New Year's Resolution #1: No More Resolutions!
Thanks for the Comment, Dustin
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December 6, 2007
Remember the Fundamentals
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (12/3/07) cites new research indicating that anorexia may be linked to brain regions influencing anxiety and perfectionism. This finding may ultimately contrast, contradict, or complement popular ideas that anorexia is primarily the result of external forces--family dysfunction, media images of thinness, or coach or peer pressure. The more we learn, it seems, the less sure we become. At least, that's how it ought to be.
What struck me in reading this little article is how frequently research emerges that seems to tell parents and mental health practitioners that what we've been doing all along is wrong. Often there is a reactive rush to create and implement new approaches that focuses on the newest findings. Often the result is flip-flopping practice that can be counterproductive or even dangerous.
As a young endurance athlete, I remember waiting tables with a Stanford running back who gorged on the restaurant's sourdough throughout his shift. "All the Stanford teams are about carbs now; new research. Carbs are the secret weapon, dude. They give you energy, bulk, whatever you need; I live on sourdough."
A year or two later while innocently munching high-carb granola, I was chided by my roommate, a Stanford swimmer who, along with most other Stanford athletes--including the football team, was now implementing a high-protein diet. "Dude, step AWAY from the GRANOLA! What you need is protein; carbs are bunk. Protein makes muscle and fuel and burns fat. Magic."
It's one thing to chase dietary fads based on the latest research--something I've finally stopped doing--and another to chase parenting, treatment, or medication fads based on the latest therapeutic research. The former might make you faster or slower, stronger or weaker; the latter might make you sicker, or kill you (or your patient or loved one). Practitioners, programs, and parents who attempt to quickly implement new strategies based on emergent research do well to review the fundamentals of the scientific method they learned in grade school. Observation, hypothesis, experimentation, theory, test test test test test the theory.
We forget that most good research yields (or bunks) theories, not facts. Interestingly, all of the
"ologies--" pathology, etiology, etc. are based on the greek word logos which means (among other things) dialogue, but we often treat these ologies as if the conversation is over, as if they involve mostly stable facts. Facts take a helluva long time to emerge from the womb of theory, though...and most are born still. Theories are, according to classical scientific discipline, things to be rolled over and poked and kicked and fought and refuted...either to death or to further life. Those things that survive these merciless scientific beatings and prove reliable over time eventually take on the honorific title of "fact." In our eagerness as a consumer culture to "apply" the immediate fruits of research (i.e. very young and barely tested theories), we jump to conclusions quickly, implementing drugs, techniques, and approaches that have really only made it through the first few hoops of the scientific process. This can be counter productive or even dangerous.
As someone who designs and implements programs for struggling youth, I have learned to rely primarily on balanced approaches that make intuitive sense. I also tend to favor dialogue ("ology") over discovery (young, unvetted theory) as I make design choices. I take a deep breath when I see new research in order to avoid jumping prematurely on the bandwagon of implementation. I adopt novel approaches slowly and with caution, and keep a foundation of fundamentals that are not the least bit sexy, new, or controversial.
Kids, all kids, respond to love, connection, structure, play, consistency, clarity, humor, and truthfulness. These are some of the ingredients I learned to arrange and balance in my first job as an unsophisticated front-line childcare worker at Eastfield Ming-Quong--one of the oldest effective therapeutic programs in the country. I've learned lots of other things since, but these fundamentals are the only things I never question. Love, connection, structure, play, consistency, clarity, humor, and truthfulness are a few of those foundational elements that are guaranteed to nourish any child (or adult) in need of healing, as well as those in pretty good shape. The former, it seems, just need a super-concentrated dose. And the great thing is there's no risk of overdose!
So regardless of the latest theory regarding the etiology and treatment of adolescent pathology, every parent and practitioner does well to honor the fundamentals...
December 12, 2007
The Other Edge
A recent article in the New York Times cites a study by the Cass Business School in London which found that 35% of American entrepreneurs surveyed describe themselves as dyslexic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/business/06dyslexia.html?em&ex=1197262800&en=24bb78073ad70446&ei=5087%0A
It is estimated that only about 10% of the general population is dyslexic. So here's a clear case for viewing dyslexia as a potential asset to leverage rather than a deficit to fix. I love that!
My own academic and professional journey has left me profoundly relieved that whatever learning disabilities I possess have gone undiagnosed. I was nearly held back every year until the 6th grade, when I finally learned to leverage my extreme energy and distractibility to advantage. What a blessing that my parents did not give into the coddling approach advocated by some of my teachers; what a relief that no one was permitted to excuse me from the arduous work of finding a way to leverage those very qualities that had been such a challenge previously.
I've seen so many dyslexics and others with diagnosed learning disabilities coddled and protected and pathologized--excused from the challenge of succeeding or forced to attempt achievement in ways incompatible with their own personality and neurological makeup. I have not seen great results come from deficit-oriented parenting, teaching, or therapy. In fact, the most powerful approaches that I have witnessed come from a relational approach to healing-- dimensionalized approaches that acknowledge challenges but seek out and leverage strengths. These approaches embrace the paradox that weaknesses and strengths are often just different manifestations of the same core quality.
As a result both of my personal experience and my proessional observations--over the past 20 years--of students, teachers, therapists, and parents, I subscribe to the simple belief that our strongest features as individuals tend to have two opposing edges. Our job as parents, teachers, and therapists is often just to teach which edge to use, which way to push the blade. Many oppositional kids have superior verbal and rhetorical skills; many ADHD kids can hyper-focus and multi-task to great advantage; manic depressives have an extraordinarily high incidence of creative genius.
Because common diagnostic language is deficit oriented, consumers of psycho-educational assessments--parents, teachers, therapists, and students--can easily miss the opportunity that is might be embedded in a kid's most salient--and therefore most annoying, frustrating, or problematic--feature. When we become myopic in assessing others based on an urge to fix pathology, we miss out on a broader, more dimensionalized, more human, and ultimately more accurate understanding of people.
Do you have a story of a deficit turned to advantage? I'd love to hear any stories you care to share, whether your own or that of a student, child, or friend. Please post your comments to this site, but remember to use other's stories only with their permission and or with their identity masked.
December 21, 2007
The World in a Cup of Joe
Just after Thanksgiving I was driving to work gripping the wheel tightly, clenching my jaw, and swearing quietly through my teeth. I was late to work but had to drive with excruciating care to avoid spinning on the black ice; my brain was stuck on some paycheck error that I needed to take care of when I got to the office. It was a tense morning--a bad one as far as I was concerned.
As I passed the Amante Coffee shop in North Boulder, though, I saw a homeless man with dirty pants and a thin jacket walking down the street, slightly hunched over a cup of coffee, which he gripped with both hands. It was so cold that both the man and his coffee billowed with steam. As he walked, wrapped around his little cup of warmth, his expression was one of serenity if not sheer bliss. The dude was happy!
What was he doing in the freezing cold in his thin, filthy clothes looking so happy? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with me?
It was just after Thanksgiving, for crying out loud, and as I drove to my great job in my warm car guzzling my own streaming cup of coffee, I had been sure that my life was pretty hard. Seeing that man snapped me awake. I immediately began looking around me, cataloguing the things, right there in the present, that were beautiful or good or comforting. The image of that man has stuck with me, and I think of him whenever my mind starts to slip into worry or negativism. I'm disciplining myself pause and catalogue a few of the many good things in my life and to say an audible "thank you," for each one.
A recent study published in the journal, Current Directions in Psychological Science, found that human memory attaches much more strongly to negative events than to positive ones. Some scientists attribute this to a survival function--if we remember events that were dangerous or difficult, we are more likely to work to avoid them in the future. What strikes me about that research, however, is that it implies we're not wired to be thankful. Whether that's a spiritual, attitudinal, or neurological condition, I don't know. I do know, however, that it's true of me. It's much easier to remember bad stuff and, therefore, to fixate on how to avoid it in the present. So while pessimism may have helped cave men survive attacks from the brontosaurus rex (I don't want to tangle with one of THOSE again!), it definitely does not help us thrive emotionally, socially, or spiritually. That dirty jobless near-frozen homeless man was, in the moment I caught a glimpse of him, thriving.
Thankfulness, for most of us, requires some discipline. We have to stop and consciously catalogue the things we have to be thankful for--i.e. count our blessings--in order to realize the paradise we occupy. Most major religious disciplines account for this by making formal thanksgiving a part of their liturgy or ceremony. Some countries have a day set aside to focus on being thankful; the UN set aside a whole year of thanksgiving (2000)...remember? Neither do I. People that we are, we don't naturally wake up fully aware of all we have to be thankful for and move through our days in a bliss of thanksgiving. My dog does, but I don't.
I'm a spoiled man. We're a spoiled generation, and so is the one we're raising. Our kids are drowning in abundance. They're shut down and so busy and stressed managing their abundance that they don't enjoy much of it. "Affluenza," is the popular term used by psychologists, and ironic UTube videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFZz6ICzpjI), to describe this epidemic of teen culture. We needn't be ashamed of abundance as long as we are mindful of it and thankful for it. Our gift to our kids can be to model thankfulness; to pause and actually say out loud what you're thankful for--the little things and the big things. It's not something that's natural, but it's something that can make the difference between being selfish or generous, stressed or relaxed, stingy or generous, miserable or blissfully content. Common sense tells us this, and current research on the relationship between gratitude and well-being confirms it.
So this holiday season, remember my freezing jobless dirty homeless friend who found the world in a cup of joe and, in so doing, gave me my best Christmas gift this year. Thanks.
December 31, 2007
Thanks for the Comment, Dustin
Thanks for the comment, Dustin, and for the amazing story. It's neat to get such important lessons from such unexpected sources. Have a great NY!
New Year's Resolution #1: No More Resolutions!
Here's an article I wrote a year ago and am recycling. I'll be posting a followup to it later this week where we'll follow someone who is trying to implement a Kaizan Approach to change in his life this year. We'll see how it works!
If you have ever poured your mind, body and soul into creating and implementing New Year's resolutions, chances are good you won't be doing that again soon. New Year's resolutions are more notorious for producing frustration than personal growth; because of this, many therapists suggest alternate methods for moving to higher ground.
"My advice regarding New Year's resolutions," says Judith Brodie, a Denver, Colorado based therapist, and a parent coach, "is to not make them!" In her work at Vive!, Inc., a Boulder, Colorado-based company that helps families struggling with a troubled teen, Brodie has worked with countless parents who were desperate to make changes, but exasperated by failed attempts.
Despite Brodie's dismissive approach toward resolutions, she is a champion of process-oriented personal growth. "I'm a proponent of process," says Brodie, "of figuring out what we're ready for, what we want, what we need, and then taking small steady steps in that direction. Jumps, dives, and resolutions, in my experience, are hard for people to sustain."
Psychologist Robert Maurer, a professor in UCLA's Family Medicine Department, agrees with Brodie. "The average American makes the same New Year's resolution seven years in row before giving up," he says, "this is hardly a practical solution to us wanting to better our lives." In his new book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Maurer applies the Japanese corporate philosophy of Kaizen--or continuous improvement through micro changes--to therapeutic healing. Instead of creating frustration and failure by attempting immediate large-scale change, Maurer suggests easing into change. "My suggestion is to take an area of life you'd like to improve and identify an activity in that area you'd like to be doing. Engage in this activity for just one minute a day, four, five or six days per week to start."
In One Small Step Can Change Your Life, Maurer tells the story of a patient who had failed repeatedly at her attempts to stick with an exercise program. Her resistance to exercise was so great that he had her just stand on her treadmill for a minute a day where she would drink her first cup of coffee and read the paper. Before long, Maurer reports, standing led to walking a little and walking a little led to walking more and more. Small steps, Maurer contends, circumnavigate our natural, neurologically based resistance to radical change, clearing the path for a process of incremental, often life changing, improvement.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," Maurer reminds us, "and research suggests that those steps need to be as small as possible to make the giant leaps we all want in our lives."
Drew Krafcik, a therapist for Vive! Inc., suggests that there is some preliminary work to be done before we even select these areas of incremental change. "Understanding why we choose to make a New Year's resolution is much more important than the resolution itself. If we don't fully understand why we've started something, how could we expect to understand why we might quit?" Krafcik suggests starting with a broad view of what we want to change in our lives and becoming clear about our motives, visions, and fears before engaging in the change process.
So this New Year, it might be good to stick to one resolution: "no resolutions!" Instead, come up with a New Year's vision--a broad-stroke image of what you want your life to look like over the next few years. Revisit this vision frequently or post it in a highly visible location, like over your desk, and use it as a rubric to evaluate all the small, even miniscule, decisions you make on a daily and weekly basis. Constantly ask, "is this small decision leading me toward, or away from, my vision of who I want to become?" You can also focus in on one or two specific activities that support this personal vision and fold one minute's worth of that activity into your schedule several days each week. This one minute might be the start of your own thousand mile journey as one minute becomes two minutes, then three minutes, then thirty minutes over time.
This "Kaizen" approach to change combines the benefits of small, manageable steps with the benefits of accumulated effect. By committing to small but continuous change this year, you may be able to achieve a great deal while avoiding the dicey, often discouraging, routine of New Year's resolutions.
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