For generations, many boys have been taught the same lesson—sometimes explicitly, often subtly: don’t cry, don’t be scared, don’t be emotional. Sadness is brushed off. Fear is minimized. Vulnerability is framed as weakness.
But what happens when we raise boys this way?
When boys are told they shouldn’t cry when they are sad or admit fear when they feel unsafe, we aren’t making them strong—we are teaching them to disconnect from themselves. Over time, this disconnect can grow into something far more damaging: a lack of emotional intelligence.
When Emotions Are Invalidated
Many boys receive the message, “Your emotions are wrong.” Or worse: “You can’t trust what you feel.”
Parents and caregivers may say things like:
“You’re fine.”
“That’s nothing to cry about.”
“Be a man.”
“Don’t be scared.”
While often well-intentioned, these responses invalidate a child’s inner experience. According to Dr. John Gottman’s research on Emotion Coaching, when children’s emotions are dismissed or minimized, they don’t learn how to understand or regulate those emotions, and they learn to ignore them.
But emotions don’t disappear when ignored. They simply go underground.
The Cost of Emotional Disconnection
Boys who grow up not knowing what they feel—or believing they shouldn’t trust their emotions—are more likely to:
Enter dangerous situations because fear is dismissed rather than honored
Struggle to identify their needs
Suppress sadness until it emerges as anger, numbness, or risk-taking
Have difficulty forming healthy, emotionally connected relationships
When we raise boys to override their internal signals, we remove one of their most important survival tools.
Emotions Are Not the Problem
All emotions are a gift. They exist for a reason.
Fear keeps us safe. Sadness signals loss and the need for connection. Anger highlights boundaries that have been crossed. Joy points us toward meaning and purpose.
Emotions are information. They guide us toward what matters and help us navigate the world with awareness. When boys are taught to listen to their emotions rather than suppress them, they develop resilience—not fragility.
Why is Taylor Swift staying silent about the use of her song “The Fate of Ophelia” in a recent TikTok video posted by the White House earlier this month? That’s the question music fans, political junkies, and media outlets are asking. The cheeky video shows a slideshow of Trump, vice president JD Vance, and their wives over Swift’s lyrics “Pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibe.” And the video pairs the lyric “The fate of Ophelia” with the caption “The fate of America” and an image of Trump.
Swift has made no public statement about it. And there’s a lot any smart entrepreneur or business leader can learn from her. Even if she’s unhappy about that video, she’s made the choice not to interfere. In many situations, including this one, that’s the wise, emotionally intelligent thing to do.
Swift is likely not a Trump fan. She endorsed Kamala Harris in 2024, writing “I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.” Trump, for his part, has posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” on social media. He also predicted sales of her music would fall after she opposed him. That obviously hasn’t happened, and more recently Trump praised both Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce when the two announced their engagement.
Swift takes music rights seriously.
While Trump may have changed his mind about Swift, it seems unlikely that she’s changed her mind about him. Plus, she’s known to take the rights to her music very seriously, and has sued theme parks and YouTube creators for using her songs without permission.
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Why hasn’t she said anything the Trump White House using her song in its video? Most observers assume she’s intimidated by a president known to attack those who displease him. Without reading her thoughts, it’s impossible to know whether that’s true. But there are many reasons why saying nothing is the smart choice.
First of all, although she may not like the White House using her work, it might have the legal right to do so. The use of music to accompany TikTok videos is a complicated topic, but in short, the platform cuts licensing deals with major labels so creators can use their music as the audio for their videos. TikTok even groups together videos using the same song to create playlists. The rules are a bit different for an institutional account such as the White House, but it’s still highly possible that the use of her music was legal.
Also, Swift is newly engaged to Kelce. Football fans–and Kelce’s teammates–come in all political persuasions. The team represents a red state. Kelce himself avoids saying anything about politics, even though he’s very open about most aspects of his life. So Swift may be considering her partner’s preferences. That’s a wise and emotionally intelligent move for anyone in a committed relationship.
What would speaking out accomplish?
That’s the most important question here. Swift is very much a pragmatist. She’s highly attuned to her own fame and thinks constantly about how everything she does and says will be received by her millions of fans. In 2024, she stayed silent about the election, even as an AI-created fake made it appear she’d endorsed Trump. She finally broke her silence and endorsed Harris on the night of the Trump-Harris debate. That was a moment when the nation’s attention was hyper-focused on the election, and so her endorsement seemed likely to have the greatest possible effect. You can be sure it was a very deliberate choice.
With the midterm elections nearly a year away and Trump constitutionally barred from running for a third term, this is very different time. Today, Swift criticizing Trump would have no practical effect on any election. It might be emotionally satisfying. It might seem like the right thing to do. But it wouldn’t change anyone’s opinion, and the video would still be out there.
Next time someone does something that makes you angry, and you want to speak out publicly about it, take a lesson from Swift. Consider what the practical effect of that would be. Maybe it would be the opposite of what you want. That’s probably the case here.
“Congrats, you got played.”
“If it’s the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you’re helping,” she said, after some people criticized her newest album, The Life of a Showgirl, on social media. She knows the same would be true for Trump. Publicly commenting on the video would just bring it exponentially more attention than it already has.
The White House knows this too. When at least two media outlets, Variety and TheWrap ran a story about the video and asked the White House for comment, they received this statement in return: “We made this video because we knew fake news media brands like[yours] would breathlessly amplify them. Congrats, you got played.”
That may be true for every media outlet that has reported on the video. But it’s not true for Swift. By staying silent, she’s shown that she knows better.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Stressed? Absolutely. My flight was delayed, and delayed, and delayed. An accident jammed up traffic around the airport. My driver took a wrong turn. Instead of a 6-hour cushion, I made it to the conference with 20 minutes to spare before I went onstage. No sound check. No slide check. No time to go over a few cues with the techs.
No time to do anything but worry my keynote would fall flat.
The Yerkes-Dodson law is a psychological principle that describes the relationship between arousal (not that kind of arousal) and performance. Too much stress, and performance declines.
But up to a certain point, anxiety and stress actually improve performance.
How much stress is too much stress? Clearly, that depends. Feeling stressed because I’m running five minutes behind when I planned to get to the airport is unlikely to affect how I drive.
Spending all day worrying about whether I’d make it to an event on time, and having those fears nearly realized, is a different story.
Again, though, not always.
When something happens that makes you feel nervous, challenged, scared, etc., your body responds. Your heart rate increases. Your breathing gets faster, and shallower. Your body temperature rises. Those responses are automatic and normal.
Having your body spot a problem or challenge and say, “Let’s gear up!” is the upside of the Yerkes-Dodson law.
The downside? You also vasoconstrict: the muscles inside your blood vessels tighten, making the space inside smaller. Vasoconstriction raises your blood pressure and reduces circulation to your extremities (which is why, when you feel super-stressed, your fingers and toes can feel cold.)
That natural response to a more serious problem or challenge is terrible for you, and therefore for how you perform… unless you apply some emotional intelligence, and do a little cognitive reframing.
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that when people viewed their stress response as helpful — when their body’s natural response to stress, like increased heart and respiration rate, signaled their rising to the challenge — they didn’t vasoconstrict. Their blood pressure didn’t rise.
In fact, their physiological profiles looked like what Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal describes in her 2013 TED Talk as what happens in “moments of joy and courage.”
Simply thinking about stress differently — seeing stress not as a problem, but as a good thing — changed how their bodies responded. Their “arousal” level stayed on the helpful side of the Yerkes-Dodson law curve.
So as the sound tech fitted my mic, I took a deep breath and decided that arriving in the nick of time was a good thing. I didn’t have time to pace. I didn’t have time to peek out and see the hundreds of people finding their seats. I didn’t have time to make small talk with people backstage to help the time pass.
I tried to smile and see being “late” as a challenge to overcome. After all, pressure is something you want to feel. Feeing pressure means you’re in a position to do something meaningful. Something important. Something where the outcome truly matters.
As Billie Jean King says, “Pressure is a privilege, and champions adjust.”
Did my reframing work? Not completely. Looking back, I give myself an A-minus. (OK, a B-plus.) I was still a little too amped up, and rushed the first minute. I could have read the room a little better. Overall, I wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked.
But I performed a lot better than I would had I not reframed the events leading up to my keynote.
When you feel nervous or stressed — when your heart rate rises, and your breathing quickens — reframe the feeling and let those emotions work for you. See it as your body rising to a challenge, helping you be more able to step in or step up. See stress as a signal that you have the opportunity to make your life better.
Sure, you will never totally control how you feel.
But with a little reframing, you can stay on the positive side of the Yerkes-Dodson law curve, and use stress as a tool to help you perform at your best.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
We’re building the first of twenty or so houses we’ll build on land we own. We’ve renovated a number of our rental properties, so we’re familiar with building codes and inspections, but we’ve never built a new house. As with anything new, that means we don’t know what we don’t know.
One thing we didn’t know is that J-bolts need to be placed within 12 inches of sill plate joints. Unfortunately we had already framed the house, so correcting that mistake seemed really complicated.
While thinking about how to fix it created some stress, what really messed with me was worrying about other unknown things that could pop up along the way, and what we might have to do about them.
That’s how anxiety and stress usually works. Ask someone why they feel stressed and they’ll give you a list: problems at work, concerns about their personal life, issues with their health… it’s rarely just one thing. You probably tend not to stress over just one thing, because you can deal with one thing. You can deal with feeling afraid about a specific version of the future. Or a certain decision you think may come back to haunt you. Or an upcoming presentation, or uncomfortable conversation with an underperforming employee, or a short-term cash flow problem.
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Those “one things” are what psychologists call granular emotions. Unlike a general feeling of being stressed, a granular emotion is a specific feeling like “fear,” “worry,” or “anxiety.” On the flip side, compared to a feeling of unspecified happiness, a granular emotion might be “pleased,” “delighted,” or “excited.”
Pile them all up, though — pile up all your worries and frustrations and fears — and granular emotions tend to feel more general. Instead of feeling concerned, or uncertain, or hesitant, you start to feel stressed.
That’s what psychologists call clumping: perceiving emotions broadly rather than specifically.
And that’s a problem, because research shows that the more specifically you identify an emotion — the more granular you make it — the better.
Participants who were deemed granular were better able to differentiate their emotional experiences. Subjects who were low in granularity — called clumpers — were less skilled at differentiating emotions (e.g., angry, worried, frustrated).
When the two groups were compared… granular individuals were less likely to freak out… when under stress and more likely to find positive meaning in negative experiences. They also were better at emotion regulation — moderating their responses in order to achieve desired outcomes.
The clumpers, on the other hand, scored worse on those counts, tending to be physically and psychologically ill at a higher rate than the granular crowd.
While it might sound odd, especially since we’re often told not to dwell on our emotions, taking the time to think about the reasons why you feel the way you feel helps you better deal with that emotion.
The same is of course true where others are concerned: helping a person who feels upset or stressed or anxious identify the specific source of the underlying emotions helps them better manage their feelings.
Try it. The next time you feel stressed, go granular.
First, identify the specific emotion. Never settle for “I feel stressed.” Instead, be specific. You’re worried about completing a project on time. Concerned about a relationship. Hesitant to speak up about a problem. Unsettled by a recent conversation.
List the reasons you feel stressed. Then describe the resulting emotion in a granular way. Take the time to think about the reasons you feel the way you do.
Most people try to use their psyche as their systemic process, which means issues gain importance based on your emotions. I’ve never met anyone who said they didn’t feel a little better if they sat down and made a list. Nothing changes when you write things down except how you engage with your issues: you can be objective and also be creative and intuitive.
Your head is for having ideas, not holding ideas, and it’s certainly not for filing things away. Without exception, you will feel better if you get stuff out of your head.
But don’t stop there. Then decide what you will do.
As Bezos says, “Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over. I find that as soon as I can identify it, and make the first phone call, or send off the first email, it dramatically reduces the stress I feel.”
Step one, identify. Step two, take action.
Because, over time, that will help you to reframe a negative emotion as a positive. Say you feel nervous about an important sales demo. While nervousness is negative, the fact you have a chance to win a major account is definitely a positive.
Or say you’re concerned you won’t be able to deliver on a tight timetable. While being concerned is a negative, the fact your company can be a hero for your customer is definitely a positive.
Feeling pressured is an emotion you sometimes want to feel, because it means you’re in a position to do something meaningful. Something important. Something where the outcome truly matters to you.
When you feel anxious, or nervous, or afraid, reframe that emotion. See that stress for what it is: An opportunity to step in. Step up. Eliminate a problem. Overcome a challenge. Make your life — or someone else’s life — better.
Or you could just see how you answer the following questions.
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“Do I ask for advice instead of feedback?”
Say you’re okay with getting feedback, even when it’s critical. (Plenty of people who claim they do, really don’t.) You may even enjoy getting critical feedback.
But that doesn’t mean other people like to give you the feedback you need. Research shows when feedback is requested rather than volunteered, it tends to be too vague. Too fluffy. Too, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings so I’ll just be nice,” to be of any real value.
But when you ask for advice? Harvard Business School researchers found that compared to asking for feedback, asking for advice resulted in respondents providing 34 percent more areas of improvement, and 56 percent more ways to improve.
In short, emotionally intelligent people realize that asking another person to provide feedback (saying, “How did I do?”) puts them on the spot.
On the other hand, asking another person for advice (saying, “What can (or should) I do?”) is flattering. Asking someone for advice implicitly shows you respect their knowledge, skills, experience, etc.
Do that, and two great things happen: you get the input you need, and they feel valued, trusted, and happy to offer guidance they know will help you.
Win-win.
“Do I appreciate (even if I don’t like) negative feedback?”
Emotionally intelligent people keep their feelings in check and embrace — or at least put aside — the discomfort to find ways to improve. A study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning found that we’re far more likely to recall evaluative feedback (feedback about something we’ve already completed) than directive feedback (feedback on how we could improve on a future task.)
That’s why emotionally intelligent people embrace — again, even if they don’t enjoy — critical feedback. They focus on what it says about the task, not about themselves.
Instead of avoiding feedback that threatens how you currently perceive yourself, use it to improve how you will someday perceive yourself.
Smarter, more skilled, more talented, more inclusive… more of whatever you someday hope to be.
“Do I often praise other people?”
Do you feel you don’t receive enough recognition and praise? Science says you’re not alone. Two out of three employees surveyed feel they don’t receive enough praise, and nearly three-fourths say they receive some form of positive feedback less than once a week.
Clearly that doesn’t feel great.
Emotionally intelligent people recognize that what they want — or need — is what they can give to people they know. A kind word. A sincere thank-you.
Plenty of people you know — employees, vendors, customers, friends, family, etc. — deserve a kind word. A sincere thank-you.
But you should also recognize people you don’t know. A store clerk. A delivery person. A customer service rep. Because praise that is unexpected, like the gift that is given “just because,” is often even more powerful.
“Do I willingly admit my mistakes?”
As Daniel Coyle writes in his book The Culture Code, Navy SEAL Dave Cooper feels the most important words a leader can say are, “I screwed that up.”
While that might sound odd, since conventional wisdom says leaders should project unshakable confidence, and admitting weakness risks creating more weakness, emotionally intelligent people realize strong cultures can only be built when people feel safe enough to tell one another the truth.
Which starts with leaders who admit they aren’t perfect.
The result is a vulnerability loop: one person allows themself to be vulnerable and admits a mistake or a shortcoming, which allows another person to do the same. In time, that leads to more open exchanges that build trust and drive performance.
And helps people focus on how they can get better, together.
“Do I often skip past the small talk?”
Say you’re at a conference and just met someone new. Do you whip out the small talk?
Science says you shouldn’t. A series of studies published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychologyfound that the more awkward and uncomfortable a conversation with another person sounded, the more they tended to bond with the other person, and the more they liked the other person.
Participants felt less awkward, more connected, and a lot happier after those conversations than they expected to feel.
Emotionally intelligent people realize that the deeper the conversation, especially with someone they don’t know, the more likely they both are to enjoy it.
Keep in mind “deep” doesn’t have to be too deep. When researchers asked people to come up with what they considered to be “deeper” questions, the most common were pretty straightforward:
What do you love doing?
What do you regret most?
Where do you see yourself in five years?
As the researchers write, “Our research suggests that the person next to you would probably be happier talking about their passions and purpose than the weather or ‘What’s up?’”
And so do you.
The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.
Have you ever worried that your child is getting the wrong messages about what it means to “be a man”?
You’re not overthinking it. From the sidelines of youth sports to viral YouTube shorts, kids are surrounded by messages about toughness, dominance, and staying silent about emotions.
And more and more parents are starting to talk about it—especially after the release of Netflix’s Adolescence, a gripping series that shines a spotlight on toxic masculinity and the online influences shaping our sons.
These messages don’t just show up in the teen years—they start much earlier. And they’re not just hurting boys. Girls are often taught to tolerate disrespect or shrink themselves to make others comfortable.
The good news? Even with so many forces working against our kids, your influence at home still makes the most difference.
“Inside Out 2” introduces new emotions like Anxiety and Envy as Riley navigates the challenges of growing up and forming her sense of self. This heartfelt sequel naturally builds on the inner world of its predecessor, teaching important lessons in mental health for both children and adults.
The original “Inside Out” (2015) was a monumental Pixar film that humorously depicted the chaotic inner world of emotions that we all have to navigate.
In the first one, the young protagonist Riley had to learn that negative emotions like “Sadness” (a blue-colored character) aren’t something that have to be avoided at all costs, but are appropriate emotions to feel sometimes, and even a necessary function of a happy and healthy life. It was a powerful lesson in emotional intelligence that resonated with both children and adults alike.
The sequel “Inside Out 2” (2024) continues to build off of these themes in a fun, organic, and intuitive way. Riley is now thirteen and about to enter high school. She starts to experience a new range of emotions (especially “Anxiety” and “Envy”), which start to influence her newly forming “belief system” and a “sense of self.”
The creators of the Inside Out franchise have a team of psychologists that help them illustrate key concepts in an imaginative way, which makes this film both enjoyable and educational. This article will explore some of the new concepts in the film and how the mental world-building in the franchise continues to expand.
New Emotions
Inside Out 2 introduces a bunch of new emotions into Riley’s inner world. In addition to the original line-up (Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Disgust), they also include:
Anxiety (orange): The focus of the film. Anxiety is always thinking ahead and wanting what is best for Riley, but also overworks and overworries her. The main narrative of the film shows Riley wanting to become the best hockey player she can possibly be; anxiety tries to help her achieve this by motivating Riley to constantly push herself forward, wake up early to train more, and work harder. However, too much anxiety distracts her from other core values in life, such as kindness and friendship, and also hurts her ability to just have fun and enjoy the game of hockey. At the climax of the film, Anxiety works itself up into such a frenzy that it freezes and has a panic attack (this scene has resonated with a lot of people who have experienced similar attacks, including myself). Riley must learn that while anxiety can be a powerful motivator it also needs to be balanced with feelings of acceptance, relaxation, and joy.
Envy (cyan): This emotion is always admiring others, looking up to them, and wanting what they have. When Riley first meets her hockey idols, she becomes envious of how “cool” and “successful” they are, so she strives to become just like them by mimicking them and copying their behaviors, including at one point dying her hair the same way to be more like them. Like all emotions, envy and jealousy can be insightful emotions with the right perspective: they can show us what we want or value in life. However when our lives are completely run by these feelings, we end up trying to be something we’re not.
Embarrassment (pink): A big goofy emotion that looks away and covers his head in a hoodie whenever something shameful or embarrassing happens to Riley. It’s interesting to note that many of the new emotions added have a social component to them. This makes sense as Riley comes of age and begins to balance her self-perception with how she is perceived by others.
All of the emotions in Inside Out 2 (both old and new). One cool thing about each emotion is that it is naturally paired with a specific color. Sadness is blue, Anger is red, Joy is yellow, Disgust is green, and Anxiety is orange.
Ennui/Boredom (purple): A humorous emotion with a stereotypically snobby French accent that constantly pretends to not be interested in anything. They will often deflect serious or uncomfortable situations with sarcasm, irony, or feigned disinterest. This character cleverly shows how many people use sarcasm as a defense mechanism when they are too afraid to be honest or sincere about their true thoughts and feelings. It reflects a common attitude among teenagers and young adults where it’s perceived as “lame” to care too much about anything.
Nostalgia (beige): This emotion is a side character that pops up a couple times throughout the film. Each time the other emotions humorously tell “Nostalgia” that she is arriving too soon, and that Riley has to at least wait for her first date, first kiss, or graduation before she starts reminiscing on the past. Perhaps Nostalgia will be the main character in Inside Out 10, when Riley is much older and has already lived the bulk of her life.
The original creator Pete Docter conceived of between 5-27 emotions that could be added to the Inside Out world, so it’s likely newer emotions will continue to be introduced if the series keeps going. Check out different classifications of emotions here, the original five in the movie are based on Paul Ekman’s model (excluding “surprise”).
Belief System and Sense of Self
One of the most interesting new features added to the Inside Out world is the idea of a “belief system.”
In the first movie, they introduced the concept of a “core memory” as a highly emotionally charged event that is then stored in Riley’s brain. Now these core memories can be brought to the “belief system” and turned into a belief (or recurring thought pattern). For example, when Riley fails an important exam at school, that core memory may be turned into the belief, “I’m not good enough” or “I’m not smart enough.”
Here’s how the belief system is visually represented, it looks similar to a bunch of neurons in a brain. Each ray of light represents one specific belief:
All of these beliefs come together to create Riley’s “sense of self.” This is depicted in the movie as a type of “electric tree,” with its roots representing each core belief.
At first the character Joy takes complete control over Riley’s “sense of self.” It only feeds positive memories and positive beliefs into her belief system, and tries to protect her from negative memories by throwing them into the “back of the mind” where they can be ignored forever.
When the emotion Anxiety takes over, only negative beliefs are fed into the sense of self, such as “I’m not good enough” or “I need to be better.” The “sense of self” changes color and shape to reflect these changes in how Riley sees herself.
After Riley suffers from a panic attack during a hockey game due to being completely controlled by Anxiety, the character Joy intervenes and gets Anxiety to “let go” of the controls.
In the outside world, Riley practices a grounding technique by making note of her five senses and taking deep breaths to bring herself back to the present moment. She then does the right thing by apologizing to her friends for being so mean and distant toward them.
Finally Riley “calls” Joy back to her and allows herself to have fun playing the rest of the hockey game with her friends.
By the end of the movie, Riley forms a completely new “sense of self” that accepts all of her thoughts and feelings, even when they can be conflicting or contradictory at times. Riley’s emotions come together and realize that she needs all of them.
No single emotion gets to determine who Riley is – they all contribute in helping Riley become the best version of herself.
Conclusion
Overall Inside Out 2 is a worthy sequel that builds off of its predecessor in an organic and intelligent way that is bound to resonate with both children and adults. Make sure to put it on your watchlist this year!
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The answer is probably no since only .5%- 5% of the population is actually diagnosed with Narcissist Personality Disorder, but many people do exhibit narcissist-like behavior. This behavior can be […]
Do you stand over your child’s shoulder when they do their homework? Do you find yourself directing your kids’ every move? “Pick up this, clean up that, sit up straight, finish your homework, study hard, say thank you.” Do you spend a good chunk of your day obsessing about your children’s success, like will they make the sports team or school play, and will they get into the top-notch college you (yes, you!) always dreamed of?
I hate to break it to you, but you may be a helicopter parent—a term which is commonly used but also has a basis in research on specific parenting behaviors and their effects on children.
Most parents want the very best for their children, and so they’ll go to great lengths to be wonderful providers and protectors. The deep love and care that parents have for their children can even push parents to, well, be a bit over-the-top. And helicopter parents are known to be overly protective and involved in their children’s lives.
The term paints a picture of a parent who hovers over their children, always on alert, and who swoops in to rescue them at the first sign of trouble or disappointment. The term was first coined in 1990 by Foster Cline and Jim Fay in their book, Parenting with Love and Logic, and it gained relevance with college admissions staff who noticed how parents of prospective students were inserting themselves in the admissions process.
What is helicopter parenting?
Helicopter parenting can be defined by three types of behaviors that parents exemplify:
Information seeking behavior including knowing your children’s daily schedule and where they are at all times, helping them make decisions, and being informed about grades and other accomplishments
Direct intervention meaning jumping into conflicts with kids’ roommates, friends, romantic partners and even bosses
Autonomy limiting like when parents prevent kids from making their own mistakes and control their lives
We all want to love our children as much as possible and protect them from the dangers in our society. We live in an increasingly competitive world and want to give our kids every advantage possible. But if we over-parent and smother them, it can backfire big time. A collection of research in recent years shows a connection between helicopter parenting and mental health issues like anxiety and depression as children get older and try to make it on their own.
The negative impacts of helicopter parenting
A 2016 study from the National University of Singapore published in the Journal of Personality indicated that children with intrusive parents who had high expectations for academic performance, or who overreacted when they made a mistake, tend to be more self-critical, anxious, or depressed. The researchers termed this as “maladaptive perfectionism,” or a tendency in children of helicopter parents to be afraid of making mistakes and to blame themselves for not being perfect. This happens because the parents are essentially—whether by their words or actions—indicating to their kids that what they do is never good enough.
Another 2016 study evaluated questionnaires about parenting completed by 377 students from a Midwestern university. Students responded to statements about the type of parents they have, how often they communicate with their parents, and how much their parents intrude in their lives. The students also completed a number of tests to discern their decision-making skills, academic performance, and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Results showed that higher overall helicopter parenting scores were associated with stronger symptoms of anxiety and depression.
According to that study, helicopter parenting “was also associated with poorer functioning in emotional functioning, decision making, and academic functioning. Parents’ information-seeking behaviors, when done in absences of other [helicopter parenting] behaviors, were associated with better decision making and academic functioning.”
Link to social anxiety?
The journal Cognitive Therapy and Researchpublished research in 2017 suggesting that helicopter parenting can trigger anxiety in kids who already struggle with some social issues. A group of children and their parents were asked to complete as many puzzles as possible in a 10-minute time period. Parents were allowed to help their children, but not encouraged to do so.
Researchers noted that the parents of children with social issues touched the puzzles more often than the other parents did. Though they were not critical or negative, they stepped in even when their children did not ask for help. Researchers think this indicates that parents of socially anxious children may perceive challenges to be more threatening than the child thinks they are. Over time, this can diminish a child’s ability to succeed on their own and potentially increase anxiety.
So how does all this hovering cause mental health problems in our children?
First of all, helicopter parents are communicating to their children in subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways that they won’t be safe unless mom or dad is there looking out for them. When these children have to go off on their own, they are not prepared to meet daily challenges. This inability to find creative solutions and make decisions on their own can cause a great deal of worry since their protector is no longer around to help them.
Because these children were never taught the skills to function independently, and because they may have been held to unattainable or even “perfectionist” standards, children of helicopter parents can experience anxiety, depression, a lack of confidence, and low self-esteem. Another issue is that if these kids have never experienced failure, they can develop an overwhelming fear of failure and of disappointing others. Finally, if we don’t let our children have the freedom to learn about the world and discover their purpose and what makes them happy, they will struggle to find happiness and live a balanced life—all impacting their mental health.
What we can do to break the helicopter habit
All parents know that parenting is not easy. Having children and raising them presents innumerable challenges and surprises, but also immense joy and connection. Now that we know that overparenting only leads to more problems for our kids, we can make the following adjustments in our parenting approach:
Support your children’s growth and independence by listening to them, and not always pushing your desires on them.
Don’t try to help your children escape consequences for their actions unless you believe those consequences are unfair or life-altering.
Don’t raise your child to expect to be treated differently than other children.
Encourage your children to solve their own problems by asking them to come up with creative solutions.
Teach your children to speak up for themselves in a respectful manner.
Understand and accept your children’s weaknesses and strengths, and help them to use their strengths to achieve their own goals.
Fostering independence
Parents should, of course, do the best they can for their kids. Impulses to involve ourselves in our children’s’ lives often come from a sense of duty, and of unconditional love. We can harness those desires to give the most we can to our kids by resisting helicopter parenting, which can lead to poor outcomes in adulthood.
Instead, try letting your children discover themselves—their weaknesses, strengths, their goals and dreams. You can help them succeed, but you should also let them fail. Teach them how to try again. Learning what failure means, how it feels, and how to bounce back is an important part of becoming independent in our world.
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While part of being emotionally intelligent involves knowing what to say at the right time, it also involves knowing when it’s best to hold your tongue. Just as silence speaks volumes, what you don’t say can convey respect, understanding, and restraint. Sometimes, withholding words can prevent misunderstandings, preserve relationships, and demonstrate empathy of others’ feelings.
Everyone stumbles from time to time. However, emotionally intelligent people tend to avoid certain phrases that can negatively impact their relationships. Here are 20 phrases emotionally intelligent people avoid saying — and things to say instead that will help you foster good relationships.
We all love a good family drama. But let’s be honest—when it’s your own family playing out a dysfunctional script, it’s less The Kardashians and more downright disastrous.
You know the feeling. Holidays with passive-aggressive barbs. Or your every move feels judged by a resident family critic.
These ingrained patterns are what’s called “family roles.” Simply put, it’s where everyone falls into a predictable role.
And understanding them can be the first step to rewriting the script and creating a more harmonious family dynamic.
What Are Family Roles?
Family roles are the unspoken behaviors and expectations that define how we interact with each other. They can be positive—think of the supportive younger sister or the wise older brother. But more often than not, they fall into unhealthy patterns.
They can stem from a variety of factors, like conflict, misbehavior, neglect, abuse, or generational beliefs. And they can leave you feeling stuck, misunderstood, and resentful.
“Most of our beliefs are unconscious; we don’t even know that we have them,” says Shelly Lefkoe, the owner of Lefkoe Institute and founder of Parenting the Next Generation, in Mindvalley’s Little Humans Quest. “But they totally determine our behavior, our emotions, and even our reality.”
This unconscious programming can create a ripple effect, shaping how you view yourself and interact with the world.
8 Common Roles In Family
When it comes to family dynamics, the roles are diverse. So what do these characters look like?
Here are eight of the most common ones you might find:
The golden child, hero, or saint
A seemingly perfect child, this person basks in the spotlight and is showered with praise.
The downside of it is, being the golden child-slash-hero-slash-saint can come with a heavy burden. They’re constantly trying to be #1 and can be in constant fear of letting the family down.
Example in pop culture: Rory Gilmore from Gilmore Girls
The scapegoat or black sheep
It’s likely you know a scapegoat-slash-black sheep or two. This person is the family’s designated “problem child,” and they’re often blamed for everything that goes wrong.
Scapegoats can feel like outsiders, struggling to gain approval and feeling misunderstood. As a result, they may act out in response to the negativity, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Example in pop culture: Lorelai Gilmore from Gilmore Girls
The parentified child
When the parents are unable to be and act like parents, sometimes the child (often the eldest) takes on that role.
They’re mature for their age and are responsible and dependable. However, that’s at the expense of their childhood. And the unfortunate thing is, it can become difficult for them to form healthy relationships with their actual parents.
Example in pop culture: Randall Pearson from This Is Us
The mascot or clown
They’re loud. They’re funny. And they’re the life of the party. These people are the family mascot—they use humor to lighten the mood and deflect tension.
While they bring laughter, this role can mask deeper issues and prevent them from forming genuine connections.
Example in pop culture: Chandler Bing from Friends
The addict
Children of alcoholics and adult children of addicts (ACOA) are terms used to describe people who grew up in a household where one or both parents struggled with substance abuse. More often than not, they develop their own unhealthy behaviors as a way to cope with the dysfunction at home.
The thing is, this role isn’t limited to just drugs and alcoholism. It can also encompass any unhealthy behavior used to cope with emotional pain or family dysfunction.
Family roles in addiction become particularly complex. While the addict’s behavior is central, other members often fall into specific roles in response, like the enabler who protects the addict or the hero who tries to fix everything.
Example in pop culture: Kevin Pearson from This Is Us
The lost child, problem child, or rebel
Often withdrawn or attention-seeking, the lost child acts out in ways that cry for help. They may struggle academically or socially, feeling unseen and unheard.
These lost children can feel like they don’t belong and may lash out in ways that further isolate them.
Example in pop culture: Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family
The peacemaker or mediator
The peacemaker is the family diplomat, constantly trying to smooth over conflict and maintain harmony. They often find themselves caught in the middle of squabbles and mediating arguments.
While this role can be helpful in the short term, it can also lead to the peacemaker neglecting their own needs to keep everyone else happy.
Example in pop culture: Elaine Benes from Seinfeld
The narcissist
Those in narcissistic family roles only care about one thing: themselves. They demand constant admiration and attention, and they may use manipulation and control to get it.
As a result, they often leave a trail of emotional wreckage in their wake. And their self-absorption can be incredibly damaging to family relationships.
Example in pop culture: Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones
How to Heal From Dysfunctional Family Roles
If your children (or even you) struggle with the effects of dysfunctional family roles, know that it doesn’t mean they have to stay there.
Explore these expert-backed tips. They can help you parent consciously so you can take the steps to heal the dysfunction in your family dynamics and the roles that your children have fallen into.
1. Challenge your own negative beliefs
Most of our negative thoughts about ourselves as adults are due to disempowering beliefs that we form as children.
The thing is, the way adults parent changes the way their children see the world and their chance to thrive, according to a British birth cohort study. That means healthy family dynamics shape healthy children, and vice versa.
So think back to your childhood. How might your family dynamics have shaped your self-perception?
Shelly recommends questioning the negative beliefs you hold about yourself. These beliefs might sound like “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t deserve happiness.”
Often, these beliefs stem from misinterpretations of childhood experiences. For instance, maybe you failed a test and concluded you’re “bad at math” instead of recognizing it as a single setback.
To challenge these negative beliefs, ask yourself: “What is the evidence for this belief?”
Look for alternative interpretations. Did you not study for the test? Was the teacher’s style not a good fit for your learning?
By seeking evidence to the contrary, you can begin to weaken the hold these negative beliefs have on you. And as a result, you don’t spill it over to your children.
2. Practice active listening
It’s no secret that an essential aspect of building strong relationships is active listening.
“When your child is talking to you, just look at them and say, ‘Hmm. Oh. I see. I got it. That makes sense’…and then stop talking,” Shelly advises. “And when you listen and listen and listen, when they stop talking, keep listening, you will find out things that you will not find out if you keep talking. So practice active listening.”
This parenting skill is a way to create a safe space for open communication. This will not only strengthen your bond with your child but also equip them with the skills to be a good listener themselves, fostering healthier relationships throughout their lives.
3. Validate their feelings
“Before you say anything,” says Shelly, “the most important thing is, ‘I totally hear how sad you are. I totally hear how angry you are. That makes total sense to me that you want that.’ Then you can interact.”
This is how you can validate your child’s emotions.
It builds on the foundation of active listening, where you acknowledge and accept their feelings, even if you don’t necessarily agree with them. The most important thing is, it shows them you understand and care.
This not only provides a safe space for them to express themselves openly, but it also fosters trust and helps them to identify and manage their emotions in a healthy way.
Keep in mind, though, that validation is different from praise. You don’t need to judge their emotions as good or bad. Simply acknowledge their feelings and let them know it’s okay to feel that way.
4. Move out of control and into connection
Instead of constantly trying to control your child’s behavior, focus on building a deeper connection. Dr. Shefali Tsabary, a clinical psychologist, acknowledges the frustration parents feel when they know they love their child but struggle to connect in her Conscious Parenting Mastery Quest on Mindvalley.
“Connection with our children doesn’t just come about because we have a good intention to connect,” she explains. “All true connection emerges from one place only: our connection to ourselves.”
If you’re disconnected from yourself, you can’t truly connect with your child. Past experiences and unresolved issues can create barriers to connection.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set boundaries or provide guidance. However, the approach shifts from giving orders to asking questions. By fostering curiosity and open-mindedness, you invite your child to share their experiences and feelings.
5. Let go of the expectations
When you expect your child to behave in a certain way, it creates pressure and disconnection.
“Expectations create this conditional kind of love,” Dr. Shefali points out. “When our desires, needs, our wants, our expectations get met, we show great love for our kids. And when they don’t get met, then we immediately withdraw our love; we enter reactivity and anger.”
Look at it this way: You want Chinese food, but there are no restaurants nearby. You either change your expectations (find a different meal) or change your reality (travel to a different town). This applies to parenting as well.
Dr. Shefali suggests taking these three steps:
When feeling stuck, ask yourself what you expected.
Re-evaluate your expectations. Are they realistic and helpful? Can you adjust them?
Choose to change your expectations or your reality.
There might not always be a perfect solution, but letting go of rigid expectations creates space for empathy.
FAQ
What is the impact of dysfunctional family dynamics?
Did you know that in the United States, “more people”—approximately 70–80%—“come from dysfunctional families than healthy families,” according to Terence T. Gorski, M.A., N.C.A.C., in his book, Getting Love Right: Learning the Choices of Healthy Intimacy?
While this unhealthy family dynamic is common, growing up in such an environment can affect you in many ways. You might experience low self-esteem, difficulty trusting others, or trouble maintaining healthy relationships. These dynamics can also lead to anxiety, depression, or difficulty managing emotions.
Imagine a family where fights are constant and emotions are never discussed openly. This can leave a child feeling confused and unsafe. They might learn to bottle up their emotions or develop unhealthy coping mechanisms.
The good news is, you can heal from these experiences. By understanding your family dynamics and developing healthy coping mechanisms, you can build a brighter future.
How to recognize my own family role
Recognizing your role in your family starts with reflecting on your interactions and how you respond to family conflicts. Here are some signs that can help you identify which one you may fall under:
The golden child: You always try to “fix” things and take care of everyone else’s problems.
The scapegoat: You often get blamed for family problems, even if it’s not your fault.
The lost child: You feel invisible or unheard in your family.
The parentified child: You take on adult responsibilities to try to keep the peace.
It’s important to note that if you recognize yourself in one of these roles, it doesn’t define you. But when you’re aware, you can begin to break free from unhealthy patterns and build healthier relationships.
When should I look for professional help?
If you’re struggling to cope with the effects of your family dynamics, consider seeking professional help through family therapy. A therapist can provide a safe and supportive environment for your family to work through past experiences together.
Here are some signs that family therapy might be beneficial:
You find it difficult to trust or form healthy relationships within your family.
You or your family members struggle with low self-esteem or negative self-talk.
There are difficulties managing emotions in a healthy way within the family unit.
Your past family experiences are interfering with your present happiness.
Family therapy can be a powerful tool for healing and growth for the entire family unit. A therapist can guide open communication and help develop healthy coping mechanisms for everyone involved.
Let Your Change Do the Talking
As you strive to find the best ways to nurture and love your child, remember that the journey starts with you. Healing your inner child is crucial for being the parent your child needs.
That’s the beauty of Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s Conscious Parenting Mastery Quest on Mindvalley. In just 20 minutes a day, you’ll gain powerful tools to:
Let go of self-doubt and connect with your child on a deeper level.
Raise an emotionally intelligent child.
Foster a loving and supportive family environment.
The great thing is, when you sign up for a FREE Mindvalley account, you’ll have access to the first few lessons of this powerful program. And with it, you’ll really see why more than 100,000 students have enrolled in it. Like Mayra Velazquez, a small business owner from Charlotte, U.S.A.:
“This course was life-saving for me because it allowed me to let me [sic] guard down and connect with my daughter the way I wanted to, and in the process, I learned that I needed to work on myself in order to be a better mother and person overall.”
The fact of the matter is, as Dr. Shefali puts it, humanity needs you to “shine your light, bright, conscious, and evolved.” Being a conscious parent is a great way to do it.
Do you see your emotions as a source of strength or weakness? New research shows how maladaptive beliefs about feelings can lead to destructive patterns and poor self-regulation. Learn how to better navigate your emotional world by cultivating the right approach and mindset toward every feeling.
Two people can experience the same exact emotion in radically different ways depending on their mindset and perspective.
Ultimately, the beliefs you have about emotions are going to influence how you respond to them. This includes both helpful and unhelpful strategies you use to self-regulate your mood and feelings on a daily basis, which is one of the main pillars of emotional intelligence.
Psychology research has looked into what types of beliefs about emotions are associated with maladaptive strategies. One new study published in Current Psychology identified two types of beliefs that can lead to emotional distress and the development of mood disorders: “emotional undesirability” (the belief that emotions should be avoided) and “emotional uncontrollability” (the belief that there’s nothing you can do to change your emotions).
Both of these maladaptive beliefs lead to a passive approach to mental health. They amount to the idea, “All emotions should be avoided – and if they do happen there’s nothing I can do about it.” Naturally a person who holds these beliefs isn’t going to make much of an effort to listen to their emotions more closely or channel them in a more constructive way.
For example, if a person is overwhelmed with anger and they hold these beliefs, they will always rely on their “default response” however destructive it may be: yelling at someone, drinking alcohol, punching a wall, or storming out of the room. The person doesn’t believe they have a choice in how they respond to their anger, they only blame others for their feelings, so there are limited options whenever anger arises. They say to themselves, “When I’m angry, I act like this! And that’s that!”
When you remove any choice or responsibility for your mood and feelings (and how you act on them), you automatically limit your power. You end up becoming a slave to your emotions, rather than a master of them. That’s why these maladaptive beliefs can lead to serious emotional dysfunction and disorder over time, especially if we don’t learn the proper tools and skills for managing our emotions more effectively.
Now let’s learn more about specific destructive beliefs about emotions and how they can hurt our mental health and well-being. Do you believe any of them (or used to in the past)?
5 Destructive and Maladaptive Beliefs About Emotions
People hold many misconceptions about their emotions, but these are the most popular myths:
Emotions Are Weakness – One of the most common beliefs about emotions is that they are a weakness that should be avoided. Whether it’s love, sadness, or fear, we are told to keep our emotions to ourselves, and any expression of them makes us imperfect and vulnerable. This is a myth especially common among men who strive to be as stoic as possible. Instead of listening to emotions and seeing them as a source of strength and knowledge, we bottle them up and are told to just “think with your head” and “be rational.” While emotions can be misleading and we should question our feelings instead of following them blindly or impulsively, the truth is emotions can contain a lot of power and wisdom when we can listen and respond to them in the right way.
Emotions Should Always Be Positive – Another popular myth about emotions is that we should always “feel good” and never “feel bad.” However, even the most emotionally intelligent person is going to experience their fair share of positive and negative emotions, because it’s an inseparable part of human existence. Negative emotions are not only inevitable, they provide a necessary function that helps us navigate our world and live better lives. All emotions – including sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, and grief – serve a purpose and guide us. Without the experience of pain we would put ourselves in danger, such as keeping our hands in a fire until it is burnt. In the same way, negative emotions are uncomfortable but necessary signals we need to survive.
Emotions Are Fixed and Permanent – Emotions come and go naturally, but in the moment they can feel solid and permanent. If you watch your emotions closely, you’ll notice they are always changing in various dimensions (time, intensity, frequency, shape), and if you wait long enough one emotion usually takes the place of another. This is the lesson of impermanence – it’s best encapsulated by the mantra this too shall pass, and it describes how every experience (sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, imaginations) will eventually dissipate over time. Once you learn this, you realize that you don’t always have to act on every emotion to move past it, sometimes you can just sit and wait. There’s a mindful gap between every “feeling” and “action,” and we can experience an emotion fully without needing to directly respond to it.
Emotions Are Uncontrollable – In the heat of the moment, emotions can seem uncontrollable. Once an emotion becomes too intense, it can often hijack our brains and cause us to act in ways we later regret. One key aspect of self-regulation is creating a plan for negative emotionsbefore they happen. First identify one emotion you’re stuck in a negative pattern with. Then when you are in a calm and peaceful state of mind, write and brainstorm new ways to respond to that negative emotion in that situation. Put it in the form of an “if, then” statement: “If I feel angry, then I will take ten deep breaths” or “If I feel sad, then I will write for 10 minutes in my journal.” You can change your natural response to intense negative emotions, but like all habits it takes time, practice, and patience.
Emotions Are Irrational – The last common error people make is believing that emotions are the opposite of thinking and that the two are completely separate. We falsely believe we need to choose between “thinking” and “emotions” in a given situation when often they are interconnected and work in tandem. Beliefs ↔ emotions is a two-way street. Thoughts can influence our emotions (such as an idea in your head that makes you feel good/bad), and emotions can influence our thoughts (such as a bad mood making you more pessimistic or cynical). Emotions are just another way of processing information from our environment. In fact our intuition and gut feelings are often described as super fast pattern recognition that happens below the surface of consciousness. In some situations, gut feelings can be a more intelligent guide for making decisions than our conscious logic and reasoning.
What’s your perspective on your emotions? How have your beliefs about emotions changed over time?
Personally, I once viewed emotions as mere background noise, something to be ignored or suppressed in pursuit of pure rationality and self-control. My journey into psychology and self-improvement changed my perspective. I began to discover that “emotions are powerful,” “emotions are a resource,” and “emotions are worth paying attention to.”
This paradigm shift was foundational in shaping my approach to life and one of my core motivations for starting this website.
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“Love On The Spectrum” is a reality television show centered on how people with autism view, seek, and find love. It’s a fun, inspiring, and heartwarming series that we can all draw many lessons from.
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Movies can be an excellent social bonding experience in a variety of situations, including first dates, family movie nights, group watches, couples therapy, and professional settings. Learn more about the emotional dynamics behind watching films together.
Beyond being a source of entertainment, films have the power to foster social bonds and create shared experiences among individuals.
Whether it’s getting together at a friend’s house on a weekend night, embarking on a first date at the theaters, or upholding a family tradition of watching the same movie during holidays, watching movies together is one of the most common ways we connect with others.
But what’s the psychology behind these cinematic connections? Let’s dive into the many social benefits behind movie watching and how they can improve our relationships in a number of different social settings.
Shared Experiences
Every time you press “Play” on a new movie, you are starting a collective journey with whoever you are watching with. No one knows what will happen, so you are both entering the unknown together and experiencing it for the first time.
Every film is a rollercoaster of different emotions – joy, laughter, surprise, fear, suspense, disgust, sadness, anger – and everyone is experiencing those emotions together as a “hive mind.” Research shows emotions are contagious, and when multiple people are experiencing the same emotion in unison, feelings are often amplified more than if you were just experiencing it by yourself.
Movies create new shared experiences that mark new chapters throughout our relationship. “Remember that one time we saw Wolf on Wall Street? That was fun!” A memorable movie can become a distinct event in our relationship’s storyline, especially if it symbolizes a special day like a first date, birthday, or anniversary, giving us a positive memory to look back on and reminisce about.
Watching movies together doesn’t require much work, it effortlessly creates a sense of unity among the people watching. Even if everyone hates the movie, it still creates a shared bond, “Wow, that movie was really stupid!” and then you can all laugh about it.
Icebreaker and Conversation Starter
Watching films together serves as an excellent icebreaker, especially in situations where individuals may be meeting for the first time or trying to strengthen new connections.
The movie theater, often considered a classic venue for a first date, provides a natural conversation starter. After the credits roll, initiating a conversation becomes as easy as asking, “Did you like the movie? Why or why not?” Ask about favorite scenes or whether they’ve seen other movies featuring the same actor or actress.
Use the film as a springboard into other topics to talk about. If you’re skilled at conversation threading, you should be able to take one thing from the film and branch off into more important subjects. If it’s a film about music, inquire about their musical preferences or whether they play an instrument. For sports-themed movies, explore their favorite sports or childhood sports experiences.
Icebreakers aren’t exclusive to first dates; they’re equally helpful in building connections in various scenarios, whether it’s getting to know a coworker outside the office or deepening a friendship.
One fair criticism of movies as a bonding experience is that you don’t get to do much talking during them. It’s a passive experience, not an active one. But there are also benefits to this: it’s a shared experience with little effort (no pressure, just sit and watch), and it gives you a convenient starting point for more meaningful conversation later on.
Nostalgia and Tradition
For many, watching films together is not just an occasional activity but a cherished tradition that spans multiple generations.
Family movie nights play a pivotal role in strengthening the bonds between parents and children. Holiday film marathons, especially during festive seasons, elevate our collective spirit and enhance the joyous atmosphere. Revisiting favorite childhood movies creates a profound sense of nostalgia, keeping us connected to our past.
One popular family tradition may be during Christmas, such as having A Christmas Story playing in the background as you decorate the tree or watching It’s A Wonderful Life every Christmas eve.
These traditions are about more than just the movie; they’re about creating a whole family experience. Infuse your own unique twist by turning it into a game, baking homemade cookies before watching, or simply enjoying jokes and good company. The film itself is just one aspect of a complete family ritual and bonding experience.
When families embrace these shared traditions, they contribute to a profound sense of belonging and unity. These rituals become the threads weaving together the fabric of family ties and friendships over long periods of time.
Team Building and Group Bonding
Beyond personal connections, watching films together can be an effective team-building activity in professional settings.
Organizational unity can be difficult to achieve for many companies, especially when workers have radically different jobs and skillsets, often being assigned to work within one department of a company but being siloed off from the organization as a whole.
Movie nights and film screenings can be an effective way to provide employees with a stronger sense of unity and camaraderie. Different departments that normally don’t see each other get to cross-pollinate and make connections with faces they don’t often get to see. Scheduled events like this can foster a team of teams mindset, helping to interconnect different departments into a cohesive whole.
Perhaps certain movies depict an idea, philosophy, or mindset that an organization wants to embrace more of. Requiring every employee to watch a movie together is more than just making friends at work, it can also tap into a deeper meaning behind the organization’s mission and purpose.
Couples Therapy
Movies can serve as bouncing points to important conversations that need to be had between spouses and loved ones.
It’s not always easy to bring up certain topics of conversation, but through film you can organically dive into subjects that otherwise wouldn’t get brought up in everyday discourse, like mental health, sex and intimacy, or experiencing grief after a tragedy or loss.
It’s common for a couples therapist to recommend a specific movie to their clients. You may already know of a movie that you’d like to share with someone. You can also ask friends or seek recommendations online. Ask yourself, “What’s something I really want to talk about with my partner?” then “What’s a good movie that can introduce this topic?”
A powerful film can help couples process their relationship more clearly. It shows the universality of humanity – you’re not alone with whatever you are going through – and brings ideas out in the open that need to be expressed or talked about.
One exercise you can try together is to each take notes or fill out a movie analysis worksheet while watching.
Communal Bonding and Bridging Social Divides
On a larger scale, film watching can help bridge cultural and social divides, as well as be used as a tool for communal bonding.
Social events such as public screenings, outdoor showings, movie festivals, or drive-thru theaters are great settings to watch a movie among a large and diverse group of people within your community.
These days with easy access to streaming services at home, most people watch movies all by themselves, but there used to be a time when movie-watching was an intrinsically social activity done in public spaces.
As we continue to see a decline in community feeling, movies may be one avenue to start bringing people together again as a cohesive group.
One idea is for local organizations to throw more public events with film features to celebrate holidays or special events – or you can set up a projector on your garage door and invite some neighbors for a weekend movie watch.
Conclusion
Watching films together is more than just a passive form of entertainment; it is a dynamic social activity that brings people together, creating lasting bonds and shared memories.
Films are universal connectors. Whether it’s with family, friends, or colleagues, the act of watching a movie together creates an automatic bond and sense of unity.
Are you a big movie watcher? In what situations can use film watching to improve your relationships with family, friends, loved ones, or coworkers?
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What are the six aspects of a balanced person? Physical, mental, emotional, social, work/financial, and meaning/spiritual. Learn more about each one and how to improve it!
In life, there isn’t one single area that we need to focus on that is going to magically fix all of our problems.
Instead there are multiple dimensions behind every “good life.” Each dimension requires our attention and each contributes to our overall happiness and well-being.
Here are six aspects of life that come together to create a “balanced person.” By being more aware of these different dimensions in life, we can determine which areas we need to focus on more and work to improve.
The different aspects of a balanced person include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial and 6) Meaning/Spiritual.
If we focus too much on any one area, then we risk neglecting another one. For example, if you become solely focused on just work and money, you may end up spending less time taking care of your physical and mental health, or less quality time with family and friends.
This is a common trap people fall into. They focus all of their energy and effort into one area in life while completely ignoring another. Often they need to reconfigure their core values and priorities before making a meaningful change.
This is why practicing balance in all things is so important.
Each of these areas is one piece of a much larger puzzle, and only when you have all of these areas working together harmoniously can you finally build a complete life that serves all of your needs.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of each aspect of a “balanced person,” along with tips, tools, and practical advice on how you can start improving each one.
While reading ask yourself, “Which aspect do I need to focus on the most right now? What’s one small change I can make to improve that area?”
Now let’s dive in…
1. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING
The “physical” aspect of life is all about taking care of our health, especially exercise, diet, and sleep.
This includes what types of foods and drinks we consume on a daily basis, how often we exercise and keep our bodies moving, personal hygiene and cleanliness, as well as minimizing alcohol, smoking, and other harmful habits to our physical health.
Our body is one of the most precious gifts we have – and without it we can’t exist. If we don’t stay healthy, we often can’t fully enjoy all the other aspects of life such as family, work, traveling, or leisure.
Our health can often have a spillover effect into all the other aspects of our lives – for that reason, taking care of our physical health is often an essential first step on any road to self-improvement.
No matter what the current state of our health is, it’s never too late to start changing our habits, even if it’s something small like stretching in the morning, taking daily walks outside, or starting an active hobby like Yoga, marathon running, or playing sports.
A healthy body is a healthy mind. When we take better care of our bodies, we also feel more confident, motivated, and energized overall. That’s the beginning of bringing out your best self.
Things to do:
Identify small ways to be more physically active. Often our days are filled with opportunities to be more active, we just need to take advantage of them. Try to cultivate an “everything counts” mindset when it comes to exercise, even if it just means taking a walk around the block, or stretching in the morning, or doing push-ups before lunch. Any physical activity is better than none at all – so seek out small and convenient ways to keep your body moving throughout the day. If you find yourself sitting for long periods of time, get up and do chores, take a walk around the office, or make a phone call while standing up. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to poor health, so finding any reason to stand up more is better than sitting.
Find exercise that “clicks” with you and your personality. Different things work for different people. Some people need to commit themselves to a gym membership to get themselves off the couch, while others prefer to work out in the comfort of their own homes. Your personality shapes what exercise you like, so it’s important you find activities that resonate and “click” with you, rather than trying to force yourself to do something you really don’t enjoy. All you need is that one hobby to take your fitness to the next level, whether it be finding an enjoyable sport (like Tennis, or Baseball, or Basketball), or even exercising through video games (such as Wii Fit or Dance Dance Revolution). Try to think of physical activities you enjoyed as a kid, that can often be a good place to rekindle motivation.
Keep a healthy and consistent sleep schedule. Sleep is one of the most important habits when it comes to your overall physical and mental health. Research shows that those who don’t get sufficient sleep (between 6-10 hours every night) often suffer worse health outcomes like a weaker immune system, higher risk of obesity, lower energy and stamina, and more stress and anxiety. If your sleep habits aren’t healthy or consistent, it will likely have a negative “ripple effect” on almost every other aspect of your day. When you’re tired and fatigued, you’re more likely to make mistakes at work or argue with your spouse. It’s important not only to get between 6-10 hours of sleep each night, but also to maintain a consistent schedule. If you don’t sleep much on the weekends, it’s difficult to “catch up” on those lost hours throughout the week. Try to go to bed and wake up around the same time each day if possible. Here are more important lessons behind a good night’s sleep, including recognizing that some people are natural “early birds” or “night owls,” and that’s something you need to recognize and work with.
Pay attention to your food and diet. There are many different diets out there to choose from – and people can have long debates about which one is better – but the most important thing is to not eat too much, especially junk food, fast food, soda, sweets, and lots of processed food. Use your commonsense. Experiment with different diet changes and see what works best for you. Different diets work better for different people – so there’s no “one size fits all” solution to what exactly you should eat or not eat. One simple diet change is to substitute all your soda/juice/sugary drinks with water instead. Drinking plenty of water is never a bad place to start – most people don’t recognize how dehydrated they can be throughout the day and how it effects them. If you’re trying to lose weight, one popular option you can consider is intermittent fasting where you allow yourself to eat for an 8 hour window each day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. You can also try the “One Meal A Day” approach, where you restrict yourself to just one big meal (with minimal snacking). In general, pay attention to how your body responds to the things you eat: What foods leave you tired and feeling like crap? What foods make you energized and feeling good?
Take care of personal hygiene and cleanliness. Proper hygiene is another important aspect of physical health. While it can seem like commonsense, basic habits like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, getting a haircut, trimming your nails, and washing your face are are all important things not to neglect. Not only does cleanliness prevent you from catching germs and getting sick, you also feel better about yourself when you present yourself in the best way possible (and smell good). Often we are surprised by how much better we feel after a fresh new haircut, or clean new clothes, or new cologne/perfume. When mental health is low, we sometimes neglect these basic habits out of laziness or apathy, which is why they are a crucial first step in self-improvement if we aren’t paying enough attention to them.
Minimize your bad habits. No one is 100% perfect and we all have a couple bad habits, whether it be eating too many sweets, or drinking alcohol, or staying up late, or smoking cigarettes. In general, it’s important to quit (or minimize) our unhealthy habits as much as possible. “Choose your crutches wisely.” Keep in mind the long-term consequences of your habits – while it may not feel like they are hurting you right now, their effects can often catch up to you in the future. When trying to quit any bad habit, identify your triggers and work from there to change to change your patterns. Often by creating more boundaries between you and your bad habits, you can overcome your urge to do them (until it’s no longer an automatic habit anymore). If you find that you have a serious problem with addiction or drug abuse, consider professional help (such as a therapist, psychologist, or counselor) – there are often local resources available in your area if you do a quick search.
Please don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your body in the best shape possible. As Socrates famously said, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
Physical health is about much more than just looking and feeling good about yourself – it’s about living a life of vitality and longevity. You can have everything else in your life figured out, but if you don’t maintain your health you won’t be around very long to use or enjoy it.
2. MENTAL WELL-BEING
If you don’t take care of your body then it will slowly deteriorate – and the same is true for your mind.
Just because you don’t have to go to school anymore doesn’t mean you can’t keep learning new things, keeping your brain sharp, and challenging your intellect.
Reading books. Learning about new topics. Having deep conversations. Attending lectures and workshops. Following the news. These are all commonsense ways to keep our minds active and continue to update our knowledge and belief system as we move through life.
Learning is a lifelong endeavor. Balanced people are always seeking new things to dig into and learn more about like a new hobby, new game, or new skill such as painting, chess, learning a new language, or playing a musical instrument.
In addition, research shows that continuing to challenge our brain is an important way to prevent cognitive decline as we get older, including lower the risk of dementia and memory loss.
Things to do:
Read more books. Reading is one of the best ways to keep your mind sharp and learn new things. Nonfiction books about science, history, philosophy, or self help can grow your knowledge and broaden your perspective on life; and reading fiction has been shown to have many cognitive benefits such as boosting empathy, creative thinking, and expanding your vocabulary. If you haven’t read a book in awhile, try to make it a goal to read at least one book this year. You can start with a book you already own but never got a chance to read, or ask a friend for a book recommendation, or get a card from your local library and explore countless books for free. Find a topic or subject that interests you and start there!
Learn a new skill. Learning multiple skills is a hallmark of being a balanced and well-rounded person. It’s never too late in life to dive into something completely new, such as playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, writing poetry, painting, or playing chess. A jack of all trades mindset can make you stand-out from others in unique ways. Many people have a talent or passion for at least one thing, but when you start combining talents and cultivating multiple interests it shows your range and flexibility as a person. Don’t limit yourself. There’s no pressure to become a “professional” or “expert” in everything you do, just stay on a learning path, have fun while doing it, and enjoy seeing the growth as you go.
Watch documentaries. Documentaries are a fun and easy way to explore new topics and learn about interesting things you otherwise wouldn’t experience. Depending on what you like, there are many different subjects to choose from: history, sports, biographies, science, inspirational stories, or nature documentaries (which have also been shown to boost positive emotions like joy, gratitude, and awe). I’ve made a lengthy list of recommended documentaries which I try to keep updated as I discover new ones. Check it out and choose one that catches your eye!
Monitor your information diet. Our current world is overloaded with information, including a lot that is wrong, misleading, or straight up lies and propaganda. Now more than ever we need to pay close attention to the information we consume on a daily basis. Try to find trustworthy news and educational sites where you can easily verify what they are saying from other sources. Beware of going down esoteric “rabbit holes” where people only confirm their own biases and beliefs. Actively seek out information from multiple sides so you’re at least aware of different perspectives and counter-arguments. The information pyramid is a great guide on how you should prioritize certain sources over others. In general, a peer-reviewed scientific study should be given more weight than some random influencer on social media. Keep in mind it’s also possible to consume too much and become an information junkie, where you’re addicted to learning new things, but you never act on it or put it into practice.
Spend time in active reflection. Give yourself time to think and digest, even if it’s just for 10 minutes while sitting with your first cup of coffee in the morning. You don’t always need to be filling your brain with facts to be a smarter person, you also need to know how to step back and contemplate what you know. Active and engaged minds are always taking advantage of opportunities for everyday reflection when sitting on the bus, taking a shower, or walking the dog. Often your best ideas and insights come in moments when you’re not trying to solve a problem directly but just mulling it over in your mind. Schedule time for solitude every now and then and don’t be afraid to sit alone with your thoughts.
Learn how your mind works. One essential component to being a more intelligent thinker is knowing how your mind works. We naturally believe we understand ourselves best, but psychology and neuroscience can sometimes reveal counter-intuitive facts and tendencies. To start, our minds are very susceptible to cognitive biases and logical fallacies that can muddy our thinking and understanding of reality. One of the most common errors is black and white thinking, where we believe a situation needs to be either “A” or “B,” but a third perspective, “C,” is the more accurate view. Our minds like to over-simplify things when reality can often be more nuanced and complex. Show intellectual humility. Be open to being wrong and be open to changing your mind in the face of new evidence and experience.
Take your education seriously. Maintain a healthy and active brain. Even if you were never a good student in school, that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your knowledge and intelligence, especially once you find subjects you are deeply passionate about. Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
3. EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING
In the “Mental” section we covered how to keep our brains active and be more intelligent thinkers, but there’s also a whole other side of our psychology that we need to pay attention to as well: our “Emotional” side.
Emotions can often seem like something that we have limited power over, but being a more emotionally intelligent person means becoming more self-aware and learning how to better respond to our emotions in the moment.
We can’t ignore our emotions or push them aside forever, they are a necessary facet of life and we must learn to navigate our emotional world effectively if we want to live the best life possible.
Remember that emotions are a resource, not a crutch. Every emotion serves a function or purpose, and if we channel our emotions in a constructive direction we can make great things happen.
One important lesson is that even negative emotions like sadness, anger, guilt, or fear are helpful to a better life if we approach them from the right perspective.
Things to do:
Learn the basics of emotional intelligence. There are 4 fundamental pillars of emotional intelligence that we need to cultivate: 1) Self-awareness (recognizing our emotions when they happen), 2) Self-regulation (knowing how to respond to our emotions and channel them in a positive direction, 3) Empathy (being aware of other people’s emotions and internal states), and 4) Social Skills (knowing how to respond to other people’s emotions in a healthy and constructive way). Certain people may be strong at some of these and not for others. For example, someone may be really empathetic and caring, but not know how to regulate their own mood and emotions, leading to burnout and emotional fatigue. An emotionally intelligent person must work on all four of these pillars.
Improve body awareness. All emotions have a physical component to them. When you learn how to identify the physical sensations behind each emotion, you’ll be much more attuned to your feelings in the moment as you’re experiencing them. This helps you to be more aware of your feelings before acting on them, and to recognize how emotions often want to push or pull you in a certain direction (“do this” vs. “don’t do that”). Every feeling serves a different function depending on its emotional valence (“positive” vs. “negative”) and arousal level (“high energy” vs. “low energy”). With practice, this improved body awareness can also boost your intuition, making you a better reader of your “gut feelings” and what they are telling you.
Learn to channel negative emotions. Negative emotions can serve a positive function if you know how to respond to them in a constructive way. If you struggle with any specific negative emotion (sadness, fear, guilt, or anger), then create a plan for how you will respond to it the next time it arises. For example, “If I’m angry, then I’ll go exercise,” or “If I’m sad, then I’ll write in my journal.” Emotions are energy that can be channeled in multiple directions. Write a list of the many ways you can respond to any negative emotion. Remind yourself you have a choice, and you don’t have to keep following the same pattern between negative emotion → negative behavior. One popular technique is opposite action, where you intentionally do the opposite of what a feeling is telling you to do (to reverse the cycle of negativity).
Practice meditation and daily mindfulness. Meditation is a great avenue for better understanding and regulating your emotions. It teaches you how to step back and just observe your thoughts and feelings without needing to immediately react to them. This space between “feelings” and “actions” is crucial for being a more emotionally intelligent person; it’s the main principle behind discipline, willpower, and self-control. Never forget that just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you need to act on it. If you’re completely new to meditation, start with the 100 breaths meditation – a simple exercise where you just focus on your breathing. It’s also helpful to learn grounding techniques for when you feel overwhelmed, such as mindful stretching or a 5 senses meditation.
Embrace creative expression. It’s difficult to describe many emotions with only words so it’s important to embrace other ways of expressing yourself, such as through music, photography, dance, painting, drawing, acting, or film. Often when I meet people who don’t feel fully connected to their emotional self, they usually lack ways of expressing themselves through art and creativity. A creative outlet is often a prerequisite to better understanding and navigating your emotional world, even if you don’t typically think of yourself as a “creative person.”
Savor all of your positive experiences. Life is filled with many joys and pleasures throughout the day and we should try to savor them as much as possible. We have many positive emotions to choose from – joy, gratitude, peace, awe, excitement, laughter, and wonder – and there are a variety of activities that can lead to more positive emodiversity in our lives. Don’t just chase after the same positive experiences over and over again, seek new experiences, new hobbies, and new ways of enjoying life. Learn how to savor happiness as much as possible by being more present in the moment, creating positive memories, and reminiscing on good times.
Relax and manage daily stress. Last but not least, it’s necessary we cover stress management as an essential component to mental health and emotional intelligence. Stress is a normal part of everyday life, but if you don’t know how to manage it in a healthy way it can often have a negative influence on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by making you more sensitive, irritable, angry, and bothered (even by little things that don’t really matter). Recognize when to push yourself vs. when to step back and recharge. In the complete guide on daily stress, you’ll find a great framework for reframing your “fight, flight, or freeze” response by viewing stress as a signal to pay attention to and guide you throughout the day. Don’t underestimate the importance of your comfort zone and use it as a place to recharge after a challenging or overwhelming day.
Emotions can “make us” or “break us” depending on how emotionally intelligent we are. They are a fundamental part of life, but we often have more power over them than we realize. Learn how to channel your emotions in a healthy and constructive way – become a master of them, not a slave to them.
4. SOCIAL WELL-BEING
Healthy and positive relationships are an essential ingredient to happiness and well-being.
No matter who you are, you crave some type of social connection; even the most introverted person on the planet will have a tough time finding happiness all by themselves.
There used to be a time when I believed “I don’t need people to be happy, all I need is myself.” But over the years I’ve learned more and more that having social support and a sense of belonging is a basic human need that can’t be avoided.
How strong is your current social circle? Here’s advice to get you started.
Things to do:
Stay connected with friends and family. You should try your best to stay in touch with people who you already have a strong relationship with, especially family and old friends. There’s a simple power in checking in on people and preserving social connections you’ve already established. It doesn’t take much time or effort to show you’re thinking about someone: a simple text, email, or phone call is all you need to let people know you still care and value your relationship with them. You’d be surprised by how much other people appreciate you reaching out to them, even if you haven’t spoken to them in a really long time.
Embrace small social interactions. Every time you leave your home, there is opportunity for social interaction. To build your social muscles, embrace the power of 10 second relationships, such as saying “Hi,” to a neighbor or coworker, small talk with a cashier or cab driver, or sparking up a quick conversation while waiting for the train or bus. Research shows even super tiny social interactions can boost positive emotions and feelings of social connectedness. This can also be a great exercise for people who are very introverted (or have a lot of social anxiety) and want to start being a more social person. Make a plan to have a pleasant interaction with at least one new person every day.
Learn how to have endless conversations. One big concern for people when it comes to meeting new people is, “What do I say? What if I run out of things to talk about?” One popular technique known as conversation threading provides an excellent framework so that you never run out of topics to talk about. The basic idea is that every sentence contains multiple “threads” we can go down, and often the art of good conversation is being able to 1) Listen to what people say, and 2) Choose a thread to talk more about. Rinse and repeat and a conversation can go on forever. Also consider improvisation exercises so that you can be a faster and more creative thinker in the moment.
Improve communication and conflict resolution. It’s a cliché, but communication is everything in relationships. If you don’t know how to express your thoughts and feelings in an honest and constructive way, you’ll have trouble building genuine and healthy connections with others at home, work, or wherever you need to cooperate and work together with people. In romantic relationships, it’s important to know how to communicate your feelings without manipulating or being dramatic. In family and work environments, it’s important to know how to defuse heated arguments before they spiral out of control. The truth is people can be difficult and you’re not going to like everyone’s company. That’s natural. Conflicts have the potential to arise in any social situation, because people have different beliefs, values, and personalities that may be incompatible with each other. What’s most important is to teach yourself the best methods for conflict resolution so you can better navigate the complexities of your social world.
Find opportunities to meet new people. Most people make friends through work or school. Once we get older, it can become more difficult to find new connections or become a part of new social circles. Recent research shows that most adults claim to have “less than 5 close friends.” If you’re looking to expand your circle, there are many opportunities available to you. Depending on your likes, hobbies, and interests, consider going out more to music shows, bars, coffee shops, workshops, church/religious services, bowling leagues, adult education classes, sports events, or book clubs. Seek out local groups in your area or volunteer somewhere. You can also take advantage of websites like Meet Up to connect with like-minded people who live close-by. All it takes is one new friend to introduce you to an entirely new social circle. Be patient and don’t worry if you don’t initially hit it off with the first couple people you meet. Finding the right relationships that fit into our lives can take time.
Use social media and the internet to connect. The internet can be a great place to connect with like-minded people who we’d never meet in the real world. Online communities on social media, message boards, or video games can often provide a valuable source of social interaction, especially for people who don’t have many “real life” friends. The internet can be particularly helpful for connecting with others who have rare or eccentric hobbies, such as fans of a specific author, athlete, music genre, or comic book franchise. Unfortunately, many online communities can also become negative, competitive, and toxic (see the online disinhibition effect), so it’s necessary you build a positive digital environment that works for you. That doesn’t mean hiding in your own “echo chamber,” but it does mean cultivating a feed and followers who ultimately add value to your life and don’t subtract it. First focus on topics you’re naturally interested in such as science, technology, sports, or movies. Try not to be a passive consumer of information, actively enter conversations by asking questions or sharing knowledge with others. Often times we can build meaningful connections with people online that are just as important as those we find in the real world. However, while online relationships can have many benefits, we shouldn’t see them as a substitute for real world “face to face” interactions.
Always remember that quality of relationships > quantity of relationships.
You don’t need to be super popular or the life of the party to have a healthy social life. All you need is a couple really close friends who support you, trust you, and enjoy your presence. That’s everything you need to be socially satisfied.
Healthy relationships are a fundamental aspect of happiness and well-being for everyone. Our need to belong to a “tribe” or group is hardwired into our brain, biology, and evolution. Like every other aspect of a balanced person, it can’t be ignored.
Are your daily social needs being fulfilled?
5. WORK / FINANCIAL WELL-BEING
Another fundamental aspect of a balanced person is work, money, and material concerns.
At the most basic level, we depend on food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and other necessities so we can live a healthy and dignified life.
People that struggle to make a living can often hurt in many other areas: physical health (can’t afford good foods, healthcare, or medicine), relationships (can’t support family, no money for dating), as well as our mental and emotional well-being (stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem).
Unless you win the lottery or have someone else to provide for you, finding a steady job or career is often one of the most focused on areas in life. From childhood up until we finish high school or college, we are constantly asked, “What do you want to do for a living?”
A few people find jobs they love, many find jobs they like, and most find jobs they can at least tolerate. Balancing psychological needs with financial needs can be a difficult task depending on your current situation.
While we don’t always get a choice in what we do for a living, there are important ways to give ourselves more power over our work life and financial life. Here are important guidelines to keep in mind.
Things to do:
Focus on your strengths. Everyone has a place in this world where they add value. Before you decide what type of work you’d like to do for a living, it’s important to know what your natural strengths, skills, and talents are. If you’re friendly and good with people, you may excel at managing, customer service, or human resources type jobs. If you’re more introverted and creative, you may want to focus on writing, graphic design, computer programming, or freelance work. What type of activities are you typically good at (or at least above average)? What were your best subjects in school? What do you enjoy doing and why? Complete the strengths worksheet to discover more about your natural skillset. Ultimately, knowing your strengths will influence what types of jobs or career choices will suit you best – including where you contribute the most value.
Value education and experience. No matter what your job is, there are always new ways to learn and improve. The best workers in life are those who are always growing and mastering their craft. College is still an important part of education, but what’s even more important is to stay self-motivated and continue learning after school. Many people I know have landed successful jobs that had virtually nothing to do with what they studied in college. In several cases, they were people who taught themselves coding/programming, built a portfolio to show their work to potential employers, and climbed their way up the company ladder from there. All self-taught. You can also consider going to trade schools, workshops, mentorships, internships, and other forms of gaining knowledge and experience that are outside of the traditional college model. Any work experience is better than none at all – you just need to start somewhere and begin building yourself up.
Make the most of your job. While it’s rare for any of us to get our “dream job,” we can always make the most of our work life by being a good employee and doing our best. Use nudges to keep yourself motivated and productive throughout the day, learn mental strategies for getting things done that you normally “don’t like” doing, and make friends at work with bosses, coworkers, clients, or customers, because those are the people you’re going to be spending a lot of time with and it’s crucial you have healthy and functioning relationships with them. No matter what your job is try to see the underlying purpose or meaning behind it. What value does it add to the world? Are you proud of the work you do?
Live within your means. Regardless of how much money you make, one of the most commonsense rules for financial well-being is living within your means. This includes keeping a budget that you can maintain (for food, rent/mortgage, bills, gas, clothes, and leisure expenses), and not buying too much stuff you can’t immediately afford. Debt can be common at some point in our lives (due to student loans, credit card debt, medical emergencies, etc.), but try to be mindful to not put yourself in a hole that you can’t climb out of. Avoid luxury expenses that put you at financial risk. We sometimes over-extend ourselves due to social comparison and a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. We think if our friend or neighbor gets a brand new car or goes on an expensive trip, then we need to “one-up” them with a similar purchase. Many times people fall into massive debt because they are trying to chase status, fame, luxury, or exorbitant pleasures. In general, keep track of all your monthly expenses and find ways to cut back on spending that isn’t necessary. Learn about spending biases that can lead to overconsumption (like the allure of “FREE!,” the “Relativity Trap,” and “One Click” purchases). Big corporations are masters of psychology and persuasion. If we aren’t vigilant about our spending habits (especially if you enjoy retail therapy), then we’ll often fall for tricks that cause us to spend more money than we should.
Create a healthy relationship with material things. This article is about being a balanced person. Work and money are very important aspects of life, but materialistic beliefs can also backfire to hurt us. No one lays down on their deathbed wishing they spent more time in the office. Work-a-holics can end up focusing so much on their career that they neglect giving enough attention to their family, health, and well-being. Never forget that there is a lot more to a good life than just money and material things, despite what you may see glamorized in movies, TV shows, or commercials. Psychology research shows that after a certain point, increased wealth and income has very little effect on our overall happiness and life satisfaction. Being rich sounds awesome, but it won’t necessarily make you any happier than if you earned less with a stable and secure life. Take the materialism quiz to see if you have a healthy relationship with money and stuff.
Remember, money is important but it isn’t everything.
Financial well-being will often look radically different depending on the person. Certain people may be content with modest and minimal living, while others crave more luxury, adventure, and pleasure. Whichever lifestyle you choose, it’s necessary that money finds the proper role in your life without being completely consumed by it.
One succinct way to define true financial well-being is “not needing to think about money all the time.”
6. MEANINGFUL / SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING
The meaningful or spiritual aspects of life can often be overlooked.
We may occasionally ask ourselves big questions like, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” or “What’s my purpose?” but we rarely translate these questions into our daily lives through action.
For many people, religion is their main source of spirituality and meaning. Attending church, being part of a local community, prayer, and volunteering or giving to charities are common ways people boost meaning in their daily lives. Religion has been shown to improve happiness and well-being by creating a strong sense of purpose and community.
However, we don’t need religion to have a meaningful life. There are many other sources of meaning, including art, culture, philosophy, literature, music, relationships, activism, introspection, and creativity.
Where do you get your meaning in life?
Things to do:
Learn the pillars of a meaningful life. One excellent guide on how to live a meaningful life outlines five different pillars to focus on, including 1) A sense of belonging (having healthy relationships with those around you), 2) A sense of purpose (feeling that you contribute to a larger whole), 3) Storytelling (the life story we tell about ourselves, as well as stories and myths about the world we live in), 4) Transcendence (experiencing “awe” and “inspiration” in the presence of great things), 5) Growth (having a sense that you are evolving and moving forward as a person). All five pillars contribute to a rich and meaningful existence.
Spend more time in nature. Nature reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, a whole process known as “life.” Nature is a fantastic source of meaning because it continuously inspires positive emotions like joy, amazement, gratitude, and awe. The best part is that nature is all around us – we don’t need to plan a weekend camping trip to experience it – instead just pay attention to everyday nature that is all around you: trees on the drive to work, birdwatching in your backyard, or spending time in your garden over the summer. Having pets to care for is another easy and wonderful source of nature and connection, even if it’s just a small fish tank to maintain. Nature also includes enjoying the beauty of a nice view such as sunrises, sunsets, mountaintops, storm watching, and star-gazing.
Take a complete picture perspective. Finding meaning requires being able to look at things from a big picture perspective. What influence do your actions have in the long-term? What type of impact will you leave on the world after you die? When you keep the complete picture in mind, you recognize that even super small actions can add up and have big results in the future. Your life doesn’t begin at birth nor end at death, you are part of an intergenerational chain of cause-and-effect that has stretched thousands of years. That’s a powerful thought if you can see the true significance behind it.
Embrace art, music, and culture. Artists are the creators of new meanings, especially famous painters, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, authors, playwrights, and dancers. Pursuing a creative hobby of your own is one fantastic way to infuse new meaning into your life. You can also embrace art and culture more by going to museums, art galleries, music concerts, and theaters. A lot of beautiful art is archived in online art and cultural exhibits, so you can discover a lot of new inspiration by just sitting in the comfort of your own home. Artists of all forms teach us how universal the human condition is. It’s a huge inspirational boost when you realize a book written over a hundred years ago resonates exactly with how you feel today. One of my strongest memories is attending a music concert of my favorite band with thousands of others listening and singing along. Creativity is one of humanity’s greatest gifts and there’s a lot of wisdom, beauty, and feelings of universal connection it can offer us.
Signs, symbols, and synchronicity. A meaningful life can be more about feeling inspiration and empowerment rather than thinking only logically and factually about the world. Embrace things you can’t always explain. If you feel like you’re getting a “sign” from the universe, accept it. Our minds often think unconsciously through the power of symbols, especially through reoccurring dreams or nightmares that may be trying to tell you something important. Meaning can be created anywhere if you have the right perspective. Many of my favorite moments in life are when I experience synchronicity, which is finding a connection between two things that seem completely unrelated at first. For example, if I start reading a book and then someone brings up the same book randomly the next day, I try to see that as a sign that I’m on the right path. It may or may not be true, but it is a simple and easy way to add more meaning to the little things in life.
Have faith that life is good. Faith may not have any role in science, but it does play an important role in good living. At the end of the day, one of the most important beliefs we can have is that “life is good” and things will generally work out in the end. One of my personal favorite quotes is, “Pray to God, but row to shore.” It shows us to have hope and faith in life, but still take action and try our best in the moment. Both faith and action are necessary ingredients to a happy and fulfilling life. A belief in God or a higher power can make this whole process easier. However, even if you can’t bring yourself to accept “metaphysical” or “supernatural” ideas, at least try to sense the oneness and interconnectedness of all things. These ideas are an endless source of power, strength, and resilience, even in the face of incredible hardships and tribulations.
A “meaningful life” can be one of the most difficult areas of life to improve, especially while living in a world that is filled with nihilism, hedonism, and materialism.
However, once you build a strong spiritual core you can withstand almost any difficulty or hardship. It can empower you to a whole new level that non-spiritual people don’t usually have access to.
CONCLUSION
To sum things up we must invest time and energy in all six of these aspects if we want to live a happy and balanced life.
Once again, these six aspects of a balanced life include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial, and 6) Meaningful/Spiritual.
Which area are you the strongest in? Which area are you the weakest in?
Keep this framework in mind as you embark on a lifetime of self-improvement. Try the Daily Routine (PDF) exercise and use this resource as a guideline.
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CENTENNIAL, Colo., December 19, 2023 (Newswire.com)
– In the wake of a global pandemic, widespread staffing shortages, and declining enrollment, educational leaders face a complex and demanding landscape. Higher Ed Change introduces a new book, From Teacher to Leader: Paving Your Path to Education Administration by Dr. Eric Goodman and Dr. Kim Nugent. It is already making waves, reaching #1 bestseller status in multiple categories on Amazon, including Business Leadership Training, Education Administration, and School Management.
From Teacher to Leader provides a practical and inspiring guide for educators, faculty members, and aspiring school leaders who want to make a difference in the face of unprecedented challenges. The book offers a clear path to leadership, with step-by-step guidance, reflective questions, and practical exercises to help readers develop their leadership skills and reach their full potential.
“Historically, there has been little emphasis on investing in leadership development for educators and unleashing the leadership potential within every educator is the key to transforming education. Having a strong pipeline of future leaders is critical to ensuring the long-term success and sustainability of not only our education system but also our economy,” says Dr. Goodman.
“From Teacher to Leader is a grand collection of what is needed in educational leadership. It clarifies the task areas and competencies needed, has an A-Z structured pathway to navigate the shift in roles, includes insights from many who have taken this path, and the great learnings of the authors in their own transitions. Most importantly, throughout societies, the education sector has become more critical and disrupted by serious types of changes. Leadership in these organizations will be paramount!” -David W. Jamieson, Ph.D., Past President of: the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD now ATD) and the NTL Institute
“The approach of this book is a game-changer for any teacher ready to step into educational leadership.” – J.W. Wilson, Executive Director, The Learning Code Institute
About the Authors:
Dr. Eric Goodman: Educational leader, speaker, consultant, and coach with decades of experience. President of Higher Ed Change. Former leader of one of the nation’s largest college of business, now empowering educators and leaders.
Dr. Kim Nugent: Talent development expert, speaker and certified leadership coach. Passionate about mentoring and guiding aspiring leaders, including those in education.
They are available for media inquiries, speaking engagements and podcasts. In addition, they offer courses, workshops and resources to develop leadership skills.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Many of us like to think we’re highly self-aware, but most of us are not. Emotional intelligence is hailed as one of the hallmarks of a great leader. It’s a hot topic in the workplace, and numerous research organizations have produced studies that say emotional intelligence comes down to a handful of factors — including self-awareness, emotional regulation and empathy.
But why do we think we are more aware than we are? It’s because we don’t get enough feedback on how we come across to others. This leaves us with blind spots when it comes to understanding how others view us. You might think you’re a star employee and desirable peer, but you could make others more uncomfortable. As a mentor and leadership coach, I’ve identified six behaviors that you should address and fix if you want to maintain and grow a better workplace relationship with your peers.
There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.
Growing up, many people are taught to place other people first. Unfortunately, this often goes against human nature.
Sadly, a lot of people are selfish naturally and tend to think about themselves first. This can harm their relationships with their family members, friends, coworkers, and loved ones.
If you are looking for ways to be selfless, it is helpful to surround yourself with people like you; however, if you are trying to be selfless when you are surrounded by selfish people, this can present a unique challenge.
So in this article, I will show you eight ways to be selfless in life — even if you are surrounded by selfish people.
Why Should You Learn How to Be Selfless?
You should learn how to be selfless because not only will you help other people, but you will also feel better about yourself. When you are selfless, you will increase your confidence and self-esteem while also repelling negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions about yourself.
By focusing on what you give to others instead of what you receive, you shift the focus away from yourself and look at the world as a whole instead.
Unfortunately, many people are naturally selfish. A lot of people are selfish because they confuse being selfish with a sense of individualism. In today’s culture, there is an innate drive for people to try to succeed on their own.
Even though becoming more independent is a natural part of growing up, this doesn’t mean that people have to become selfish as well. In a lot of situations, people confuse the two topics. The dangers of misguided individualism are real.
Therefore, it is important for everyone to learn how to be selfish and considerate of others. This is important when it comes to personal development and self-awareness.
Some people work hard to be more selfless and generous around other people, they naturally attract more people toward them.
That way, people are able to focus more on what they are doing well and less on the mistakes and character flaws they might be trying to correct. This is how being selfless can help you improve your self-confidence and self-esteem.
Even though it can be a bit of a challenge to be selfless if you are surrounded by people who are naturally selfish, there are a few ways that you can accomplish this goal.
8 Ways to Be Selfless (Even When Surrounded by Selfish People)
Some of the top ways that you can be selfless even if you are surrounded by selfish people include:
1. Start Performing Random Acts of Kindness Every Day
The first thing that you need to do is try to perform random acts of kindness every day. Often, people are only kind to someone else when they feel like they owe that person something.
For example, some people feel obligated to buy someone a birthday present because that person bought a birthday present for them. This is not the right motivation for performing acts of kindness.
Instead, you should simply perform random acts of kindness because it is the right thing to do. By removing an act of kindness away from the obligation of a special occasion, you become a more selfless person.
Furthermore, you do not necessarily have to perform random acts of kindness for someone you know. Even smiling at a stranger and asking them how their day is going can make someone feel much better about themselves.
If everyone in the world simply smiled more often, think about how much better the world would be.
Also, you can open the door for someone, offer to buy someone a coffee just because you feel like it, and treat your co-workers, friends, and family members with more compassion.
Offer to buy groceries for a family member or run an errand for a coworker. When you perform, random, unexpected acts of kindness, you are going to feel much better about yourself. You will make the world a slightly less selfish place.
2. Offer Compliments Instead of Criticism
One important step you can take to become a more selfless person is to offer compliments instead of criticism. It is very easy to criticize someone. Everyone wants to feel like they are doing something right.
One of the ways to do this is to focus on what you are doing better than someone else, which simply brings out a lot of criticism. At the same time, this is not the right approach to take. Instead, focus on giving out compliments instead.
Even though this may feel like a challenge, this is actually a relatively easy approach. Instead of focusing on what someone is doing poorly, focus on what they are doing well. That way, you will take a few minutes and build someone up.
Furthermore, you may realize that other people are more likely to offer you compliments if you are saying good things about them. That way, this is a great way to synergistically increase your self-confidence and self-esteem by being a more selfless person.
At the same time, notice that you also encourage other people to be more selfless as well. This is one way that your positive impact on the world can be magnified.
Beware of crab mentality! When people with crab mentality see others around them advancing, they subconsciously (or even consciously) reach out to hold them back. The video below provides four ways crab mentality is keeping you selfish.
3. Practice Kindness Meditation Regularly
In order to become a more selfless person, you need to make sure that you are emotionally balanced. One of the ways to do this is to practice something called kindness meditation.
Many psychologists have discovered through studies that kindness meditation can help you become more emotionally centered. This means that you may be able to help your brain become more compassionate by using simple meditation sequences.
Similar to other activities, it may take a while for you to learn how to meditate successfully; however, studies have shown that you can become a more selfless person by doing that.
In one specific study, a team of researchers gave individuals a 30-minute audio recording that these participants were supposed to listen to daily for 2 weeks. This recording was an adaptation that focused on loving kindness meditation. It was specifically called compassionate meditation.
After the study, the researchers realized that the participants were more likely to be kind, generous, and altruistic.
The results of this study demonstrate that individuals who practice compassionate, loving, kindness meditation on a regular basis will spend more time, money, and energy on others than themselves. By meditating regularly, you can become a more selfless person as well.
4. Listen Instead of Speak
One of the most common examples of people being selfish is that they continuously turn conversations back toward themselves. This is only natural. People like to talk about themselves.
In fact, people like to talk about themselves more often than ever in the past. Social media often acts as an extension of our voices, where people always want to move their lives to extremes. The reality is that no one’s life is either as good or as bad as it seems on social media.
Therefore, instead of speaking, people need to learn how to listen more often. Even though you may feel like you have a special accomplishment to share or you could feel like you are going through a rough time, try to give others a chance to speak.
For example, start conversations by asking people how their day is going. Then, ask questions that further the conversation and try to learn more about their situation.
Instead of speaking, people need to learn how to listen more often.
Eventually, the other person is also going to ask about you, giving you a chance to speak; however, when you demonstrate that you are genuinely interested in the lives of other people, you immediately become a more selfless person.
If people would listen to other people just a little bit more often, the world would immediately become a better place. Everyone has good times and bad times. Make an effort to be a relief valve for other people by opening your ears, your heart, and your soul to others.
5. Donate to Charity
It is easy for people to donate money to charity. Even if it is just a dollar or two, many people donate to charity because this fulfills some sort of an obligation.
Instead of donating money to charity and claiming a tax deduction for it, donate something more valuable. Instead of giving money, donate your time. Your time is the most valuable resource that you have. When you spend it helping others, you demonstrate that you are not a selfish person.
A simple Google search will quickly show that there are lots of charitable organizations in the area with which you can volunteer your time.
For example, you may want to spend your time building homes with Habitat for Humanity. Or, you can go to the local soup kitchen and serve food to individuals who sorely need it. If you are someone who is good with children, you may want to volunteer with a local sports league.
That way, you can encourage kids to be active and fight childhood obesity in the process. It is relatively easy for someone to be nice and generous around people they know; however, the true test is whether you can be selfless with people who you might otherwise overlook on a daily basis.
When you donate your time to charity, you demonstrate that you are growing as a selfless person.
Finally, you can use a site like Charity Navigator to find the right charity that matches your personal beliefs.
6. Be a More Patient Person
Today, we live in an impatient world. People have shorter attention spans today than they ever did in the past. Therefore, our patience is wearing thin as well. You may notice that you have a shorter fuse today than you did in the past.
For example, you may be faster to become angry, emotionally irritated, or frustrated than before. As a result, take a few minutes and practice patience.
In order to practice more patience, start small. For example, try not to become frustrated when you are standing in line. No, do not take out your cell phone in an effort to entertain yourself.
This is a subtle sign that you are becoming impatient and frustrated with the people in front of you. Instead, take a deep breath and look around. Absorb the scenery. You might even start a conversation with the other people in line if you are feeling particularly brave.
In today’s world, a lot of people expect to be instantly gratified with the swipe of a finger or the push of a button. It takes a selfless person to truly become patient with the world around them. That could be you.
Take a deep breath, practice patience, and be patient with others. Then, you will find that you will surround yourself with people who are more generous and accepting of you as well. This is one way that you can make the world a slightly less selfish place.
7. Be Okay with Imperfection
One of the ways that you have tried to become a successful person is by always doing your best. You have shot for the stars and just about everything that you have ever tried.
Therefore, you may imagine that other people are going to do the same thing. You cannot imagine that someone would ever put forth something that is less than their best effort.
Instead of focusing on what people are doing wrong, focus on what they’re doing right.
As a result, you demand perfection from other people as well. Even though you may feel like you are pushing others to do their best, you are actually being a selfish person because you are expecting people to be just like you. Therefore, you need to learn how to be okay with imperfection.
Instead of focusing on what people are doing wrong, focus on what they’re doing right. If you find that you are more tolerant of smaller, understandable mistakes, you will find that people are more accepting of you as well.
In addition, if you become more understanding of other people, you may find that they ask you for assistance. This is one of the top validations that you can feel when it comes to being a more selfless person.
If people are coming to you during their time of need, they know that you are going to be understanding of their situation. Then, you will have another opportunity to be a selfless person and make the world a slightly better place through your thoughtful actions.
8. Treat Others the Way You Would Like to Be Treated
There are going to be plenty of times during your journey to be a more selfless person when you have questions or are in doubt of what to do next. You might be wondering if what you have just done is truly a selfless act.
Ask yourself if you would like someone else to treat you that way. If the answer is yes, then you are doing a good job. On the other hand, if the answer is no, it simply means that you have more room to grow as a person. This is not a bad thing, as no one is going to change completely overnight.
Following the golden rule is one of the most important steps that you can take on your way to becoming a more selfless person. If everyone would spend their days simply doing one thing for someone else, the world would be a much better place.
These are a few of the top ways that you can become a more selfless person. Nobody has ever said that becoming a more selfless person is easy; however, it is incredibly important for our overall growth both as people and as a society.
Final Thoughts on Being Selfless
In today’s world, it can be a challenge to be selfless. Because many people are focused on being individualistic, it may appear that being selfish is now the norm.
Even though it can be frustrating to learn how to be selfless, particularly when everyone seems to be focused on themselves, this is a critically important part of your overall health.
When you take the time to be selfless around other people, you will find that your impact on the world becomes magnified. Therefore, take a few minutes and think about ways you can be selfless when you are surrounded by selfish people.
Finally, if you need some help on your journey to selflessness and spirituality, here are some articles to check out:
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
What are toxic emotions, and how do they prevent healing and moving forward? Toxic emotions are negative feelings that manifest within our bodies, minds and spirit. They become harmful when they lead us into a victim state, from which it can be challenging to get out and can cause mental and physical harm. Learning to control certain emotions is imperative, especially when moving on from divorce and other traumas to create a new and happy life.
The most common negative emotions associated with trauma and difficult life situations are fear, anger, guilt, and sadness/grief. Experiencing these or other negative emotions is normal in most cases. For example, divorce is comparable to a death, and there is a significant separation between the “we” of the partnership and the new “me.” We had entwined our lives with one another, including dreams and a future, so when suddenly one is no longer part of a “we,” it can be traumatic and lead to toxic emotions. Similarly, any time we feel down, negative or unhappy in life, toxic emotions can keep us stuck and unable to heal. The lesson is to prevent the feelings from becoming toxic.
Since it is normal to experience negative emotions about trauma or difficult life events, the first rule of thumb is to let yourself feel them, whatever they may be. Grieve, feel angry, sad, hurt, afraid, guilty or lost…these feelings must be recognized. You might cry, punch a pillow, exercise hard, scream or whatever non-dangerous release helps to relieve tension caused by these feelings. If the feelings are dangerous, cause you to feel so helpless that you cannot function, or have thoughts of hurting yourself or another or of ending your life, you must seek professional help immediately.
At some point – a time that can be different for each person – you must let go of these feelings and move forward.
Fear
This is one of the biggest emotions suffered by those going through trauma. It can also plague those who face difficult times, like losing a job or a home or the death of a loved one. Worrying about what a new life will look like post-trauma is easy. Where will you live? How will you pay the bills? In the case of divorce, a stay-at-home parent may have to return to the workforce for the first time in years, which is scary.
Being alone is also scary — who will care for you when you are sick or need help? What about parenting responsibilities, the desire to ease the effects of divorce on children and coming up with a plan to co-parent amicably? There is also a fear of being alone for the rest of one’s life (this is especially true with women and even has a name).
No matter what the trauma or life circumstance that leads to toxic emotions, when we feel afraid and stuck, it actually prevents us from being able to heal, and the longer we nurse this fear within our bodies, minds and spirits, the more troubles we may suffer, both physically and mentally. You may recall a time in your life (even childhood) when you were so afraid of something or someone that you got a stomachache or experienced other forms of stress — imagine what can happen over time when we let fear fester – it’s like an open wound that does not get cleaned and treated.
Anger is another common emotion experienced by those who experience trauma and big life changes. Since many people do not understand how to start the healing process, blaming others or the universe for their fate becomes easier. With divorce, many will blame the former spouse rather than start looking within for the answers. Blaming equates to a refusal to take responsibility for the self and one’s own happiness, leading to stagnation and the inability to heal and be happy.
Anger zaps our energy, and it can lead us to a victim state. In this state, we believe everything happens to us instead of realizing we are the only ones who have control over our own lives, we become incapable of taking the reins and turning our lives around. Angry emotions can elevate blood pressure and lead to a plethora of physical and mental/emotional ailments, like poor focus and lack of energy, bodily pains and depression, rapid weight gain or loss, the desire to hurt oneself or others, extreme exhaustion, and lack of motivation, to name a few. This is not the way to heal or be happy.
Many traumas or difficult situations can lead to feelings of guilt. Divorce is one example, especially when we have been programmed to believe it is wrong or bad and that marriage lasts forever. Many have grown up with these messages from religion, culture or familial beliefs. Sometimes, we may not even recognize that what we have been taught, often throughout our lives, has a limiting effect on our thoughts.
Guilt is normal when it comes to divorce, and it is important to let oneself feel it and recognize from where it comes so that we can change our mindset and accept that those lessons we were taught are not reality. This usually involves diving deep into the past, especially childhood traumas.
When feeling guilty for being the “cause” of a trauma or major life change, that mindset must be examined and altered. Using divorce as an example, a marriage is a partnership, and even if one of the parties does things that do not support the marriage, there are still two people involved; both parties need to be working together in the relationship – all the time. Most marriages break down long before divorce is filed; one study indicated that the time frame is six years.
Other situations and traumas can also lead to feelings of guilt, such as physical and verbal abuse. Many victims of abuse feel that they must have done something wrong to trigger the abusive behavior that is directed toward them, and this, along with fear (of retaliation, of being alone, of the partner going to prison, etc.), is the reason that many victims of abusive relationships do not leave.
Sadness and grief
These are the most common toxic emotions regarding trauma, loss and big life changes. For example, it is normal to feel sad and grieve the death of a marriage or a loved one. Embarking upon the healing journey will alleviate these feelings. Although they never go away completely, they will dissipate with healing, and it is possible to create a new life and be happy despite the circumstances or changes.
Preventing negative feelings from becoming toxic is within our control, and we can learn how to overcome the barriers. Each step has many subparts that may require help from a divorce coach or therapist.
Steps to overcome negativity and toxicity to focus on healing
Let go of people, ideas and situations that don’t serve you
Get healthy – body, mind and spirit (healthy eating, exercise, breathwork, journaling, spending time in nature).
Express gratitude (especially when you awaken and before bed. Think of at least 3-5 things for which you are grateful)
Try something new by getting out of your comfort zone (take a class, volunteer, learn something – outside of the house, not from a computer)
Focus on the present, not the past — the past is over, and nothing can be done to change it, so don’t waste energy on how it could have been if only…
Replace negative thoughts and actions with positive ones, repeating until it becomes the norm – start telling yourself you are what you want to be by using affirmations, journaling, meditation and doing activities that make you happy; we are what we believe ourselves to be!
Evaluate your support network and make sure you have the right people – many of those within our support networks do not truly support us. Those who love you need to respect your choices and not try to tell you what they think you should or shouldn’t do.
August is the month when oppressive humidity causes the mass evacuation of official Washington. In 2021, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki piled her family into the car for a week at the beach. Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to the Hamptons to visit his elderly father. Their boss left for the leafy sanctuary of Camp David.
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They knew that when they returned, their attention would shift to a date circled at the end of the month. On August 31, the United States would officially complete its withdrawal from Afghanistan, concluding the longest war in American history.
The State Department didn’t expect to solve Afghanistan’s problems by that date. But if everything went well, there was a chance to wheedle the two warring sides into some sort of agreement that would culminate in the nation’s president, Ashraf Ghani, resigning from office, beginning an orderly transfer of power to a governing coalition that included the Taliban. There was even discussion of Blinken flying out, most likely to Doha, Qatar, to preside over the signing of an accord.
It would be an ending, but not the end. Within the State Department there was a strongly held belief: Even after August 31, the embassy in Kabul would remain open. It wouldn’t be as robustly staffed, but some aid programs would continue; visas would still be issued. The United States—at least not the State Department—wasn’t going to abandon the country.
There were plans for catastrophic scenarios, which had been practiced in tabletop simulations, but no one anticipated that they would be needed. Intelligence assessments asserted that the Afghan military would be able to hold off the Taliban for months, though the number of months kept dwindling as the Taliban conquered terrain more quickly than the analysts had predicted. But as August began, the grim future of Afghanistan seemed to exist in the distance, beyond the end of the month, not on America’s watch.
July 30, 2021: Joe Biden speaks to reporters before departing the White House for Camp David. (Anna Moneymaker / Getty)
That grim future arrived disastrously ahead of schedule. What follows is an intimate history of that excruciating month of withdrawal, as narrated by its participants, based on dozens of interviews conducted shortly after the fact, when memories were fresh and emotions raw. At times, as I spoke with these participants, I felt as if I was their confessor. Their failings were so apparent that they had a desperate need to explain themselves, but also an impulse to relive moments of drama and pain more intense than any they had experienced in their career.
During those fraught days, foreign policy, so often debated in the abstract, or conducted from the sanitized remove of the Situation Room, became horrifyingly vivid. President Joe Biden and his aides found themselves staring hard at the consequences of their decisions.
Even in the thick of the crisis, as the details of a mass evacuation swallowed them, the members of Biden’s inner circle could see that the legacy of the month would stalk them into the next election—and perhaps into their obituaries. Though it was a moment when their shortcomings were on obvious display, they also believed it evinced resilience and improvisational skill.
And amid the crisis, a crisis that taxed his character and managerial acumen, the president revealed himself. For a man long caricatured as a political weather vane, Biden exhibited determination, even stubbornness, despite furious criticism from the establishment figures whose approval he usually craved. For a man vaunted for his empathy, he could be detached, even icy, when confronted with the prospect of human suffering.
When it came to foreign policy, Joe Biden possessed a swaggering faith in himself. He liked to knock the diplomats and pundits who would pontificate at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Munich Security Conference. He called them risk-averse, beholden to institutions, lazy in their thinking. Listening to these complaints, a friend once posed the obvious question: If you have such negative things to say about these confabs, then why attend so many of them? Biden replied, “If I don’t go, they’re going to get stale as hell.”
From 12 years as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—and then eight years as the vice president—Biden had acquired a sense that he could scythe through conventional wisdom. He distrusted mandarins, even those he had hired for his staff. They were always muddying things with theories. One aide recalled that he would say, “You foreign-policy guys, you think this is all pretty complicated. But it’s just like family dynamics.” Foreign affairs was sometimes painful, often futile, but really it was emotional intelligence applied to people with names that were difficult to pronounce. Diplomacy, in Biden’s view, was akin to persuading a pain-in-the-ass uncle to stop drinking so much.
One subject seemed to provoke his contrarian side above all others: the war in Afghanistan. His strong opinions were grounded in experience. Soon after the United States invaded, in late 2001, Biden began visiting the country. He traveled with a sleeping bag; he stood in line alongside Marines, wrapped in a towel, waiting for his turn to shower.
On his first trip, in 2002, Biden met with Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni in his Kabul office, a shell of a building. Qanuni, an old mujahideen fighter, told him: We really appreciate that you have come here. But Americans have a long history of making promises and then breaking them. And if that happens again, the Afghan people are going to be disappointed.
Biden was jet-lagged and irritable. Qanuni’s comments set him off: Let me tell you, if you even think of threatening us … Biden’s aides struggled to calm him down.
In Biden’s moral code, ingratitude is a grievous sin. The United States had evicted the Taliban from power; it had sent young men to die in the nation’s mountains; it would give the new government billions in aid. But throughout the long conflict, Afghan officials kept telling him that the U.S. hadn’t done enough.
The frustration stuck with him, and it clarified his thinking. He began to draw unsentimental conclusions about the war. He could see that the Afghan government was a failed enterprise. He could see that a nation-building campaign of this scale was beyond American capacity.
As vice president, Biden also watched as the military pressured Barack Obama into sending thousands of additional troops to salvage a doomed cause. In his 2020 memoir, A Promised Land, Obama recalled that as he agonized over his Afghan policy, Biden pulled him aside and told him, “Listen to me, boss. Maybe I’ve been around this town for too long, but one thing I know is when these generals are trying to box in a new president.” He drew close and whispered, “Don’t let them jam you.”
Biden developed a theory of how he would succeed where Obama had failed. He wasn’t going to let anyone jam him.
In early February 2021, now-President Biden invited his secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, into the Oval Office. He wanted to acknowledge an emotional truth: “I know you have friends you have lost in this war. I know you feel strongly. I know what you’ve put into this.”
Over the years, Biden had traveled to military bases, frequently accompanied by his fellow senator Chuck Hagel. On those trips, Hagel and Biden dipped in and out of a long-running conversation about war. They traded theories on why the United States would remain mired in unwinnable conflicts. One problem was the psychology of defeat. Generals were terrified of being blamed for a loss, living in history as the one who waved the white flag.
It was this dynamic, in part, that kept the United States entangled in Afghanistan. Politicians who hadn’t served in the military could never summon the will to overrule the generals, and the generals could never admit that they were losing. So the war continued indefinitely, a zombie campaign. Biden believed that he could break this cycle, that he could master the psychology of defeat.
Biden wanted to avoid having his generals feel cornered—even as he guided them to his desired outcome. He wanted them to feel heard, to appreciate his good faith. He told Austin and Milley, “Before I make a decision, you’ll have a chance to look me in the eyes.”
The date set out by the Doha Agreement, which the Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban, was May 1, 2021. If the Taliban adhered to a set of conditions—engaging in political negotiations with the Afghan government, refraining from attacking U.S. troops, and cutting ties with terrorist groups—then the United States would remove its soldiers from the country by that date. Because of the May deadline, Biden’s first major foreign-policy decision—whether or not to honor the Doha Agreement—would also be the one he seemed to care most about. And it would need to be made in a sprint.
In the spring, after weeks of meetings with generals and foreign-policy advisers, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had the National Security Council generate two documents for the president to read. One outlined the best case for staying in Afghanistan; the other made the best case for leaving.
This reflected Biden’s belief that he faced a binary choice. If he abandoned the Doha Agreement, attacks on U.S. troops would resume. Since the accord had been signed, in February 2020, the Taliban had grown stronger, forging new alliances and sharpening plans. And thanks to the drawdown of troops that had begun under Donald Trump, the United States no longer had a robust-enough force to fight a surging foe.
Biden gathered his aides for one last meeting before he formally made his decision. Toward the end of the session, he asked Sullivan, Blinken, and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to leave the room. He wanted to talk with Austin and Milley alone.
Instead of revealing his final decision, Biden told them, “This is hard. I want to go to Camp David this weekend and think about it.”
It was always clear where the president would land. Milley knew that his own preferred path for Afghanistan—leaving a small but meaningful contingent of troops in the country—wasn’t shared by the nation he served, or the new commander in chief. Having just survived Trump and a wave of speculation about how the U.S. military might figure in a coup, Milley was eager to demonstrate his fidelity to civilian rule. If Biden wanted to shape the process to get his preferred result, well, that’s how a democracy should work.
On April 14, Biden announced that he would withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. He delivered remarks explaining his decision in the Treaty Room of the White House, the very spot where, in the fall of 2001, George W. Bush had informed the public of the first American strikes against the Taliban.
Biden’s speech contained a hole that few noted at the time. It scarcely mentioned the Afghan people, with not even an expression of best wishes for the nation that the United States would be leaving behind. The Afghans were apparently only incidental to his thinking. (Biden hadn’t spoken with President Ghani until right before the announcement.) Scranton Joe’s deep reserves of compassion were directed at people with whom he felt a connection; his visceral ties were with American soldiers. When he thought about the military’s rank and file, he couldn’t help but project an image of his own late son, Beau. “I’m the first president in 40 years who knows what it means to have a child serving in a war zone,” he said.
Biden also announced a new deadline for the U.S. withdrawal, which would move from May 1 to September 11, the 20th anniversary of the attack that drew the United States into war. The choice of date was polemical. Although he never officially complained about it, Milley didn’t understand the decision. How did it honor the dead to admit defeat in a conflict that had been waged on their behalf? Eventually, the Biden administration pushed the withdrawal deadline forward to August 31, an implicit concession that it had erred.
But the choice of September 11 was telling. Biden took pride in ending an unhappy chapter in American history. Democrats might have once referred to Afghanistan as the “good war,” but it had become a fruitless fight. It had distracted the United States from policies that might preserve the nation’s geostrategic dominance. By leaving Afghanistan, Biden believed he was redirecting the nation’s gaze to the future: “We’ll be much more formidable to our adversaries and competitors over the long term if we fight the battles for the next 20 years, not the last 20.”
August 6–9
In late June, Jake Sullivan began to worry that the Pentagon had pulled American personnel and materiel out of Afghanistan too precipitously. The rapid drawdown had allowed the Taliban to advance and to win a string of victories against the Afghan army that had caught the administration by surprise. Even if Taliban fighters weren’t firing at American troops, they were continuing to battle the Afghan army and take control of the countryside. Now they’d captured a provincial capital in the remote southwest—a victory that was disturbingly effortless.
Sullivan asked one of his top aides, Homeland Security Adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, to convene a meeting for Sunday, August 8, with officials overseeing the withdrawal. Contingency plans contained a switch that could be flipped in an emergency. To avoid a reprise of the fall of Saigon, with desperate hands clinging to the last choppers out of Vietnam, the government made plans for a noncombatant-evacuation operation, or NEO. The U.S. embassy would shut down and relocate to Hamid Karzai International Airport (or HKIA, as everyone called it). Troops, pre-positioned near the Persian Gulf and waiting at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, would descend on Kabul to protect the airport. Military transport planes would haul American citizens and visa holders out of the country.
By the time Sherwood-Randall had a chance to assemble the meeting, the most pessimistic expectations had been exceeded. The Taliban had captured four more provincial capitals. General Frank McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, filed a commander’s estimate warning that Kabul could be surrounded within about 30 days—a far faster collapse than previously predicted.
McKenzie’s dire warning did strangely little to alter plans. Sherwood-Randall’s group unanimously agreed that it was too soon to declare a NEO. The embassy in Kabul was particularly forceful on this point. The acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, wanted to avoid cultivating a sense of panic in Kabul, which would further collapse the army and the state. Even the CIA seconded this line of thinking.
August 12
At 2 a.m., Sullivan’s phone rang. It was Mark Milley. The military had received reports that the Taliban had entered the city of Ghazni, less than 100 miles from Kabul.
The intelligence community assumed that the Taliban wouldn’t storm Kabul until after the United States left, because the Taliban wanted to avoid a block‑by‑block battle for the city. But the proximity of the Taliban to the embassy and HKIA was terrifying. It necessitated the decisive action that the administration had thus far resisted. Milley wanted Sullivan to initiate a NEO. If the State Department wasn’t going to move quickly, the president needed to order it to. Sullivan assured him that he would push harder, but it would be two more days before the president officially declared a NEO.
With the passage of each hour, Sullivan’s anxieties grew. He called Lloyd Austin and told him, “I think you need to send someone with bars on his arm to Doha to talk to the Taliban so that they understand not to mess with an evacuation.” Austin agreed to dispatch General McKenzie to renew negotiations.
August 13
Austin convened a videoconference with the top civilian and military officials in Kabul. He wanted updates from them before he headed to the White House to brief the president.
Ross Wilson, the acting ambassador, told him, “I need 72 hours before I can begin destroying sensitive documents.”
“You have to be done in 72 hours,” Austin replied.
The Taliban were now perched outside Kabul. Delaying the evacuation of the embassy posed a danger that Austin couldn’t abide. Thousands of troops were about to arrive to protect the new makeshift facility that would be set up at the airport. The moment had come to move there.
Abandoning an embassy has its own protocols; they are rituals of panic. The diplomats had a weekend, more or less, to purge the place: to fill its shredders, burn bins, and disintegrator with documents and hard drives. Anything with an American flag on it needed destroying so it couldn’t be used by the enemy for propaganda purposes.
Wisps of smoke would soon begin to blow from the compound—a plume of what had been classified cables and personnel files. Even for those Afghans who didn’t have access to the internet, the narrative would be legible in the sky.
August 14
On Saturday night, Antony Blinken placed a call to Ashraf Ghani. He wanted to make sure the Afghan president remained committed to the negotiations in Doha. The Taliban delegation there was still prepared to agree to a unity government, which it might eventually run, allocating cabinet slots to ministers from Ghani’s government. That notion had broad support from the Afghan political elite. Everyone, even Ghani, agreed that he would need to resign as part of a deal. Blinken wanted to ensure that he wouldn’t waver from his commitments and try to hold on to power.
Although Ghani said that he would comply, he began musing aloud about what might happen if the Taliban invaded Kabul prior to August 31. He told Blinken, “I’d rather die than surrender.”
August 15
The next day, the presidential palace released a video of Ghani talking with security officials on the phone. As he sat at his imposing wooden desk, which once belonged to King Amanullah, who had bolted from the palace to avoid an Islamist uprising in 1929, Ghani’s aides hoped to project a sense of calm.
During the early hours, a small number of Taliban fighters eased their way to the gates of the city, and then into the capital itself. The Taliban leadership didn’t want to invade Kabul until after the American departure. But their soldiers had conquered territory without even firing a shot. In their path, Afghan soldiers simply walked away from checkpoints. Taliban units kept drifting in the direction of the presidential palace.
Rumors traveled more quickly than the invaders. A crowd formed outside a bank in central Kabul. Nervous customers jostled in a chaotic rush to empty their accounts. Guards fired into the air to disperse the melee. The sound of gunfire reverberated through the nearby palace, which had largely emptied for lunch. Ghani’s closest advisers pressed him to flee. “If you stay,” one told him, according to The Washington Post, “you’ll be killed.”
This was a fear rooted in history. In 1996, when the Taliban first invaded Kabul, they hanged the tortured body of the former president from a traffic light. Ghani hustled onto one of three Mi‑17 helicopters waiting inside his compound, bound for Uzbekistan. The New York Times Magazinelater reported that the helicopters were instructed to fly low to the terrain, to evade detection by the U.S. military. From Uzbekistan, he would fly to the United Arab Emirates and an ignominious exile. Without time to pack, he left in plastic sandals, accompanied by his wife. On the tarmac, aides and guards grappled over the choppers’ last remaining seats.
When the rest of Ghani’s staff returned from lunch, they moved through the palace searching for the president, unaware that he had abandoned them, and their country.
At approximately 1:45 p.m., Ambassador Wilson went to the embassy lobby for the ceremonial lowering of the flag. Emotionally drained and worried about his own safety, he prepared to leave the embassy behind, a monument to his nation’s defeat.
Wilson made his way to the helicopter pad so that he could be taken to his new outpost at the airport, where he was told that a trio of choppers had just left the presidential palace. Wilson knew what that likely meant. By the time he relayed his suspicions to Washington, officials already possessed intelligence that confirmed Wilson’s hunch: Ghani had fled.
Jake Sullivan relayed the news to Biden, who exploded in frustration: Give me a break.
Later that afternoon, General McKenzie arrived at the Ritz-Carlton in Doha. Well before Ghani’s departure from power, the wizened Marine had scheduled a meeting with an old adversary of the United States, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.
Baradar wasn’t just any Taliban leader. He was a co-founder of the group, with Mullah Mohammed Omar. McKenzie had arrived with the intention of delivering a stern warning. He barely had time to tweak his agenda after learning of Ghani’s exit.
McKenzie unfolded a map of Afghanistan translated into Pashto. A circle had been drawn around the center of Kabul—a radius of about 25 kilometers—and he pointed to it. He referred to this area as the “ring of death.” If the Taliban operated within those 25 kilometers, McKenzie said, “we’re going to assume hostile intent, and we’ll strike hard.”
McKenzie tried to bolster his threat with logic. He said he didn’t want to end up in a firefight with the Taliban, and that would be a lot less likely to happen if they weren’t in the city.
Baradar not only understood; he agreed. Known as a daring military tactician, he was also a pragmatist. He wanted to transform his group’s inhospitable image; he hoped that foreign embassies, even the American one, would remain in Kabul. Baradar didn’t want a Taliban government to become a pariah state, starved of foreign assistance that it badly needed.
But the McKenzie plan had an elemental problem: It was too late. Taliban fighters were already operating within the ring of death. Kabul was on the brink of anarchy. Armed criminal gangs were already starting to roam the streets. Baradar asked the general, “Are you going to take responsibility for the security of Kabul?”
McKenzie replied that his orders were to run an evacuation. Whatever happens to the security situation in Kabul, he told Baradar, don’t mess with the evacuation, or there will be hell to pay. It was an evasive answer. The United States didn’t have the troops or the will to secure Kabul. McKenzie had no choice but to implicitly cede that job to the Taliban.
Baradar walked toward a window. Because he didn’t speak English, he wanted his adviser to confirm his understanding. “Is he saying that he won’t attack us if we go in?” His adviser told him that he had heard correctly.
As the meeting wrapped up, McKenzie realized that the United States would need to be in constant communication with the Taliban. They were about to be rubbing shoulders with each other in a dense city. Misunderstandings were inevitable. Both sides agreed that they would designate a representative in Kabul to talk through the many complexities so that the old enemies could muddle together toward a common purpose.
Soon after McKenzie and Baradar ended their meeting, Al Jazeera carried a live feed from the presidential palace, showing the Taliban as they went from room to room, in awe of the building, seemingly bemused by their own accomplishment.
August 15: Taliban fighters take control of the presidential palace in Kabul. (Associated Press)
They gathered in Ghani’s old office, where a book of poems remained on his desk, across from a box of Kleenex. A Talib sat in the president’s Herman Miller chair. His comrades stood behind him in a tableau, cloth draped over the shoulders of their tunics, guns resting in the crooks of their arms, as if posing for an official portrait.
August 16
The U.S. embassy, now relocated to the airport, became a magnet for humanity. The extent of Afghan desperation shocked officials back in Washington. Only amid the panicked exodus did top officials at the State Department realize that hundreds of thousands of Afghans had fled their homes as civil war swept through the countryside—and made their way to the capital.
The runway divided the airport into halves. A northern sector served as a military outpost and, after the relocation of the embassy, a consular office—the last remaining vestiges of the United States and its promise of liberation. A commercial airport stared at these barracks from across the strip of asphalt.
The commercial facility had been abandoned by the Afghans who worked there. The night shift of air-traffic controllers simply never arrived. The U.S. troops whom Austin had ordered to support the evacuation were only just arriving. So the terminal was overwhelmed. Afghans began to spill onto the tarmac itself.
The crowds arrived in waves. The previous day, Afghans had flooded the tarmac late in the day, then left when they realized that no flights would depart that evening. But in the morning, the compound still wasn’t secure, and it refilled.
In the chaos, it wasn’t entirely clear to Ambassador Wilson who controlled the compound. The Taliban began freely roaming the facility, wielding bludgeons, trying to secure the mob. Apparently, they were working alongside soldiers from the old Afghan army. Wilson received worrying reports of tensions between the two forces.
The imperative was to begin landing transport planes with equipment and soldiers. A C‑17, a warehouse with wings, full of supplies to support the arriving troops, managed to touch down. The crew lowered a ramp to unload the contents of the jet’s belly, but the plane was rushed by a surge of civilians. The Americans on board were no less anxious than the Afghans who greeted them. Almost as quickly as the plane’s back ramp lowered, the crew reboarded and resealed the jet’s entrances. They received permission to flee the uncontrolled scene.
But they could not escape the crowd, for whom the jet was a last chance to avoid the Taliban and the suffering to come. As the plane began to taxi, about a dozen Afghans climbed onto one side of the jet. Others sought to stow away in the wheel well that housed its bulging landing gear. To clear the runway of human traffic, Humvees began rushing alongside the plane. Two Apache helicopters flew just above the ground, to give the Afghans a good scare and to blast the civilians from the plane with rotor wash.
Only after the plane had lifted into the air did the crew discover its place in history. When the pilot couldn’t fully retract the landing gear, a member of the crew went to investigate, staring out of a small porthole. Through the window, it was possible to see scattered human remains.
Videos taken from the tarmac instantly went viral. They showed a dentist from Kabul plunging to the ground from the elevating jet. The footage evoked the photo of a man falling to his death from an upper story of the World Trade Center—images of plummeting bodies bracketing an era.
Over the weekend, Biden had received briefings about the chaos in Kabul in a secure conference room at Camp David. Photographs distributed to the press showed him alone, talking to screens, isolated in his contrarian faith in the righteousness of his decision. Despite the fiasco at the airport, he returned to the White House, stood in the East Room, and proclaimed: “If anything, the developments of the past week reinforced that ending U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan now was the right decision. American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves.”
August 17
John Bass was having a hard time keeping his mind on the task at hand. From 2017 to 2020, he had served as Washington’s ambassador to Afghanistan. During that tour, Bass did his best to immerse himself in the country and meet its people. He’d planted a garden with a group of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and hosted roundtables with journalists. When his term as ambassador ended, he left behind friends, colleagues, and hundreds of acquaintances.
Now Bass kept his eyes on his phone, checking for any word from his old Afghan network. He moved through his day dreading what might come next.
Yet he also had a job that required his attention. The State Department had assigned him to train future ambassadors. In a seminar room in suburban Virginia, he did his best to focus on passing along wisdom to these soon‑to‑be emissaries of the United States.
As class was beginning, his phone lit up. Bass saw the number of the State Department Operations Center. He apologized and stepped out to take the call.
“Are you available to talk to Deputy Secretary Sherman?”
The familiar voice of Wendy Sherman, the No. 2 at the department, came on the line. “I have a mission for you. You must take it, and you need to leave today.” Sherman then told him: “I’m calling to ask you to go back to Kabul to lead the evacuation effort.”
Ambassador Wilson was shattered by the experience of the past week and wasn’t “able to function at the level that was necessary” to complete the job on his own. Sherman needed Bass to help manage the exodus.
Bass hadn’t expected the request. In his flummoxed state, he struggled to pose the questions he thought he might later regret not having asked.
“How much time do we have?”
“Probably about two weeks, a little less than two weeks.”
“I’ve been away from this for 18 months or so.”
“Yep, we know, but we think you’re the right person for this.”
Bass returned to class and scooped up his belongings. “With apologies, I’m going to have to take my leave. I’ve just been asked to go back to Kabul and support the evacuations. So I’ve got to say goodbye and wish you all the best, and you’re all going to be great ambassadors.”
Because he wasn’t living in Washington, Bass didn’t have the necessary gear with him. He drove straight to the nearest REI in search of hiking pants and rugged boots. He needed to pick up a laptop from the IT department in Foggy Bottom. Without knowing much more than what was in the news, Bass rushed to board a plane taking him to the worst crisis in the recent history of American foreign policy.
August 19–25
About 30 hours later—3:30 a.m., Kabul time—Bass touched down at HKIA and immediately began touring the compound. At the American headquarters, he ran into the military heads of the operation, whom he had worked with before. They presented Bass with the state of play. The situation was undeniably bizarre: The success of the American operation now depended largely on the cooperation of the Taliban.
The Americans needed the Taliban to help control the crowds that had formed outside the airport—and to implement systems that would allow passport and visa holders to pass through the throngs. But the Taliban were imperfect allies at best. Their checkpoints were run by warriors from the countryside who didn’t know how to deal with the array of documents being waved in their faces. What was an authentic visa? What about families where the father had a U.S. passport but his wife and children didn’t? Every day, a new set of Taliban soldiers seemed to arrive at checkpoints, unaware of the previous day’s directions. Frustrated with the unruliness, the Taliban would sometimes simply stop letting anyone through.
August 24: Afghan families hoping to flee the country arrive at Hamid Karzai International Airport at dawn. (Jim Huylebroek)
Abdul Ghani Baradar’s delegation in Doha had passed along the name of a Taliban commander in Kabul—Mawlawi Hamdullah Mukhlis. It had fallen to Major General Chris Donahue, the head of the 82nd Airborne Division, out of Fort Bragg, to coordinate with him. On September 11, 2001, Donahue had been an aide to the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Richard Myers, and had been with him on Capitol Hill when the first plane struck the World Trade Center.
Donahue told Pentagon officials that he had to grit his teeth as he dealt with Mukhlis. But the Taliban commander seemed to feel a camaraderie with his fellow soldier. He confided to Donahue his worry that Afghanistan would suffer from brain drain, as the country’s most talented minds evacuated on American airplanes.
In a videoconference with Mark Milley, back at the Pentagon, Donahue recounted Mukhlis’s fears. According to one Defense Department official in the meeting, his description caused Milley to laugh.
“Don’t be going local on me, Donahue,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me, sir,” Donahue responded. “I’m not buying what they are selling.”
After Bass left his meeting with the military men, including Donahue, he toured the gates of the airport, where Afghans had amassed. He was greeted by the smell of feces and urine, by the sound of gunshots and bullhorns blaring instructions in Dari and Pashto. Dust assaulted his eyes and nose. He felt the heat that emanated from human bodies crowded into narrow spaces.
The atmosphere was tense. Marines and consular officers, some of whom had flown into Kabul from other embassies, were trying to pull passport and visa holders from the crowd. But every time they waded into it, they seemed to provoke a furious reaction. To get plucked from the street by the Americans smacked of cosmic unfairness to those left behind. Sometimes the anger swelled beyond control, so the troops shut down entrances to allow frustrations to subside. Bass was staring at despair in its rawest form. As he studied the people surrounding the airport, he wondered if he could ever make any of this a bit less terrible.
Bass cadged a room in barracks belonging to the Turkish army, which had agreed, before the chaos had descended, to operate and protect the airport after the Americans finally departed. His days tended to follow a pattern. They would begin with the Taliban’s grudging assistance. Then, as lunchtime approached, the Talibs would get hot and hungry. Abruptly, they would stop processing evacuees through their checkpoints. Then, just as suddenly, at six or seven, as the sun began to set, they would begin to cooperate again.
Bass was forever hatching fresh schemes to satisfy the Taliban’s fickle requirements. One day, the Taliban would let buses through without question; the next, they would demand to see passenger manifests in advance. Bass’s staff created official-looking placards to place in bus windows. The Taliban waved them through for a short period, then declared the placard system unreliable.
Throughout the day, Bass would stop what he was doing and join videoconferences with Washington. He became a fixture in the Situation Room. Biden would pepper him with ideas for squeezing more evacuees through the gates. The president’s instinct was to throw himself into the intricacies of troubleshooting. Why don’t we have them meet in parking lots? Can’t we leave the airport and pick them up? Bass would kick around Biden’s proposed solutions with colleagues to determine their plausibility, which was usually low. Still, he appreciated Biden applying pressure, making sure that he didn’t overlook the obvious.
At the end of his first day at the airport, Bass went through his email. A State Department spokesperson had announced Bass’s arrival in Kabul. Friends and colleagues had deluged him with requests to save Afghans. Bass began to scrawl the names from his inbox on a whiteboard in his office. By the time he finished, he’d filled the six-foot‑by‑four-foot surface. He knew there was little chance that he could help. The orders from Washington couldn’t have been clearer. The primary objective was to load planes with U.S. citizens, U.S.-visa holders, and passport holders from partner nations, mostly European ones.
In his mind, Bass kept another running list, of Afghans he had come to know personally during his time as ambassador who were beyond his ability to rescue. Their faces and voices were etched in his memory, and he could be sure that, at some point when he wasn’t rushing to fill C‑17s, they would haunt his sleep.
“Someone on the bus is dying.”
Jake Sullivan was unnerved. What to do with such a dire message from a trusted friend? It described a caravan of five blue-and-white buses stuck 100 yards outside the south gate of the airport, one of them carrying a human being struggling for life. If Sullivan forwarded this problem to an aide, would it get resolved in time?
Sullivan sometimes felt as if every member of the American elite was simultaneously asking for his help. When he left secure rooms, he would grab his phone and check his personal email accounts, which overflowed with pleas. This person just had the Taliban threaten them. They will be shot in 15 hours if you don’t get them out. Some of the senders seemed to be trying to shame him into action. If you don’t do something, their death is on your hands.
Throughout late August, the president himself was fielding requests to help stranded Afghans, from friends and members of Congress. Biden became invested in individual cases. Three buses of women at the Kabul Serena Hotel kept running into logistical obstacles. He told Sullivan, “I want to know what happens to them. I want to know when they make it to the airport.” When the president heard these stories, he would become engrossed in solving the practical challenge of getting people to the airport, mapping routes through the city.
When Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, went to check in with members of a task force working on the evacuation, she found grizzled diplomats in tears. She estimated that a quarter of the State Department’s personnel had served in Afghanistan. They felt a connection with the country, an emotional entanglement. Fielding an overwhelming volume of emails describing hardship cases, they easily imagined the faces of refugees. They felt the shame and anger that come with the inability to help. To deal with the trauma, the State Department procured therapy dogs that might ease the staff’s pain.
The State Department redirected the attention of its sprawling apparatus to Afghanistan. Embassies in Mexico City and New Delhi became call centers. Staff in those distant capitals assumed the role of caseworkers, assigned to stay in touch with the remaining American citizens in Afghanistan, counseling them through the terrifying weeks.
Sherman dispatched her Afghan-born chief of staff, Mustafa Popal, to HKIA to support embassy workers and serve as an interpreter. All day long, Sherman responded to pleas for help: from foreign governments’ representatives, who joined a daily videoconference she hosted; from members of Congress; from the cellist Yo‑Yo Ma, writing on behalf of musicians. Amid the crush, she felt compelled to go down to the first floor, to spend 15 minutes cuddling the therapy dogs.
The Biden administration hadn’t intended to conduct a full-blown humanitarian evacuation of Afghanistan. It had imagined an orderly and efficient exodus that would extend past August 31, as visa holders boarded commercial flights from the country. As those plans collapsed, the president felt the same swirl of emotions as everyone else watching the desperation at the airport. Over the decades, he had thought about Afghanistan using the cold logic of realism—it was a strategic distraction, a project whose costs outweighed the benefits. Despite his many visits, the country had become an abstraction in his mind. But the graphic suffering in Kabul awakened in him a compassion that he’d never evinced in the debates about the withdrawal.
After seeing the abject desperation on the HKIA tarmac, the president had told the Situation Room that he wanted all the planes flying thousands of troops into the airport to leave filled with evacuees. Pilots should pile American citizens and Afghans with visas into those planes. But there was a category of evacuees that he now especially wanted to help, what the government called “Afghans at risk.” These were the newspaper reporters, the schoolteachers, the filmmakers, the lawyers, the members of a girls’ robotics team who didn’t necessarily have paperwork but did have every reason to fear for their well-being in a Taliban-controlled country.
This was a different sort of mission. The State Department hadn’t vetted all of the Afghans at risk. It didn’t know if they were genuinely endangered or simply strivers looking for a better life. It didn’t know if they would have qualified for the visas that the administration said it issued to those who worked with the Americans, or if they were petty criminals. But if they were in the right place at the right time, they were herded up the ramp of C‑17s.
In anticipation of an evacuation, the United States had built housing at Camp As Sayliyah, a U.S. Army base in the suburbs of Doha. It could hold 8,000 people, housing them as the Department of Homeland Security collected their biometric data and began to vet them for immigration. But it quickly became clear that the United States would fly far more than 8,000 Afghans to Qatar.
As the numbers swelled, the United States set up tents at Al Udeid Air Base, a bus ride away from As Sayliyah. Nearly 15,000 Afghans took up residence there, but their quarters were poorly planned. There weren’t nearly enough toilets or showers. Procuring lunch meant standing in line for three or four hours. Single men slept in cots opposite married women, a transgression of Afghan traditions.
The Qataris, determined to use the crisis to burnish their reputation, erected a small city of air-conditioned wedding tents and began to cater meals for the refugees. But the Biden administration knew that the number of evacuees would soon exceed Qatar’s capacity. It needed to erect a network of camps. What it created was something like the hub-and-spoke system used by commercial airlines. Refugees would fly into Al Udeid and then be redirected to bases across the Middle East and Europe, what the administration termed “lily pads.”
In September, just as refugees were beginning to arrive at Dulles International Airport, outside Washington, D.C., four Afghan evacuees caught the measles. All the refugees in the Middle East and Europe now needed vaccinations, which would require 21 days for immunity to take hold. To keep disease from flying into the United States, the State Department called around the world, asking if Afghans could stay on bases for three extra weeks.
In the end, the U.S. government housed more than 60,000 Afghans in facilities that hadn’t existed before the fall of Kabul. It flew 387 sorties from HKIA. At the height of the operation, an aircraft took off every 45 minutes. A terrible failure of planning necessitated a mad scramble—a mad scramble that was an impressive display of creative determination.
Even as the administration pulled off this feat of logistics, it was pilloried for the clumsiness of the withdrawal. The New York Times’ David Sanger had written, “After seven months in which his administration seemed to exude much-needed competence—getting more than 70 percent of the country’s adults vaccinated, engineering surging job growth and making progress toward a bipartisan infrastructure bill—everything about America’s last days in Afghanistan shattered the imagery.”
Biden didn’t have time to voraciously consume the news, but he was well aware of the coverage, and it infuriated him. It did little to change his mind, though. In the caricature version of Joe Biden that had persisted for decades, he was highly sensitive to shifts in opinion, especially when they emerged from columnists at the Post or the Times. The criticism of the withdrawal caused him to justify the chaos as the inevitable consequence of a difficult decision, even though he had never publicly, or privately, predicted it. Through the whole last decade of the Afghan War, he had detested the conventional wisdom of the foreign-policy elites. They were willing to stay forever, no matter the cost. After defying their delusional promises of progress for so long, he wasn’t going to back down now. In fact, everything he’d witnessed from his seat in the Situation Room confirmed his belief that exiting a war without hope was the best and only course.
So much of the commentary felt overheated to him. He said to an aide: Either the press is losing its mind, or I am.
August 26
Every intelligence official watching Kabul was obsessed with the possibility of an attack by ISIS-Khorasan, or ISIS‑K, the Afghan offshoot of the Islamic State, which dreamed of a new caliphate in Central Asia. As the Taliban stormed across Afghanistan, they unlocked a prison at Bagram Air Base, freeing hardened ISIS‑K adherents. ISIS‑K had been founded by veterans of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban who had broken with their groups, on the grounds that they needed to be replaced by an even more militant vanguard. The intelligence community had been sorting through a roaring river of unmistakable warnings about an imminent assault on the airport.
As the national-security team entered the Situation Room for a morning meeting, it consumed an early, sketchy report of an explosion at one of the gates to HKIA, but it was hard to know if there were any U.S. casualties. Everyone wanted to believe that the United States had escaped unscathed, but everyone had too much experience to believe that. General McKenzie appeared via videoconference in the Situation Room with updates that confirmed the room’s suspicions of American deaths. Biden hung his head and quietly absorbed the reports. In the end, the explosion killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 150 Afghan civilians.
August 29–30
The remains ofthe dead service members were flown to Dover Air Force Base, in Delaware, for a ritual known as the dignified transfer: Flag-draped caskets are marched down the gangway of a transport plane and driven to the base’s mortuary.
So much about the withdrawal had slipped beyond Biden’s control. But grieving was his expertise. If there was one thing that everyone agreed Biden did more adroitly than any other public official, it was comforting survivors. The Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole once called him “the Designated Mourner.”
August 29: President Biden watches as the remains of a Marine killed in the attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport are returned to Dover Air Force Base. (Associated Press)
Accompanied by his wife, Jill; Mark Milley; Antony Blinken; and Lloyd Austin, Biden made his way to a private room where grieving families had gathered. He knew he would be standing face to face with unbridled anger. A father had already turned his back on Austin and was angrily shouting at Milley, who held up his hands in the posture of surrender.
When Biden entered, he shook the hand of Mark Schmitz, who had lost his 20-year-old son, Jared. In his sorrow, Schmitz couldn’t decide whether he wanted to sit in the presence of the president. According to a report in TheWashingtonPost, the night before, he had told a military officer that he didn’t want to speak to the man whose incompetence he blamed for his son’s death. In the morning, he changed his mind.
Schmitz told the Post that he couldn’t help but glare in Biden’s direction. When Biden approached, he held out a photo of Jared. “Don’t you ever forget that name. Don’t you ever forget that face. Don’t you ever forget the names of the other 12. And take some time to learn their stories.”
“I do know their stories,” Biden replied.
After the dignified transfer, the families piled onto a bus. A sister of one of the dead screamed in Biden’s direction: “I hope you burn in hell.”
Of all the moments in August, this was the one that caused the president to second-guess himself. He asked Press Secretary Jen Psaki: Did I do something wrong? Maybe I should have handled that differently.
As Biden left, Milley saw the pain on the president’s face. He told him: “You made a decision that had to be made. War is a brutal, vicious undertaking. We’re moving forward to the next step.”
That afternoon, Bidenreturned to the Situation Room. There was pressure, from the Hill and talking heads, to push back the August 31 deadline. But everyone in the room was terrified by the intelligence assessments about ISIS‑K. If the U.S. stayed, it would be hard to avoid the arrival of more caskets at Dover.
As Biden discussed the evacuation, he received a note, which he passed to Milley. According to a White House official present in the room, the general read it aloud: “If you want to catch the 5:30 Mass, you have to leave now.” He turned to the president. “My mother always said it’s okay to miss Mass if you’re doing something important. And I would argue that this is important.” He paused, realizing that the president might need a moment after his bruising day. “This is probably also a time when we need prayers.”
Biden gathered himself to leave. As he stood from his chair, he told the group, “I will be praying for all of you.”
On the morning of the 30th, John Bass was cleaning out his office. An alarm sounded, and he rushed for cover. A rocket flew over the airport from the west and a second crashed into the compound, without inflicting damage.
Bass, ever the stoic, turned to a colleague. “Well, that’s about the only thing that hasn’t happened so far.” He was worried that the rockets weren’t a parting gift, but a prelude to an attack.
Earlier that morning, though, Bass had implored Major General Donahue to delay the departure. He’d asked his military colleagues to remain at the outer access points, because there were reports of American citizens still making their way to them.
Donahue was willing to give Bass a few extra hours. And around 3 a.m., 60 more American-passport holders arrived at the airport. Then, as if anticipating a final burst of American generosity toward refugees, the Taliban opened their checkpoints. A flood of Afghans rushed toward the airport. Bass sent consular officers to stand at the perimeter of concertina wire, next to the paratroopers, scanning for passports, visas, any official-looking document.
An officer caught a glimpse of an Afghan woman in her 20s waving a printout showing that she had received permission to enter the U.S. “Wow. You won the lottery twice,” he told her. “You’re the visa-lottery winner and you’ve made it here in time.” She was one of the final evacuees hustled into the airport.
Around 7 a.m., the last remaining State Department officials in Kabul, including Bass, posed for a photo and then walked up the ramp of a C-17. As Bass prepared for takeoff, he thought about two numbers. In total, the United States had evacuated about 124,000 people, which the White House touted as the most successful airlift in history. Bass also thought about the unknown number of Afghans he had failed to get out. He thought about the friends he couldn’t extricate. He thought about the last time he’d flown out of Kabul, 18 months earlier, and how he had harbored a sense of optimism for the country then. A hopefulness that now felt as remote as the Hindu Kush.
August 31: President Biden delivers remarks on the end of the war in Afghanistan. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty)
In a command center in the Pentagon’s basement, Lloyd Austin and Mark Milley followed events at the airport through a video feed provided by a drone, the footage filtered through the hazy shades of a night-vision lens. They watched in silence as Donahue, the last American soldier on the ground in Afghanistan, boarded the last C-17 to depart HKIA.
Five C‑17s sat on the runway—carrying “chalk,” as the military refers to the cargo of troops. An officer in the command center narrated the procession for them. “Chalk 1 loaded … Chalk 2 taxiing.”
As the planes departed, there was no applause, no hand-shaking. A murmur returned to the room. Austin and Milley watched the great military project of their generation—a war that had cost the lives of comrades, that had taken them away from their families—end without remark. They stood without ceremony and returned to their offices.
Across the Potomac River, Biden sat with Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken, revising a speech he would deliver the next day. One of Sullivan’s aides passed him a note, which he read to the group: “Chalk 1 in the air.” A few minutes later, the aide returned with an update. All of the planes were safely away.
Some critics had clamored for Biden to fire the advisers who had failed to plan for the chaos at HKIA, to make a sacrificial offering in the spirit of self-abasement. But Biden never deflected blame onto staff. In fact, he privately expressed gratitude to them. And with the last plane in the air, he wanted Blinken and Sullivan to join him in the private dining room next to the Oval Office as he called Austin to thank him. The secretary of defense hadn’t agreed with Biden’s withdrawal plan, but he’d implemented it in the spirit of a good soldier.
America’s longest war was now finally and officially over. Each man looked exhausted. Sullivan hadn’t slept for more than two hours a night over the course of the evacuation. Biden aides sensed that he hadn’t rested much better. Nobody needed to mention how the trauma and political scars might never go away, how the month of August had imperiled a presidency. Before returning to the Oval Office, they spent a moment together, lingering in the melancholy.
