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March 05, 2008
Interesting Articles on "Me"-ness vs. Happiness
Sorry, I meant to blog about this days ago but forgot.
Recently, I came across this good article in The Washington Post about how me-centered thinking and entitlement make people miserable instead of happy.
Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
Then why do we as a society tend to teach our kids that they are the center of the universe and are entitled to get whatever they want?
It's fascinating and counter-intuitive that focusing so much on instilling self-esteem has backfired and may actually do more harm than good.
It reminds me of an article I recently read in Oprah Magazine called "The New and Improved Self-Esteem" (by Aimee Lee Ball).
Sadly, the article isn't available online. I checked. It was in the January 2008 issue if you can get your hands on it. (All the website has of the article is the sidebar, which is good but not the meat of the thing.)
Here are the two quotes from the Oprah article that I found most interesting:
"There's no question you get the best results from highly contingent praise and criticism," says [Roy] Baumeister [PhD, professor of psychology at Florida State University]. "That means praising exactly what you did right and criticizing exactly what you did wrong." [emphasis mine]
That makes sense to me. So why have we fallen so far away from doing that? I guess because we are so afraid of hurting someone's feelings. Key phrase: "highly contingent."
"[Carol] Dweck's studies clearly show that when children are told they're brilliant, they often start thinking of effort as a sign of stupidity."[Dweck, PhD, is professor of psychology at Stanford University.]
That explains a lot!
I encourage you to check out both of these fascinating reads.
Posted by Selena at March 5, 2008 09:43 PM