Monday, September 21, 2015

Eyes are the Windows

"The soul that can speak through the eyes can also kiss with a gaze" - Gustavo Adolfo Becquer


            When I was on a date a few weeks ago, my date made a very interesting comment that I thought was completely strange. He said he liked that I made a lot of eye contact. My first thought to this was, “Who the heck do you talk to? Making eye contact is normal and what you’re supposed to do.” But then I remembered another guy I dated a couple of years ago. He had the most trouble looking me in the eye, and I did not trust him. Funny how such a common thing can be an indicator of so much.

Random Eye Contact Fact #1: A comfortable amount of eye contact happens from 30% to 60% of the time during a conversation – more when you are listening, less when you are speaking.

            Earlier this year, I wrote about the importance of kissing in relationships (Kissing is Amazing), and I think eye contact is just as important, if not more so. Mandy Len Catron wrote an article for the New York Times about an experiment she tried based off of psychologist Arthur Aron’s experiment. Aron brought various pairs of strangers into a lab and had them both answer 36 questions that became increasingly more intimate and personal. Then, they had to stare into each other’s eyes for four minutes. His goal was to produce love between two complete strangers, and six months after the experiment two participants got married.

Random Eye Contact Fact #2: In any type of relationship, the more eye contact that is exchanged, the closer the relationship.

            Catron tried the same experiment with an acquaintance. They went to a bar to ask the 36 questions, and she describes forgetting that they were in a public place. But even though they had revealed such personal things about one another, the most intimate part came when they walked outside to a nearby bridge where they stared at each other in silence for four minutes. About that experience, she says, “… I was seeing someone really seeing me. Once I embraced the terror of this realization and gave it time to subside, I arrived somewhere unexpected. I felt brave, and in a state of wonder. Part of that wonder was at my own vulnerability and part was the weird kind of wonder you get from saying a word over and over until it loses its meaning…” And of course, she answers the real question – did they fall in love?

Random Eye Contact Fact #3: Both men and women find dilated pupils subconsciously more attractive, because it signals that the other person finds them attractive. Women used to use the juices from the belladonna plant as eye drops to make their pupils appear bigger so that men would find them more attractive.

            Yes they did, but she doesn’t give the experiment all the credit. She says, “But what I like about this study is how it assumes that love is an action… Arthur Aron’s study taught me that it’s possible — simple, even — to generate trust and intimacy, the feelings love needs to thrive.” She explains further that it is common Western thinking that love and fate just happen to us, and we have to wait around for it to happen. This study led them into a more deliberate relationship, where it was more of a choice to be intimate rather than the convenience of a situation or having things in common.

Random Eye Contact Fact #4: We avoid eye contact in elevators and other cramped places as a way to reduce the discomfort of our personal space being invaded.

            A similar experiment was conducted in 2010 by Robert Epstein during a presentation that involved about a hundred New Yorkers. His goal was to show that “we could, fairly easily and on demand, increase the love that people feel toward each other—people who are already in love, people who are just friends, and even total strangers.” Four volunteers came to the stage and were paired up and told to gaze into each other’s eyes for two minutes. Before they began gazing, they were asked to rate on a scale of 1-10 what they felt for the other person on terms of liking, loving, closeness and attraction. After the experiment, they were asked to rate it again, and the numbers went up for all four people. Afterward, Epstein asked the entire audience to find someone to gaze at, and then asked if they felt closer to this person. Nearly everyone did.

            Epstein explains why this phenomena occurs, and can even happen with total strangers:

Emotional bonds often get stronger when people feel vulnerable, and this works for two reasons. First, when you see someone who is in a weak and vulnerable state, you often feel like comforting or protecting that person; those tendencies make you feel close to someone, and they often bring you physically closer, too. Second, when you are feeling vulnerable yourself, you might interpret your emotional state as a loving one—especially if someone nearby happens to reach out to comfort you. If two people feel vulnerable simultaneously, these two tendencies can interlock and increase synergistically… The difference between mutual gazing and staring is the consent; people are giving each other permission to invade their privacy in way that is normally quite threatening.

Random Eye Contact Fact #5: When we are sad, ashamed, or looking inward, we avoid contact, which is why Catholic confessionals and psychiatric couches are arranged to attempt to reduce the amount of contact between the priest or therapist and the confessor or patient. It’s easier to open up when we sense but don’t actually see others, and when they don’t or cannot stare at us.

            Many studies have shown how bonding eye contact is. The article, “The Look of Love: the role of eye contact in human connection,” explains that it is believed prolonged eye contact releases phenylethylamine, a chemical responsible for feelings of attraction, and oxytocin, the chemical most associated with longer term bonding and commitment. The article also points to an experiment by psychologist Zick Rubin, which “found that couples who were deeply in love after several years looked at each other 75% of the time while talking versus the average 30-60% of the time.”

Random Eye Contact Fact #6: Extroverts make more eye contact than introverts.

            One way that eye contact creates such an intimate bond is created through mirror neurons in our brain. In the article, “Look ‘Em in the Eye: Part I – The Importance of Eye Contact,” Brett and Kate McKay explain that when you are feeling a certain emotion, such as sadness, the same neurons that light up in your brain will also light up in the person who is watching you feel sad. This is empathy. The mirror neurons of the person who is watching you are activated by facial expressions and eye contact. Eye contact helps you to really feel what someone else is feeling, thus creating a bond.

Random Eye Contact Fact #7: Infants begin looking for eye contact at about 9-19 months.

            How long you maintain eye contact can even possibly determine “love at first sight,” or rather the likelihood of experience deeper feelings. A study found, “a man who rated a lady attractive held eye contact for about an average of 8.2 seconds, which increased his chances of falling in love at first sight.” When a man held the gaze for about 4.5 seconds, he was uninterested in the woman and/or did not find her attractive. The same study found that women held eye contact for the same amount of time with men they found attractive and ones they didn’t.

Random Eye Contact Fact #8: Women make more eye contact than men. Interestingly, the higher the levels of testosterone a fetus is exposed to in utero, the less eye contact they make as infants—across genders. The exception to this rule are alpha male babies, who have the highest levels of testosterone.


            Eyes are the window to the soul and the heart. So much has been studied about them, but the biggest take away for me was from Catron’s New York Time’s article. She found that love is choice, but also acknowledges that you can’t choose who you love or who loves you. There are a few things you can choose, though. You can choose to be vulnerable, to create more intimacy, to show interest, and to form a deeper bond. You can choose to do all this by simply gazing into someone else’s eyes.

p.s. Six couples were asked to stare into each other's eyes for four minutes. It's worth watching: How to Connect With Anyone

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Monday, September 14, 2015

Be Kind to Yourself

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."
- Malcolm S. Forbes


            I spent all of high school being part of the color guard team. One of my coaches, Bobby, had been part of an elite team and had high expectations and standards for us. During my second semester of my sophomore year, I started doing bad for no apparent reason. I was dropping my tosses a lot, I couldn’t stay focused, and I was just not meeting the achievement standard I expected of myself. And of course, my response to my failure was to beat myself up about it, very harshly. After a certain practice when I was messing up a lot, Bobby had a talk with everyone. He said these words to the whole team, but I felt like it was directly for me. He said that when we drop, or make a mistake, he didn’t want to see us feel bad about it – he wanted to see us try again and do it better next time. His words really clicked with me, and I’ve tried to apply them to every perceived failure I have.

            To this day, I still need to remind myself of the lesson he taught me years ago, because I am still incredibly hard on myself. I hate making mistakes, because it makes me feel like a failure. After I graduated college, I was battling depression for over a year, which only worsened how I felt about myself after every mistake big or small. Logically, I know it’s not healthy or beneficial to beat yourself up all the time, but it's hard to stop. So, I wanted to know why I do this to myself so much.

            Barbara Markway made a lot of sense to me in her article, “Why is Self-Acceptance so Hard?” She explains that if you are constantly too hard on yourself, it is probably because you can’t accept yourself as you are. She says, “We think if we punish ourselves enough, we'll change.” It’s like when drill sergeants try to whip people into shape by yelling at them and calling them puny girls. I’m not sure if that works on anyone, or at least not most people. Being negative to yourself does not help you. Markway explains, “the more we yell at ourselves to "buck up," "snap out of it," or "get tough," the more anxious we become.” It just doesn’t work, so it really is a pointless waste of time and energy. In order to accept ourselves unconditionally, we have to stop believing that punishing ourselves with negativity will make us better, because it won’t.

            The second reason self-acceptance can be hard for you is if you don’t feel deserving of it. She says, “We don't believe we deserve self-acceptance, at least not now... we put conditions on self-acceptance.” She compares it to someone trying to lose weight and saying, “I’ll be happy with myself when I’m 30 pounds lighter.” This really hit home hard with me. For the most part, I have felt successful almost all of my life. I’ve accomplished nearly every major goal I’ve had. I was the person that my family was proud of, and friends looked up to.

            Since I’ve graduated, I have not felt like that person at all. I put conditions on myself that I wouldn’t be “okay” until I got a decent job and went back to school to pursue a Master’s degree. I know that a truly mentally healthy person can be okay no matter their circumstances, but that is not how I have felt this past year and a half. I keep telling myself that I’ll be okay once these conditions are met, and my fear is that if all my conditions are met, what if I’m still not okay or happy with myself? It’s funny to me, because I’ve always perceived myself as a confident person with high self-esteem. It’s weird to learn that it’s hard for me to accept myself as I am right now, but it’s true. The biggest reason I can’t accept myself is because I’m not where I want to be or where I thought I’d be by now.

            The third reason Markway gives for difficulty with self-acceptance is, “We believe we're giving up control.” It’s a weird confusing paradox, because we are trying to be in control of our self-perception by holding ourselves to a certain standard. We tell ourselves, “This is who I want to be. This is what I want to be. This is what I want to do,” and if we are not those things, then we think to ourselves, “I don’t like myself because I am not who, what, or where I want to be.” We think that by being tough on ourselves, it'll be the push we need to achieve our ideal. And we can’t accept anything less than that standard. We think that if we are not at that standard, then we have less worth.

            Markway explains that true control happens when we relinquish it. “Instead of giving away our power by letting other people determine our worth, we're saying to ourselves, “I accept myself today, exactly the way I am,”” she says. In order to accept yourself, you have to let go of who or what you think you’re supposed to be right now. This is terrifying, because we may think, “How am I supposed to be a better person?” What we need to learn is that accepting yourself as you are in this moment doesn’t mean you stop striving to grow. It doesn’t mean “you're giving up and not trying anymore… it means you're looking at yourself and your situation realistically.”

            We need to be kind to ourselves. For people like me, who are used to being too hard on yourself, it’s not easy to be kind. It’s incredibly easy to be kind to others, but not to myself. It’s a hard process to put my life in perspective and tell myself it’s okay to be where I’m at right now. I hate “how to’s,” because they honestly don’t seem helpful to me, but when I found a few articles about “how to stop being too hard on yourself,” the very first piece of advice was to have realistic expectations.

            Now, at first thought, I told myself my expectations are realistic, because I’ve accomplished this much so far, so I have to keep accomplishing more or else I’m a failure. But it’s actually a good piece of advice, because I look at all of my friends who are my age. Some have Bachelor’s, one has a Master’s, others are still in school or not. Some have jobs, others don’t. No one has the job they want. We’re all in different places of our lives, and that’s okay. I’ve been learning the hard way that everyone was right – the real world is hard and it sucks. But the next step is to learn that I can still accept myself whether I’m in school or not, have an amazing job or be jobless, be single or in a relationship.


            Another piece of advice I found was to give myself credit for what I have achieved. The truth is, I have achieved a lot, and not just in tangible ways, like finishing school and stuff like that. Whether I’m doing what I want with my life right now or not, I am the person I want to be, and that should mean more. I keep doing what I love, which is writing, even if I’m not being paid to do it. And I just celebrated my birthday this weekend and was reminded of how many people care about me and how much. Who I am and who loves me should be more important than what I’m currently doing with my life, because circumstances always change, but your character and the people in your life can last a lifetime.

p.s. fun fact: only children tend to be harder on themselves

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson


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Tuesday, September 1, 2015

"I Care What People Think About Me"

“A truly strong person does not need the approval of others any more than a lion needs the approval of sheep.”
― Vernon Howard


            I have a friend who loves having the approval of others. She is deeply affected by her parent’s opinions of her, cares a lot about her appearance on social media, and just always wants to know she is liked by the people she cares about. She’s the kind of person who will take a picture and ask, “Is this facebook worthy cute?” She baffles me, because she’s such a confident person, who is not easily brought down by negativity, yet she can’t help how much she cares about what others think.

            Then I have another friend, who I considered my partner in crime in college. She always seemed to me like she genuinely didn’t care what anyone thought of her. I admired her for that and wanted to be more like her. She wore what she wanted, styled her hair in crazy ways, said and did what she wanted, and always I had the “I don’t give a f***” attitude. She brought me out of my shell a lot, but it turns out that she cares so much about what others think of her. I think that people who try the hardest not to care are the ones who care the most.

            When faced with the approval or opinions of others, I think there are four types of people: 1) I genuinely don’t care what anyone thinks, 2) I care about what people think, 3) I pretend like I really don’t care, but I really do care what people think, 4) I’m trying to not care what people think, even though I often do. To some degree, we all care what others think, but have different ways of coping with it.

            Before we can understand why we care about what others think of us, there’s a few things to know first. CEO of YourCoach, Tom Ferry, explains that there are two types of decision makers – internal and external. Internal decision makers “self-analyze every step, every option, every possible outcome and never talk it through with others... they choose to make their decisions on their own as a way of avoiding being rejected.” External decision makers are considered team players who “constantly seek the opinions of others, asking for their approval… They simply can't move forward without the validation from others.” Both types are affected by either the approval or fear of disapproval of others.

            Michael J Formica further explains that we all have an inside and an outside – “Our interior landscape is our subjective experience of our authentic self, while our exterior landscape is a product of our worldview.” We need to balance both to live healthy lives. We need to look inward to truly be ourselves, but also outward to learn about others and the world, and take into consideration the beliefs and opinions of others. Both can be sources of growth, but if you go too inward, you can stop caring about others and the world all together, and if you go too outward, you can care too much.

            To go a little deeper, Formica says we have an essential nature and an ego-self. Our essential nature includes our authentic self and values. Our ego-self is the self-image, or social mask, we portray to others, and it is highly influenced by others. It is a false self, “and it thrives on approval.” There are times when the ego-self is appropriate, such as at work or professional settings, but your authentic self is what you should always strive to be.

            The ego-self is what finally brings us to where are desire to be accepted, approved of, and validated come from. It is fear based, meaning that we desire these things because we fear being rejected. Our ego-self can change because it is completely dependent on how others see us and want us to be. It’s a lot more frightening to reveal your authentic self because if that person is rejected, it will take a whole lot of effort and time to change who you are, if you can change at all.

            Whether we want to accept it or not, “the desire for validation is one of the strongest motivating forces known to man,” says life coach Jonathan Wells. He says that we all have the need to “establish a physical and emotional sense of security.” Feeling approved of and validated makes us feel secure with ourselves. From birth, we mainly rely on the approval of our parents and other outside people to grow, build self-esteem, and feel sure about our decisions. As we get older, there has to be a shift for this approval to come from ourselves and not others. This shift is not an easy one for many people to make, and can happen at different stages of your life.

            The best example I can think of as someone who learned to care more about his self-approval is my dad. He actually called me as I was researching this topic. When I told him I was writing about why we care what others think of us, his response was, “Who’s we? I don’t care what people think. It should be why some people care.” I laughed, because my dad is among the most confident and self-assuring people I know, but I know that even he seeks approval from others sometimes. I admire that my dad started his own business twice, even though the first time was a failure, and he had a lot of criticism about trying again. He didn’t let that get to him. He cared more about what he wanted, his dreams and goals, rather than the opinions of others. He told me once that even if no one supported him, he’d still try running his own business because it has always been his dream. Having support would make it easier, but not having it wouldn’t stop him.

            But then I remember the story of when he first started dating his wife. She didn’t want to be with a guy who had tattoos, was gang affiliated, or drank a lot. My dad has a past, so he fell into this category as a teenager, but left that lifestyle. So, while trying to impress her and seeking her approval, he said he didn’t have any tattoos. He had twelve tattoos at the time. He lied because he cared about what she would think of him. He didn't want her to judge him as a bad guy just because of something superficial, because he was and is a great guy. We are all susceptible to others opinions of us at certain times.
            I think that caring about what other people think can be healthy, such as at times when you may be making bad decisions. You need the disapproval of others to lead you back in the right direction. Also, positive approval from an employer or friend can be good motivation to let you know that you are doing a good job. But, you shouldn’t just rely on what others think or say. Wells says, “If we remain dependent on external factors to feel approved of, then we will always be emotionally vulnerable. Our self-esteem would be in the hands of things that we have very little control over.”

            Ferry explains, “Approval from others gives us a higher sense of self-esteem. We’re convinced that their recognition matters to our self-worth and how deeply we value ourselves.” The truth is that the path to finding self-happiness starts with self-approval, which comes from self-acceptance. If you can’t accept yourself, it won’t matter if anyone else accepts you. Wells says, “When you disapprove of yourself, all the external approval in the world cannot make up for it.” In my own life, I’ve cared a lot about what my family thinks of me. I’ve always been considered “the good one” and “the smart one.” To lose that reputation would have devastated me. But then I discovered that there were things I wanted to do, fun things, freeing things, that I didn’t feel bad doing. Some of my family members disapproved of my new lifestyle choices, but I knew that I approved of my choices and decisions, that they made me feel more free, happy, and independent, and that matters more.


            You know it’s a problem when you care too much about the opinions of others if it is limiting your own happiness. I would suggest making a list of the things you want, and the way you want to be. Then write down what people would think or say if you did these things or acted that way. Then it’s up to you to determine what’s more important, the fear of being judged, or the potential happiness of being your genuine self. 
p.s. If you want some help not caring so much about what other think, Life Hack is here for the rescue: 10 Clear Reasons Why You Shouldn't Care What Others Think


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