'How to Raise Kids who Aren't A**holes' — or maybe even kind

The desire to raise good people is fairly universal among adults with kids in their lives. Most of us want our kids to grow up to be kind and compassionate adults.

We mean it, we really do, but our kids often hear something else. Research from the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that 80% of youth think their parents are more interested in their children's achievement or happiness than whether or not they are caring for others.

Effectively modeling behavior you'd like your kids to adapt takes a healthy dose of intention, says author and science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer.

In her new book "How to Raise Kids Who Aren't A**holes: Science-Based Strategies for Better Parenting--from Tots to Teens," science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer cuts through the data on the subject. She looks at research on gunplay, screen time, shyness, resilience and more, helping parents effectively send the message that kindness matters.

CNN spoke with Moyer about what we are getting right, what we're doing wrong, how to teach kindness, and why it's hard to raise a kind kid if we're not being kind ourselves.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: What inspired you to write this book?

Melinda Wenner Moyer: Two and half years ago I started to get frustrated by the bad adult behavior I saw happening all around me. It made me think, what are my kids learning? Who are my kids learning from? It made me realize that what I wanted more than anything was for my kids to not grow up to be a**holes. And I realized I didn't know how to do this.

I began looking into the science about how to build character and values and was surprised by how much research there was.

CNN: Based on what you discovered, what are some of the things well-meaning adults are doing wrong when it comes to raising kind kids?

Moyer: First, I want to say that I hate to frame anything as "wrong." The last thing I want to do is shame parents or pressure parents to feel like they have to do everything right. We have a lot of leeway as parents and even when we do things that are not the most constructive, our kids will be fine.

One thing I saw come up again and again in the research is that a lot of parents avoid talking with their kids about nuanced, complicated topics like race, sex or pornography. But kids, starting from when they are little, are detectives trying to figure out how the world works. They notice a racial hierarchy, gender hierarchy and the sexual undertones, or overtones, everywhere. Disney movies have them.

Kids are being exposed to these big, nuanced issues, and if we aren't there to expose them to these issues, they will get the information elsewhere and then make assumptions that are inaccurate. It is far better to have intentional conversations on difficult topics. Even if you think they are too young, they are not, as long as you do it in an age-appropriate manner.

One more thing is how we handle our kids' feelings. We attempt to make our kids feel better when they are mad or bad or sad. We will minimize the feelings, or shame them, by saying things like "stop acting like a baby," or, for boys, "stop acting like a girl."

We do this because we want to rescue our kids from their negative feelings. Research tells us this is bad for a couple of reasons. We are telling them their feelings are wrong, and to bottle up their feelings and hide them. It doesn't help our kids learn the skills to manage them.

Also, parents tend to shame boys more for having feelings of sadness or fear because it isn't seen as masculine. But boys who have been taught to feel shame about these feelings are more likely to be aggressive as they get older.

Kindness matter is the message of Melinda Wenner Moyer's science-based book "How to Raise Kids Who Aren't A**holes."

CNN: And what might parents intuitively be doing right?

Moyer: One is modeling kindness and generosity in front of our kids. That is really good because kids learn from what we do rather than what we say.

Over the past five years, I've seen a lot more parents include kids in social movements, bringing them to protests, volunteering or encouraging them to donate their allowance money. When we include kids, we show them that it is important to care about others.

CNN: You found research connecting selflessness to success, which goes against much of what our competitive culture tells us.

Moyer: I often hear from skeptical readers who ask, "If we want our kids to succeed, isn't raising them to be kind and compassionate going to hold them back?" Our culture still tells us that to get ahead in the world, you need to be an arrogant a**hole.

There are certainly exceptions, but overall, research points to the opposite: People who are kind and compassionate are usually more successful. When you treat people well, people want to treat you well.

CNN: As I read your book, it struck me that parents can learn a lot about themselves in this process. Raising kind kids helps us think harder about how we could be kinder and what kindness means to us.

Moyer: I hope that this book inspires some self-reflection because to really model for your kids what you hope they become, you have to be pretty intentional. You have to think about what kindness means to you.

It helps to prioritize and think, "What is the most important thing for my kids to grow up and be or do?" Is it to be compassionate? To be helpful? Honest? Think about how to weave those values into your relationship with your kids.

It's important to remember that we can't do all the things all the time. Also, our priorities can change.

CNN: How do we balance our expectations for our kids and ourselves to be kind with an acceptance of our louder, angrier impulses?

Moyer: It's really important to be open and honest. It's OK for us to have big feelings; feelings are part of being human and are normal. We should accept our own big feelings, and the way we respond to situations when we are angry. That is OK. We are human and everybody makes mistakes and that is just part of life.

It is really helpful for kids to see us model that self-acceptance. It's also really good for them to see us apologize afterward, modeling the behavior we want them to do longer down the line. When we take responsibility, a lot of good can come out of our "mistakes" as parents.

(Source: CNN)

The origin of my laugh

When my mother died, her best friend Heidi called and told me, “What I’ll miss most is her laugh.”

*

When my mother called me on the phone before she died, she rarely laughed but often cried.

*

My mother had four daughters, and I am the oldest. My mother did not raise us. We had all been adopted: the first of us, by our paternal grandmother; the third, by my mother’s friend; the fourth, by a family in Virginia shortly after she was born. My youngest sister is almost twenty years younger than me—she was eight years old the first time we met. I found a card her family had sent my mother with a still-working cell phone number printed inside, and we set up a meeting while I was in town for a conference. As we walked across the parking lot toward their car, her adoptive mother made an off-hand comment that startled me into laughter. She tripped over nothing and gasped, “You have your mother’s laugh.”

*

When I was in middle school, I fell in love with a friend’s laugh. It sounded like cute, high-pitched hiccups. I practiced her laugh alone in my room—as if my laugh could be something smaller, something else. Grandma always said she could pick my laugh out of a crowd.

*

A bat biologist once described my laugh as the sound a crow makes when it sees something really shiny.

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A few years ago, a friend I knew only through voice chat and video games visited me in Boston. More accurately, he visited Boston for a video game convention, but I had invited him and the rest of our guild to my apartment for a dinner of homemade pulled-pork sandwiches, corn bread, and macaroni and cheese. On the train ride down, his phone’s battery died, and he found himself wandering my street in the dark because he couldn’t remember the number of my building. He was about to head back to his hotel when he heard it, my laughter, erupting from the open living room window. “I knew that laugh!” he yelled when I opened the door.

*

My mother did not want her daughters to return to the Navajo reservation. She kept us from her family to protect us, she thought. But after she died, I reconnected with my aunt, and the first time we talked on the phone, I recognized it, my mother’s laugh, carried hundreds of miles from the land she once called home.

*

The first time I felt a cotton swab scrape my cervix, I laughed—not because it tickled, though that’s what I told the doctor, but because it was a feeling that was more of a sound: a resonating disturbance of all my unsure places. Laughter is my body’s first, and sometimes only, response. The doctor gave me a panty liner, after, for the blood.

*

Once, wearing a pair of woolen socks, I slipped down a full flight of wooden stairs. My spine caught the hard right angle of the bottommost step. I managed to limp to the kitchen, where my boyfriend found me laughing hysterically. I could not find the words to explain to him the pain I was in. Weaving circles in circles, I walked my hands around the perimeter of the room and laughed and laughed.

*

A gnomish systems engineer once described my laugh as the sound pain makes when it hears a funny joke.

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After my niece was born, I gifted my sister a copy of First Laugh—Welcome, Baby!, a children’s book by Rose Ann Tahe and Nancy Bo Flood. The story follows the baby’s urban family back to the reservation—to the red earth and the sheep and the Rez dogs—where her parents and her grandparents and her brother and sister all try to make her laugh. In Navajo families, the first person to make a baby laugh hosts the child’s First Laugh Ceremony, a celebration of welcome and community. I have never seen this ceremony—only read or heard about it—and when I visited my niece, she was only one month old. Too young to laugh. She mostly glared at me with her faint, serious brows.

My sister told me after I left that she laughed for the first time in her sleep. My sister asked, “Who throws her party now?”

“Joke’s on her,” I laughed. “She’ll have to throw it for herself.”

*

A few weeks later, one of my colleagues, a Métis poet, waved me into his office and asked me about the First Laugh Ceremony, which he had encountered on Facebook. I told him about how my niece had first laughed in her sleep.

“It was her grandma,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, feeling the tears already in the back of my throat.

“It was her grandma,” he said again.

Her grandma, my mother, teaching her the language of home.

(Source: The Paris Review)

Happy New Year 2020

“Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true,” said Alfred Lord Tennyson. 

The biggest lesson I learnt in 2019 was that we have no idea who's coming into our life and who's going to leave. Be prepared for anything and everything, for life is just a journey and never a destination in itself. We meet so many, we bid goodbye to so many. We learn something, we unlearn something... 

Don't worry if someone calls you a mad person. People called Einstein a mad man, Leonardo da Vinci a mad man… People call you mad only when you don't live your life like others. Perhaps feel happy. It is like confirming you that you are on your own way, in fact, the right way. 

Don’t break your head to talk to such people, for they always avoid talking with you due to a fear of getting exposed. They avoid you unable to face the truth, they love to be hidden behind the ugly and a mask filled with sweet and dangerous lies. When such people - whether relatives or family members or friends - are not ready to talk with you or avoid you, don’t worry. Be happy, for such people are like clouds, when they’re gone its a beautiful day. 

Never stop questioning, never stop arguing, never stop telling the truth, never stop unmasking the lies and cheating of relatives, family members, and friends. Never stoop down to the level of others to convince or please them. You need not hide the truth, you need not say lies to cover up a mistake, you need not compromise to save someone...     

A fresh start, a new chapter in life is waiting to be written. New questions to be asked, embraced, and loved. Answers to be discovered and then lived in this transformative year of delight and self-discovery... It’s never too late to become who you want to be. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020!

How to be happy

Behavioral scientists have spent a lot of time studying what makes us happy (and what doesn’t). We know happiness can predict health and longevity, and happiness scales can be used to measure social progress and the success of public policies. But happiness isn’t something that just happens to you. Everyone has the power to make small changes in our behavior, our surroundings and our relationships that can help set us on course for a happier life.

Mind

Happiness often comes from within. Learn how to tame negative thoughts and approach every day with optimism.

Conquer Negative Thinking

All humans have a tendency to be a bit more like Eeyore than Tigger, to ruminate more on bad experiences than positive ones. It’s an evolutionary adaptation — over-learning from the dangerous or hurtful situations we encounter through life (bullying, trauma, betrayal) helps us avoid them in the future and react quickly in a crisis.

But that means you have to work a little harder to train your brain to conquer negative thoughts. Here’s how:

Don’t try to stop negative thoughts. Telling yourself “I have to stop thinking about this,” only makes you think about it more. Instead, own your worries. When you are in a negative cycle, acknowledge it. “I’m worrying about money.” “I’m obsessing about problems at work.”

Treat yourself like a friend. When you are feeling negative about yourself, ask yourself what advice would you give a friend who was down on herself. Now try to apply that advice to you.

Challenge your negative thoughts. Socratic questioning is the process of challenging and changing irrational thoughts. Studies show that this method can reduce depression symptoms. The goal is to get you from a negative mindset (“I’m a failure.”) to a more positive one (“I’ve had a lot of success in my career. This is just one setback that doesn’t reflect on me. I can learn from it and be better.”) Here are some examples of questions you can ask yourself to challenge negative thinking.

First, write down your negative thought, such as “I’m having problems at work and am questioning my abilities.”

• Then ask yourself: “What is the evidence for this thought?”
• “Am I basing this on facts? Or feelings?”
• “Could I be misinterpreting the situation?”
• “How might other people view the situation differently?
• “How might I view this situation if it happened to someone else?”

The bottom line: Negative thinking happens to all of us, but if we recognize it and challenge that thinking, we are taking a big step toward a happier life.

Controlled Breathing

Science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits of this ancient practice are real. Studies have found, for example, that breathing practices can help reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder. For centuries yogis have used breath control, or pranayama, to promote concentration and improve vitality. Buddha advocated breath-meditation as a way to reach enlightenment.

Try it.

Rewrite Your Story

Writing about oneself and personal experiences — and then rewriting your story — can lead to behavioral changes and improve happiness. (We already know that expressive writing can improve mood disorders and help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, among other health benefits.)

Some research suggests that writing in a personal journal for 15 minutes a day can lead to a boost in overall happiness and well-being, in part because it allows us to express our emotions, be mindful of our circumstances and resolve inner conflicts. Or you can take the next step and focus on one particular challenge you face, and write and rewrite that story.

We all have a personal narrative that shapes our view of the world and ourselves. But sometimes our inner voice doesn’t get it right. By writing and then editing our own stories, we can change our perceptions of ourselves and identify obstacles that stand in the way of our personal well-being. The process is similar to Socratic questioning (referenced above). Here’s a writing exercise:

1. Write a brief story about your struggle. I’m having money problems. I am having a hard time making friends in a new city. I’m never going to find love. I’m fighting with my spouse.
2. Now write a new story from the viewpoint of a neutral observer, or with the kind of encouragement you’d give a friend. 

• Money is a challenge but you can take steps to get yourself into financial shape. 
• Everyone struggles in their first year in a new city. Give it some time. Join some groups. 
• Don’t focus on finding love. Focus on meeting new people and having fun. The rest will follow.
• Couples argue. Here’s what your situation looks like to a neutral observer. 

Numerous studies show that writing and rewriting your story can move you out of your negative mindset and into a more positive view of life. “The idea here is getting people to come to terms with who they are, where they want to go,” said James Pennebaker, a psychology professor at the University of Texas who has pioneered much of the research on expressive writing.  “I think of expressive writing as a life course correction.”

Get Moving

When people get up and move, even a little, they tend to be happier than when they are still. A study that tracked the movement and moods of cellphone users found that people reported the most happiness if they had been moving in the past 15 minutes than when they had been sitting or lying down. Most of the time it wasn’t rigorous activity but just gentle walking that left them in a good mood. Of course, we don’t know if moving makes you happy or if happy people just move more, but we do know that more activity goes hand-in-hand with better health and greater happiness.

Practice Optimism

Optimism is part genetic, part learned. Even if you were born into a family of gloomy Guses, you can still find your inner ray of sunshine. Optimism doesn’t mean ignoring the reality of a dire situation. After a job loss, for instance, many people may feel defeated and think, “I’ll never recover from this.” An optimist would acknowledge the challenge in a more hopeful way, saying, “This is going to be difficult, but it’s a chance to rethink my life goals and find work that truly makes me happy.”

And thinking positive thoughts and surrounding yourself with positive people really does help. Optimism, like pessimism, can be infectious. So make a point to hang out with optimistic people.

(Source: NYT)

Psychology shows it’s a big mistake to base our self-worth on our professional achievements

Contemporary society has some very wrong-headed ideas about what constitutes success. Popular thinking holds that a person who went to Harvard is smarter and better than someone who attended Ohio State; that a father who stays at home with his kids is contributing less to society than a man who works at a Fortune 500 company; that a woman with 200 Instagram followers must be less valuable than a woman with two million.

This notion of success isn’t just elitist and misguided; it actively hurts those who believe it. For my book, The Power of Meaning, I spoke to many people who defined their identity and self-worth by their educational and career achievements. When they succeeded, their lives felt meaningful, and they were happy. But when they failed or struggled, the only thing that gave their lives value was gone—and so they fell into despair, and became convinced they were worthless.

Writing my book taught me that being a successful person isn’t about career achievement or having the most toys. It’s about being a good, wise, and generous human being. Cultivating these qualities, my research showed, brings people a deep and enduring sense of fulfillment, which in turn helps them to face setbacks with resilience and meet death with peace. These are the criteria that we should be using to gauge our own success in life and the success of others, especially our children.

Redefining success
According to the great 20th-century psychologist Erik Erikson, in order to lead a meaningful life, humans must master a certain value or skill at each stage of their development. In adolescence, for example, creating a sense of identity is the key developmental challenge. In young adulthood, the primary goal is to forge intimate bonds with others. And in adulthood, the most significant task is developing generativity—that is, cultivating the next generation, or helping other people to accomplish their goals and reach their potential.

In the book The Life Cycle Completed, Erikson tells a joke about a dying old man to make a profound point about generativity:

As he lay there with his eyes closed, his wife whispered to him, naming every member of the family who was there to wish him shalom. “And who,” he suddenly asked, sitting up abruptly, “who is minding the store?” This is expresses the spirit of adulthood which the Hindus call “the maintenance of the world.”

In other words, you’re a successful adult when you outgrow the natural selfishness of your childhood and youth—when you realize that life is no longer about charting your own course, but about helping others, whether it’s by raising children, mentoring colleagues, or creating something new and useful for the world. Generative people perceive themselves as part of a larger tapestry and seek to preserve it, however humbly, for future generations. This legacy gives their lives meaning.

Today, Anthony Tjan—an entrepreneur, investor, and author of the new book Good People—is a good example of generativity. But he wasn’t always. Back in 2000, Tjan was a newly-minted Harvard Business School graduate running a fast-growing $100 million internet services company called ZEFER, a poster child of the dot-com boom. Tjan was about to take the company public, an exciting milestone that would bring with it a lucrative payday.

But the day the company was scheduled to go public, the NASDAQ experienced its largest drop in history. The dot-com bubble was bursting. Tjan and his colleagues were forced to pull the IPO, and eventually restructure the company with three rounds of layoffs.

Tjan was devastated. The IPO had been his obsession—he’d seen it as the crowning achievement of his young career. He had been privately calculating how many millions he’d make from it. Now those dreams were gone, and he felt humiliated and demoralized.

As he dealt with the fallout of the failed IPO, Tjan realized that his definition of success had led him down the wrong path. At the time, he assumed success meant, in his word, “winning.” He writes: “We’d defined our success, by what an initial public offering could bring us, rather than by any of the meaningful roles or innovations we had created, or their impact on the world.” In time, he realized that true success lies in, he said, “using your strengths in the service of a higher calling”—in other words, generativity.

Today, Tjan is a partner at the investment firm Cue Ball, where he’s trying to live up to his new definition of success—and he seems to be, well, succeeding. One of his pet projects is MiniLuxe, a nail salon chain that he founded to shake up the nail industry, where manicurists are routinely underpaid and exploited. At MiniLuxe, the manicurists receive fair pay and retirement benefits—and the customers receive a more hygienic manicure and pedicure.

“I don’t want my children thinking about success in terms of winning and losing,” Tjan told me. “I want them pursuing wholeness.”

Making yourself useful
In Erikson’s model of development, the opposite of generativity is “stagnation”—the gnawing sense that your life is meaningless because you are useless and unneeded.

To thrive, people need to feel like they have a role to play in their communities, and skin in the game of life. This fact is evident in a classic psychology study of adult development, which followed 40 men over 10 years of their lives in the 1970s.

One of these men, a novelist, had gone through a rough patch in his career. But when he got a call asking him to teach creative writing at a university, he said it was “a sort of confirmation of my usefulness.”

Another man had the opposite experience. He had been unemployed for over a year when he told the researchers: “I’m running into a big blank wall. I feel that I’m useless, no good to anybody … The idea that I can’t provide the necessities, that the money is not there and that we cannot get my son what he needs, it makes me feel like a dope, an asshole.”

For the first man, the opportunity to be generative gave him a purpose. For the second, the denial of that opportunity was a bitter blow. And for both of them—as for most people—unemployment was not just an economic issue; it was an existential one, too. Research shows that across history, rates of unemployment and suicide rise together. That’s because when people don’t feel they have something worthwhile to do, they flounder.

But work is not the only way to be useful to others. John Barnes, another man in that longitudinal study, learned this lesson the hard way. Barnes, a biologist at a university, was an extremely ambitious and conventionally successful man. He had won prized grants like the Guggenheim fellowship, was unanimously chosen to be the chair of his Ivy League department, and was associate dean of his medical school.

And yet, in the middle of his life, he considered himself a failure. He didn’t have any goals that he considered worthwhile. And the things that he liked doing best—“being in a lab and being on a boat”—did not, in his words, contribute “a damn thing to anybody else.” He felt adrift. His whole life, he’d been driven by an “intense desire for kudos.” He wanted, above all, to be recognized as a first-tier scientist. But now, he saw that his yearning for recognition reflected a spiritual emptiness: “There must be something missing from one’s inner man,” he said, “if you need to be supported by having adulatory comments.”

In middle age, it’s natural for people to vacillate between generativity and stagnation—between caring more for others and caring more for themselves. To Erikson, the mark of a successful, growing adult is resolving this struggle.

And that, eventually, is what Barnes did. When the researchers checked in on him a few years later, they found that he was focused less on his personal advancement and receiving acclaim. Instead, he had discovered meaningful ways to serve others, by being a more involved father to his son, playing an administrative role in his university, and mentoring graduate students in his lab. Maybe his research would remain obscure; maybe he’d never be considered a luminary in his field. But he had rewritten his story about what success was. He had retired his pursuit of “kudos.” Now, he occupied his time with being useful not just at work, but also at home with his family.

In a lot of ways, many of us are like John Barnes. Maybe we’re not as hungry for recognition or as advanced in our careers. But, like Barnes, most of us have dreams that won’t come true. The question is—how do we respond to that disappointment? We can conclude we’re failures and that our lives lack meaning, as Barnes initially did. Or we can embrace a different definition of success, one rooted in generativity—in doing the quiet work of maintaining our “stores” in our own little corners of the world, and making sure that someone will mind them after we’re gone. That, ultimately, is the key to leading a meaningful life.

(Source: Quartz)

Blue spaces: why time spent near water is the secret of happiness

Coastal environments have been shown to improve our health, body and mind. So should doctors start issuing nature-based prescriptions?

After her mother’s sudden death, Catherine Kelly felt the call of the sea. She was in her 20s and had been working as a geographer in London away from her native Ireland. She spent a year in Dublin with her family, then accepted an academic position on the west coast, near Westport in County Mayo. “I thought: ‘I need to go and get my head cleared in this place, to be blown away by the wind and nature.’”

Kelly bought a little house in a remote area and surfed, swam and walked a three-mile-long beach twice a day. “I guess the five or six years that I spent there on the wild Atlantic coast just healed me, really.”

She didn’t understand why that might be until some years later, when she started to see scientific literature that proved what she had long felt intuitively to be true: that she felt much better by the sea. For the past eight years, Kelly has been based in Brighton, researching “outdoor wellbeing” and the therapeutic effects of nature – particularly of water.

In recent years, stressed-out urbanites have been seeking refuge in green spaces, for which the proven positive impacts on physical and mental health are often cited in arguments for more inner-city parks and accessible woodlands. The benefits of “blue space” – the sea and coastline, but also rivers, lakes, canals, waterfalls, even fountains – are less well publicised, yet the science has been consistent for at least a decade: being by water is good for body and mind.

 ‘People who visit the coast at least twice weekly tend to experience better general and mental health,’ says Dr Lewis Elliott. Composite: Getty Images

Proximity to water – especially the sea – is associated with many positive measures of physical and mental wellbeing, from higher levels of vitamin D to better social relations. “Many of the processes are exactly the same as with green space – with some added benefits,” says Dr Mathew White, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and an environmental psychologist with BlueHealth, a programme researching the health and wellbeing benefits of blue space across 18 (mostly European) countries.

An extensive 2013 study on happiness in natural environments – to White’s mind, “one of the best ever” – prompted 20,000 smartphone users to record their sense of wellbeing and their immediate environment at random intervals. Marine and coastal margins were found by some distance to be the happiest locations, with responses approximately six points higher than in a continuous urban environment. The researchers equated it to “the difference between attending an exhibition and doing housework”.

Although living within 1km (0.6 miles) of the coast – and to a lesser extent, within 5km (3.1 miles) – has been associated with better general and mental health, it seems to be the propensity to visit that is key. “We find people who visit the coast, for example, at least twice weekly tend to experience better general and mental health,” says Dr Lewis Elliott, also of the University of Exeter and BlueHealth. “Some of our research suggests around two hours a week is probably beneficial, across many sectors of society.” Even sea views have been associated with better mental health.

White says there are three established pathways by which the presence of water is positively related to health, wellbeing and happiness. First, there are the beneficial environmental factors typical of aquatic environments, such as less polluted air and more sunlight. Second, people who live by water tend to be more physically active – not just with water sports, but walking and cycling.

Third – and this is where blue space seems to have an edge over other natural environments – water has a psychologically restorative effect. White says spending time in and around aquatic environments has consistently been shown to lead to significantly higher benefits, in inducing positive mood and reducing negative mood and stress, than green space does.

People of all socioeconomic groups go to the coast to spend quality time with friends and family. Dr Sian Rees, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth, says the coastline is Britain’s “most socially levelling environment”, whereas forests tend to be accessed by high-income earners. “It’s not seen as being elite or a special place, it’s where we just go and have fun.

“By spending time in these environments, you’re getting what we call ‘health by stealth’ – enjoying the outdoors, interacting with the physical environment – and that also has some different health benefits.”

Even a fountain may do. A 2010 study (of which White was lead author) found that images of built environments containing water were generally rated just as positively as those of only green space; researchers suggested that the associated soundscape and the quality of light on water might be enough to have a restorative effect.

Although participants rated large bodies of water higher than other aquatic environments (and “swampy areas” were rated significantly less positively), the study suggested that any water is better than none – presenting opportunities for beneficial blue space to be designed or retrofitted. “You can’t change where the coast is, but when we’re talking about translating the benefits to other types of environments, there is nothing to stop a well-designed urban fountain,” says Elliott.

“People work with what they have,” says Kelly. When she lived in London, she would head for the Thames when she had a spare 10 minutes “and recalibrate”. Then, four times a year, she would go to Brighton “and the benefits would keep me going for the next few months – so I didn’t get into a place of being overwhelmed or stressed, just keeping myself topped up”.

The coast does seem to be especially effective, however. White suggests this is due to the ebb and flow of the tides. He points out that rumination – focusing on negative thoughts about one’s distress – is an established factor in depression. “What we find is that spending time walking on the beach, there’s a transition towards thinking outwards towards the environment, thinking about those patterns – putting your life in perspective, if you like.”

 To go to the sea is synonymous with letting go. Photograph: James Galpin/Getty Images

When you are sailing, surfing or swimming, says White, “you’re really in tune with natural forces there – you have to understand the motion of the wind, the movement of the water”. By being forced to concentrate on the qualities of the environment, we access a cognitive state honed over millennia. “We’re kind of getting back in touch with our historical heritage, cognitively.” Water is, quite literally, immersive.

As well as an academic, Kelly is a wellness practitioner who teaches classes in “mindfulness by the sea”. She says the sea has a meditative quality – whether it is crashing or still, or you are in the water or observing from the shore. “You can immerse yourself in it, which you can’t really do with a green space. You’re present in that moment, you’re looking at something with intention, and whether that’s for two minutes or half an hour, it gives you the benefits in that moment.”

In the future, she believes time in blue space will be a mainstream, formalised response. “The mental health crisis isn’t going anywhere,” she says.

Rees says support for the idea of “blue” or “green” prescriptions for individuals is growing. A “surfing for mental health” group in north Devon is one example she gives of how “nature-based interventions” can work.

By working to characterise and quantify benefits, BlueHealth’s cross-disciplinary team hopes to establish how “blue infrastructure” – the coast, rivers, inland lakes – can help tackle major public health challenges such as obesity, physical inactivity and mental health disorders. A 2016 paper – which White co-authored – put the monetary value of the health benefit of engaging with the marine environment at £176m.

Harnessing the power of blue space could also potentially help to alleviate inequality. “One of our recent papers finds that the benefits of coastal living are strongest for people living in the poorest areas,” says Elliott. For that reason, it is crucial to ensure everyone has access. With proximity to water associated with at least a 10% premium in house prices, White is concerned by the exclusivity of seaside urban development. “What will happen is you’ll get this kind of gentrification, where the people who benefit most will get squeezed inland.”

Access provisions under the revised Marine and Coastal Access Act, which is due to be completed next year, will help, says White. But seaside communities are particularly vulnerable, imminently from seasonal fluctuations in income and environmental degradation, and, in the longer term, sea level rise and extreme weather due to climate change.

Rees says that the benefits of marine environments for our wellbeing are tied to the health of those environments, and that conservation efforts need to factor in the “natural capital” of blue space in supporting our wellbeing. Kelly’s work has found a link between a sense of personal connection to the sea and environmentally friendly behaviours; researchers hope that we may be more inclined to protect blue space if the health benefits are proven.

“To go to the sea is synonymous with letting go,” says Kelly. “It could be lying on a beach or somebody handing you a cocktail. For somebody else, it could be a wild, empty coast. But there is this really human sense of: ‘Oh, look, there’s the sea’ – and the shoulders drop.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Humans aren’t supposed to be eternally happy, so why do we continue to force it? Pretending pain is abnormal or pathological will only lead to feelings of inadequacy and frustration Rafael Euba 1 day ago Click to follow The Independent Nature discourages contentment because it would lower our guard against threats to survival Nature discourages contentment because it would lower our guard against threats to survival ( Getty/iStock ) A huge happiness and positive thinking industry, estimated to be worth $11bn a year, has helped to create the fantasy that happiness is a realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very American concept, exported to the rest of the world through popular culture. Indeed, “the pursuit of happiness” is one of the US’s “unalienable rights”. Unfortunately, this has helped to create an expectation that real life stubbornly refuses to deliver. Because even when all our material and biological needs are satisfied, a state of sustained happiness will still remain a theoretical and elusive goal, as Abd-al-Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba in the 10th century, discovered. He was one of the most powerful men of his time, who enjoyed military and cultural achievements, as well as the earthly pleasures of his two harems. Towards the end of his life, however, he decided to count the exact number of days during which he had felt happy. They amounted to precisely 14. Happiness, as the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes put it, is “like a feather flying in the air. It flies light, but not for very long”. Happiness is a human construct, an abstract idea with no equivalent in actual human experience. Positive and negative affects do reside in the brain, but sustained happiness has no biological basis. And – perhaps surprisingly – I reckon this is something to be happy about. Nature and evolution Humans are not designed to be happy, or even content. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival. Read more Wealth and happiness is a still postcode lottery The fact that evolution has prioritised the development of a big frontal lobe in our brain (which gives us excellent executive and analytical abilities) over a natural ability to be happy, tells us a lot about nature’s priorities. Different geographical locations and circuits in the brain are each associated with certain neurological and intellectual functions, but happiness, being a mere construct with no neurological basis, cannot be found in the brain tissue. In fact, experts in this field argue that nature’s failure to weed out depression in the evolutionary process (despite the obvious disadvantages in terms of survival and reproduction) is due precisely to the fact that depression as an adaptation plays a useful role in times of adversity, by helping the depressed individual disengage from risky and hopeless situations in which he or she cannot win. Depressive ruminations can also have a problem solving function during difficult times. Morality Humans are designed primarily to survive and reproduce (iStock) The current global happiness industry has some of its roots in Christian morality codes, many of which will tell us that there is a moral reason for any unhappiness we may experience. This, they will often say, is due to our own moral shortcomings, selfishness and materialism. They preach a state of virtuous psychological balance through renunciation, detachment and holding back desire. In fact, these strategies merely try to find a remedy for our innate inability to enjoy life consistently, so we should take comfort in the knowledge that unhappiness is not really our fault. It is the fault of our natural design. It is in our blueprint. Advocates of a morally correct path to happiness also disapprove of taking shortcuts to pleasure with the help of psychotropic drugs. George Bernard Shaw said: “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” Wellbeing apparently needs to be earned, which proves that it is not a natural state. Health news in pictures Show all 47 The inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live perfectly happy lives with the help of “soma”, the drug that keeps them docile but content. In his novel, Huxley implies that a free human being must inevitably be tormented by difficult emotions. Given the choice between emotional torment and content placidity, I suspect many would prefer the latter. Read more Can colour really change the way we feel? These are the 'happiest places' to live in the UK Swan happy to help others after opening up about mental health But “soma” doesn’t exist, so the problem isn’t that accessing reliable and consistent satisfaction by chemical means is illicit; rather that it’s impossible. Chemicals alter the mind (which can be a good thing sometimes), but since happiness is not related to a particular functional brain pattern, we cannot replicate it chemically. Happy and unhappy Our emotions are mixed and impure, messy, tangled and at times contradictory, like everything else in our lives. Research has shown that positive and negative emotions and affects can coexist in the brain relatively independently of each other. This model shows that the right hemisphere processes negative emotions preferentially, whereas positive emotions are dealt with by the left-sided brain. Support free-thinking journalism and subscribe to Independent Minds It’s worth remembering, then, that we are not designed to be consistently happy. Instead, we are designed to survive and reproduce. These are difficult tasks, so we are meant to struggle and strive, seek gratification and safety, fight off threats and avoid pain. The model of competing emotions offered by coexisting pleasure and pain fits our reality much better than the unachievable bliss that the happiness industry is trying to sell us. In fact, pretending that any degree of pain is abnormal or pathological will only foster feelings of inadequacy and frustration. Postulating that there is no such thing as happiness may appear to be a purely negative message, but the silver lining, the consolation, is the knowledge that dissatisfaction is not a personal failure. If you are unhappy at times, this is not a shortcoming that demands urgent repair, as the happiness gurus would have it. Far from it. This fluctuation is, in fact, what makes you human. Rafael Euba is a consultant and senior lecturer in old age psychiatry at King's College London. ​This article first appeared on The Conversation MORE ABOUT HEALTH | BRAIN | HAPPINESS | HUMAN NATURE Promoted stories ASIA London girl, 15, vanishes at night on holiday in Malaysia OTHERS Basketball star banned after drug test shows him to be pregnant AMERICAS Police release CCTV video of gunman Connor Betts being shot dead VOICES The world is burning, and the government is being run by an arsonist Coming Soon Godrej South Estate at Okhla, Delhi. 2/3/4 BHK Starting @ Rs. 3 Crs* GODREJ SOUTH ESTATE DELHI | Sponsored If You Like to Play, this Game is a Must-Have FORGE OF EMPIRES - FREE ONLINE GAME | Sponsored A Browser that's 200% Faster than Chrome BROWSERGUIDES.ORG | Sponsored Own a luxury home at Emaar Turkey with 10 years post-handover payment plan EMAAR TURKEY | Sponsored Flights In Qatar At Ridiculously Low Prices SAVE70.COM | Sponsored NEWSJohn Oliver declares USA ‘completely f***ed’ after two mass shootings HEALTH & FAMILIESOlivia Newton-John says ‘every day is a gift’ after cancer diagnosis 10 Best Men's Walking Sandals That Will Support You Through Every Type Of Hike This Summer HIKING 50 of the best family days out in the UK PROMOTED BY THE INDEPENDENT | Sponsored احصل على بطاقة خضراء أمريكية. قدم الآن! 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Pretending pain is abnormal or pathological will only lead to feelings of inadequacy and frustration

A huge happiness and positive thinking industry, estimated to be worth $11bn a year, has helped to create the fantasy that happiness is a realistic goal. Chasing the happiness dream is a very American concept, exported to the rest of the world through popular culture. Indeed, “the pursuit of happiness” is one of the US’s “unalienable rights”. Unfortunately, this has helped to create an expectation that real life stubbornly refuses to deliver.

Because even when all our material and biological needs are satisfied, a state of sustained happiness will still remain a theoretical and elusive goal, as Abd-al-Rahman III, Caliph of Cordoba in the 10th century, discovered. He was one of the most powerful men of his time, who enjoyed military and cultural achievements, as well as the earthly pleasures of his two harems. Towards the end of his life, however, he decided to count the exact number of days during which he had felt happy. They amounted to precisely 14.

Happiness, as the Brazilian poet Vinicius de Moraes put it, is “like a feather flying in the air. It flies light, but not for very long”. Happiness is a human construct, an abstract idea with no equivalent in actual human experience. Positive and negative affects do reside in the brain, but sustained happiness has no biological basis. And – perhaps surprisingly – I reckon this is something to be happy about.

Nature and evolution
Humans are not designed to be happy, or even content. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.

The fact that evolution has prioritised the development of a big frontal lobe in our brain (which gives us excellent executive and analytical abilities) over a natural ability to be happy, tells us a lot about nature’s priorities. Different geographical locations and circuits in the brain are each associated with certain neurological and intellectual functions, but happiness, being a mere construct with no neurological basis, cannot be found in the brain tissue.

In fact, experts in this field argue that nature’s failure to weed out depression in the evolutionary process (despite the obvious disadvantages in terms of survival and reproduction) is due precisely to the fact that depression as an adaptation plays a useful role in times of adversity, by helping the depressed individual disengage from risky and hopeless situations in which he or she cannot win. Depressive ruminations can also have a problem solving function during difficult times.

Morality
The current global happiness industry has some of its roots in Christian morality codes, many of which will tell us that there is a moral reason for any unhappiness we may experience. This, they will often say, is due to our own moral shortcomings, selfishness and materialism. They preach a state of virtuous psychological balance through renunciation, detachment and holding back desire.

In fact, these strategies merely try to find a remedy for our innate inability to enjoy life consistently, so we should take comfort in the knowledge that unhappiness is not really our fault. It is the fault of our natural design. It is in our blueprint.

Advocates of a morally correct path to happiness also disapprove of taking shortcuts to pleasure with the help of psychotropic drugs. George Bernard Shaw said: “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.” Wellbeing apparently needs to be earned, which proves that it is not a natural state.

The inhabitants of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World live perfectly happy lives with the help of “soma”, the drug that keeps them docile but content. In his novel, Huxley implies that a free human being must inevitably be tormented by difficult emotions. Given the choice between emotional torment and content placidity, I suspect many would prefer the latter.

But “soma” doesn’t exist, so the problem isn’t that accessing reliable and consistent satisfaction by chemical means is illicit; rather that it’s impossible. Chemicals alter the mind (which can be a good thing sometimes), but since happiness is not related to a particular functional brain pattern, we cannot replicate it chemically.

Happy and unhappy
Our emotions are mixed and impure, messy, tangled and at times contradictory, like everything else in our lives. Research has shown that positive and negative emotions and affects can coexist in the brain relatively independently of each other. This model shows that the right hemisphere processes negative emotions preferentially, whereas positive emotions are dealt with by the left-sided brain.

It’s worth remembering, then, that we are not designed to be consistently happy. Instead, we are designed to survive and reproduce. These are difficult tasks, so we are meant to struggle and strive, seek gratification and safety, fight off threats and avoid pain. The model of competing emotions offered by coexisting pleasure and pain fits our reality much better than the unachievable bliss that the happiness industry is trying to sell us. In fact, pretending that any degree of pain is abnormal or pathological will only foster feelings of inadequacy and frustration.

Postulating that there is no such thing as happiness may appear to be a purely negative message, but the silver lining, the consolation, is the knowledge that dissatisfaction is not a personal failure. If you are unhappy at times, this is not a shortcoming that demands urgent repair, as the happiness gurus would have it. Far from it. This fluctuation is, in fact, what makes you human.

(Source: Independent)

Everything I want to tell my younger self

Hey little one.

Always remember that, no matter how dark things seem, there is so, so, so much more light. Tell yourself that every single day. And be thankful for every moment alone, because they will be the moments that teach you who you really are.

Put your whole heart into something, because sweet rebellion isn’t pretty.

Be kind. Learn that lesson now, instead of later, like I did. But don’t be too kind. Don’t give your attention to anyone who doesn’t excite you. Broken hearts are painful, but they are inevitable.

Just make sure that you stand up for yourself and that you tell the truth. And work hard. If you don’t understand, ask. You won’t seem stupid, because you’re not.

Every mistake you make is another opportunity to learn. But please learn. And don’t make the same mistake twice. And for your own sake, don’t make it a third time.

You are so much more than the words and the hatred and the fear. There is no better moment than this one, because it is this moment that leads to the next.

Live with a confident freedom, because you will get there. Whatever you wish, it will happen; maybe not in the way you thought, but in a way that sneaks up on you after years of questioning why.

Don’t question why. You won’t get the answers you want anyway. It will just frustrate you. So just trust, mostly in yourself, but it’s alright to trust other people too. Just don’t give any part of your heart blindly. Because it hurts when people leave your pieces scattered.

Take little steps to manage the pain. Smile at everyone. Dance all the time. Don’t lose sight of what does matter and forget what doesn’t. You are your greatest enemy. Darkness can drag you down, and the deeper you go, the faster you drown. So get your feet wet, learn how to swim to the bottom. Take control.

Welcome the dark, little one. Don’t be afraid of it.

(Source: Thought Catalog)