doing. When it came to understanding their feelings and emotions, my game plan was “I’ll just keep them happy all the time.” But, as anyone who has kids realizes, that’s a ridiculous thing to do. It is impossible and incredibly exhausting to try to keep people happy all the time. So I learned that I needed to find a way to help my children thrive emotionally and also create harmony for them in our home.

I’m lucky enough to understand and study trauma, and I began to see that what we need as humans is a safe place to unpack all of who we are. We need boundaries and holding, but we also need empathy and compassion for those big feelings that rise within. Instead of trying to fix their problems and trying to make them happy all the time, I just got down low and said: “Tell me all about it.”

And I just listened. Sometimes there were tears; sometimes, rage or complaining. But every time my only job was to sit there and hold space for them.

What I began to see was emotional intelligence developing in my children.

How do we expect our children to have empathy and compassion for other people if we don’t show them how?

One evening, I realized just how powerful this was. I was making dinner but I also had to go teach a class so I was doing the hustle that most parents do.

I was just about to go out the door when my youngest daughter, who was five at the time, came into the kitchen. She looked unhappy, and I could see that she’s feeling some feelings. I actually turned to her and said: “Honey, do you think you could hold onto your feelings for a few hours?” Of course, she looked at me like, “Are you kidding?”

At that moment my middle daughter, who was then 10, walked into the room. She said, “I’ll listen to your feelings”, and I’m like “OK.” So my 10-year-old took the 5-year-old into the bedroom, and I thought, I’m going to be late for work because I need to see what happens here.

I stood outside their door, and I heard my 10-year-old say: “Tell me all about it.” And the five-year-old started crying and complaining about all the things that had happened at school.

The 10-year-old was going, “Oh that’s hard. What else?” And then there was more complaining and then more tears and giggles and laughter and they came out of the room.

I saw my 10-year-old and said to her, “Honey, how was that for you?” She looked at me and said, “Well, Mama, I just did to her what you do for me.”

At that moment, I realized that children can’t be what they can’t see. How do we expect them to have empathy and compassion for other people if we don’t show them how? How can we expect them to treat others with kindness and respect if they don’t know what that feels like in their own bodies?

I wonder:

— What would it be like if we actually supported parents with the tools and understanding to listen compassionately to their children?

— What would it be like if we actually helped parents unpack their own childhood, so they don’t have to carry that baggage and put it on their children’s shoulders?

— What would it be like if we supported and encouraged boys to cry and be vulnerable and girls to rage and find their voice and speak up for what they need?

— What if instead of harsh disciplines and punishments, we replaced them with compassionate listening and loving limits and boundaries?

— What would it look like if we took all of these ideas and placed them in our education system?

About 18 months ago, a colleague and I created Woodline Primary School. It’s set in the Geelong hinterlands on a beautiful farm with abundant nature. We have horses, chickens and veggie patches, and the philosophy of our school is to foster our students’ emotional well-being in a safe learning environment.

Sir Ken Robinson said the aims of education are to understand the world around us and the world within us. But what if we prioritized the world within?

Research shows that when children feel safe to learn — which means they feel free of judgment and criticism, they’re treated with kindness and respect, they have autonomy over their bodies and their learning, and they are given much love and celebrated for their unique differences — their neurological systems become fully operational and their capacity for growth and learning increases.

Our aim at Woodline is for children to learn about the world and also develop critical life skills such as emotional intelligence, growth mindset, critical thinking and a love of failure. Every time you fail, you realize, “Ah there are so many more options I haven’t yet explored!” More than anything, we want them to learn to be compassionate citizens of the Earth.

The late great Sir Ken Robinson said that the aims of education are to understand the world around us and the world within us. But what if we prioritized the world within? Surely, the world around us would make so much more sense.

Just think: How different could the world be if we placed connection, heart and compassionate listening at the center of every one of our relationships?

This post was adapted from a TEDxDocklands Talk. Watch it here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lael Stone is an author, speaker, parenting educator and consultant that specializes in helping adults process their childhood trauma. She is the cofounder of Woodline Primary School, cohost of The Aware Parenting Podcast and a mum to 3 grown-up children.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Nadine Redlich

Our bodies are designed to respond to touch, and not just to sense the environment around us.

We actually have a network of dedicated nerve fibers in our skin that detect and emotionally respond to the touch of another person — affirming our relationships, our social connections and even our sense of self.

So, what happens when we don’t receive that?

This was one of the first questions that neuroscientist Helena Wasling PhD considered when social distancing restrictions were introduced to curb the spread of COVID-19. Based at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, she has studied these nerves — known as C tactile or CT afferents — and their importance to our emotions for over a decade.

“What struck me very early on, in the first week of being told that we were restricted from touch,  was that people no longer knew how to behave,” she says.

Even if you don’t consider yourself to be a tactile person, touch is — or was — embedded in the social structure of our lives. From meeting a new colleague and evaluating their handshake to giving a friend a long hug when we haven’t seen them in a while, it is one of the fundamental ways we have all learned to relate to one another. “To take it away is a very big intervention,” says Wasling.

New York based psychologist Guy Winch PhD agrees; “Touch is something we associate with emotional closeness, and we associate the absence of it with emotional distance. We may not fully appreciate it, but in pre-pandemic life there were literally dozens of small moments of touch throughout the day.”

This is significant not just in the landscape of our minds, but that of our bodies. Being emotionally and socially responsive to touch is so biologically fundamental to us that CT afferents are present over almost every inch of our skin, absent only from the palms of our hands and the soles of our feet.

These nerves are, Wasling explains in her TEDxGöteborg talk, particularly attuned to three things: a light touch, gently moving, and around 32 degrees Celsius (89F). Which just happens to be human skin temperature. So they are programmed to be most responsive to a gentle caress from another person.

Rather than simply telling our brains that this touch has happened — this is the role of other receptors in the skin that help the primary somatosensory cortex to processes physical sensations — CT afferents instead send signals to the insular cortex. “This is a deeper part of the cortex that deals more with your emotional equilibrium,” explains Wasling. “So you will get kind of a vague sensation. In the best of cases, it will be: ‘That was nice. I’m accepted. I feel safer now. Someone is counting on me.’ CT afferents also have pathways to parts of the brain that deal with who you are socially.”

For people who have now been living without that connection for a long time, it can be incredibly difficult, says Winch. “I have friends and patients that I work with who have not been touched in a year. At all. Not a handshake. And they are really suffering for it. There’s something that feels very distancing and cold about not having any kind of option for an embrace, and that can leave long lasting scars.”

Hugs, the form of touch we probably all miss the most, are particularly important and emotionally nourishing, says Winch. “When someone’s crying and we hold them, we’re doing it to comfort, but what it allows them to do is cry more. People usually will hold it together until somebody puts an arm around them, and then they’ll break down because that hug represents security and safety, and because of the closeness we feel when we know and trust that person.”

Moreover, the benefits of touch that we are missing out on are not just emotional and social but also physical; it can reduce pain and stress, as well as giving us a general feeling of wellbeing. These are the areas, says Wasling, where we may be able to support ourselves when we need to go for prolonged periods without social touch.

Here are some of the ways that we can ease the difficulty of living without this closeness — both for ourselves, and the people in our lives:

Take a shower or have a warm bath.

Although it doesn’t elicit quite the same physiological response as interpersonal touch, Wasling says the slow movement of the water on your skin is likely to generate a CT afferent response. Having a warm bath also relaxes your muscles, which can help to alleviate tension.

Cuddle a pet, or ask to walk someone else’s.

“Just being close to a furry animal has been shown to lower your stress, reduce your heart rate and your blood pressure,” says Wasling. You also have a social relationship with your pet — they rely on you and need you to show up for them.

There’s been a noted increase in people adopting pets during the pandemic, and at least one study has identified the potential therapeutic benefits of human-animal relationships when we are denied our normal level of human social interaction.

If you are able to see anyone in person, be wholly present — even if you can’t touch.

When we remove touch from our social interactions, we should consider what else we can emphasize instead. “Maybe we could be better at looking each other in the eyes, if we do have physical meetings,” suggests Wasling. “We can make sure that we see each other, because touching a person is a way of saying that ‘I see you, I acknowledge your existence.’”

Don’t be afraid to have deeper, more meaningful conversations where you really listen — especially if you know someone might be isolated or lonely. While these interactions don’t activate the same touch-based neural pathways, they still stimulate our social sense of belonging and intimacy, says Winch.

Don’t just “check in” on people who are alone — connect with them meaningfully.

It feels like everyone from our employers to the Twittersphere to US vice president Kamala Harris is reminding us to check in on our single friends. But are we going the right way about it?

“When we say ‘check in’ that’s like a checkbox. Tick; done,” says Winch. But that really isn’t enough. While the boredom and frustration of lockdowns are similar experiences for everyone, being isolated from the regular physical closeness of friends and family is uniquely difficult for people who are alone; the elderly, those who live by themselves, and those who are in high risk categories and cannot chance even one hug.

“If you just check in, that’s not going to be sufficient. You should be talking for at least 15 – 20 minutes for that to be a meaningful conversation. You have to really connect,” says Winch. If you’re both feeling Zoom fatigue, try each taking a walk while you talk on the phone.

If friends have described feeling ghostly or unreal, do your best to appreciate that the absence of touch has been a significant emotional loss for them during this time. One that you may never fully understand. Try not to say “I know how you feel,” if you are not in the same position.

“You know that when you touch things, they’re real to you,” says Wasling. “One of the reasons why I think touch is so important is that it makes you convinced you have a place in the social world of other people.”

As we look towards a vaccinated future, it is difficult to know right now how the pandemic will change our social attitudes towards touch in the long term. Will we still shake hands? Hug colleagues? A UK study conducted from January to March 2020, mostly before lockdown measures were introduced, found that 54 percent of people already felt they had too little touch in their lives. So we may well want this aspect of our lives to return as soon as possible.

But one facet that worries Winch is how the pandemic has actually reshaped our relationship with touch; “We took the thing that represents something so close, intimate and important, and now it represents something that’s actually dangerous and you should avoid. Even if we don’t fully register it, we are going to feel surges of anxiety at the idea of getting a hug. It’s going to take a while to bring us down from the danger alert of touch.”

Watch Helena Wasling’s TEDxGöteborg Talk here: 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Halton is Assistant Ideas Editor at TED, and a science journalist based in the Pacific Northwest.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

Avalon Nuovo

I have struggled with feelings of unworthiness for as long as I can remember.

From the outside, my life looked pretty perfect when I was growing up. My parents had a happy marriage, they were supportive and they earned enough for us to be more than comfortable. I was mostly happy, but I also had a deep sense that something was wrong with me.

My most painful moments were at parties. When I went to Black parties, my friends made fun of me because I was rhythmically challenged and I couldn’t get my awkward middle-school body to mimic the latest dance moves.

Then, as the only Black girl at parties associated with my predominantly white school, I was never chosen to dance. I was never the object of anyone’s attention. I felt like I didn’t belong.

So, at around the age of 12, I decided that the way to cure these feelings of unworthiness was perfection. Simple, right? If I was just perfect,  then I would fit in. I would be chosen. I would really be happy.

I threw myself into formal dance classes, worked hard in school and tried to be a supportive and selfless friend. My self-esteem was high when I got good grades and felt included — but it crashed when I didn’t do well academically or was left out.

I held on to the hope that if I could just find someone to love me, then I would finally feel worthy.

In college, busyness became my key strategy for trying to feel worthy. I juggled classes and tutoring with the Black Student Union, student government, gospel choir, step team … I barely gave myself time to breathe, to think, to be.

After college, my attention turned to trying to find a relationship to feel the void. The anxiety and ups and downs I experienced in this quest were exhausting. I remember going out to bars and clubs, and just like in junior high, I was rarely the one chosen to dance. I began to question my attractiveness with my brown skin and kinky hair and whether I’d ever be accepted by a potential partner. I held on to the hope that if I could just find someone to love me, then I would finally feel worthy.

I’ll let you in on a secret: None of it worked!

Not the perfectionism, the busyness, the relationships — well, maybe some of it did for a moment. Right after starting a new relationship or getting a good grade, I felt worthy. But soon enough, my feelings of self-worth slipped away and I was onto pursuing the next thing.  As soon as I reached the bar I had set for my worth, it was raised yet again.

Have you ever experienced that?

After several years of therapy, spiritual growth and a PhD in clinical psychology, I’ve finally begun to cultivate an unconditional self-worth and shed the belief that “I’m not good enough”.  I’m embracing myself — quirks and all — and this new path is liberating, enlivening and life-giving.

Let me share what I’ve learned with you. But before I do, you might be wondering if this is just more advice about self-esteem.

Unconditional self-worth is the sense that you deserve to be alive, to be loved and cared for. To take up space.

I just want to clarify: Self-worth is not the same as self-esteem.

Our self-esteem is derived from our abilities, accomplishments, social positions and things we believe and we can achieve. We can bolster our self-esteem by improving our skills or performance, and our self-esteem goes up and down depending on how we’re doing in various aspects of our lives.

In contrast, unconditional self-worth is distinct from our abilities and accomplishments. It’s not about comparing ourselves to others; it’s not something that we can have more or less of. Unconditional self-worth is the sense that you deserve to be alive, to be loved and cared for. To take up space.

I have sat with hundreds of students at one of the top universities in the country and when we explore their concerns and dig to the root, we often find that they’re struggling with a deep sense of unworthiness. I believe there are many factors that cause us to feel this way.

Ads tell us that we need to buy things to be loved, accepted or to succeed. Our educational system teaches us that our worthiness as students is based on our grades or test scores. Our parents may have implied they’d love us more if we made the honor roll or the varsity team. Those of us who’ve experienced abuse, sexual assault and trauma may question our personhood and very right to exist. And, as social media pervades our lives, we have also begun to feel that our worthiness is based on the number of followers we have and likes we get.

Whatever the cause, for many of us our self-worth is tied to our accomplishments and possessions. As soon as we fail or lose approval, we experience low self-worth.

Unconditional self-worth is the antidote to low self-worth. It is a way out of self-criticism, shame and unhealthy behavior. It is a way out of depression, anxiety and substance abuse. It is time for us to base our worth on the fact that we are human to cultivate a worth that persists even when life does not go as we hoped.

So what keeps so many of us from cultivating unconditional self-worth?

Some people might fear that if they get too satisfied with themselves, they won’t be motivated to grow and change. Others could feel that accepting themselves as worthy would be arrogant. And some may simply believe that feeling worthy is just not possible.

I often wonder:

What the world would look like if we all cultivated unconditional self-worth?
What would you find the courage to do if you knew you were worthy?
What would you dare to dream if your self-worth wasn’t at stake?
What would you stop doing if you knew you were already worthy?

I believe people would resolve conflicts without violence and that more people would dare to do amazing things. I believe that if our self-worth wasn’t on the line, the world would look a lot better and more peaceful for all of us.

So how do we make this vision real?

Cultivating unconditional self-worth is an ongoing practice. Here are four ways you can begin to feel more worthy starting right here, right now:

1. Forgive yourself

Many of us struggle to feel worthy, because we are angry with ourselves about past mistakes. Forgiveness involves acknowledging and accepting what has happened. Acceptance releases us from blaming ourselves and others and allows us to move forward.

To forgive yourself, reflect on the circumstances that led to past mistakes, acknowledge the pain you experienced and identify what you learned from the situation. Then say to yourself “I forgive you” — in an honest and kind way.

2. Practice self-acceptance

I think many of us struggle with low self-worth because we think there’s something wrong with us and we refuse to accept ourselves the way we are. We receive so many messages that we are not OK the way we are. We’re told that we need to change our bodies, our clothes, our jobs or even our personalities to be acceptable.

See if you can let go of the thoughts you have about how the way you think, feel or look should be different. Instead, focus on the things you like about yourself. Over time, begin to embrace your quirks — your awkward laugh, your crooked smile, your unusual way of thinking about things. Through this acceptance, you’re acknowledging that you are worthy just the way you are.

Knowing that we are not alone in our struggles and pain reminds us that challenges don’t make us unworthy.

3. Be there for yourself

When life gets rough, many of us abandon ourselves during times of challenge. We engage in harsh self-criticism — which only leaves us feeling worse. What we need most when we are going through a difficult time is for someone to say “I see you. I see how badly you’re hurting. I’m here.”

We can do this for ourselves.

The next time you experience emotional pain, acknowledge how you were feeling and offer yourself some comfort. Place your hand on your chest, give yourself a hug or say something kind and soothing to yourself.

4. Connect to supportive people

Low self-worth can leave us feeling isolated and alone. When we think there’s something wrong with us, we tend to pull away from our relationships, and this isolation only exacerbates our feelings of unworthiness. Knowing that we are not alone in our struggles and pain reminds us that challenges don’t make us unworthy. Connecting to people who are supportive helps us to get in touch with our humanity and our sense of worth.

One last thing: The journey to unconditional self-worth is not always easy. The path is not straight or smooth, and you’ll face setbacks along the way — I certainly have.

It takes courage to free yourself from the conditions you’ve placed on your worth. The process of forgiveness can be messy, it can be scary to accept ourselves as we are, being there for ourselves can put us face to face with emotional pain, and connecting to others can make us feel vulnerable.

But I’m here to tell you that this journey is also beautiful and worth taking. On it, you’ll find strength, become grounded in your humanity and know that you are worthy. So I challenge you to embrace yourselves and begin living from a place of worthiness to find your own metaphorical dance floor and move freely.

Yes, I said dance floor.

I felt free, I felt exuberant, I felt full of life, I felt worthy.

On my journey, I found myself returning to the dance floor because that’s where my own struggles with unworthiness began.

It turns out, I’ve learned a few new moves since junior high.

A few summers ago, I went to a jazz festival by myself. As I sat there watching people dancing to the live music, I longed to get up and join them. But all of my old insecurities about my dance moves and not being chosen showed up.

Luckily, an elderly man invited me to dance, and after a song or two with him, I began dancing on my own. And as the notes of Latin jazz filled the air and I moved my body to the rhythm, I felt free, I felt exuberant, I felt full of life, I felt worthy.

This talk was adapted from a TEDxDePaulUniversity Talk; to learn more about Dr. Adia Gooden and her work, visit her website.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adia Gooden PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and a dynamic speaker and trainer. She is passionate about helping others cultivate unconditional self-worth, and she received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and earned her PhD in Clinical Community Psychology from DePaul University.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.