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Please Tell Me I’m Awesome
We live in an age of grade inflation. We coddle our children. Everyone gets a trophy. The culture of praise and happy talk is making us weak.
I mean, right? Maybe not.
According to this paper from the Harvard Business School, before you set about a hard task — or before you assign some underling (or, I guess, child) something challenging to do — let them know how great they are:
In two lab experiments and a field experiment in a global consulting firm, we tested the hypotheses by offering people reflections on times they were at their best. Results confirmed that best-self activation inspired improvements in people’s emotions, resistance to disease, resilience to stress and burnout, creative problem solving, performance under pressure, and relationships with their employer. Results also revealed that best-self activations are more effective in creating improvements when they feature information from one’s social network rather than personal reflections.
In other words, reminding people that they’re awesome and have done awesome things before makes them more likely to be awesome in the future. And that sort of irritates me — or at least flies in the face of my naturally conservative instincts — because before I set out on something challenging or daunting, I like to hedge my bets a little by reminding myself that Well, you’ve messed up before, so nobody expects much from this, either.
But maybe the squishy social scientists have been right all along: maybe we all need a little boost in the self-esteem department right before we dig into a task. Of course, it’s all predicated on having something in our history that we managed to accomplish, some summit we reached, something to be proud of, so in a grade-inflated over-praised world, it’s hard to know what, exactly, counts as an accomplishment, which means it’s hard to help your “social network” in its “self-activation” if every little thing has been a triumph.
Published in Culture
Our parents actually tried this with us to some extent. The older children bore the brunt of it, of course. Not that the younger ones were overpraised – they were just treated “normally” by comparison, since by the time the younger siblings come along, the parents lack the energy to try so hard :-)
And… I think “normal” is the way to go. Don’t overpraise your children, certainly. But children succeeding at what they’re actually good at really does seem to work better when parents are their kids’ biggest boosters rather than their biggest critics. Sure, kids should not be lied to about their strengths and weaknesses – but overplaying their weaknesses and underplaying their strengths is lying to them.
Also, while perfectionists occasionally accomplish great things, they’re even more likely to inflict their insufferable neuroticism on the world to no great purpose. On balance, I’d say it usually doesn’t pay to encourage perfectionism in your child.
CHRIS CHAMPION
Not bad would cover it.
Thanks.
I went ahead and “liked” everyone’s comments because you’re all awesome. I hope this made your day.
vs.
There is a difference.
Another thought on this topic:
One of the perennial memes of the SJW crowd is that men don’t deserve a reward simply for being decent human beings.
I disagree. In the history of mankind decent human beings have been a rarity. If you want more of ’em, there needs to be some reward.
I agree. Approval, gratitude and acknowledgment are a little different from effusive praise… my husband actually laughs at me because I’m so volubly enthusiastic about his carpentry, plumbing, car maintenance, gardening and cooking, not to mention his handsomeness. But, let’s face it, it’s pretty freakin’…um, awesome.
Good for you. (PS. Got a single sister?)
You’re awesome. Now go sell your next show . . .