The Science of Wellbeing: Week 3
Well guys, we made it! We finally get to the part of this course that is less about the ways our brains try to make things harder, and more about what we can actively do to increase our happiness! I’m going to keep this tight so that hopefully you can run out after you read this and get right to it:
Social connection. Ok, ok, I am going to need everyone to hold their eye rolls and read these next paragraphs with a beginner's mind. Lots of what you will read from here on out is pretty intuitive. It is not rocket science. The question then becomes, why don’t we do this stuff all the time? As with most things, it is not as simple as we would like to believe. Let me get into it a bit more:
Social connections can be broken down into various types: Time with close friends, time with peers at school (or at work), social connections outside of school (with family friends or a church community, or extracurricular activity friends), and social connection with strangers. Laurie Santos presents good studies that suggest that something as simple and low-stakes as our social connections with strangers can be a reliable method to improve your mood.
Simple actions such as smiling at a stranger (or a dog, or a baby), or having a brief interaction with someone on the T, or at a store, can boost your sense of wellbeing and connection. The problem these days is that cell phones cut down these types of incidental interactions because we all have our eyes down instead of on the humans around us. Add to that the fact that so many things can now be ordered rather than going out to buy them (books, toys, groceries, even restaurants are less frequented now that we have Uber eats), and you get a modern environment where you can be almost completely estranged from these types of incidental interactions.
Heaped on top of this are the ways that social media and zoom have served to cut down our face to face interaction. We are increasingly able to zoom in to meetings and classes (especially college ones), and apps like instagram and snapchat have aspects of social connection but usually just simulate, rather than actually recreate, the qualities of a face to face moment with someone. I am all for social media as a means to add to your social connection by touching base with friends, but I don’t think we should view it as a replacement for actual hanging out. Laurie Santos shares the following:
Teens report that loneliness is increasing in 36 out of 37 countries and the number of teens reporting that they feel lonely has doubled between 2012-2018.
The good news is that social connections are easy to increase. Here are a few tips on how to do that:
1. Talk to a stranger. Yes, random, safe-looking strangers in public areas can be safe to have small interactions with. (Store clerks count as well.) It can be short, it can seem meaningless, but I think you might notice the boost. Check out this amazing TED talk from Kio Stark on the types and benefits of talking with strangers:
2. Put time into maintaining your friendships. Be the person to initiate plans with your friends. Be proactive about finding fun things you might like to try and inviting your friends along. Say yes to invitations.
3. Join a club, or participate in a group. Faith-based communities can be excellent sources of community and connection and so can team sports, dance, or any other group or club activity, like game night, cards or Dungeons and Dragons.
4. Put effort into managing your shyness and fears of rejection. All of us, grown and teen alike, sometimes suffer from not putting ourselves out there because we don’t want to get shot down.
Finally, and importantly, you can choose to boost in any one of these categories, pick the one that is easiest for you.
Kindness. The second method for increasing your own wellbeing is kindness. Happy people tend to volunteer more often, reach out to friends more often, and give more money away. Doing more of these types of activities has a measurable impact on our body, lowering your body's stress hormones.
Now, kindness can be tough. For those of us who are people pleasers, it can be challenging to find ways that you want to be generous without giving away too much of yourself (or your funds). A concept that I have found to be useful is thinking about the relationship of kindness to resentment. If you find yourself feeling resentful, it’s a sign that you have given beyond what you want. No need to beat yourself up about it, we are all struggling with how to balance ourselves and others. Focus on the acts of kindness that you know you want to give, or ones that are easy to accomplish.
Kindness can also be hard if you are shy or have a tendency to isolate yourself when you are feeling sad or anxious. Kindness requires you to look outward and acknowledge your connection with the world around you. It can sometimes be a challenge to push yourself to engage in this way. You may find yourself doubting whether it matters to anyone else. But when you acknowledge that you are a part of a family, community, or social system, you must acknowledge that you matter and have agency to make the world a little bit better. Plus, kindness gets you out of your own head. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need that. It can be lovely not to focus on myself.
Here is a fabulous short meditation on giving: An Ode to Giving People Money - The Atlantic
Flow and Fun. The third set of behaviors is flow and fun. Flow is a mental state that you can get into when you are completely immersed in a task that is both challenging and interesting. In this state you are able to feel present and engaged, you sometimes lose track of time, you are fully involved, and your concentration is able to rest only on the task at hand. For flow to happen you need a task that is challenging but that you have some skill for. These states feel amazing and are intrinsically rewarding.
Flow is an important part of experiencing fun. Fun is defined in this course as an experience that combines playfulness, connection, and flow. Connection meaning with friends or others, flow meaning a task that is challenging but you have skill for, and playfulness meaning…..? How does one define playfulness? I tend to define it as a spontaneous, open-ended, activity that is done for exploration and experimentation.
Fun is obviously important and my hope is that everyone who reads this feels they are good at having fun and can point to regular experiences of fun on a weekly basis. The problem with fun right now is that many folks these days are so busy with school or work or homework or extracurricular activities that they are not seeking out and engaging in fun frequently enough. For adults in my generation it can be an endless list of to-do’s that keep you putting fun on the back burner. For teens it is quite often due to homework load and extracurricular activities. If there is any one thing that I hope you can take from this series of posts it is that fun should be a part of every day and that it is worthwhile to cross a few things off your list (or to consider ways to balance your schedule) so that you can allow, seek out, schedule in, and engage in more fun and more flow.
Ok, please challenge yourself this week to try something new in one or more of the areas above. I plan to experiment with flow by doing some crochet that I learned from a client. What are you into?
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