As I mentioned in Wednesday’s meeting, I try to have my final article summary of the school year focus more on us the personal rather than on the professional level. While teachers are incredibly selfless and giving to their students, we need to take time to take care of ourselves.
The two articles below focus on the insights from experts on the keys to finding happiness and spreading kindness.
Just as we are help our students develop a sense of self and belonging, we adults are on the same quest.
Using the articles as a springboard, ask yourself two existential questions: Am I happy? Am I kind?
As I discussed Wednesday, I purposely left the questions Hemingway-esque, i.e., a simple sentence with few adjectives or modifiers. I’ll leave it up to you to reflect on the two questions and, if needed, add more detail. Am I more happy at home than at school? Am I kind some of the time? Etc.
Obviously, some of us are more predisposed to be happy and/or kind; for others it takes more effort. Yet the goal should be the same for all of us—be happy and be kind.
The first article summary is fifteen suggestions to be kinder to others from being a better listeners, to being less judgmental, to simply smiling more.
The second article is a summary of various TED Talks on what makes people happy (the article contains the links to all the TED Talks and I hope you get the opportunity to watch them this summer). One observation really hit home for me: while most of us believe that happiness precedes gratitude, the opposite is actually true: showing gratitude leads to being happier.
As we talked about on Wednesday, the frenetic pace of a school year’s end often leaves many of us--at least temporarily--unhappy and unkind. I wish that were’t the case as to me happiness ands kindness are controlled by us internally and shouldn’t be influenced by external factors, e.g., stress.
Summer is a perfect time to reflect and to take stock of ourselves and reflect on what makes us happy and what we can do to be kind to others.
We’ll discuss this more at back-to-school preplanning.
As we head into the final days of school, let’s celebrate our students, Trinity, and the special comradeship we have all shared this year
I thank all of you for great school year, toast those of you who are leaving Trinity, and wish everyone a relaxing and fulfilling summer!
Joe
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“Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.” Albert Schweitzer
“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.” Henry James
Kindness is often a pretty simple thing to spread in the world.
But we sometimes forget about it.
Or don’t remember how it can help us all.
Three things to keep in mind to try to be a kinder person:
- I get what I give: Some people will be ungrateful, miserable and not reciprocating no matter what you may do, but most people will over time treat you as you treat them.
- By being kinder to others I am more likely to be kinder to myself: When I am kinder towards others then my self-esteem goes up and I think more highly about myself.
- It creates a happier place to live in: Being kinder simply makes my own little world a nicer and happier place to live in.
So how can you start spreading the kindness in your daily life?
Here are 15 simple ways to do it.
Express your gratitude: Think about what you can be grateful for about someone in your life. Maybe that he is a good listener, that he often is quick to help out, or simply that he held up the door for you. Then express that gratitude in a simple “thank you!” or in a sincere sentence or two.
Replace the judgments: No one likes to be judged. And the more you judge other people the more you tend to judge yourself. So despite the temporary benefit of deriving pleasure from the judgments it is not a good or smart long-term habit. When you feel the urge to judge ask yourself: what is one kind thing I can think or do in this situation instead?
Replace the un-constructive criticism: Try encouragement instead of excessive criticism. It helps people to both raise their self-esteem and to do a better job. And it will make things more fun and more light-hearted in the long run.
Put yourself in the other person’s shoes: It is quite easy to resort to unkindness when you see things just from your perspective. Two questions that help me to see and to better understand other viewpoints are: How would I think and feel it if I were in his or her shoes? What parts of this person can I see in myself?
Recall how people’s kindness made you feel: Just sit down for a few minutes and try to recall one time or a few times when other people’s kindness really touched you and helped you out. Then think about how you can do those very same things for someone in your life.
Express kindness for something you may often take for granted: It is easy to remember and to feel motivated to express kindness when someone is having a rough time or have just finished an important project. But also remember to express kindness for being on time every day and doing their job well and keeping deadlines.
Hide a surprising and kind note: Leave a small note with a loving or encouraging sentence in your partner’s or child’s lunchbox, hat, tea-container or book that he or she is reading right now. That minute of your time will put a smile on her face and joy and motivation in her heart.
Just be there: Listen – without thinking about something else – when someone needs to vent. Just be there fully with your attention. Or have a conversation and help someone find his or her way out of fear and to a more constructive and grounded perspective.
Remember the small acts of kindness too: Let someone into your lane while driving. Let someone skip ahead of you in a line if he’s in a real hurry. Hold up the door for someone or ask if they need help when you see them standing around with a map and a confused look.
Give someone an uplifting gift: Someone in your life may have a bit of a tough time right now. Then send him or her an inspirational book or movie. Or simply send an email with a link to something inspiring or funny that you have found like a blog, article or a comic.
Help someone out practically: Give them a hand when moving or with making dinner or arrangements before a party. If they need information, then help out by googling it or by asking knowledgeable people that you know.
Help the people in your life see how they make a difference in their lives: When you talk to someone about his/her day or what has been going on lately then make sure to point out how he/she also has spread kindness and given value. People are often unaware of the positive things they do or they minimize them in their own minds. So help them to see themselves in a more positive light and to improve their own self-esteem.
Remember the 3 reasons for kindness at the start of this article: It will help you to be kinder even when you may not always feel much like it. If you like, write those reasons down on a piece of paper and put that note where you can see it every day.
Pay it forward: When someone does something kind for you – no matter how big or small – then try to pay that forward by being kind to someone else as soon as you can.
Be kinder towards yourself: Then you will naturally treat other people with more kindness too. It is truly a win-win habit. A simple way to start being kinder toward yourself is to each evening write down 3 things you appreciate about yourself and about what you have done that day in a journal.
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What makes us happy? Thirteen happiness experts, including psychologists, researchers, monks, and the inimitable Malcolm Gladwell, try to shed light on this surprisingly difficult question in a series of TED Talks about happiness.
Over and over, the same two themes emerge.
First, we're usually wrong about what will make us happy--or unhappy, for that matter.
For example, research has demonstrated that people who win the lottery are no happier about that event one year later than if they'd lost the use of their legs instead.
And second, happiness is largely a matter of choice. Which is good news, because it means we can pretty much all be happier if we want to be.
How can we make this happen? Here's some of what the TED speakers advise:
Don't expect happiness to be one-size-fits-all: In a fascinating bit of product history, Gladwell recounts how the food industry discovered to its astonishment that some people like chunky tomato sauce. And what that discovery means in a broader context--that what makes me happy won't necessarily do it for you, and vice versa.
Stop chasing things like success, fame, and money: Or at least, keep chasing them but don't expect them to make you substantially happier than you are right now. As psychologist Dan Gilbert explains, our brains have a defense mechanism that's hard-wired to make us happy with the lives we have, whatever those may be. Even Pete Best, a drummer best known for getting fired by the Beatles just before they hit it big, now says he wouldn't want it any other way.
Keep challenging yourself: If you love your work, you're good at it, and you've been doing it for a while, you probably have experienced "flow," that state where you get so lost in what you're doing that you forget yourself and everything else. That state of flow is where true happiness lies, says psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and we can also find it when doing something creative, or even something recreational. But only so long as we keep challenging ourselves. Boredom is the opposite of flow.
Be generous: Connecting with other people and feeling part of something larger than ourselves takes us a long way toward happiness. Social scientist Michael Norton recounts a fascinating experiment that proves--contrary to popular belief--that money can buy happiness, so long as you spend it on someone other than yourself. Not only will you have made someone else happy, you'll have made yourself happy too, a happiness buy-one-get-one-free special.
Be grateful: We tend to expect that being happy will make us feel grateful, but actually it's the other way around, explains Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast--being grateful is what will make us feel happy. And gratitude is a choice, he says. How can we remember to be grateful? By reminding ourselves of all the gifts in our lives. Even something so simple as a water faucet was a true occasion for gratitude for Steindl-Rast after a stint in Africa where drinking water was scarce.
Train your mind: The way to do this is by meditating on compassion, says Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard. It takes time, he says, but it's worth doing. Brain scans show that monks who are practiced at such meditation show happiness activity in their brains that is "off the charts" compared with everyone else. Though he doesn't mention it, Ricard himself is the poster child for this approach.
Smile: It sounds too simple to be true, but research actually shows that if you smile, you'll have better health, a better marriage and other relationships, and increased life expectancy, says HealthTap founder Ron Gutman. So if you haven't smiled yet today, what are you waiting for?
Tell the truth: In a highly personal talk, Eve Ensler recounts the epidemic of worldwide violence against women she learned about as a result of her hit show, The Vagina Monologues. For a while, these stories threatened to overwhelm her. But then she found herself at the head of a movement to end that violence and give young girls in Africa a refuge from violence she herself had lacked as a child. And then she says, she learned, "this really simple thing, which is that happiness exists in action; it exists in telling the truth...and giving away what you want the most." That's the kind of happiness all of us can reach for.
