One of the oldest myths in psychology is that our minds are separate from our bodies. Today, however, there is an overwhelming amount of research that shows how our mental health is directly influenced by our brains and biology.
A big part of this influence comes from what we inherit from our genes, which we don’t have much control over. However, diet and exercise also play an important role in maintaining a healthy body and healthy mind – and those are things that we do have the power to change.
Black and white thinking can be the cause of many problems in our life.
I remember a time when I was very depressed, and looking back, I can now see how my absolutist views were a big reason I couldn’t get out of the rut I was stuck in for so long.
According to a recent study published in Emotion, students who evaluated their performance on an exam as higher than it actually was – a form of undeserved self-praise – later felt dejected and depressed.
According to Chi-Yue Chiu, of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore:
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“Distress following excessive self-praise is likely to occur when a person’s inadequacy is exposed, and because inaccurate self-assessments can prevent self-improvement.”
Researchers discovered this effect in students from both the U.S. and Hong Kong, suggesting that it may be cross-cultural. However, they found that students from Hong Kong tended to be more humble in their self evaluations overall, which was consistent with previous research supporting the trend of Asian cultures being more modest than Western cultures.
This finding shouldn’t be that shocking to readers of The Emotion Machine. I have long advocated that we take an honest and reasonable approach to how we view ourselves.
I like positive psychology and I think it offers many useful theories and practices for how we can benefit our lives. But this shouldn’t be confused with the “positive thinking movement.” The former is a scientific discipline, while the latter is a heavily commercialized and distorted industry with little scientific backing.
I’ve experienced the heartache of believing things like The Law of Attraction and The Secret first hand, and I’ve later warned about these dangerous trends in personal development – which often emphasize the importance of excessive self-praise and over-confidence, even when it is irrational and potentially very harmful.
When the self-help “guru” James Arthur Ray had participants go on a physically demanding “Spiritual Warrior” retreat that consisted of several days of fasting, and then spending hours locked in a sweat lodge, several people needed to be hospitalized after – and some even died. Ray believed that through excessive confidence and self-belief, they could overcome any physical limitations. His excessive confidence was wrong, and it had dire consequences for those who fell prey to it.
Of course, some level of self-praise and confidence is essential to our evolution. Because without any confidence, we can never be motivated to take the risks required to successfully adapt to our environment.
If a fish gets thrown into a new pond, but it is too fearful and avoiding of it’s surroundings, it will have greater difficulty finding food to survive. But if it has the confidence to explore its new territory and take calculated risks, it will often have a greater probability of discovering new means of survival, without being crippled by fear.
Self-praise is one of the biggest ways humans can build a more confident demeanor and be more motivated to take action, but it needs to be balanced.
Sports psychologists have demonstrated how athletes can use positive self-talk to improve their performance. But clearly overestimating our abilities can at times lead to some destructive outcomes.
Another study showed how overly optimistic people are susceptible to underestimating the risks that bad things will happen to them, such as getting cancer or getting into a bad car accident. This optimistic attitude can motivate people toward more reckless behaviors because they mis-attribute the risks of their actions.
Again, it’s about balance. Self-praise and confidence are good, but only when they are deserved and when they are grounded in reality. Trying to fool ourselves into thinking we are more than we are can only backfire in the end.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
I bet you’ve made a lot of mistakes in your past. I have too – we all have. But however unpleasant these mistakes may seem, it’s a part of life that we need to learn to accept and eventually get over.
The past is in the past, and no amount of thinking and worrying can change that. By acknowledging that our past mistakes are outside of our locus of control, we can more easily let go of these mistakes and stop beating ourselves up over them.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s completely natural to feel bad every now and then. In some ways, I think emotions like depression, guilt, and anger can actually serve a positive function in our lives.
At the same time, we have to be careful not to become too attached.
We have to think of these negative emotions and past events in our life as something to learn from and eventually let go of. The more we wallow in these emotions, without solution-oriented thinking, the more we feed into them and let them dictate our lives. That’s when these emotions become unhelpful, and even “addictive” in some cases.
Here are some tips and perspectives to help you stop beating yourself up over past mistakes:
- Remember that everyone makes mistakes at times, you are no different.
- You probably tried your best given the time and situation.
- Be honest about how these mistakes make you feel (frustrated, anger, guilty, sad, etc.) – without attaching these emotions or becoming addicted to them.
- Learn whatever lessons you can from the experience.
- Focus on what you can do now or in the near future to avoid repeating these mistakes.
- Know that the future will probably bring even more obstacles and failures. If you’re not failing, you’re probably not challenging yourself enough.
- Life is a constantly unfolding process, no single event can dictate the rest of your life, so don’t pretend that it does.
By the end of the day, it’s simply not worth it to be distracted by things that are no longer in our control. It’s a waste of both physical and mental resources.
Your past has shaped you to become the person you are today, but only your actions from here forward will shape who you become in the future.
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Rarely in life are things just black-and-white, but instead different shades of grey. In my post Depression: The Yin of Happiness, I describe how depressive states can sometimes motivate us to reevaluate our lives and solve personal problems. I argue that in many ways a period of depression can actually guide us to be more happy in the long-term.
The key idea is that while depression may usually be seen as solely “bad” or “negative,” it can actually serve a positive function, especially if our depression is triggered by events that we have control over.
On the other end, while depression can sometimes lead to more happiness, the pursuit of happiness can also sometimes lead to more depression. A study by psychologists at Yale University has recently identified some downsides to happiness. Here are some of the pitfalls they’ve found:
1. Expecting happiness…and then not getting it.
We often read books and blogs (like this one) in order to find suggestions on how we can achieve a happier life. Common suggestions include thinking about what you are grateful for or helping others. While there is nothing wrong with these activities, when we do them with the sole expectation that they are supposed to make us happy, we can often be let down when we don’t get what we expect.
For example, in one study participants who read a newspaper article about how to be more happy ended up reporting less happiness after watching a happy film than those who read a newspaper article about a neutral topic. The reason? Those that read the article promoting happiness ended up creating unrealistic expectations about how happy the movie should make them feel. After they viewed it they became disappointed, resulting in feeling even worse than they would have felt if they just went in with no expectations.
2. Too much happiness can make us bad risk-takers.
Another study discovered that too much happiness correlates with a shortened lifespan. Research suggests that highly elevated moods can make us more willing to engage in risky behaviors, like substance abuse, driving too fast, or gambling away our life savings. Our excess happiness can create a feeling of superiority and invincibility that often blows up in our face. In a healthy mind, “negative” emotions like fear and anxiety usually help deter us from this reckless behavior, but if we only experience joy and positivity then we don’t get the proper emotional warning signs.
3. When being happy is inappropriate.
It’s usually not a good idea to attend a funeral while laughing or to have a big smile on your face while someone is telling you about a bad experience they once had. The fact is there are times in our life where it is appropriate to grieve and feel down. As positive psychologist Tal Ben-Sahar puts it: “We must give ourselves permission to experience the full-range of human emotions.” So instead of ignoring these unpleasant emotions, we should accept them, and even think of them as a necessary facet of the human experience. We should allow ourselves to empathize and encourage other’s feelings, without always needing to put on a facade of “everything is happy-go-lucky.”
Conclusion
As I also mentioned in Depression: The Yin Of Happiness, sometimes we need the lows in our life to help define the highs. So when we ignore those lows or run away from them – when we only want and expect pure pleasure and joy – we not only adopt an unrealistic view of the world, but I believe we also hurt ourselves more in the long-run.
True happiness – true emotional intelligence – requires that we see the gifts in every emotion, not just joy and pleasure, but also temporary pain and suffering. When we acknowledge these inevitable ebbs and flows of life it becomes a lot easier to ride from one to the next.
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