advice & wisdom

Words of Wisdom written by Polly

Personality Type in Depth

An interview with Polly Young-Eisendrath, PhD*

Personality Type in Depth: In The Resilient Spirit, you say that resilient people pay more attention to their attitudes and reactions than to the actual events that precipitate them.

Polly Young-Eisendrath: Yes, I continue to be very interested in the interface between “mindfulness” practice and self-knowledge. There are a lot of words for this skill of becoming self-aware in both Buddhist practice and in psychotherapy. In psychotherapy, in a Jungian framework, it’s called “cultivating the transcendent function.” In the Freudian framework, it’s called developing “evenly hovering attention”—a certain kind of awareness where you can become aware of things without reacting to them. In Buddhist practice sometimes it’s called “spacious mind.” In the research on personality disorders, it’s called “mentalization.” (It used to be called “reflexivity.”) Then you have Donald Winnicott’s term “potential space,” and Thomas Ogden’s term “dialogical space.” All of these terms are dealing with how do we get a “spaciousness” in our own responses so that we can experience our feelings, our thoughts, our motivations without acting on them directly—but without denying them either. This is not a matter of suppressing, dissociating, trying to override one’s negative experience; it’s not a matter of controlling; it’s not a matter of pushing anything aside. It’s a matter of being able to watch what is going on in our own experience, without reacting—or without reacting, at least, on the level of our actions.

You may have emotional reactions and so you just feel the feelings all the way through; you hear your thoughts; or you see the pictures in your mind—and you do that with a kind of friendly attitude towards them. It’s “Oh, there’s that” and “Oh, there’s that now” instead of “Why am I feeling this?” or “I should have that out of my mind by now” or “I shouldn’t be reacting like that.” It’s being able to experience your own subjective experience without judging it, without immediately identifying with it, and without pushing it away.

PTD: So we’re talking about cultivating “mindfulness” through “mindfulness practice.”

PY-E: Yes, mindfulness practice allows us to create a more spacious mind when we’re actually involved in our walking-around activities. This gives us that ability to actually check-in with our subjective experience, instead of just reacting out of our subjective experience.

PTD: It seems like this is extremely critical—that an attitude of mindfulness is almost sufficient unto itself to promote significant personal growth, and without which our potential for that development is fairly limited.

PY-E: That’s right; because it actually kind of stops you in your tracks; and you can have this “holding” of your own experience where you can continue to experience without doing the verbal or nonverbal or emotional reactivity that people do place on each other. It allows you to be able to have your own experience; and then a bit of freedom to respond to whatever is going on. Of course that’s particularly an issue in close relationships, where we care about the other people; and it’s an issue often with authority figures where we’re under somebody’s power or status; and it’s also often an issue with our own creativity.

PTD: Could you explain, specifically, what you consider to be mindfulness practices?

PY-E: I’ll start out by saying that I’m going to lump all forms of Buddhist meditation, at least, under the term “mindfulness practice”—that is to say that all the different forms are all helping us cultivate something that’s called mindfulness. I don’t have so much experience with other forms, outside the Buddhist world; but I think all forms of meditation are trying to cultivate mindfulness. I think all forms are trying to improve our ability to concentrate and have equanimity with our experience. But I can only really talk about the Buddhist ones from my own experience.

So here’s a definition of mindfulness: it’s a strengthening of your concentration so that you can be more precise and clear in recognizing your experience. It’s also a strengthening of your equanimity—your ability to be relaxed and open in the face of your experience. The concentration part of mindfulness is a little like drinking a cup of coffee; it kind of wakes you up. It’s like the straight spine of arousal or awareness. The equanimity part is like the relaxed limbs of the body. The spine is straight, and the limbs are relaxed. This relaxation part is a receptivity and acceptance to things as they are. It’s a kind of “friendly audience” to your own experience; a sort of “Hello. Wow! OK.” attitude—a gentle, matter-of-fact awareness of your experience, rather than a reactive pulling back. All mindfulness practices cultivate both of those, the concentration and the equanimity, so that you can be clearer, more precise and more relaxed in the face of whatever is happening to you—whether it’s loud noises coming in from a jackhammer running in the next building, or a pain in your knee, or your emotions about your spouse.

These are all aspects of subjective experience. You hear that jackhammer; and you react to it often by starting to say a bunch of things like “Who the heck is that?” and “Why are they doing that?” And then you kind of try to close your ears against it. Pretty soon you may be calling up the superintendent in your building and yelling at them for allowing this to go on next door. Mindfulness, on the other hand, would say: “Let’s look at what we’re actually experiencing.” “Let’s listen to the sound without reacting to it.” “Let’s look at the words that are in the mind in relation to that sound.” “Let’s feel the sensations in the body.” “Let’s feel the emotions that are reacting.” There’s a lot going on in that moment. And after we’ve experienced it all, without rejecting any of it, then let’s see what we want to do about it.

PTD: You have written that “pride, shame, envy, guilt, embarrassment, and jealousy are emotions born of body boundaries, of feeling oneself as an individual being” and that “traps of self-consciousness, feeling unique or special . . . are barriers to engaging directly in our lives.” That seems like a very powerful piece of the human puzzle that’s not generally accepted in our Western culture.

PY-E: Yes, I agree with you completely. Those are the self-conscious emotions—sometimes called the “secondary” emotions. The “primal emotions” are the ones that we’re born with. The primal emotions can be refined and expanded; but they are the emotions that we share with other animals. The self-conscious emotions are more or less specifically human (though some other animals do have them.) These are the emotions that cause us to feel separate from the world and other people. They give us the capacity to abstract ourselves, and to reflect on ourselves, and to form systems of thought and meaning and so on that are very complex. So they’re a great gift to us. But they’re also a real barrier.

PTD: How do mindfulness practices fit with psychoanalysis?

PY-E: The topic of “mindfulness” actually comes up in connection with psychoanalysis quite a bit these days. There is an active dialogue going on between psychotherapy and meditational practices. In fact, I just returned from the Tassajara Center in San Francisco where I was co-presenting a course in psychotherapy and Zen, so I’m very aware of the importance of that dialogue.

We have these different meditation approaches, all of them aimed towards increasing mindfulness. How, then, does this interact with psychotherapy? In psychotherapy, when we meet with people, we kind of assume that they can watch their own experience but I think that’s asking a lot if someone hasn’t practiced mindfulness. At the same time, it’s also true that in a certain way all the psychotherapies also try to teach you how to watch your experience—by having you stay in the session for the 50 minutes and by the therapist asking you again and again to observe what is going on. In that observation, you come to see patterns in your own reactivity. You come to see that it’s not like your mind is free; it just keeps going over things in the same way. Then you begin to see things: What’s the root of that pattern? How did it get started? Then we find some answers, usually in your early relationships. And then, over time, you’re meant to actually watch the whole thing without doing it, so that you have a freedom to do it or not do it. That is mindfulness. In therapy, what we tend to look at are these repetitive patterns—at what Jung called the “psychological complexes.” They have a lot of emotional reactivity in them, certain habits of our mind, certain words that go through our mind, certain images that go through, and also the tendency to react to those in a certain way in relationship to others.

So there’s a difference between the way we watch our experience in psychotherapy and the way we watch it in meditation; but there are also similarities. In both environments, we’re asking ourselves to watch with interest, with engagement, but without reactivity—or at least without too much reactivity. In both environments we’re strengthening concentration and equanimity. But in the meditation environment often the object of the meditation is something that’s assigned to us that we use to help us practice. In psychotherapy the object of our concentration and equanimity is usually what’s coming up in the room between two people. Of course at first—and maybe throughout the therapy—the focus really is also on what already has happened to the patient or client outside of the therapy. Eventually though, we come around to also watching what’s going on in the room.

PTD: So psychotherapy is really a kind of mindfulness practice?

PY-E: Yes, it is, in an interpersonal environment. The other mindfulness practices, even when they are conducted in a group environment, are really solo activities.

PTD: How do you think people’s psychological types affect their mindfulness practices?

PY-E: When Jung talks about the psychological types, he’s very focused, first, on the attitudinal types—on the Introversion and the Extraversion. Of course, the extraverted type is oriented toward the external world and actually has a preference for trying to sort things out in terms of the so-called “objective” world. The introverted type has a preference for sorting things out in terms of the internal, “subjective” world. So you can see that there can be, in the Jungian way of seeing things, a belief that the Introvert is better suited for this activity that we’re talking about—mindfulness of one’s subjective experience—because the Introvert has a natural interest in the subjective experience.

In general, I would say that this is the case. In general, the people that I see—who come to see me as a Jungian analyst—they’re Introverts. In general, the people that I am attracted toward—the people with whom I would work on developing programs, or who might co-teach with me, or whatever—in general, those people are Introverts. They tend to be drawn to the subjects of psychology, psychotherapy, typology, meditation, and so on. So, yes, it’s been my experience that the people who are “naturally” drawn to both mindfulness practices and psychotherapy are mostly the Introverts. On the other hand, I also have a lot of meditation buddies who are Extraverts. They came to the world of meditation usually because they were concerned, worried about, compassionate about the external world: things like war, famine, poverty, the ways that human beings act toward each other, the environment, all sorts of things that have to do with what we’d call the objective world; things that didn’t have to do with their own personal experience of themselves. They noticed that there was a huge amount of suffering in this world, and they wanted to address that suffering. They weren’t actually, primarily addressing their own suffering. So it depends: more Introverts come to psychotherapy, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true for meditation practice.

PTD: So while introverted types tend to be naturally, and more directly, attracted to the subjective focus of meditation, many Extraverts arrive there too—though perhaps by a more circuitous route?

PY-E: That’s right. There are people who are very much Extraverts who perceive the objective stuff—the sights, the sounds, the body sensations, as well as politics, the weather, the news, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq—and they realize that it has something to do with human motivation. Why do people do all these things? Why isn’t there peace in the world? Many people ask me that question. They say, “It seems like peace makes so much more sense. Why is there not peace in the world?” Well, because of human beings, primarily. So many of these people who are trying to understand end up meditating—looking inside to understand what they experience outside.

PTD: What about type differences other than Extraversion vs. Introversion?

PY-E: In regard to the functions of Sensing, Intuiting, Feeling and Thinking, Jung had what might be considered to be a prejudice that would say that the function of Intuition is the closest to unconscious wisdom. After that would be Feeling, then Thinking, then Sensing. So Sensing would be closest to the external world, followed by Thinking, followed by Feeling, followed by Intuition. The more intuitive one is, according to Jung, the more one is able to get hold of one’s own motivations, one’s internal images. There’s research that would say that an Introverted Intuitive is in fact more capable of understanding subjective experience than an Extraverted Sensate. But that, of course, doesn’t mean that we assume that Extraverted Sensing types don’t know how to get into their subjective experience.

PTD: Can you help me understand how an Extraverted Sensing type, in particular, would make the connection of “I need to meditate in order to solve the problems of the outer world?”

PY-E: Well, an Extraverted Sensate type can be as tenderhearted or caring as any other type, of course. So she looks at the world and says, “This doesn’t make any sense.” “Why do people kill each other? Why do people form these economic systems that cause other people to distrust and to cause violence?” Then they start by looking around and maybe, for example, the first answers they get have to do with economic realities, or political realities. So they may take off and become politicians, economists, or perhaps philosophers. But if they continue pursuing that kind of inquiry, it always still has its roots in human motivations. I’m not saying that every Extraverted Sensate is going to dive into meditation when that person recognizes that there are problems in this world. A lot of them do go in the direction of politics and economics, or, say, engineering or nursing. They’re interested in solving the problems of the world from an extraverted point of view. But there are plenty of Extraverts who are meditators because they’ve already investigated these more extraverted activities and they found that at the root of the problems is this issue of human motivation. So then they said, “Oh, meditation helps us see our motivations. Meditation actually allows us to slow things down so that we can see what’s happening—see our motivations.” So they can get interested in that, whereas they might not get interested in psychotherapy because they feel that psychotherapy is so purely subjective. There’s a lot of research on meditation now—the Dalai Lama has sponsored much of it—that shows that it actually changes the physical brain. That’s the kind of objective evidence that often appeals to Extraverted Sensing people.

PTD: Could you give our readers a basic description of meditation? What range of forms are we talking about?

PY-E: In terms of meditation practices, almost all the basic practices have some way of arranging your posture. Whether you sit in a chair or on the floor, the posture has to have the straight spine and the relaxed limbs. Then there’s some sort of instruction for the mind. Usually the instruction has to do with concentrating on something—maybe the breath. It may be the in-breath or the out-breath, or it might be counting the out-breaths. Or it may be concentrating on sound, or concentrating on body sensations, or concentrating on whatever comes up in the mind—just paying attention to it. Then while you’re concentrating, all of these forms of meditation ask you just to observe, with a matter-of-factness, what’s happening. In other words, don’t jump out of your chair and run across the room; just keep observing. The practices ask you to do that for some period of time—maybe at the beginning for 10 minutes, or at the very, very beginning maybe for just two minutes, and then over time, for longer periods. What’s happening—I mean what the point is of all that—is to learn this skill called mindfulness. The reason for learning it is not so that you can sit around and meditate. It’s like when you learn to drive a car in a parking lot. It’s not so you can drive that car in parking lots. You learn in the parking lot because it’s a restricted, safe area. When you go to a meditation retreat it’s like learning to drive in the parking lot. Then, in time, you take the car out onto the highway. Mindfulness practice is cultivated in order to get around in life with this skill that you can use in your ordinary experience.

PTD: A lot of people who read this interview will not jump up and immediately sign up for a meditation class . . .

PY-E: . . . or go to psychotherapy either.

PTD: Right. But it seems like a lot of readers may hear what you’re saying about the importance of mindfulness practices and simply start trying to be more “mindful” as they walk through their lives. Clearly that’s not as effective as targeted, guided practicing; but can you comment on what that might look like and how effective it might or might not be?

PY-E: Let me ask you: Why do you think it’s so difficult for people to become mindful?

PTD: From my own experience, I’d say that the main difficulty is in simply sitting still—just “being” rather than “doing.”

PY-E: The agitation side of the issue (and also the depression side) usually comes because of emotional issues that are motivating us: anxiety, fear, dread, and other things. Trying to get away from these emotions leads to that kind of restlessness. It’s an inability to experience our direct experience without doing a bunch of distracting things. This is true of most people when they’re starting out with meditation and is the same issue that can lead us to develop an addiction (it might be a positive addiction like exercise or a negative addiction like drinking.) There’s even a term for it called “monkey mind,” which is to say that your mind is trying to help you out. It goes to here, and there, and there, and there . . . ; but it’s confusing and overwhelming instead of really helpful. There’s a perseverative quality, then, in the mind, rather than a clarity or an ease, and people don’t know how to work with that. Most people have a lot of that reactivity anyway; and then they experience it quite intensely if they try to start to meditate—or even sometimes if they come to psychotherapy. They don’t like having to sit there in silence or receptivity.

So can people become mindful without doing these activities? Yes, but it’s hard. That’s because the limbic brain—the emotional brain—when it’s activated, takes charge of our whole perceptual system. What we perceive as the world—the world “out there”—is actually just an environment that’s in flux. All of the stimulations of the world come through our entire nervous system, and are bounced back to the cortex before we can see anything, hear anything, know anything . . . . So the so-called “world” is very subjective all the time.

PTD: And how does the emotional content get associated with that subjective perception of reality?

PY-E: There are two main mechanisms at work. One is the “fight or flight” reaction, which comes from the amygdala in the middle brain. The other is the way that emotional memory gets formed moment to moment—the way that we react to the present in terms of emotional memory. Emotional memory is not like a video. It’s more like a puzzle that gets reassembled in different ways from moment to moment. So if this moment sort of smells like my mother, for example, it becomes my mother, whether it really has anything to do with my mother or not.

*Conducted by Mark Hunziker, Aug. 13, 2010

The Hidden Treasure of Anger

In many ways, human anger is a treasure. The Greeks called it the “moral emotion” because they noted that animals did not possess it; animals, the Greeks observed, got aggressive and showed fight or flight reactivity. They did not get angry. Humans, on the other hand, could experience and express anger with its inherent reflective component: “I can see/know/feel that someone or something has wronged me.”

As a response to being wronged, anger is a boundary-setter that says, “Stop! I can’t tolerate this,” or, “This isn’t working for me.” It is not blaming the other or shaming the self. Often experienced first as a contraction in the throat, chest, stomach, or abdomen and a clenching of the fist, anger may be associated with the words “I can’t go on like this” seared into the mind.

Anger—sparked by injustice—is at the root of all protest movements, all major processes of change. In our most intimate relationships, when we or our loved ones experience or express anger, it is an opportunity to get to know one another better, to get closer and clearer, and to work with ourselves in a new way. It is an opportunity to ask ourselves, “Why am I feeling this?” “What needs to change here?” and “What do I need to do about it?”

Because anger is expressed at a moment of need, the person expressing it is vulnerable. If, when our partner is angry, we inquire into his need to be seen, treated, known, or held more wholly, dearly, or fairly, we have a chance of accepting our beloved more fully. In our closest relationships, our fate is bound up with the fate of the other. In Buddhist terms, our karma is interwoven and we cannot easily escape feeling the consequences of the beloved’s actions. It is a natural desire for us to want to keep our partner safe or happy, for both selfish and unselfish reasons. But, as a result, we have a tendency to want to control our beloved—and that often creates a sense of being unfairly treated.

Our closest relationships are the most challenging in our lives when it comes to practicing fairness, equality, and kindness. That is because in these intimate relationships, we always begin to get to know the other person (even if that person is an infant) through a process of psychological projection: seeing/feeling/experiencing the other through already familiar views, desires, and ideals. This is especially true in romantic love, where we “fall” in love through an idealizing projection and assume that the other is ideal for us and meets our needs in some particular or general way. When the other person does not do or become what we want, which is always the case, we can easily turn against him with hatred, rejection, or pain. Working with anger skillfully can actually be very helpful in our not doing this.

Anger has unfortunately been confused or conflated with aggression, hatred, or rage—some of its more destructive siblings. Many people make the mistake of pushing away anger, being afraid that it will be destructive if expressed. Some may hyper-value silence as though it were its own virtue. Others may express aggression, blame, anxiety, or rage instead of anger. But if you have the skill to feel your feelings with a gentle acceptance of them), you are less likely to dissociate from your feelings or distance yourself from another in times of anger. You won’t have to hide your anger from yourself and you can learn about speaking it honestly and kindly—and about inquiring into your beloved’s anger at you. Knowing what anger really is, we can appreciate how it allows us to avoid destructive behavior, such as fighting or diminishing others and ourselves. The next time our partner does something we don’t like or the next time she approaches us saying, “I feel overlooked or unfairly treated,” we can begin a process of inquiry that leads to the possibility of accepting differences or changing our actions without blaming the other or having a sense of being blamed.

In order to do this, we need a little wisdom and a few mindfulness skills. To begin, we must remember the first noble truth: life is filled with stress and unsatisfactoriness that are not the fault of anyone in particular. Misunderstandings and oversights are simply part of the muddle of human affairs, especially when we live together on a daily basis and have lots of different needs and perspectives. So when faced with anger—our own or another’s—it’s a good idea to start with a bit of modesty.

We can then make a commitment to watch our own feelings. We will notice how they arise and pass away, no matter how painful or contractive they are, and that we experience them as body sensations, internal images, and internal talk. Over time, we will become familiar with the emotional landscape of anger. My own anger arises with my chest tightening and my throat constricting, and it tends to shape into the inner words: “I can’t stand this,” or something similar. I label it “anger” fairly quickly. Then, I am interested in discovering just what it is that seems unfair to me at that moment. The sense of being treated unfairly should not be overlooked or brushed aside. We will learn from answering the questions: “Why am I feeling this?” “What needs to change here?” and “What do I need to do about it?”

Once we see how our feelings arise and pass away on their own, without our doing anything in particular, then we have true freedom to decide when and if we want to express our feelings in words to another. Of course, even if we don’t express ourselves in words directly, the other person may read our emotion accurately and may choose to question us about it. Knowing how and when it is useful to express our feelings, especially anger, means paying close attention to the consequences of our speech. Often anger is an important motivator to talk about what is bothering us, but we first have to reflect. What happens when we speak anger? What happens when we don’t? Is it possible to speak anger honestly and kindly at the same time? (Yes, it is, but you have to find your own way each time.)

Equanimity, or gentle, matter-of-fact attention to all of our experiences, helps us work with our own and another’s anger. Equanimity means to have an open and relaxed view of what’s happening while getting our “sea legs,” our balance in the midst of being tumbled around. If you can maintain equanimity in the face of your own and your beloved’s anger, then you’ll be able to feel your own feelings and listen to your beloved at the same time. By slowing down your reactivity, you’ll be able to think about the potential consequences of speaking or not speaking in any given moment.

But beware of trying to do all this in a “perfect” way! You cannot get good at delving into the treasure of anger without making mistakes. If you speak out in an aggressive, blaming manner, you can apologize! You can hear yourself speak and say, “I’m sorry. I don’t like what I said there. Let me try again because I love you and I want to understand what is going on.” Similarly, if you defend yourself in a preemptive way and walk away from an angry partner, you can turn around and go back. Apologize. Remember: There is no perfect way to do this. There is only the intention to do it and the attempt to follow that intention.

What is the most skillful intention in relation to anger? In my view, it’s being interested in anger—your own and another’s. True anger is about unfairness, injustice, and intolerable treatment. Inquiring into the source of anger and trying to understand its message is very useful. Using skillful speech is very helpful: use “I” statements, rather than talking about what the other person is doing to you, and speak descriptively about the problem. For example, “It doesn’t work for me when you walk away while I am in the middle of telling you about my difficult day at work, as you did or seemed to do this morning. I want to talk with you about the thoughts and feelings and questions your behavior triggered in me. Okay?”

The most skillful response to this statement would be, “Please tell me about what you experienced and what you thought was going on.” Both of these statements have a tentative tone (a sort of “help me understand what is going on here” tone). At the point that the listener fully understands the speaker (she can check through reflective listening), the listener can then respond with her experience of the event. Frequently, in an intimate relationship various levels of misunderstanding and misperception are at the source of anger. The process of discovering this usually brings the two people closer. They come to see and know each other more completely, even if the source of the difficulty is not fully resolved.

When you’re feeling angry, especially in a close relationship, it’s a good time to practice mindfulness and equanimity, not to dissolve the anger but to become more skillful in mining it. See if you can find ways to speak your anger in words that are both honest and kind; stick to “I” statements and stay away from blaming, recalling that blame is a “fight” reaction, not true human anger. The path of love is a difficult one, in large part because of our natural desire to control the beloved. Anger will loosen that sense of control as we come to know our beloved more fully in times of vulnerability. Love and partnership are trainings in the transformation of suffering into compassion and kindness. They teach us the deep lessons of the first noble truth and they do it in a way that is truly ego-dissolving.

From the March 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun.

Happiness is Not Guaranteed, But It's a Worthy Goal Anyway

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D.

There's been a lot in the media lately about "positive psychology," the new field that studies happiness and positive emotions. The gist of its conclusions is that happiness leads to all kinds of health and social benefits. Because I have written about happiness in some of my books, I get invitations to speak about it publicly. When I do I always hear from parents and spouses about how much they'd love to see their children and partners be happier. Of course, most people want happiness for themselves, as well, and often equate it with financial or creative "success." But I’ve been most impressed with the desire we humans have to "give" happiness to others.

I must admit, though, I have also been skeptical of the positive psychology folks out there drumming up happiness because, as a long-time psychologist and psychotherapist, I know that many people first wake up to the meaning of their lives through unhappiness, mistakes, loss, and suffering. I don't underestimate the power of adversity to ring the alarm clock of life. Still, I have been impressed by many of the research findings from positive psychology and have gradually been persuaded that talking about happiness is a useful thing to do.

And yet, I am certain that happiness cannot be pursued directly (you can readily direct yourself to bend down and tie your shoelace, but not to become happy). Like our self-esteem, happiness is the by-product of various things we do, think, say and believe. Yes, there are ways of acting, thinking, speaking and believing that are likely to lead to greater happiness rather than unhappiness, but they don't guarantee happiness.

My preferred definition of happiness comes from the internationally-known American psychologist who has researched "flow experience," also dubbed "optimal experience." Mihalyi Csikzentmihalyi is one of the founders of the positive psychology movement and he defines "happiness" as "the state of mind in which one does not desire to be in any other." Think about it. The definition covers a lot of ground and it means essentially that all your desires are satisfied in that state. When you're happy, you’re "in the zone" and don't need anything about yourself or your surroundings to change.

Everyone wants this kind of happiness and parents especially want to give it their children, but this is an impossible wish. Just as happiness cannot be pursued directly, we cannot give it to others, even those whom we love very much. And while happiness is not guaranteed on any given day, unhappiness is. There are more negative human emotions than positive ones and it’s certainly the nature of human life to encounter suffering, mistakes, loss, illness, old age and death. Most of what happens to us is out of our control and we don't like that one bit. But when you recognize these conditions as universal, you don't have to take your roadblocks and bad days personally — and so, you don't set your standards impossibly high. You start to recognize that, while you are responsible for your actions and speech (and do have important control over them), you are not in control of the results because they exist in a complex environment of other influences. Paradoxically, this insight increases your chances of being in a state of mind in which you don't desire any other.

In my recent book on parenting, I discovered that there is a way to build into our childrearing practices influences that are more likely (than not) to produce young adults who are confident, but not arrogant, optimistic without being unrealistic, and kind – qualities that have been tied to greater happiness. (Optimism and kindness are more important than being famous or wealthy for actual happiness in adulthood.) If we want our children to lead happier lives, we must allow them to face and learn from the ordinary disappointments of life, teach them how to become members of their family and society and species (not expecting to the be center of attention), make sure they know both their weaknesses and strengths (gaining a realistic perspective), and stop feeding them junk praise, such as the widely expressed "great job!" when they do something ordinary like tying their shoes. Junk praise, like junk food, is addictive, and takes the place of really noticing the inherent satisfaction in completing a task. If we want happier children, and if we want to be happier ourselves, we need to recognize our interdependence with all the others around us, always discouraging egotism.

Together, we create the environment in which we live. Our acts of kindness, generosity, courage and love sustain us from the inside out. True kindness creates an on-going atmosphere of interest and curiosity — always giving rise to a certain degree of happiness. For this finding from positive psychology research, I am truly grateful (and happy!).

X-treme Personality Makeover – How to Avoid the Self-Esteem Trap

COOPERATE AND SHARE: To be the most confident and happy person you can be, develop an engaged relationship with the people around you. Focus on your ability to share, cooperate, be empathic, and help others and yourself. This is the most ecological and environmentally friendly approach you can take to life.

AVOID PERFECTIONISM: There’s no way to know whether you are making the "right decisions" for life’s big choices (partner, work, location). Don’t become obsessed with perfection. Recognize instead that you must learn to guide yourself through the disappointments, failures and mistakes that will always be a part of your life, no matter how successful you are.

BE MODEST: Remain modest and open to feedback about your choices, ideals and actions. You need others to help you find your way. You can’t find the answers that you’re looking for in your own head by constantly replaying "What if..."

BE FLEXIBLE: Develop a resilient spirit by recognizing how and when you need to take responsibility in response to adversity, challenge and error. Being the "best" never counts as much as being flexible and able to improve with feedback. Life is demanding, disappointing, challenging, and changing. You will never find "security" or "stability" on a permanent basis because the ground is always shifting under you.

BE PATIENT WITH YOUR TALENT: Patience and diligence are necessary for true creativity. It takes about ten years to become an original contributor in any field. Cultivate your abilities sensibly, recognizing that you won’t make your mark on the world overnight.

BE GENEROUS AND KIND: Any time you have a spare moment, look around and see who needs assistance, support, or care. Don’t dole out help only on special occasions or you’ll miss thousands of opportunities to feel happy as a result of helping.

BE ORDINARY: Good manners, good conscience, and virtue are required to be a regular good person who can be trusted. Sharing and collaborating are essential for developing good character. Don’t look for your own private advantages in life; they won't make you happy.

BECOME A MEMBER OF YOUR FAMILY: Recognize that your parents, partner, and elders deserve your respect, support, and interest. They are the foundation for your own life. If you help them, your foundation will be stronger. Belonging to a family means more than being born into it. It means contributing to your family’s welfare, celebration, and happiness on a daily basis.

X-treme Parenting Makeover – Ten Guidelines for Healthy Parenting in An Age of Self-Importance

1. YOUR KID IS NOT KING: You’re raising your kid to be a member of the human race, a society, a community, a family – not to be the center of attention.

2. REAL LIFE IS DISAPPOINTING: Learning early to handle disappointments well helps your kid become confident, self-governing and optimistic in a world full of limitations.

3. AUTONOMY IS THE GOAL: Effective self-governance and healthy self-esteem come from knowing our strengths and weaknesses in doing things in the real world and getting feedback, not from excessive encouragement or praise.

4. DON’T FEED YOUR KID JUNK PRAISE: Junk praise (for example, "Great job!" for ordinary activities), like junk food, is addictive and takes the place of developing inner wisdom that is necessary for skillful decision-making.

5. RESILIENCE COMES FROM BEING FLEXIBLE: Don’t protect your child from making mistakes, encountering failures or knowing the limitations (of self and other) that teach us how to be flexible in facing the expectable challenges of life.

6. HELP YOUR CHILD HAVE PATIENCE WITH TALENTS AND CREATIVITY: Diligence and patience are necessary for true creativity to develop; it takes about ten years to become truly creative in any field.

7. KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY BRING THE GREATEST HAPPINESS: Guide your child to be compassionate and helpful to others. Teach your kid to look around and see who needs help, assistance, or support in any moment (not just special occasions). There are countless opportunities to feel happy as a result of helping.

8. GOOD CHARACTER WINS: Good manners, good conscience and virtue are the requirements for good character that provides the best foundation for success.

9. BE AN EXAMPLE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIPS: Show respect, kindness and interest in your own parents, partner and elders. If you don’t, your child will not show a lasting interest in elders and other family members, including you.

10. TEACH YOUR KID HOW TO BECOME A MEMBER: Belonging to a family means more than being born into it. All kids should be taught to contribute to the welfare, celebration and cooperation of their families throughout the life span, becoming valuable members.

Relevant Links

"Polly Young-Eisendrath on Mindfulness, Love and Relationship" Shambhala Sun Audio
www.shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=7370

"Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp"
New York Times article

"Want to build your child's self-esteem?"
Toronto Globe Mail article