Too Many Choices

For those of you who have not read the article by John Tierney in the New York Times Magazine of August 24, 2011 called, “To Choose Is to Loose.” I would like to summarize some of the main points as I feel it is one of the more important topics I have seen in a long time. The caption under the title reads, “the very act of making decisions depletes our ability to make them well. So how do we navigate a world of endless choices?”

We are not aware during our daily activities of how many choices encumber our brains non-stop. For instance, we start the day with shower or bath, plaid or stripped, regular or decaf, whole eggs or whites only, heels or flats, taxi or subway. Then we continue throughout the day with staple or paperclip, buy now or wait for sale, speak up or keep quiet, paper or plastic, wash or dry-clean, chocolates or flowers, book or magazine, strength training or cardio, keep driving or ask for directions, cash or credit, go out or stay home. The list can go on ad infinitum—it is just a sample of how bombarded we are with constant decision making.

What happens is that our brains get tired. Tierney calls it decision fatigue which explains why ordinarily sensible people buy junk food, splurge on clothes, and let the salesperson talk them into an unneeded upgrade. It is different from physical fatigue, because we’re not aware that our brain is tired and our brain begins to look for short cuts either by acting impulsively, not thinking through consequences, or by saving energy and doing nothing, avoiding making any decision, which could also lead to unintended consequences.

Psychologist Ray F. Baumeister coined the term “ego depletion.” The more energy you use to avoid temptation (such as ordering dessert) the less energy you will have to avoid other temptations, so you may end up eating half that box of chocolates. One of the examples given is registering for wedding gifts—after deciding on flatware, china, glasses, table linens, towels, and sheets, the exhausted couple just pick whatever is displayed, stop making choices, and start asking the salesperson, “What do you suggest?”

The more options—whether buying a car or ordering a suit—the quicker fatigue sets in and so one chooses the default option.

In an experiment involving the timing of paroles given or refused, 1100 decisions were analyzed over the course of a year. Prisoners who appeared in front of the judges early in the morning received parole 70% of the time, while those who appeared later in the day were paroled less than 10% of the time. The fatigued judges chose the default option: remain in jail.

What experimenters tried to do next was to see whether the brain can be made to function even when fatigued, and the answer was glucose. Glucose could reverse the brain’s propensity to stop deciding and give it a burst of energy. This explains the dieter’s problem with willpower. We start off refusing the doughnut for breakfast, but by dinner have no willpower left for the chocolate cake. The Catch-22 is that in order not to eat, the dieter needs willpower, but in order to have willpower, the dieter needs to eat. Baumeister showed that in order to start making good choices again once depleted, people need “a sugary pick-me-up,” but not a beverage containing a diet sweetener.

The prisoners who normally would have that 10% chance of getting paroled by appearing in the afternoon in front of tired judges were taken in front of judges who had just eaten and got approved 60% of the time. I personally don’t know how much choice prisoners have in the timing of their appearances. I’m guessing not much, but according to this research, the judges should find the opportunity to eat a snack before their brains start turning off.

People with the best self-control are the ones who structure their lives so as to conserve willpower. They don’t schedule back-to-back meetings, avoid all-you-can-eat buffets, and instead of having to decide whether to exercise every morning, they schedule it in advance. Even the wisest people won’t make good choices when their glucose is low.

So don’t make decisions late in the day nor on an empty stomach. The best decision makers, Baumeister says, are the ones who know when not to trust themselves. We all now have a good excuse for the piece of chocolate mid-afternoon.

Anger: To Vent or Not to Vent, That Is the Question

I used to read that not expressing your anger, holding on to it, would lead to physical symptoms of illness, so the advice was to vent your anger. Then I read that to express your anger will only make you angrier, raise your blood pressure, and not help to resolve the situation. So the advice was to swallow your anger.

Now I read the latest research, which suggests that the above advice can be harmful. So what’s the real story?

Most studies have always involved men and the relationship between anger and heart attacks. Men who are easily angered, easily irritated over small things, who are generally anxious, are more likely to suffer heart attacks than their calmer counterparts.

We used to think of Type A personalities as those who are always in a rush, who do three things at the same time, who push their way to the front of the line, who interrupt others, finishing their sentences for them.

What has been found is that the only Type A behavior that is harmful is hostility. In other words, it is not that you are in a rush, it is that you’re angry at the slowpokes around you, honking your horn and cursing.

Little research has been done on women, when the first large-scale study at the University of Tennessee looked at anger in the lives of average, middle-class, American women. Five-hundred-thirty-five women between the ages of 25 and 66, working fulltime outside the home, were given questionnaires.

The researchers found that what typically triggered an angry response was feeling that one had been treated unfairly or disrespectfully, not being able to meet one’s own expectations, others failing to live up to expectations, and frustrating situations at work that could not be changed.

Generally, issues concerning power, responsibility, and justice were all the triggering mechanisms for angry reactions.

Older women seemed to get less angry, perhaps because they learned to suppress anger as young women or because they just mellowed with age.

The researchers also found strong evidence that venting anger by yelling, screaming, or lashing out was more harmful than keeping it in. Venting anger more disrupted relationships, creating further problems for both the giver and the receiver of the wrath.

Women with low self-esteem were more easily provoked and saw innocent acts and words as personal affronts. The women who expressed their anger in an attacking and blaming fashion were also more likely to be depressed. Ruminating about the provoking event worsened the angry feelings and was associated with an increase in blood pressure.

On the other hand, women with high self-esteem neither suppressed their anger, nor expressed it, but discussed that anger in a problem-solving way either with the person who provoked it or with a friend, reducing the feelings of anger and sparing the potential recipient from an outburst.

Living in a retirement community as I do, I find that when residents are angry about a seemingly unimportant thing, it may be healthy. Being upset may be a way to have a voice; it is a sign of caring about the way things are done or not done. In this case, the opposite of anger is apathy—giving up on one’s wishes, expectations, or needs.

One cannot write about anger today without discussing rage: the out-of-control feeling that overwhelms us and dictates our behaviors usually to our detriment and to that of others. Rage unleashes cortisol, the stress hormone, which clogs our arteries. Spouse and child abuse are due to rage¾often unleashed by an insignificant event. We have all read about road rage¾common to people with a low tolerance for frustration. Then there is the rage fuelled by political agendas that propel people to suicide bombings, anger large enough to overcome our innate urge to survive. Anger threatens, rage kills.

So to vent anger is bad for your relationships. “Ruminating” about it raises your blood-pressure. So suppress it until you can talk to the offending person and explain the impact of their behavior. If that is not possible, talking about the angry feelings with a friend helps.

But most importantly, don’t allow yourself to be easily provoked. In other words, mellow out, try not to take it too personally, it is the other person’s problem for having upset you, not yours. Remember that when Peter gives feedback to Paul he says more about Peter than he says about Paul. If it’s an event out of your control and not anyone’s fault, blame is not an option. The strategy is the same: talk about it with a friend.

Letting Your Unconscious Do the Work

Most of us function from our left brains: logical and linear. We think through problems, make lists of pros and cons, examine alternatives, and weigh the possible consequences. Very often this process does not provide us with satisfactory answers. So we toss and turn at night and obsess during the day, not knowing what to do.

Then, out of the blue, at an odd time, in a strange place, out of context, while doing something totally irrelevant, come the solutions. What happened? Our right brain, intuitive and holistic, took over.

Most of us have had this experience of finally figuring out something after we stopped working at it. Is there a way to make this type of insight, which happens outside of our control, more accessible?

When we talk about our unconscious, we often also mean our intuition. Women talk about intuition or listening to their instincts, men talk about having a nose for something or following a hunch. We are all talking about the same thing: listening to our gut reactions.

What do we mean when we say: “this just feels right to me”? It is the difference between knowledge and knowing. “Knowledge” is fact, painstakingly learned through study, listening, and observation. “Knowing” is a private experience that often cannot be explained to others, it is our intuition. Our minds process a huge amount of information that we are only dimly aware of, and sometimes, that information is the key to solving a problem.

I believe that we can train our unconscious mind to take over when our conscious mind has given up trying. The following strategies are worth trying.

1. At the end of the day, either upon leaving your office or before going to sleep, jot down the problem you’re dealing with using a few, key words, then forget about it.

2. Think of the problem just before starting a non-work-related activity.

3. Move your body: Studies at Purdue University show that any form of physical exercise seems to activate creativity.

4. Think of three people whose problem-solving ability you respect and put yourself in their shoes, how would they look at the problem. (If I were “X,” I would…)

5. Pretend you are the problem; how would you resolve your dilemma? Don’t be afraid to write down the silliest and most outrageous thoughts that come to mind.

6. Make room for the expression of feelings: I am excited, I am fearful…. Gut feelings are data too. This is the creative part.

7. Talk to people outside your field. Some surprisingly new ways of looking at the problem may occur to them, and explaining it to others may help you see things more clearly as well.

Over all, stay in touch with your unconscious by allowing your mind to wander where it will. Daydreaming is an important part of the creative process. Your right brain may know the correct path to take, even if it seems circuitous to your left brain. As a fleeting thought passes by, capture it by writing it down right away. It is disconcerting how quickly it disappears, and you sit there wondering: “What was that I just had a flash about?” Later you can look over all your notes using your left brain to analyze the ideas.

I wrote the following poem about our two brains.

Right Brain/Left Brain

While the right hand

adds numbers

the left one is doodling

While the right arm

lifts weights

the left one is hugging

While the right foot

walks the narrow path

the left one dances a jig

While the right eye

is looking

the left one is seeing

While the right ear

is listening

the left one is hearing

While the left brain

is studying

the right one just “knows”

As you see, it is important to sometimes let go of control so that you can regain it by going through the back door, or perhaps it is through a window or even down the chimney.

Your Shadow Side

Your shadow side is the side you may be, at best, only dimly aware of. It is your shadow side that makes you chronically late and leaves the pile of books on the floor and the pile of papers messing up your desk. It’s responsible for the unpaid bills on the kitchen counter, the unanswered phone calls and e-mails, the dirty dishes waiting in the sink, the dirty laundry waiting in the hamper. In other words, you can blame your shadow side for your disorganization. Do you have clothes that you hang on to but have not worn in several years? Are there objects cluttering up your house you haven’t looked at and that don’t enhance your home? Are there things in drawers, on shelves, in cupboards, and closets that have lost their usefulness? If this applies to you (it does to me), read on….

There are times when we are baffled by our own behavior. We ask ourselves: “Why do I do that or not take care of this? Why can’t I motivate myself to…take the time to…get my life in order?”

Let us start with chronic lateness. I told a friend recently that her lateness is a sign of hostility, because she makes others wait for her. But it is more than that, one needs to uncover the hidden messages lurking in our brains. “I am important, let them wait,” or “When I was a child my father always pushed me to hurry, so I promised myself I would never be pushed again,” or “I fool myself into thinking I can do one more thing before leaving the house/office and still be on time, thus giving a higher priority to that last minute call, or letter, or whatever, than getting there promptly.” Again: “My time is more valuable than yours.” On the other hand, if you always put other’s needs before your own, your shadow side may be playing old tapes about your worthlessness. Were you given messages in your childhood about not being good enough, bright enough, or constantly diminished by parents and siblings?

Before you can change unwanted behaviors, you need to get in touch with that shadow side to understand the messages that are secretly dictating your choices.

Start slow and small. “Today I will look through one inch of that pile of papers. Today I will clear up one quarter of my desk.

Live in the moment; allow your conscious mind to set the agenda so your shadow side cannot turn you back to your old patterns. Decide on your vision of the life you want, then take the time to identify the steps you need to take to get to that vision and then¾this is important¾take very small steps or you will get discouraged. Twenty minutes a day for clearing up old files may be all you can handle without frustration, but then stick to those twenty minutes no matter what.

Every time you don’t decide what to do with that item in your hand, you postpone the decision for a later time. Not making a decision is a decision: put it away or give it away.

And then there is the issue of compatibility. You like neatness and very few things around, your partner feels cozy only in a cluttered home. Or your partner (and usually children too) leaves a mess expecting you to clean up. Do you?

The amount of clutter and organization one is comfortable with, as well as who is in charge should be negotiated calmly and re-negotiated often as progress or no progress is being made.

You know you are dealing with your shadow side if there is something in your own behavior that has been bothering you but every time you think about it, it upsets you and you feel powerless. Look for a hidden message behind your lateness, the broken promises you meant to keep, your clutter, your disorganization.

In researching this article, I got in touch with why I keep all my old teaching notes and articles I wrote thirty years ago (now obsolete). It represents a time in my life that was very productive, where I was successful and at the forefront of women entering the workforce in male-dominated enclaves, giving talks, consulting with major corporations, writing, traveling.

Do I miss that time in my life? I would not do it now; I’m 84, less of an activist, and more contemplative, preferring to stay home than travel. Yet, there are those papers…. Now that I know what they represent, I can let go. That was then¾I am now.

So learn how your shadow side stops you from doing what you really want. Find a friend you can talk to; it’s hard to do it alone. Get your vision clear as to what you want to accomplish, decide on small steps and just do it.

Good luck!

Our Homes, Our Sanctuaries

A bird’s nest, a wolf’s den, a bear’s cave, a dog’s kennel or cardboard box, a person’s room or house or apartment or castle--these are the sanctuaries, the safe places where one retreats to bear and raise one’s young, to hide from predators, to seek refuge from the world.

A cave or a hole dug into a stone wall sheltered our ancestors. Today we have four walls, a roof, a floor. In some places it is a wall made of sun-dried mud bricks with cow dung for mortar, a straw roof, and an earthen floor. In other places it is corrugated cardboard walls with a piece of sheet metal for the roof.

Then there are barracks for soldiers or migrant workers, cots in rows in homeless shelters, dorm rooms for students, rented rooms in boarding houses, maids’ rooms, beach cottages, mountain cabins, condos in high rises, houses with small yards or large gardens, farms, estates, castles.

What they all have in common is a name: Home. It is a place to return to after a day away, a place to rest, to replenish oneself. It can also be a place of strife, of more work cooking and cleaning, but at the end of the day there is a bed, four walls, a roof against the elements--safety.

Those of us who can, buy a house, fix it up, furnish it, and live in it. This house represents who we are--a part of ourselves for the world to see. It is our home and an ego-extension. It is not just a location or a style of house--nor is it only landscape or decor. It is the fulfillment of dreams or lack of; it is the place of comfort, of refuge, of privacy. A place we can take our clothes off, put our feet up, and be ourselves without the demands of the outside world.

Many of life’s most emotional moments happen in our homes. The walls resonate with the memories of dialogues, of tears and laughter, of children’s voices, of parents long gone.

We look to create the perfect home environment for ourselves, for our families. We spend time buying furniture, deciding on fabrics, on colors for our walls, on the material for our floors: tile, marble, wood, carpets--all give different messages to the visitor: formal or cozy, grand or fun, traditional or innovative. Our homes tell on us; they tell our secrets.

What we place in our homes are symbols of ourselves. Walking around someone’s home, we understand the person who lives there better. What are the pictures on the walls, what photos are out, what are the books on the shelves, how is the furniture arranged? Does the home have little furniture and few objects or is it cluttered as mine is?

And then there is the color scheme. Is it neutral and peaceful, is it colorful and exciting? I once visited Audrey Hepburn in her house near Geneva, Switzerland. Everything was white in the living room, and she wore white, but the library was in primary colors. So she blended into her living room, but contrasted in her library. It was very dramatic, and it fit a great actress.

We can fall in love with a house, grow into it, and then outgrow it and move on to something larger, or move to a smaller house or apartment, move to the city or the country.

But every home we have ever lived in will also live within us. We are the sum of all our living spaces and recreate wherever we go some small part of where we have been--of who we were.

My daughter had just finished building her house, which was still empty, when my mother died. We shipped my mother’s furniture to Toronto and in one day my daughter had her living room, dining room, and two bedrooms furnished. One grandson sleeps in his grandfather’s bed, and the guest room where I sleep when I visit has my mother’s bed. The wonder of it was that somehow I did not have to leave my Beverly Hills family home--where I grew up--it was recreated in Canada and whenever I stay there I feel embraced by the familiar surroundings.

It is wonderful when certain treasured family belongings can move either with us as we move or go to our children for them to pass on to the next generation. These become our heirlooms, our treasures, our memories; they fill up our homes and make them the sanctuaries that draw us back to elicit the familiar response: “It’s so good to be home.”

A Life's Witness

After my husband died nineteen months ago, I thought I might write a book on living single in a couples’ world. Wanting to use my own experience and that of others, I have interviewed dozens of widows and widowers.

The word most often used by everyone I spoke to was “loneliness.” What that word really means is that no one knows what they do, think, read, where they go, nor whom they meet, and, not only that, no one really cares.

Some people have a child who calls everyday, that helps, or there is a close friend who is involved. Living in a retirement community also helps, as one never needs to eat alone. But it is difficult to find a new old friend.

This leads me to a different concept, that of a witness. A witness to your life is that person who sees you brushing your teeth, watches whether you’ve taken your medication, hears you talking on the phone, and knows what you plan to do every day. A witness is usually the companion to your life and an active participant in it. And that can be whomever you are living with—mate, child, friend.

A witness can also be someone you talk to every day and with whom you share the minutiae of your daily life: what you had for dinner, the latest article you read, the movie you saw, the friend you bumped into. Someone truly interested in your whereabouts—the way we were interested in the daily doings of our children when they were small.

My friend Dr. Michael Rafii sent me this quote. As far as I know, this was the first time the word “witness” was used in this context. Susan Sarandon's character says the following in the 2004 movie Shall We Dance:

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet…I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things…all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.”

Becoming aware of the meaning of “witness” could help in defining the nature of one's loss and the subsequent need for a replacement, even if only a partial one, or, on the contrary, it could help to identify that role in one's life that one must now do without.

Not everyone longs for a witness, a few men and some women felt at peace with no one close to them. These were either people who never experienced nor wished for much intimacy or their loss was so many years ago that they have adjusted to being alone.

In wondering who might need a witness and who might not, I thought of affiliation needs. These are genetically programmed. Think of children going into a kindergarten class: one may run to a group and join in the activity, another may go off by him or herself and prefer to play alone. These propensities usually remain throughout a lifetime. So I am guessing that people with high affiliation needs, when becoming a widow or widower, would suffer more from a lack of a witness than someone with low affiliation needs.

However not all witnesses fulfill their role well. There are indifferent spouses who notice nothing and don’t communicate, each partner living their life next to, but not with, the other. This may suit people with low affiliation needs. Then there is the spouse who is always critical or even abusive, and even though he or she is a witness, it is a dysfunctional relationship. Although one may be better off without such a person, there are many who remain in such dyads, afraid to leave it, preferring to be a victim than to be alone.

It would not be a bad idea for engaged couples to ask each other about their affiliation needs. It would reduce a lot of unmet expectations between one spouse who needs a lot of togetherness and the other who needs space and time alone. Understanding these different needs would allow for negotiation and compromise.

I wonder whether living in today's often alienated world people feel isolated and keep texting each other and constantly updating their whereabouts on Facebook and Twitter in order to have a witness to their lives.

For those who are lonely and are wishing for a witness, be proactive on your own behalf. I have sought out friends I could telephone in the evening when I get home to an empty and silent apartment. I keep my computer work for those hours too. I accept invitations to go out and reciprocate as often as I can. I have joined organizations that meet on a regular basis, do volunteer work, and ask friends to watch movies with me in my home.

I’m inviting readers to write me in care of this paper with comments and suggestions. This is a work in progress.

Early Brain Development

Just what we need: another difficult, if not impossible, dilemma for working parents! As if juggling home and career is not frustrating enough, research has uncovered the importance of staying home with a newborn or at least providing one-to-one contact on a daily basis by a good childcare person.

From birth, a baby’s brain cells keep making new connections and discarding others. This will shape a lifetime of experience, making the first three years critical. The question of nature vs. nurture¾does heredity shape a person, or does the environment have more influence¾is now finally answered. It is both. Experience (nurture) shapes the brain (nature) and this in turn influences how we react to future experiences.

Some of the most recent discoveries coming out of neuroscience are about the formation of the brain. A brain at birth contains over 100 billion neurons, as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. The pattern of wiring between these nerve cells is shaped by what the baby encounters.

This is how it works: a baby is stimulated by a voice, a mobile hanging over its crib, a touch. This stimulation produces electrical activity in the brain cells. Continued activity reinforces specific neural pathways, which in turn change the structure of the brain. If these connections or synapses are not used they wither away.

The best example of this is language. An infant’s brain is wired to learn all the sounds of human language. The sounds that are never heard at an early age cannot be reproduced correctly later. This is why people have accents when learning a new language as adults. Their synapses for those sounds specific to the new language have been lost at a young age. This is similar to the mechanism which make it best to learn music when young, as well as many other types of learning.

What wires a child’s brain is repeated experience. The electrical charges flowing from axons that transmit the signals to the dendrites receiving them become synapses that permanently connect the two. The more synapses in the brain, the more intelligent and well-functioning the child can become. A brain wired for musical talent will need opportunities in the environment to fulfill itself. Thus nature influences nurture, which influences nature¾ad infinitum.

Unfortunately, if there is heredity for aggression and the child is abused, he may well become an aggressive adult. With good, early parental care and love, such aggressive tendencies may never surface. On the other hand, there are abused children who never become aggressive. Their brains were not wired towards that tendency. So you need a certain susceptibility in the brain to begin with and life experiences that exacerbate it to produce specific behaviors.

What all this means is that the more positive experiences we can give our babies and children, the better developed their brains will be. Change the mobile hanging over the crib, provide new toys, play with your children, hug them, kiss them, hold them in your arms so they can see and interact with the world around them, talk to them, and read baby books and then children’s books to them even though they can’t read or understand the words yet. Interact a lot, learn the emotional cues and respond to them. Babies of depressed mothers are depressed, so be joyful with your child and have fun together.

Children who are not played with or touched develop brains that are 20% to 30% smaller than normal for their age. Remember the orphaned children of Romania, some of them so damaged by neglect that by the age of three they could not recover normal function. Emotional deprivation early in life or physical abuse has resulted in abnormal brain-wave patterns in these neglected children¾often irreversible.

Because of this we must rethink policy by providing adequate preschool programs that can boost the brain power of children under the age of three who live below the federal poverty level. We must re-think the cost of putting welfare mothers of infants and toddlers into the workforce without providing adequate daycare.

The rise of single parent households and the decline of community all point to grave consequences for the future of our children. Defective adults¾either emotionally deficient or intellectually incompetent, due to lack of early care and stimulation¾will be a burden and a danger to our society. Knowing all this, parents need to consider with utmost care, the staying-at-home option or research in great detail the daycare their children attend.

A child thrives best in a one-on-one situation, if that is not possible, there should be at least a high ratio of the number of caregivers to the number of children, so that each child can get some individual attention. Whatever the level of daycare you can find for your child, get in the habit of interacting with your child when you are together. Instead of trying to keep them quiet and “out of the way” while you cook, eat, keep house, and relax after work, involve the child in your activity as much as possible. Let dinner be ten minutes late if it means your baby’s brain is getting the stimulation it needs.

I know this all adds to the burden working parents already carry, but it is best to worry now and do something about it, than not to know and pay a high price for ignorance.

So hold your infant a lot, sing to your baby, listen to music and dance together, and read often to your child.