Swati Desai, Ph.D., LCSW

How to Stick It Out to Achieve Success!

2013-02-06T08:38:01-05:00

Hillary Clinton has endurance. Her journey from "mostly unpopular" politician to possibly "the most popular politician in the country" with sky-high approval ratings when she stepped down from public office a few days ago, as reported by NPR, is a testament to the winning strategy of endurance. Although she and President Obama started as bitter rivals, in the end, he heaped praise on her as his "strong friend" in his interview on 60 Minutes. She has been in public office for two decades and by all accounts has endured criticism of the worst type, for everything from her cold demeanor to the supposed foreign policy blunder in Benghazi. She survived the very public embarrassment of her husband's extramarital affair and the lies that followed it. She survived rejection from her own party as a candidate for the presidential office. She kept going against all odds.

On a personal level, this holds a message for all of us, regardless of what our personal undertaking is. One of the most important things Hillary did was to stick it out. On a much less public level, this reminds me of a friend who held a high-up position at Goldman Sachs, who said that when he joined Goldman Sachs, his then-boss gave him the best advice: Just stick around and you will make it. People came and people left, but my friend stuck it out to become a successful Goldman employee. On personal level, this also reminds me of my own fulfilling relationship with my husband, which has survived its crises because we both stuck it out against our own "good instincts" of the moment!

Just stick it out for a long enough time (and a little bit more) and you will most likely have your days of glory. This means keep doing the work you are supposed to be doing, to the best of your capability, regardless of the mood of the moment. Easier said than done! How do you develop the muscle to endure?

Do the following three things and see if you can reap the rewards of your hard work.

1) Watch out for the common reasons why we convince ourselves for not sticking it out. Some of us start a project because we like the newness of it. Once it becomes routine, we fall out of the "honeymoon" liking. In fact, we start finding it boring. We are supposed to follow our heart, but we find our heart not being in it. Our heart jumps to the next best thing.

Some of us are more tenacious and we don't fall out of love so easily. But then we may not get the constant validations we crave for. In fact, we hear others criticizing our work, and this discourages us from pursuing our tasks. Our love for the project depends on other people's judgment. This includes comparing ourselves with others who seem better at it at that particular moment. Then we start finding it hard to stick to the project.

Some of us find it hard to tolerate any distress. Any project has its ups and downs, and moments of failure along with moments of triumph. We have very little tolerance for the feeling of failure. The disappointment could generate self-criticism and it is hard to put proper perspective on it. If we fail, we think that we are not good enough for the project and then we quit.

Some of us have unrealistically fantastic expectations about the rewards from our projects. This keeps us perennially disappointed about our success. When we are reminded of our own limitations, we cannot take it. Accepting the reality seems like "giving up" or "then what is the point,"

When you have the temptation to just quit, think: Are you doing one or more from the above list?

2) Make sure that your undertaking is consistent with what you value. This is an important point, because what you are sticking it out for is your "value," not necessarily specific details/projects. For example, Hillary Clinton said that she cared about the country and hence she took up the job of the Secretary of State in spite of the rivalry between President Obama and herself. Specific projects come and go, but if the undertaking is based on your value then "sticking it out" will hold meaning in itself. If a good companionship with your life partner is your value, then it is worth it for you to stick to the same marriage, although you may not stick to the same way to make it work. If collecting expertise and respect in your profession is your value, then stick to the field as long as you need to, although occasionally your jobs may change. Whenever you are struggling with quitting a project, think about if you are quitting your own value.

3) Watch out for our tendency to think that the current mood or ambiance is going to last forever! Especially when there is a failure or lull, our discouragement comes when we do not recognize that things always change. Either we change or the environment around us changes. When things are not going your way, freeze the tendency to act out and just simply keep doing what you are supposed to. You will keep looking for realistic and flexible ways to move closer to your value, but you will not quit. If you learn to endure the pain on the current moment, it will set you apart from the fast rabbits as the winning tortoise.

On the other hand, imagine this. We are able to stick to our undertaking, whether we are loved or hated, whether we get momentary rewards or not, even when we miserably fail, in the face of mistakes, even when it seems really tough, in spite of mean bosses, unfriendly coworkers, uncooperative husbands, stubborn wives, wavering passions, and exciting temptations. We keep our flexibility and move along the learning curve. Then we are so much more likely to have a sincere plaque at work, a fulfilling relationship, an appreciative partner, a substantial body of work, a feeling of making a change in the world, the status of being an expert, or a feeling of accomplishment.

The next step is, of course, to know when to quit!

For more by Swati Desai, Ph.D., LCSW, click here.

For more on success and motivation, click here.

How to Enjoy Your Holidays With Your Family!

2012-12-21T12:40:51-05:00

I have figured out the art of visiting my family and having a good time with them. I would like to share what always seems to work. I have given this advice to several friends and colleagues, and they all have come back saying how they had a very good holiday.

I used to be very anxious about going back to my parents' home for the holidays when most of my family was supposed to be together and supposed to have a good family time. I used to have a hard time, because my siblings seemed so much more connected with each other than me, and I felt like an outsider. On top of that, my parents seemed to enjoy watching my siblings banter around over my typically-serious demeanor. I am very much a "doer" type, and I always had a list of things I wanted to accomplish while back there, such as shows, people, places to visit. But with so many clashing preferences it rarely really happened. One of my sisters liked being bossy and trying to dictate what everybody must do. This used to bother the heck out of me. My mother often would get mad, because she used to be in charge of the dinners, and her offspring guests were not very helpful. She would feel very overwhelmed. This would turn out to be very unpleasant.

There are so many reasons many of us have a hard time spending time with family during the holiday season. We do it because it seems to be the right thing to do. Sometimes we even look forward to it. But more often than not, we feel bothered, upset, frustrated, left out, disconnected, misunderstood, and sometimes downright explosive.

This is what I figured out, and it always seems to work: Go with the flow, and it always works out in the end!

The above message means the following things:

1) Your primary goal is to build connections with your family. All other goals are secondary. Once you say that to yourself, all decisions become easy! When I go home, I dilute my other goals of visiting people, places, and shows. If some of them work out, great! If some fizzle out, that is fine too. What the family is wishing together comes first. If there is something important I need to take care of, I plan it with them in advance, and I make sure that I can take care of it with minimum inclusion of others. If it offends someone's sensibilities, I can always take care of it later!

2) Go in without a fixed set of expectations. When you expect certain behaviors from people or have pictures in your head about what it means by a perfect living arrangement, you are asking for disappointments. If my sister is bossy, I go with her suggestions, and it makes everybody happy. If I really don't want to do something everybody else wants, I do it anyway! Majority wins. If there are some serious boundary violations that are truly upsetting to me, I clear out of the room with a good, polite excuse.

3) Decide who you want to please the foremost. Is it your parents, your spouse, or your sibling? Once you know who it is, you can always make sure to explain things appropriately to the appropriate person. For example, if your spouse is unhappy about your parent's controlling behavior and you want to please your parents, urge your spouse to put up with it for those few days. Keep the spousal sensitivities in mind.

4) Enjoy the moment with open mindedness. Look out for the good things that are coming your way and receive them when they come. When I get a chance to have a serious conversation with my parents, I cherish that moment. When my siblings are bantering around, I laugh at that with my parents. When my mom gives me a gift, I appreciate it to the max regardless of what it is. If my sibling does not appreciate my gift, I feel upset but I just laugh it off as "it is just her." When I get to have a carefree cup of tea in the morning, I enjoy it to the "tilt."

5) "What about me?" does not have a place in this scenario. If you start getting bugged by "what about me?" remind yourself that there are other occasions for taking care of you; this may not be one of them! And guess what -- when you let yourself not be the center of universe, you become the "appreciated" one for making the holiday easy. Your "what about me" will be taken care off in the end.

6) In the end, it all works out! This seems like a statement of "faith," but that is precisely why it is "true." Try it! Your flights will take you there just in time in spite of the initial cancellation. Even if you reach late for an event, you will find abundant enjoyment and rest awaiting you. You will find a cab to reach the planned dinner on time in spite of the first cab breaking down in the pouring rain. The place you wanted to visit badly will be on your mother's agenda as well, and you will end up visiting it in the end, or if you don't visit it, you will find out that it has changed so much that it really was OK not to visit it! When you let go of wanting fixed things, a lot of joy can come your way.

Go with the flow, and it always works out in the end!

For more by Swati Desai, Ph.D., LCSW, click here.

For more on family, click here.

How to Be Successful in the Right Way

2012-09-21T14:26:24-04:00

To my great relief, Mr. Verma turned out to be a soft-spoken, polite, older man who practiced miniature art in his modest middle class dwelling. I had been appropriately apprehensive about what I was going to find once we landed in Jaipur to learn miniature art under an artist who we had never met. Was he going to be ethical about keeping his two week time commitment to us? Was he going to be punctual? What eccentric artist-like airs was he going to subject us to? Was he going to have questionable lifestyle? Was he going to be a braggart names-dropper? Would he be a traditional rigid master, unable to understand my daughter's need for combining modern themes and traditional miniature art?

My responsibility was to be a middle person, organizer, and Hindi translator during the two-week training under Mr. Verma, arranged by a friend of my family, for my 17-year-old daughter who loves the miniature style of painting. My friend knew Mr. Verma as a retired professor of traditional Indian art who had acquired honors and awards in the Indian miniatures from Rajasthan. However, my friend did not know him personally and I was not confident about the casual arrangements made with Mr. Verma to accommodate our tight two-week schedule. The only thing I felt confident about was my brief email correspondence with a Canadian artist, Cole, who had trained under Mr. Verma. Cole had given him high points and had told me to compensate him well, because he would not ask for it.

I took it as a possible relief from the vigilance I typically need to exercise during my yearly visits to India for not being exploited for my "dollar" value. I am very familiar with the perils of the economically emerging India in which many people seem to want to make a quick buck, especially when someone with a foreign bank account is involved.

As time went by, all my fears were not only proven wrong, but I was in awe of Mr. Verma's genuine dedication to the development of miniature art into a formidable force, with no trace of flamboyance. Sticking to the traditional Indian Guru system, we never talked about how much monetary compensation he expected. I came up with the amount based on the time he had set aside for us, still nearly not as high as one would imagine for an artist teacher in the U.S., but what I considered fair. When I asked around, people thought it was too high, too much by local standards. Yet I decided to stick to my plans, especially because he had given us such "good service." I wanted to make sure that we gave him his time's worth.

This is what my daughter ended up creating, titled: It Is All In the Chemistry!

At the end of the last class, we said good-byes and I respectfully handed him the envelope. He counted the money and his face changed. I was afraid that he was going to be disappointed because he knew what things cost in the U.S.. But then what happened was something exactly the opposite. He took out half of what I had given him and gave it back to me. "You are giving me too much. I must return back the extra money you are giving me." I was taken aback. I insisted that he needs to accept the whole amount because of the excellent learning my daughter received under his supervision. He told me, "I can take only what I think I deserve -- what I generally would get. I just simply cannot accept all this money in my good conscience." I looked at him. He certainly was not being frivolous, but in fact he had dignity on his face. I needed to respect what he said and accept the amount he returned back.

I felt very touched, almost tearful. Why? I thought. Was I simply glorifying the good old Indian acetic values expected from a teacher or was I romanticizing the notion of poor struggling artist who preserves his passion? Probably not. Mr. Verma was far from being poor or struggling and his modest life style was relatively comfortable. I could not forget the dignity he held on his face when he returned the money back to me. I also remembered my observations of his working style with others while he was arranging art exhibitions with other artists. Gradually I realized the deep message in my transaction with Mr. Verma.

Mr. Verma had returned the money offered by a happy customer without any pretentious superiority. He had conducted the transaction simply on his own terms based on what he thought was the self-respecting value of his work. What he had earned was the dignity with which he held himself and his work. Mr. Verma could have been a rich guy, had he practiced greed, or let us say just the Western notion of measuring success by the amount of money things bring. But Mr. Verma always did business the way he thought was right, on his own terms, using his own yardstick. His yardstick was not to become increasingly rich and more famous, but to love his art with self-worth and self-respect. The money and fame was the pleasant secondary benefit.

I certainly understood that Mr. Verma was held in high esteem in the town full of accomplished artists, not simply because of his artistic accomplishments, but also because he had never wavered from his vision of self-respect and dignity. This is success earned in the right way.

Do email me if you want to get in touch with Mr. Verma!

Six Truths About "I-messages" You Don't Hear About!

2012-08-04T14:07:55-04:00

If you are about to say "I do," I hope you have your communication training skills out of the way! All experts on relationships seem to agree that without good communication your marriage is heading for trouble. You may be one of those precocious and cautious couples that seek such training from a therapist or from a workshop right before or soon after your marriage. Or you may be the starry -eyed, idealist, lazy, avoidant procrastinator who waits until the s--t hits the fan before rushing to seek help. In any case, your trainer-therapist will tell you about using 'I-message' as a must for good communication. They will tell you to take responsibility for your own feelings by using a general format, "I am feeling X, when you do Y, and I would really appreciate it if you did Z instead." This is supposed to replace the accusatory 'You-message', "You are so inconsiderate! You think my time is not as valuable as yours, right?"

You may even get over the initial awkward phase of learning to use the correct I-message format and become very frustrated to find that your conflicts still get out of control. You may just dismiss the whole idea of using I-messages or you may label yourself as a couple not fit for good communication. This is because there are six facts about I-messages you need to know before getting disappointed with their ineffectiveness. Obviously, I am speaking from experience in my marriage and what I have observed with my clients in my psychotherapy office. Make sure to get your answers to the following six questions to be roughly YES and you are set to use the I-messages effectively.

Are you sufficiently non-attached?

Just because you express your wish for your partner's changed behavior using the I-message, it doesn't mean it will be granted right away. Are you able to practice non-attachment (a.k.a simply observe and be excruciatingly patient) and keep using the I-message again and again without expecting the desired result? Using the very correct I-message format, Cindy says to Dave, "I feel mad when you forget to take the trash out on Tuesdays. I would really appreciate you taking this seriously." Dave does it on one Tuesday and then forgets the next time. If Cindy turns this into a test in her mind about Dave's disrespect for her, this incident will turn into a war of words or a painful cold war. If you are too invested in receiving the fruits of your I-message instantaneously, you are fighting the basic human limitation: changing habits is a long process.

Do you trust your partner's good intentions?

In order to practice non-attachment, it would be nice to trust that your partner is not simply manipulating your ability to stay non-attached. Cindy will not accuse Dave of disrespect, laziness, or passive-aggressiveness if she believes that Dave wants to take the trash out but he simply forgets and doesn't mind constant reminders. On the other hand, Dave must not feel that Cindy is simply expressing her usual "controlling" impulse in the I-message format. The moment you suspect self-serving agendas covered up by a nice I-message format, you will get triggered as soon as you hear the I-message. It helps to have trust in your partner's basic wish to please you.

Are you consistently able to put a lid on your over-vigilance?

When you see your partner doing something "wrong," does this trigger your own habitual survival tactic in the form of a barrage of acerbic, sarcastic, self-righteous, power-searching, or angry statements? If vigilance for your survival is triggered, you will not care about using nice I-messages to replace the potentially damaging hurtful comments. For effective use of I-messages, see if you can get a mutually beneficial perspective. Remember that your over-vigilance could come from your past wounds. Understand the wounds. Check if you can treat a cigar as just a cigar. If not taking the trash out symbolizes Dave's "obvious" disregard for Cindy's discomfort when he flirts with her friend, Cindy's I-message will not be plain and simple. Soon Cindy's angry I-message will sound like, "I feel you are a disrespectful, inconsiderate jerk, when you routinely and purposefully forget to take the trash out. I would really appreciate it if you looked in the mirror and slapped the monster you saw. And don't think you can fool me." If Cindy learns to treat a cigar as a cigar and discuss the perceived snake as a separate matter, her trash is more likely to be taken out on all Tuesdays. As far as the snake is concerned, check the next point.

Are you giving up your pride enough to take in the I-message?

When you hear the I-message, even though it's easier to take it in compared to an accusatory sentence, it still may generate a defensive reaction in you. You may still protest or defend yourself or retaliate back by saying your partner's perspective is all wrong! Beyond all this, are you able to do some self-exploration to check if your partner's claim makes sense? If it does, and if you are still sticking to your guns, your pride is getting in the way of your communication success. If Dave's response to Cindy's feeling that he flirts with her friend is dismissive ("you are just the jealous type"), defensive ("I was just being friendly"), or an angry outburst ("I can't believe you are making such ridiculous claims"), it is not going to help the relationship. However, in spite of this initial reaction, is Dave able to look at himself and choose to change his behavior? Is he able to put the trash out regardless of how the I-message makes him feel? In other words, is Dave able to self-explore at least a little bit? Without some amount of self-exploration, even if it means giving up some pride, no message will be truly effective, I or You!

Are you validating "good behavior" much more than using I-messages for complaining?

There is enough evidence that happy couples seem to express the positive aspects of each other's behavior much more than holding onto the negatives. Even when you are expressing your discontent through an I-message, you are expressing discontent and you are giving a negative message to your partner. Just like anger generates anger and blaming generates defensive resistance, an I-message will most likely generate some negative response in your partner's mind, just a milder one. It kind of makes sense to keep validating your partner when you see them trying to do something right. Although forced positive comments may not guarantee a happy marriage, it would be worth having your radar up for things you like about your partner and making sure that they hear it directly or indirectly, even if it is by using a You-message, "You are so good with our daughter. She loves it when you two go to a movie together."

Did you know this?

You should know that the concept of I-messages was crystalized as a tool for improving parent-child communication, and later for conflict-resolution in work relationships. As you can imagine, using this concept in a marital relationship can be trickier. For one, the power dynamics are so different in marital relationships and the boundaries for acceptable behaviors are much more negotiable. After reading the first five points, hopefully you can now see what needs to happen before you can use I-messages effectively. Just keep in mind that therapy that includes communication training (which typically includes I-messages) is considered an effective form of couples therapy by researchers. It definitely beats the blaming and accusations. It is worth training yourself to use I-messages, as long as you accompany them with the right understanding of you and your partner.

The Era of High Ideals

2012-05-10T16:18:43-04:00

Since the time I wrote my blog on The Huffington Post, "The Importance of Being Unhappy," I have been thinking about the importance of the negative instincts leading to unhappiness: envy, cruelty, greed, intimidating anger, hunger for power, and narcissistic self-centeredness. I have been tormented by the renewed realization that the selfish, ruthless, and deceitful behavior gets rewarded with greater wealth at the expense of the good citizens who follow the rules. Is there value in instilling good values in our children? Stories of Americans who have accumulated great wealth through building railroads or becoming news magnates are full of greed and self-centered cruelty towards people who worked for them. Western European countries amassed their wealth by colonizing other countries, not by being fair and just, but through their ruthless hunger for power.

The Darwinian evolution seems to favor the acting out of negative instincts for accumulating more resources. The powerful wealthy male gets more women, not the morally upright male without that much money. The wealth does give an unfair advantage for survival, better healthcare, better living conditions, and a better chance of surviving a crisis. Altruism was a puzzling trait for Darwin, and still is a center of debate for evolutionary biologists: if altruism comes from the selfish motive of spreading our own genes or not. This does not give an encouraging picture of cooperation, extending ourselves to others, compassion, and fairness as traits that would necessarily give you advantage over selfish and ruthless behavior. Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature, in spite of the positive message that the violence in the world has gone down, is a depressing reminder of how violent and ruthless our leaders, kings, and heroes have been. On top of that, it reminds us that the drop in violence is more to do with the law and order institutions we have created and less to do with the inherent morality we may possess as humans.

Philosophers such as Nietzsche have speculated that the moral restraint and piety came from the reaction of the weak and oppressed against the wealthy by declaring aggressiveness as bad. If so, then are lessons in good behavior a trick played by the few cheaters for exploiting the good? Hearing stories of people in power, politicians, bankers, and rich business people, it is hard not to notice the greed, the narcissism, the game playing, and the getting away with it. Do the good and the moral people get the bad end of the stick and need to rely on the charity from the rich guy if they want to have any influence in steering this world in a good direction?

However, this torment is not the reason why I am writing this blog. I am writing this because I believe we may have a possible answer. My answer is based on the following observation.

At this time in our history, we are at a juncture where our new world order, high-tech based and globally interdependent, demands that goodness decides the new direction: the direction of justness, fairness, cooperation, compassion, and equality in access to more resources. We can see this direction in various aspects of our life: business, politics, and medicine.

This realization did not crystalize because of my discussions with priests, teachers, or social activists. It came because of listening to a TED talk in the recent 2012 by a seasoned business consultant and a brand marketer with a history of a successful career in the corporate world. Jim Stengel left his lucrative position as a global marketing manager at Proctor & Gamble to spread the awareness that we live in an "era of high ideals" and that for businesses to thrive in this era they must focus on a purpose beyond profits and that maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible. In fact, Mr. Stengel was interviewed on Huff TV by Arianna Huffington to discuss his book Grow on the same ideas.

Jim Stengel's inspiring and compelling talk oriented me towards changes that are already happening in so many different aspects of our lives. Students with business degrees want to get into socially conscious businesses (e.g. solar energy, micro-finance, and education for the under-privileged), existing businesses are compelled to support good causes and to advertise themselves as promoting fair business practices (e.g. Starbucks with fair trade coffee, philanthropic donations by Target store contributing to its popular reputation). Young people talk about "optimizing profit" instead of "maximizing profit." Not only that we have moved away from the child labor practices of the recently industrialized Great Britain, today Apple must investigate and answer to the news of sweatshop conditions discovered in its factories in China. In spite of all the game-playing and greed we associate with a successful business, the direction in the business world has been to move more towards fairer and value-based practices. The emerging economies such as China and India may not practice these things today, but once a certain prosperity level gets established, they too ought to be bitten by the bug of "goodness."

The new direction is found in all types of fields. As Dr. Atul Gawande put it in his talk at the TED conference, in the field of medicine, gone are the days from the early 1900s when doctors needed to be bold, autonomous, and practicing brave new methods. Today's highly specialized and technology-based medicine needs three directions -- humility, teamwork, and checklists -- to coordinate and ensure that all requirements for a successful procedure are taken care off. The new direction is shaping our socio-political scene as well. We live in a world today in which not only that the violence is less and less tolerated (ranging from corporal punishment of children to the Syrian government's violence against its own people), more and more countries are vying for less totalitarian, less oppressive and more democratic governments (perhaps not always quite successfully). Through the falls of empires, what gets sustained is the "goodness," the analytical reasoning, the democratic ideas, the law, the justice system, the compassionate monarch; what gets hated is brutality, the overpowering use of physical force.

Does this mean we do not need to have the physically powerful military? Yes, we do need that, in order for protecting our era of high ideals! However, having the power is not the same as using the power indiscriminately. Even in the warfare, one can see the new direction. Gone are the days when the world war veterans received a hero's welcome, and gone are the days when the military atrocities by the winner could be easily hidden away. We also have so many diplomatic tactics available to us, a product of highly interdependent global economy.

Just like any new direction in history, there are always setbacks, false-starts, and counter-examples, but the direction does not get reversed. The human nature riddled with greed and desire for power is still a prominent feature of most material success stories, but once bitten by the bug of goodness, every person, culture, and civilization will always stay bitten.

Take Away Suffering From Chronic Physical Pain

2012-03-06T15:18:46-05:00

Shinzen Young, a well-known meditation teacher, uses a very apt metaphor for describing the difference between physical pain and suffering. Suffering is like the area of a rectangle, the base of the rectangle is the physical pain and the height of the rectangle is the resistance we create to the experience of the pain. When we reduce the resistance to the pain, the suffering from the pain is reduced. If the height of the rectangle becomes zero, then the area of the rectangle becomes zero too, although the base is unchanged. If we manage to completely take away the resistance to the pain, the physical experience of the pain is still unchanged, but the suffering we create is reduced to zero.

The key then is to understand what resistance to the pain we may be holding. Resistance to the pain comes from what we attach to the pain. Because pain is our body's way to tell us to pay attention to something being wrong, we tend to attach several fears and anxieties to the experience of pain. The pain may trigger some deep belief which in turn creates fears and anxieties that are not so much about the pain itself, but about the underlying bigger issue that got triggered. That is what creates suffering.

I would like to offer examples of such fears and anxieties (and one possible underlying bigger issue) creating suffering:

1) I am aging and this pain is going to disable me into a dependent old person (fear of aging).

2) I am a failure if I keep having this pain (wanting to be perfect).

3) This pain means that I would not be able to do most of what I do now (fear of asking for help).

4) I am not disciplined enough to (or I don't want to) do all the physical therapy exercises, so this is doomed (impatience or non-acceptance).

5) Why can't some doctor just fix this problem! They don't seem to have a clue and I hate this insurance setup. I hate all this. Pain -- just go away (pattern of blaming external circumstances).

6) I want someone to coddle me and care about my pain. Why don't they seem to care that much until I make a big drama (deep longing for love and caring)?

This resistance to the pain is sometimes conscious and sometimes it requires detective work exploring the psyche. Once this resistance and the underlying issue are correctly identified, there is a sense of clarity or a sense of relief. There is an experience of an "Aha" moment. Things make sense and then we know what we want to work on. The work may require separating the irrational part of the fear from the reality, acceptance, getting what we need and to stop the unjustifiable restrictions you may be putting on yourself.

A common question that comes up in reducing the resistance is, "Does this mean I just give up and accept the pain?" The answer is, "Not at all!" Identifying the resistance does not exclude investigating the cause of the pain or to work on reducing the pain by medical methods acceptable to you. Another common question about suffering and pain is this. Could the pain be created from past suffering? Could it be because of the "muscle memory" from a past trauma that can create pain? Yes, it is entirely possible. In such cases, some factor about the pain (location, magnitude or onset) cannot be explained by usual medical explanations. In such cases, it is essential to investigate any past trauma that could have led to the onset of the pain. Identifying and desensitizing the effect of the trauma helps in reducing the pain and the suffering both.

Physical pain creates psychological suffering, just the way psychological suffering can create physical pain. Investigate, get clarity and then work on the underlying issue. The existence of the physical pain can be used as a good opportunity to take us to a stronger and less fragile place.

For more by Swati Desai, Ph.D., LCSW, click here.

For more on consciousness, click here.

For more on chronic pain, click here.

Steve Jobs, Pop!Tech 2011, and Compassion

2011-10-25T17:20:02-04:00

Steve Jobs was often criticized for his apparent lack of compassion. He was not known for making generous philanthropic donations to worthy causes. The 2006 article in Wired magazine expressed this feeling in the commentary titled "Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Star?". Eyebrows were raised because for a number of years Steve Jobs had denied child support payments to his out-of-wedlock daughter. Steve Jobs was known for innovation, creativity, style, inspiration, and for revolutionizing the way the world communicates, but he was not particularly applauded for compassion and philanthropy.

I would like to propose quite the opposite. I would like to say that Steve Jobs's work is contributing tremendously, in more than one ways, to making the world a more compassionate place. I believe we can safely assume that the people in the world are becoming more peaceful and compassionate as claimed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his interview on the TODAY show on MSNBC. Steven Pinker, in his article in the Wall Street Journal, argues that the world is becoming less brutal and more empathic, as shown by the data that violence in the world has gone down. I claim that Steve Jobs' innovations are serendipitously helping the world in raising its level of compassion.

I propose that Steve's innovations are creating evolutionary and psychological conditions under which we are more likely to feel compassion towards people whom, by creating "us against them" divisions, we are otherwise hostile towards. iPhones, iPads (and other devices that sprung up as their competition) have made the use of social media -- Skype, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, video-conferencing -- available at our fingertips. In the process of doing so, they have created a digital and visual familiarity with people who otherwise would have seemed like a figment of our imagination. It has created awareness and a sense of kinship with people from the remotest parts of the world.

This perceived commonality is important for creating compassion and altruism. David DeSteno, a psychology professor at Northeastern University and a Pop!Tech 2011 speaker, articulates this effectively in the book "Out of Character". We have an internal conflict between too much compassion and too little compassion. We cannot be offering too much compassion to everybody because it may pose a threat to our own survival and consume our limited resources. On the other hand, we do not want to feel too little compassion because it will compromise our long term well-being which comes from creating altruistic positive relationships. In order to resolve this conflict, we need a psychological mechanism for choosing and picking the person who deserves our compassion by satisfying one of the two evolution-based criteria: 1) who we think is related to us and will pass on our genes, 2) who we think will help us back in return, increasing our chances of survival. The psychological mechanism used as a cue for compassion is "perceived similarity", sometimes based on physical superficial similarities, sometimes based on values, or sometimes based on shared pain. Our psychological systems are very flexible in deciding this similarity, sometimes in a blink, sometimes after a long thinking process. Awareness of similarity plays a big role in how compassionate we feel towards another person.

Back to Steve again! All the popularization of visual and voice based technology so passionately promoted by Steve, is making us much more familiar with our shared commonality with many more human beings. It makes us familiar with their physical features, it makes us aware of their pain and problems, it creates many more opportunities for receiving help in return, and it makes us feel that we want to help many more people who otherwise may seem like complete strangers. In this sense, Steve is possibly contributing to making the world a more compassionate place.

Yet another significant way in which Steve Jobs has contributed to the world of philanthropy and compassion is discussed by Dan Pallotta. Dan, an expert in innovation in the non-profit sector, wrote the article "Steve Jobs, World's Greatest Philanthropist" in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network in September 2011, before Steve passed away. Dan notes how without Steve's total devotion to what he did the best, we would be still waiting for cell phones to do quick emails and web-surf, for iPads to revolutionize medical training, for charities to raise money more efficiently, for paperless communication to save forests, and for creativity in kids to be fostered. Steve's revolutionary technical innovations have contributed directly to several good causes.

This type of contribution was very apparent in my recent trip to Pop!Tech 2011 conference, titled "The World Rebalancing", in which bright people presented innovative and heartfelt ideas for addressing problems in the world. The striking feature underlying many of these new ideas was the obvious presence of newly available technological tools: the use of social media, smart phones, graphics/voice technology, and real time access to information. The following are just a couple of such examples. Robert Kirkpatrick is working for "Global Pulse", under the UN Secretary General's office, proposing to use real time data collected from monitoring social media usage to study trends in unemployment and health. Anne Githuku-Shogwe from South Africa is using games on mobile phones to attract and educate women and children to learn how to fight and report violence. David Mikkalsen Troensegaard from Denmark is running "Refugees United" helping to locate missing relatives of refugees in the Middle East and Africa by using network of mobile phones and technology based communication.

I propose to those of us who are fortunate enough to own an iPhone, or an iPad, to listen and see, and check if we feel more empathy and compassion towards people whom we otherwise would not have noticed.

A Gift to the Secret Life

2011-07-14T14:55:00-04:00

We all have a secret life -- that includes you too!

You are like Gurov in Chekov's story "Lady with a Lap Dog", invested in a deeply secretive and adulterous love with Anna and unable to let go of it. "He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people .."

You may chuckle with moral superiority or feel a sense of relief that you are not the public figure holding a humiliating and embarrassing secret. You may be disgusted by the revelations made of Anthony Weiner's almost-adulterous secret online sex life. You may not approve of President Clinton's hidden personal life. You may be shocked in disbelief to find how Madoff could keep his secret immoral ponzi scheme going for so long. You may discard in denial the book by Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Lelyveld hinting at Mahatma Gandhi's homosexual and racist orientation. Your secret life may not be as dirty, may not be as humiliating and it may never make headlines if it is made public. In fact, you may indeed be a law abiding, hard working, honest and monogamous person, or a community pillar, or a spiritualist, or known for your character strength. But underneath all the visible layers of what the world sees, you have a secret life which is carefully hidden from most of the external world.

Do not mistake my claim of your secret life as a reference to your "unconscious." By secret life, I do not mean the buried repressed desires, or the narcissistic wound from the unavailable mother. I do not mean the secrets that are supposed to be revealed in the dreams or under hypnosis. This secret life is very much part of your awareness and you are deliberate in choosing not to disclose it to the external world and sometimes not even completely to yourself. This secret is not a trivial social etiquette such as not picking your nose in public, not using curse words in front of kids, or saying thanks for a gift you know you are never going to use.

Your secret life may be like Bill Harris's in "Lost In Translation" who is lonely and tired of his loveless marriage, or Walt in "Gran Torino" who is unable to confess to the priest that he has been troubled by killing young Koreans as a soldier in the Korean war, or Cecilia in "Purple Rose of Cairo" who escapes into a life on fantasy from the movies. You may be haunted by fears that you do not deserve your good life and you are constantly vigilant that something traumatic is going to happen, or you may live in a grandiose conviction that you are going to get that great break to fame.

Now imagine describing this secret life to at least one person, a person who is significant to you; a parent, spouse, mentor, or someone directly involved in your secret life. Imagine that this person is not only able to understand what you are going through, but is able to appreciate and accept you in all your weaknesses and fantasies without doubts and objections. You believe, at least in that moment, that this person is not going to use the information against you and there is no fear of losing power or being too vulnerable to such a person.

We all want to be seen and want to be heard in this way. We all hold this fantasy, somewhere deep down, in our ideal world. Most of the time, we do not trust that this will be a safe process, so we prefer to stay lonely, under the guise of privacy. Some of us find carefully selected friends as a compromise for not getting the real thing. Becoming the giver of such moments to another person comes with a big responsibility which most of us are not ready to bear. We are too busy licking our own wounds. Some of us are lucky and courageous enough to find a few such authentic moments. Most of us need to find self-sufficient ways to be seen and heard: therapy, meditation, churches and temples.

How would it be to be seen and heard in this way? Would it save us from the acting out of the secret life in unexpected ways? Would it be possible to stop us from inadvertently hurting people who are close to us? Could Madoff and Weiner have changed their actions were they given a chance to be truly heard by someone directly affected by their secrets? What if they are given a chance, now, to be understood in complete sense? Would that change their actions and the effect of their actions from now onwards?

Although there are not all-encompassing answers to these questions, one thing makes sense. In any close relationship, spousal or parental, such "being heard", "being understood" and yet "being appreciated" is what we mean by intimacy. If at any moment, we are able to keep our own wounds aside and hear the other person's secret life with understanding and appreciation, we create bonding beyond words. If we develop this ability, it will not only save our marriages and parental bonds but will enormously enrich us. To hear, accept and appreciate the secret life of someone close to us is the greatest gift we can give!

Confessions of a Confused Mom

2011-01-22T02:12:00-05:00

I am a confused mother!

I am a mother who does not want to simply uphold the way I was raised, but I am not able to fully embrace the American way of raising children. I am a mother who does not have a strong conviction that there is one fixed, right way of raising children. I am less confused about how I want my kids to turn out to be. I want them to be accomplished yet happy, driven yet with integrity, risk-takers yet responsible, compassionate yet ruthless about reaching their goals, balanced yet relentlessly pursuing what they choose, unique and independent yet family-loving, monetarily successful yet not material-driven, secure, friendly, polite, caring, knowledge hungry, creative, focused, exuberant, interesting, cooperative, intelligent, empathic -- let me think if I forgot anything.... In order to achieve this, I read books, I pay attention to the parenting tips, I talk to other parents, I watch parents of other kids, and self-explore on what I must be doing wrong and how I can improve. Often times I second-guess my own choice in a specific situation, and wonder if I could have found a better way of parenting.

Just for the record, I am not called a neurotic person. I have a reputation for being a calm and thoughtful person.

When I read books about how to raise happy kids, I say "happiness is not everything; you must make a difference in this world." When I see a book on "How to raise brainy kids", I say "how about the EQ factor?" When I see a book on "How to raise confident kids", I say "Too much independence can lead to unpredictable results, kids need strong discipline."

I am a modern South Asian/American Mom, from India, the country that was colonized by the British Empire for 150 years, the India that is caught between idealizing the individualistic Western (British and now the US) culture and the hundreds of years of Indian traditions of self-sacrifice for the family.

Just like my culture-of-origin is caught between the East and the West, I am confused about what principle to follow when it comes to parenting practice. I am a psychotherapist and I do not work with children -- not very surprising! When I follow the guidelines by fellow psychotherapists and ensure being emotionally very available to my children, I worry about making them emotionally entitled and self-centered just like some other American children. On the other hand, when I look at some Indian parents, I have a strong negative reaction when I see them enforcing high achievement in children as an accolade to themselves.

I know what rules are supposed to be good for them, on TV and electronic device usage, certain foods, and too much material. Sometimes, it is too much trouble to keep enforcing the potentially unpleasant rules, for the fear of being a "nag." In addition, occasionally the questions arise such as, "Did Steve Jobs have such rules when he grew up?" "Should they be deprived of having a fun and relaxing time?" "If technology is my child's passion, then should I let him be on the computer for as long as he wants -- as long as I keep track of how much YouTube he is watching?" If I monitor their actions too much and try to be too available to solve all their problems, I worry about if they can be mature and independent choice makers like the Americans I admire. If I let them be free to fend for themselves, then my knowledge of research about the perils of permissive parenting starts hovering over me. I look around and I watch the "independent kids" making mistakes and exploring on their own, only to realize later that they wasted some years in reinventing the wheel. I do not want to be overprotective for the fear of making my kids too anxious, and yet I shudder at the stories of date rape, bullying, and "boys will be boys." If I raise my kids to be compassionate in the Buddhist sense, I worry about taking out the "fire in their belly." If I want them to be tough and self-defending, I wonder if my rules such as "stupid is a bad word" become an antidote. Should I allow them to use "curse words" like most of their peers, and in fact, display tough judgmentality myself like most other moms do? Should I allow them to be judgmental in order to feel "safe" and "confident" in their own little world?

Should I try to be a "brutal" mother like the Tiger Mom, Amy Chua? Not possible, because I just simply could not bring myself to call any kid "garbage," even if it means churning out "success" and "self-esteem." Besides, what if your child was not able to keep up with your expectations? Should I be like my Indian mother (who did manage to produce happy, ambitious, and mostly pleasant people pleasers), who enforced what she thought was "good" for us, without ever giving us "three choices" or finding out how we "felt" about it? Not possible, simply because the environment in which I am raising my kids is so different, and so are my values about respecting individual feelings. Should I be expecting the self-indulgent, nonchalant teen behavior as "it is normal" or should I make sure to enforce different values (people oriented, responsible) from young age -- just like the teens in India seem to be respectful and responsible? Is it possible to go against the culture around you without making your kids feel like an odd man out?

In the middle of my confusion, when I allow myself to pause, I do notice that my kids are turning out to be the type of people I want (OK, not everything from my ridiculously long list -- but the gist of it), in their own searching ways. I did not enforce it, but my high-achieving daughter has always chosen not to fall for the "popularity" contest in her schools. Without explicit instructions, my smart son knows how to respect and treat people. Both of them aspire to be good students and good people, and yet are able to keep their individuality, some times in spite of their mom. Above all, they feel very safe and close to both me and my husband. Did we do something right? I look around amongst their friends (raised by conscious American mothers) who mostly seem to be good yet successful kids. If I look hard, I may be able to come up with a few general rules.

Keep your expectations high, whatever "expectations" you choose, and whatever ways you choose to enforce the expectations. Do it even when the kids complain or resist it. Merely "feeling good" is not enough, in the end, they stand up to the plate. In this, I agree with the Tiger mom.

When you choose your expectations, remember that there is no one fixed goal applicable to all children. There are genetic, temperamental, gender-based, and birth-order based differences. Keep looking for what the specific child is capable of and keep modifying your expectations. If you choose the expectations even before the child is born (straight A's and musical instruments), you will add to the stories you hear in response to the Tiger Mom's article, the anxious Asian kids who do not want to raise their children the way they were raised. This "exploring" for what is specific to the child is much more difficult than having pre-defined expectations, but it will pay off. This is where I disagree with the Tiger mom.

Be willing to self-explore, admit, and modify your own self. As Dan Siegel points out in his lecture series Mindsight, this is the one variable about parental characteristic that is shown to lead to secure attachment to parents.

Above all, be ready to sacrifice some part of your life -- money, time, your own desires, and order in your life! Without this willingness, none of the above will work!

Am I right in my conclusions?

Materialism Is Not All Bad!

2010-11-30T04:29:00-05:00

President Obama had a hugely successful trip to India, a country that shares several political and economic values with the U.S. Amongst other things, he had an impressive question-and-answer session with students in Mumbai who asked him tough questions. One student referred to the modern, materialistic frame of thought, asking the president what methodologies a government could adopt to incorporate core spiritual values such as selflessness and brotherhood. The president pointed out the government's role in removing poverty and encouraging the spirit of "giving" and philanthropy.

The question raises an important issue relevant to our daily lives: could we and should we seek material prosperity and spirituality at the same time? Note that the question is about both the "should" and the "could."

When I was growing up in a middle-class Brahmin family in the 1960s in India, the values around me taught me that the acquisition of knowledge is important in itself, regardless of the money that the knowledge might bring me. My father's old teacher, who was obviously of very modest means, was treated with utmost respect in our house. This India, although materialistically poor and politically left-leaning, was spiritually prosperous, known for its messages on how to transcend the perils of ordinary life. The U.S. at that time was spiritually wandering, materialistically prospering, on a tremendous upswing, believing in making one's own destiny, and lured by being the superpower in defense, technology and economics.

How things have changed since then! India is now materialistically prospering and spiritually confused. On the other hand, in the U.S. the realization has come about that material excesses do not give meaning to our lives and are an unreliable source of happiness.

Neither one of the countries seems to have a good grip on both at the same time. Why does it seem so tricky to mix materialism (in an economic sense) and spirituality? There are at least two reasons.

First, they have conflicting emphases. Spirituality implies connecting with the inner truth and the larger universal reality, outside our ordinary life experiences, and thus includes the inner sense of morality, as well as concern for humanity beyond our mere selfish interests. Economic materialism is very much about collecting and spending resources, particularly money and time. One is about the intangible spirit, and the other about daily life's concerns.

Secondly, materialism comes more naturally, in spite of the fact that we know that it often leads to a lifestyle that is perpetually wanting more, ruthlessly self-centered, desperately greedy and often taking pleasure in ostentatious displays as a source of power. Spirituality, on the other hand, is much more difficult to pursue, in spite of the fact that we know that it is associated with long-term happiness and feeling the right thing.

This is what I suggest. The question of "should" we or "could" we mix these two in our life is not the right one, because for a common person to have a good and fulfilling life, it is inevitable to make a potion of both materialism and spirituality. In fact, use one to balance the other in the following way:

Use spirituality as a greed- and envy-stopper. Spirituality, getting in touch with our inner and universal reality, would make it difficult for a materialist to engage in ruthlessly self-centered behavior, because any inner truth includes the innate human goodness. Allow the practice of spirituality to monitor the greed and envy, which seem to be at the heart of why materialism gets excessive, leaving the world around us a worse place.

Use materialism to stay in touch with the realities of daily life, recognizing that amassing resources is a source of security, survival and freedom to experience life. Desire is a life force, and when practiced with wisdom, it can create beauty. The wisdom lies in recognizing that modesty, cooperation and compassion, when combined with materialism, can indeed be a source of creativity, satisfaction, peace and prosperity. Spiritual values have the power to create such wisdom. The counter-balance to the perils of materialism can come from compassion -- a possible product of spiritual thinking. The Dalai Lama predicts that the 21st century will be happier because people have become more caring and compassionate.

However, there is one caveat! In order to understand this potion, you will need to know what it means by being without! If life hasn't already brought it to you, consider going to a place (a sparse retreat, not a resort) where your pride of "me and mine" and the habits of possession can fall apart. Do this with awareness.

Note that the difficulty in practicing spirituality without material prosperity lies not only in the fact that "it is hard to preach to an empty stomach," but also in the fact that spirituality, if not balanced, could lead to forced austerity, and eventually bitter dogmatism. Even at its best, practiced as a completely self-sufficient existence turned towards inner beauty, spirituality could become self-centered and deny the realities of the daily life. In this sense, it still may not create a better world.

President Obama emphasized the need for "giving" as a value when you become materially prosperous. I would like to point out that incorporating spirituality also includes encouraging the innate goodness that humans seem to possess, which the government can encourage by creating institutions in which doing the right things can lead to prosperity (such as success without having to succumb to corruption, very much needed in India), and in which the right moral values get highlighted (such as regulating greed, very much needed in the U.S.).

To Be or Not to Be -- Angry!

2010-10-08T16:02:14-04:00

Lately, I have felt a lot of anger and aggression in the air -- no need to list the reasons, just think about financial insecurity and the middle class. This irritable mood (sometimes fueled by depression) reflects in people being on the edge even in their personal lives, reflected in the increased calls to hotlines and to helping professionals. A common complaint is "I am not sure why but I feel so angry!"

I have come across two extremes on the anger spectrum: people who aspire to eliminating all types of anger from their expressions and people who feel self-righteous about their anger and defend the inevitability and the real value of anger. Then there are the rest of us, who go back and forth between feeling justified in our anger, acting out or suppressing its expression, occasionally regretting it, occasionally feeling triumphant, and yet frequently not sure whether to be angry or not to be angry!

Let us respectfully note that there are plenty of times when angry expression seems to offer an enticing answer to our pain and fear. This is why eliminating angry expressions does not make sense to most of us.

You yell at the AT&T service person about how you were given misinformation and you get a discount from your next phone bill. Anger can intimidate people into doing what we want. After breaking up in a dysfunctional relationship, what keeps you from going back is the anger against your partner's actions. Anger can give us the necessary distance. After repeated reminders to your kids on finishing homework before going on Facebook, the only thing that seems to keep them in line is to see you giving a very angry (just lost it!) threat of taking their computer away for the whole week. Anger can give quicker results than negotiations. You get justifiably angry against your spouse's controlling demands for keeping the apartment clean, and the one thing that seems to make them reduce their demands is the fear of your angry outburst. If not anger then it seems like we are condoning what went on. To express anything other than anger makes us look vulnerable and weak. Anger can make us feel powerful and in control. For fighting any injustice, obsessive anger is what makes ordinary people take action. It could be action against drunk driving, campaigning the use of plastic water bottles, starting support groups, promoting laws for appropriate punishment and prevention.Anger can be a powerful motivator for fighting wrongdoing.

Anger just seems to happen. Then we realize that expressing anger gives us a sense of relief, a feeling of clear thinking, and bravery that would not be possible without anger. Of course, when anger leads to random violence and abuse, then in the world we live in, we do not want to condone it. We have laws against such violent un-institutionalized expression of anger. So let us leave such "violent" cases aside.

Given all the above, why do we even have the question "To be or not to be angry?" Barring the "violent" cases, expressions of anger seems obviously useful and essential. Why even ask the question?

Here is what I think. Let us not get caught in answering the all-encompassing question of the need for anger. One thing seems clear: if we want good relationships with people, then the unfiltered expression of anger is a killer! If we think about our personal lives -- partners, kids, parents, friends -- angry expressions (angry tirades, outbursts, without any apologies) almost always seems more harmful than helpful. It creates distance (spouse would stop confiding), it pushes people away (your teenager will not communicate with you), it stops people from understanding your point (argument will lead nowhere), it exaggerates the negativity in a degree disproportionate to the trigger (you could feel uneasy about the things you said after your anger goes down), and it destroys any sense of safety. The clear thinking which we seem to feel when we are angry, does not remain very clear after the anger subsides. Anger is known for distorting our perception and destroying our intelligent instincts. Most importantly, holding anger and revenge is such a painful process that it leaves scars on us and anyone in our vicinity.

Here is what I suggest. Remember the two following messages combined from Viktor Frankl and Buddhist thinking. 1) In between the feeling of anger and the explosion of anger, there lies a moment. Stretching that moment is what gives us freedom from our own patterns! 2) Use this moment to observe your anger -- no suppress, no express, just simply observe -- no need for any immediate action. As you observe, allow yourself to decide if your anger is really fear or hurt. Decide the "why, how, and what purpose" for the angry explosion. Take action -- only after this.

Yes, to perfect this skill will require a long process of self-awareness and training of mind, but there is good news! If we simply understand these two messages, that itself will make an immediate difference in increasing the happiness level in our environment. While we are still under training, yes, there will be moments of impulsive anger. May we have the courage to hold compassion for the recipient and to say sorry if we regret our own words!

Negotiating the Paradoxes of Nonjudgment

2010-07-19T11:26:00-04:00

We are living in very confusing times. On one hand we are expected to be nonjudgmental (as in accepting, respectful, compassionate and not rejecting in demeaning way) in personal, social and politically correct settings. On the other hand, our increasingly diverse world implies that we are constantly bombarded with unfamiliar faces, new situations, and newly arriving set of cultural values that threaten our sense of security and offers compelling reasons for judgments (what may seem like vigilance, discrimination, stereotyping).

On one hand, there are two good reasons why the nonjudgmental and non-rejecting way seems to be a perfect model for creating a world that is stable and prosperous, yet allows for individual freedom: 1) To promote harmonious co-existence in our increasingly diverse world and 2) to allow all types of individual potentials to be maximized. This means that in the political arena, we are expected not to pass any moral or value judgment on any particular community, and we watch over any discrimination, racial profiling, or stereotyping. On a social level, it requires us to allow all different styles of lifestyles: dressing, hairstyles, food habits, accents, curse-words, beliefs, religions, disabilities and behavioral patterns, as long as this is not proven to violate our laws. As we believe in encouraging individual potential to flourish, we are required to hold back judgments in our personal life as well -- against choices made by our own spouses and our own children, and the values chosen by our friends. Being nonjudgmental and compassionate seems to be a perfect foundation for personal relationships to flourish.

However, there is one big problem with this very attractive principal. Our brain is not supposed to be nonjudgmental! It is structured to make judgments at all times for the sake of safety: emotional and physical. When we are faced with a person or situation that is unfamiliar or uncomfortable, our brain will check the stored database: group classifications, similar past situations, personal experiences, and then it will put the unfamiliar person or situation into one of these familiar categories. This judgment may be based on purely personal experiences or it may be based on a scientific study we have read. Either way, it seems very real, very convincing to us and we take an action based on our own training in ensuring our safety. It may mean either rejecting the new person or situation in a harsh or blunt way, or simply disappearing away, or taking a legal action invoking a rule.

Here are some real questions raised by real people in which one could judge the validity of being nonjudgmental.

If I am nonjudgmental about the actions that are against my values, will I be condoning them? Will my spouse and friends repeat them and not care about if those actions hurt me? If I am nonjudgmental about my kids' misbehavior, is that opposite of "disciplining?" Will that mean anything goes and they will have a nonchalant attitude? If someone hurts my family, how is it possible to hold any compassion towards the perpetrator?

If I am nonjudgmental, how will I know if the homeless person asking for money for food is really for food or for substance use? Unless I judge, how will I know if I am being taken advantage of? I may be viewed as a gullible simpleton who can be used. Unless I am vigilant about certain characteristics that a person exhibits, although they may be viewed as stereotyping, how will I keep myself out of future trouble? If I see a person with Mohawk and tattoos walking towards me, should I be crossing the street or quickly dashing to my car? By being nonjudgmental of teen behavior, are we allowing our teens to be self-centered and unmotivated?

Is noticing a "good" characteristic of a group, such as "brahmins from the state of Tamilnadu in India are typically very bright," also prejudice? Is stating a study about early child development that shows that on the average, girls do better in languages and boys do better in math, being prejudiced, even when such observation may lead to more efforts in changing the environmental factors? Is it okay to be critical about your daughter choosing a college dropout husband, because of studies that on the average educated people are more likely to have better income than the uneducated ones? Without putting people in categories, how can we ensure that terrorists are sorted out? Without "racial profiling," how do we begin to look for possible suspects?

We are frequently being judgmental and retraining our brain is hard and not so obviously desirable in all situations.

Here is the best answer to the confusion about being nonjudgmental I have heard. While describing his conversation with the Dalai Lama, Dr. Dan Siegel presented the following answer: Being nonjudgmental means not taking your own judgments too seriously.

This is what I suggest. When your brain makes a judgment, you do not need to take it as "that is that," but consider that there are at least three possible mistakes your brain may be making.

1) Although your judgment is evidence-based for a group, the person you are facing may not fit the description, so it is helpful to be open and accepting towards finding out more about this person.

2) You may have wrong information about a group, based on your own incomplete personal observations, which will not withstand more methodical testing.

3) Your judgments may be for the need for superiority, need for "I am better than that." In either one of these cases, if you take your judgments "too seriously," you may reject and demean a person inappropriately, losing out on a chance to create a more harmonious world. Train your brain to question it's own judgment before taking action.

At the same time, do not be too judgmental of your poor judgmental brain. She is just doing her job!

The Importance of Being Unhappy

2010-05-27T08:00:00-04:00

Lately, there is an explosion of research and writing on "how to be happy." Spiritualists such as the Dalai Lama, psychologists and academicians such as Martin Seligman, Jonathan Haidt, Sonja Lyubomirsky, the list goes on. Time magazine published a cover story on the Science of Happiness.

The number of self-help books on happiness has exploded. This drive towards spreading happiness is not surprising, given the fact that as the US became wealthier and more powerful, reported cases of depressed people increased.

Most of this advice gives pointers on how to be happy by not focusing on getting richer, by practicing gratitude, by giving up envy, by helping others, by reducing stress, by paying attention to small wonders around you, by changing the environment whenever it is under your control and practicing happy patience when it is not under your control, and most importantly by connecting to other human beings. Some tell you to "fake" happiness till you "make" it.

Let us for a moment pretend that everybody in the US practices the to-do-list on how to be happy and indeed becomes happy. We all learn to be mostly loving, kind, grateful, compassionate, un-envious form of happiness in the success of the others, optimistic, un-obsessive-overanalyzing, forgiving, virtuous, socially supportive, and mostly committed to practicing happiness within and without. The meaning in life can come from doing the best possible job of whatever is given to us, let it be cleaning toilets, parenting, or being a CEO. Does that sound as close to paradise as our world can get?

Somehow, most people are uneasy about this picture as well! Who would create great works of art, music, and literature? There would not be Van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Beethoven, and Dostoevsky in our world. Great leaders, artists, scientists, and wealth-generators have not always been happy. In fact it seem these individuals created their work out of painful conflict and struggles with adversity.

Without envy and jealousy there would be no fire in the belly to do more and to make progress. All negative emotions have a purpose, and most of the time this purpose is physical and emotional survival. Some say that negative emotions are essential for evolution. Others say that practicing happiness generates complacency which in turn generates a lack of motivation for excellence. Some psychologists argue that personality structures are not so flexible and a pessimist cannot choose to be an optimist and it would be unfair to expect people to all fall into the same mold of being happy.

If we were a nation of happy people, would we be the super power? Would we have the best military and the best weapons? Would we be able to defend ourselves against the aggression of other countries? Does that mean we need to wait for the whole world to be happy first, before we decide not to be zealous about being powerful? Is the self-protective mode, in this world in which cruelty exists, necessarily a happy state of mind? Is a happy state of mind capable of defending against external aggression?

Yet as much as we admire and appreciate great works by great people, if we are asked a question: "Do you want your child to have a happy, safe, and good life or be extremely gifted and yet have a life full of unhappiness?", most parents will choose a happy, safe, and good life for their children.

What this suggests is the following. We understand the importance of having unusually gifted (albeit unhappy) people and the inevitability of defending against the cruelty in the world (by being a cruel aggressor yourself). However, we do not want to be one of them. If the world has to be divided into two groups of people, we would much rather belong to the happy side, the ones reaping the benefits of the unhappiness from the unhappily gifted and the cruel aggressive defenders!

This is what I suggest. When you are unhappy, let it stay for a while and consider what "purpose" this unhappiness is there to "serve". Take your own sweet time to stay unhappy. Then allow it to serve its purpose, play out its role, before getting in a hurry to ward it off. This means that being unhappy could in fact make you excited that you are on to the next best thing in life. This is the importance of being unhappy!