Happier Holidays: How to Celebrate No Matter What
Dr. Laurie Santos and happiness experts Jamil Zaki (Stanford), Liz Dunn (UBC), and Nick Epley (UChicago) share science-backed strategies to navigate the unique challenges of the 2020 holiday season, focusing on well-being and connection.
Deep Dive Analysis
16 Topic Outline
Introduction to the Unusual 2020 Holiday Season
COVID-19 as an Opportunity for Savoring Small Moments
Strategies for Savoring and Being Present
How Documenting Experiences Can Hinder Memory
Leveraging Pro-Social Nudges to Break Phone Habits
The Importance of Pre-Committing to Social Connection
Challenges of Zoom for Relaxed Social Interaction
Strategies for More Relaxed Virtual Social Connection
Using Empathy to Navigate Difficult Family Conversations
Understanding and Overcoming Phantom Polarization
Managing COVID-Related Holiday Gathering Conflicts
Coping with Grief Over Lost Holiday Traditions
Recreating Old Traditions vs. Creating New Ones
The Role of Mourning and Self-Compassion
Recovering from a Disastrous Holiday Season
The Fresh Start Opportunity of the New Year
5 Key Concepts
Time Famine
This is the feeling of being overwhelmed, overcommitted, and constantly up against the clock, which is often a significant driver of holiday stress and unhappiness.
Savoring
This involves taking time to linger and appreciate low-key, enjoyable experiences that might otherwise be overlooked due to a busy schedule or divided attention.
Monotasking
This is the explicit act of focusing on a single task, such as putting away your phone during an activity, to prevent divided attention and fully engage with the present moment.
Phantom Polarization
This concept describes the tendency for people to overestimate the animosity and extreme beliefs that others, particularly those with differing views, hold about them, creating imagined divides that are worse than reality.
Self-Compassion
This practice involves acknowledging and accepting one's own struggles and suffering, recognizing them as a shared part of common humanity, rather than trying to escape or ignore the pain.
12 Questions Answered
Reduced commitments can free up time, allowing people to savor small, low-key experiences they might otherwise overlook, similar to how tourists appreciate minor attractions more when they feel they rarely travel.
Practicing mindfulness, such as taking deep breaths and paying attention to sensory details, helps bring you back to the present. Monotasking, like putting your phone away, also prevents divided attention.
Research suggests that people reliably remember events less if they document them, especially when sharing on social media, because it divides attention and takes them out of the moment.
One effective strategy is to give a 'tech-free' period as a gift to someone else, leveraging the desire to help others to nudge oneself into healthier behavior.
It's critical to pre-commit and schedule virtual social connections, even for subtle interactions like shared activities, to ensure they happen and avoid missing out.
Try incorporating shared activities (like a book club or cooking together), reducing bandwidth requirements by using audio-only calls, or introducing structured games to facilitate interaction without constant conversation pressure.
Employing empathy and actively listening to others' stories can help find common ground and even be more persuasive, as people often underestimate empathy's utility.
Our dread often stems from imagining extreme negative scenarios or 'phantom polarization' about what others think of us, which is usually worse than the reality.
Acknowledge the difficulty of social exclusion, and consider strategies like a 'random draw' for small gatherings to avoid implying personal dislike, or framing social distancing as protecting others.
It's okay to mourn the loss of traditions and acknowledge the struggles. This self-compassion, recognizing shared suffering, can help take the edge off and allow for adaptation.
There are arguments for both: recreating familiar elements can be important, especially for children, if key features can be maintained. Alternatively, if recreation results in a 'B-plus' version, creating entirely new, unique traditions for the unusual year might be better.
Practice self-compassion by accepting that it's okay not to feel okay. Also, consider showing compassion to others by apologizing for any wrongs, taking ownership, and complaining intentionally to process the loss before moving on.
27 Actionable Insights
1. Practice Empathy, Active Listening
Engage in empathy by connecting, sharing stories, and actively listening to those with different views to find common ground and potentially be more persuasive, as believing in empathy’s utility makes it effective.
2. Challenge Assumptions About Others
Actively listen in conversations rather than presuming what others think, as our expectations of difficult interactions are often worse than reality and we may be wrong about others’ beliefs or their beliefs about us.
3. Practice Monotasking for Presence
Explicitly practice monotasking by removing distractions like your phone from the room to fully engage in the present moment, as divided attention detracts from positive experiences and memories.
4. Savor Low-Key Experiences
Take time to linger and appreciate low-key, enjoyable experiences, especially when major opportunities are limited, as feeling like you have fewer ‘cool’ things to do can increase savoring of smaller pleasures.
5. Use Sensory Awareness to Be Present
Take deep breaths, look around, and pay attention to the details of what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling to get back into your senses and reduce the feeling of being hectic.
6. Avoid Excessive Photo-Taking
Limit taking too many pictures, especially for sharing later, as studies show that documenting events can reliably reduce memory and the quality of the experience itself.
7. Give Gift of Undivided Attention
Commit to a ‘phone cleanse’ for a few days as a gift to loved ones, especially if they are annoyed by your phone use, as this can break habits of constant checking and provide valuable undivided attention.
8. Frame Changes as Service to Others
Leverage the desire to help other people by framing personal behavioral changes (e.g., getting off your phone) as a gift or service to them, which can be a powerful nudge to achieve healthier actions.
9. Pre-Commit to Social Connections
Proactively schedule and commit to social connections, even subtle ones like traditional shopping trips or work parties, to ensure they happen and prevent missing out on vital social interaction.
10. Engage in Shared Activities Virtually
Foster relaxed social connection in virtual settings by engaging in a shared activity, like volunteering or a book club, which provides a reason to gather without the pressure of constant conversation.
11. Embrace Informality in Virtual Calls
Allow yourself to be informal during virtual calls, such as cooking or walking around the kitchen, to create a more relaxed atmosphere, allow others to see your real life, and facilitate natural conversations.
12. Structure Virtual Gatherings
When using video calls, either go super casual (like doing other tasks) or introduce high levels of structure, such as an organized game with specific questions, to mitigate the challenges of fluid conversation and potential interruptions.
13. Prioritize Audio for Virtual Connection
Reduce bandwidth requirements by prioritizing audio-only calls or minimizing video, as the sense of connection with another person primarily comes from hearing their voice and words, not seeing their physical presence.
14. Engage in One-on-One Deep Conversations
Seek out one-on-one deep and meaningful conversations, especially via audio, as people often underestimate how much they will enjoy and benefit from these intimate discussions.
15. Manage Exclusion with Random Selection
When needing to limit social gatherings (e.g., due to health orders), use a random selection method like drawing names from a hat to choose attendees, which avoids implying social exclusion and acknowledges the difficulty of choices.
16. Frame Safety as Protecting Others
When discussing difficult safety decisions like social distancing, frame them as a way to protect other people (e.g., ‘I don’t want you to be sick’) rather than protecting oneself, as this increases willingness to comply.
17. Emphasize Long-Term Protection
When making tough safety decisions, emphasize the long-term benefit and the desire to protect loved ones, framing it as an act of care for ‘future us’ to help others understand and accept the temporary sacrifice.
18. Recreate Necessary Tradition Features
For cherished traditions, especially with children, identify and recreate the necessary core features of the experience to maintain familiarity and a sense of normalcy, even if other aspects are different.
19. Use Technology to Recreate Traditions
Adapt traditions using available technology, such as Netflix watch parties for movie nights, to maintain a sense of continuity and shared experience during times when in-person gatherings are not possible.
20. Take New Roles in Traditions
Recreate family traditions by taking on new roles, such as cooking a family recipe yourself, which can create new meaning and maintain connection even if the original person isn’t present.
21. Mourn Lost Traditions, Acknowledge Struggles
Allow yourself to mourn the loss of traditions and acknowledge the struggles you’re going through, as it’s okay to not feel okay, and this self-compassion is part of coping.
22. Recognize Shared Suffering
Practice self-compassion by imagining others suffering in the same way, recognizing that your struggles are part of a common human experience, which can take the ’edge off’ feelings of isolation.
23. Capitalize on ‘Happiness Reset’
Leverage the ‘happiness reset’ from challenging times by finding greater joy in simpler, less impressive pleasures and experiences, as it becomes easier to derive satisfaction from them.
24. Practice Self-Acceptance in Distress
If you’re not feeling well during stressful times, practice self-acceptance, acknowledging that it’s a common experience and a valid way to treat yourself well.
25. Apologize and Take Ownership
If a social interaction goes poorly, practice compassion towards others by taking ownership of your part, apologizing for any wrongs, and expressing a desire to improve future interactions to aid recovery.
26. Complain Intentionally, Then Move On
Complain intentionally and explicitly about losses or frustrations first to get it out of the way, acknowledging the sucky times, and then consciously decide to move on and focus on what’s next.
27. Utilize ‘Fresh Start’ Moments
Use natural ‘fresh start’ moments like the New Year to reset your mindset and move on from negative experiences or habits, viewing it as an opportunity for a clean slate.
6 Key Quotes
We found that people reliably remembered the event less if they documented it, especially if they documented it in order to share it later.
Nick Epley
The sense of connection with another person doesn't really come from seeing them. It comes from hearing them.
Nick Epley
In essence, when we know that empathy is useful, we use it and it becomes useful.
Jamil Zaki
The mind that you imagine in these difficult circumstances or with these difficult relationships often isn't quite as extremely bad as you imagine.
Nick Epley
I don't want to say it can't be worse, but it is this – we know that things like a new year arriving give us this opportunity for a fresh start.
Liz Dunn
You guys can have your compassion. I just like to yell out, Christmas is ruined. That makes me feel better.
Laurie Santos
4 Protocols
Mindfulness for Savoring Moments
Jamil Zaki- Take a couple of deep breaths.
- Look around you.
- Pay attention to the details of what you're seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling.
- Get yourself back into your senses to turn down the volume on how hectic everything feels.
Breaking Phone Habits (The 'Gift' Method)
Liz Dunn- Commit to putting your phone away for a set period (e.g., three days).
- Frame this commitment as a gift to someone else (e.g., your spouse, kids).
- Leverage your desire to help others to prompt healthier behavior in yourself.
Navigating Difficult Conversations with Empathy
Jamil Zaki- Recognize that empathy is a useful tool for relating to people who are different from you.
- Try to connect, share stories, and listen to people who are different from you.
- Ask questions to understand their perspective rather than presuming their thoughts or beliefs.
- Acknowledge that your imagined negative expectations of the conversation are often worse than the reality.
Recovering from a Bad Holiday
Nick Epley, Jamil Zaki, Liz Dunn- Practice self-compassion and accept that it's okay not to feel okay, especially during a stressful time.
- Show compassion towards others by taking ownership and apologizing for any wrongs you may have contributed to.
- Complain intentionally: focus on what has been lost or what went wrong to process it.
- Use the New Year as an opportunity for a fresh start, leaving behind the negative experiences of the past year.