There's No Such Thing as a One Dimensional Life

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March is Women’s History Month, so this month I’ll be focusing on themes relating to women in the workplace, at school, at home, and of course among our peers. Let’s honor one another today and always!

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PREJUDICE? WHO? ME?

You know me. I’ve always got a book in my hand, and this week, I just finished Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg. Tucked among all the interesting research and anecdotes was a little tidbit about women that got me thinking. Because he was talking about identity, I was intrigued. You see, identity is a buzzword in the Christian community, and I’ve always felt it’s been a bit overused. (Like, GAH, talk to me about something else besides identity already!)

But here goes….

In a 2005 study at Texas Christian University, a researcher told a group of male and female students that he was studying GRE performance. The lead researcher told the students that he was studying this because of the well-known theory that men typically outperform women on these tests. (He said this on purpose to ensure that the stereotype would be at the forefront of the students’ minds while they took the test. )

Then the researchers divided the students into three groups.

• Group #1: Went to a room and took the test with no further instructions.

• Group #2: Were told to think about their identity in a general way and were given an example that showed a bubble chart with the word “ME” in the middle and then three or four branching bubbles that included words like “student,” “sister, “ and “employee.”

• Group #3: Were also told to think about their identity, but to use as many branching bubbles as they could muster. This group saw an example that included the words listed above but additional descriptors like “advice giver,” “animal lover,” and “dean’s list.”

The researchers wanted to see if the stereotype threat could be mitigated by reminding individual women of their multiples roles and identities.

WHAT I LEARNED

I didn’t think this would be such a big deal, but even women who are high achievers in the area of math often score twenty points BELOW men in tests where ability is measured. Specifically, they do worse on timed assignments. They run out of time because they’re subconsciously thinking, “I need to double-check. I need to be careful.” Anxiety and distraction slow them down.

So you can probably guess what happened in the experiment I just described. The women who were not told to think about their multiple identities or who were only asked to describe themselves in a very basic way, scored lower than those women who were given ample time to think about and write down their various identities, the clubs they belonged to, the offices they held, their roles in their families, sororities, and sports teams. In fact, the women who internalized their identity scored the same as the men!

According to Duhigg, “the existence of the stereotype generated just enough anxiety and distraction to slow the women down, which resulted in lower test scores,”—twenty points is a big deal!

THE MULTITUDES

I share this story because even though most of the women reading this blog will probably never take another college entrance exam, you will encounter situations where you may perceive yourself as the underdog. And maybe that’s because you’ve spent a couple of decades raising kids at home and now you’re ready to enter a different kind of workforce. Maybe you’ve been asked to join a board and you feel unqualified or unprepared. Maybe you’re leading a volunteer team that’s composed primarily of men who think they have all the answers.

Negative self talk loses its force when we as women think about who we are in as many categories as possible. We can render powerless all those voices telling us we’re not smart enough or good enough if we just remember that we contain multitudes. Our identities are not so one-dimensional.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll never forget meeting a new friend after my oldest daughter was born. We introduced ourselves, and then she asked, “So are you just a mom?” Of course, all I heard was that little qualifier..JUST…JUST…JUST….

You’re not a JUST anything, and neither am I. We contain multitudes, and that’s a good thing because that means we can connect with people on so many levels. Remembering that we are more than what we seem and that others are too (and this is key) is a valuable tool for empathy, understanding, connection, and progress in both work and relationships.

Of course, as a Christian, I would be remiss if I didn’t also say that while remembering who we are is important, remembering WHOSE we are is paramount. Any one component of our identity is actually pretty fragile. Your position at work, your role at home, your status in your community—all those things can change in an instant. Even so, my friend, we shall be forevermore children of God. You can take great comfort in knowing that.

For more reflections on identity, read this and this.

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The Friendship Equation

Anything worth doing takes time.

That’s what they say, anyway.

You know this is true. There’s no such thing as a get-rich-quick-scheme that works. And diets that promise quick weight loss often backfire in time.

This is true of relationships, too.

Psychologists Julie and John Gottman are considered the foremost leaders on love and relationships. Dr. John Gottman is known as the “guy that can predict divorce with over 90% accuracy.” So when he talks about relationships, people tend to listen. One of his biggest lessons: The Magic Six Hours. He maintains that couples need about six hours of quality time together per week to ensure a lasting and healthy relationship.

This is good news for Gavin and me because we literally grew up on the “six hours a week” rule, as that was the number of hours my parents allowed me to spend with my boyfriend when I was in high school. Little did they know back then that those hours would become the bedrock of our happy and intentional marriage.

Six hours a week might be okay for two spouses, but most of us don’t have that kind of time to invest in other relationships that are important to us.

Turns out, we need just eight minutes to keep those relationships in tip-top shape.

You read that right. Eight minutes.

The Eight Minute Rule

Sounds too good to be true, right?

When my friend, Heidi, shared this information with me, I was skeptical. “Just eight minutes? A week? “

But she persisted. “It’s true,” she said.

And I did find corroborating evidence at the New York Times to validate her claim.

Sometimes I think we put off investing in friendships altogether because we simply can’t find an hour to block off for lunch or a night out. Factor in the time it takes to travel to your destination plus the added logistics of securing childcare and ensuring that everyone at home has what they need, and it just seems easier not to go anywhere at all.

But this isn’t healthy or advisable.

With a little advance planning, even our busiest seasons don’t have to be filled with loneliness.

I think we can all find eight minutes at some point during the week. That might be a hands-free call while you’re putting on makeup in the morning, prepping dinner, or sitting in the carpool line. I discovered that the trip from my house to my daughter’s school is exactly eight minutes, and I often use that time to send a Marco Polo to my friend, Melanie, or my sister-in-law, Stacee.

If you’re not familiar with Marco Polo, it’s a social networking app that allows you to send a video message to to your intended recipient. While it’s technically a one-way conversation, the beauty of this method of connecting is that my friend can listen to the message and then respond at her convenience. Trust me when I say that I am up-to-date on the latest happenings in both Stacee and Melanie’s lives. That we no longer live in the same town or have kids the same ages is irrelevant. No more excuses. I talk when I have time, and my friends listen when they have time. To be sure, we send and receive messages almost everyday because Marco Polo is both easy and convenient.

The New York Times article quotes heavily from Dr. Bob Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of the book The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. He said that most busy people tend to think that in some unspecified future, they’ll have a “time surplus,” where they will be able to connect with old friends. Turns out, that time surplus rarely pans out.

He’s not wrong.

As we built our family and the kids got older, I too, thought I would have more time, but life gets in the way, and bigger kids have bigger problems. Their relationship drama, school pressure, and diverse extracurricular activities spill over into a sphere that overlaps mine.

It’s no secret that having a few close friends imbibes us with a sense of belonging and purpose. But did you also know that benefits include boosts to our self confidence and a reduction in stress? The Mayo Clinic says that friendship supports good lifestyle habits, like exercise and healthy eating. If all it takes is eight minutes a week to reap all these benefits and more, what are you waiting for?

In just eight minutes, you can microwave a baked potato, listen to a couple of songs you love, run a mile, take a shower, or…simply call a friend. So go ahead. Call the friend. (But I would recommend finding time to take that shower, too!)

And remember, no one is limiting your time together to just eight minutes. In these busy seasons, though, agreeing to spend eight minutes connecting with someone you care about doesn’t seem like such a huge sacrifice. I believe that friendship is worth it.

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How to be More Memorable: An Easy Trick

Some of you know that I majored in Biology in college. Although I don’t work in a lab or a hospital, I still find ways to incorporate science into my everyday life.

But first, a story:

When I was in the fifth grade, our English class partnered with an English class in North Dakota to embark on a year-long writing assignment: Mandatory penpals. Back then, I was an avid letter writer, and I couldn’t wait to make a new friend across the country. As the teacher flicked through the first stack of letters, she paused.

“Chantel, there’s a girl here with your name!”

And suddenly, instead of feeling different and weird, (like most pre-teens), I discovered somebody else in the world who had something uniquely in common with me—my name!

That tiny connection opened a door that turned into years of authentic correspondence, and ultimately a long-distance friendship.

As I’ve gotten older and my circle of influence has expanded, I’ve met more and more people who share my name. Unfortunately, I don’t get quite the same thrill as I did that very first time back in 1985.

Most of my introductions happen because somebody I already know wants to introduce me to somebody they know. “Hey, we have the same name!” might elicit nothing more than a fist bump. I have to work harder to turn random connections into real friendships.

But I’m a sucker for tips, tricks, and hacks that make life easier.

So what if I told you there was a trick to help you connect with people you’ve just met? You would want that trick, wouldn’t you?

I learned this one from watching reruns of 30 Rock, and you’ll be interested to know that it has its roots in psycho-biological behavior science.

Here goes:

When someone introduces you to someone else and the potential new friend responds with “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

You can say, “It’s all true. I AM a caesar salad enthusiast, and I DO own more than twenty different professional soccer team jerseys.” (That’s my son Aaron)

But mine would be: “It’s all true. I DO believe chocolate is its own food group, and I HAVE been building a rubber band ball since 1996.”

It’s sort of a variation of that ice-breaker game called Two Truths and a Lie, except in this case you do the icebreaker without anyone even telling you to do it, and the things you say are ALL true.

Hopefully, the two fun facts you share about yourself will prompt another question from the curious bystander. If you’re lucky, they may share two things about themselves. It’s not foolproof, but it is unexpected.

And if there’s anything I know about the human brain, it’s that it craves the unexpected.

Novelty makes things interesting, which ensures that information gets remembered. And don’t we all want to be MEMORABLE?

I’m an introvert, and I used to worry that since I wasn’t the loudest or the funniest one in the room, no one would want to talk to me, let alone remember me after the party ended.

But being remembered has nothing to do with being loud or funny and everything to do with being unpredictable.

The brain is always searching for new connections. It’s how we learn. Researchers have found that novelty causes a number of brain systems to become activated, and foremost among these is the dopamine system.

What Dopamine Does

Dopamine signals your brain to give it more of what it craves. When you encounter a novel or unexpected experience, your brain releases dopamine, and that feels good. Breaking the cycle encourages associative learning. That means, when you hear “I’ve heard a lot about you” you shouldn’t say, “I hope it’s all been good,” or “Nice” or something else that’s part of our natural social script. Say something the person isn’t expecting! That’s how we become more interesting and make others more interested in us.

Another interesting fact about dopamine is that nearly every drug that people abuse has an effect on the dopamine system (as do chocolate, money, sex, and many other addictive things). Again, the role of dopamine is not in the pleasure that one may get from the drug, but in establishing the craving that keeps one coming back for more, even after the drug has lost its pleasurable effects.

This cycle of motivation-reward-and-reinforcement encourages associative learning. Everyone has something beautiful to contribute to the world, and there’s an easy way to ensure you actually get to share that wonderful self. Keep people on their toes by flipping the script. Whenever you are introduced to someone new, say something unexpected, and chances are the person who normally moans, “I’m terrible with names!” won’t have a chance to say that about you.

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