If You Can't Say Anything Nice

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If you can’t say anything nice…..

You know how this sentence ends, don’t you?

If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.

I don’t know how it happened, but my husband and I noticed recently that we can be really critical of people. Of course, if Gavin were reading this post, he would temper that statement with something akin not to criticism, but evaluation.

We like to evaluate, Chantel. That’s what we do. We evaluate to make things better. At least that is the story we’re telling ourselves.

Call it what you will, but when it comes right down to it, we find ourselves just not being very nice.

If it’s just he and I talking privately, that’s okay, right?

Well, no. Not exactly.

Our kids take their cues from us. How they communicate is a reflection of how we communicate.

OUCH.

Before I had kids, I didn’t really think about the example I set for other people. Once my first daughter was born, however, I became hyper-vigilant about a great many things that never bothered me before. For example, I noticed what kind of music I played, what I watched on TV, and of course what kind of toys and books I allowed in our home.

Years have passed. Decades. I’m not as careful as I used to be. I’ve been thinking about this lately with parenting. As a young mom, my front row seat (and a playroom adjacent to the family room) afforded me the opportunity and authority to dictate a lot of choices before my kids made bad ones. If they wanted to phone a friend, they had to use mine. I stood with them at the bus stop. I drove them every place they needed to go. We ate all our meals together, and I tucked them in at night.

Part of parenting is setting boundaries that help families thrive. 

But part of parenting is also creating the space for kids to explore life and become their own people. So as they got older, I took my cue to “get lost” so to speak. They walked themselves to the bus stop, set up their own playdates with friends, and I no longer mediated arguments they could solve on their own.

But somewhere along the way, things went sideways. Disappointment and loneliness gave way to jealousy and anger. My adorable kids and their precious friends turned into mini mean girls.

Then, when MY friends got together we would lament that “raising girls is so much harder than raising boys,” and “oh my gosh girls are so awful to each other.”

And then I realized why.

Mean Girls, Mean Moms

That’s what my friends and I were doing to each other! No wonder we knew so many mean girls. They were the daughters of mean moms—and I’m embarrassed to say that I, too, was part of that group.

Our own Bible studies and coffee dates were filled with hours of chatter…ahem…gossip about all the people we knew. After all, we were with our friends. We didn’t feel like we needed to censor our words. We should be able to say what we really thought. Again—that’s the story we were telling ourselves. The problem, though, is that our thoughts needed auditing.

“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

— Frank Outlaw, Late President of the Bi-Lo Stores (Yep, I was surprised, too, but Quote Investigator confirms this)

I’d be crazy to think that when I got home and relayed these conversations to Gavin that my young daughters weren’t picking up not only on the tone of my voice but also the actual words I was using to describe people that I supposedly liked.

I was convicted then, and I’m convicted now.

So what should we do?

It’s actually pretty simple.

Think before you speak.

Think before you speak. And when you speak, make sure you err on the side of positivity.

I’m trying harder these days to see the best in everyone. To believe the best. To try my best to understand and empathize when I am tempted to be unkind.

There’s a rule of friendship that says that the words you use to describe other people to each other are the attributes that other people will actually ascribe to you. For example, if you are telling a new acquaintance about a friend who is generous, welcoming, and warm, that acquaintance will actually apply those adjectives to YOU, even though you’re talking about someone else.

Pretty cool, huh?

And then just this week, I read about a study that tried to figure out why some kids were popular and some weren’t. Believe it or not, the most popular kids weren’t necessarily the ones who were pretty, smart, and athletic (although obviously these traits contribute to overall popularity). The common denominator among the most popular kids, though, was that these were the kids who told the researchers that they “liked everybody.”

LIKE EVERYBODY—And love them too!

I’ve found that I like people a lot more when I spend time talking TO them rather than ABOUT them.

I hope you will, too.

If you hear me saying something unkind, consider this blog post your permission slip to call me out on it.

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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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