How Rituals Increase Satisfaction

Would birthday cake taste as good without the lit candles and the song? Probably not.

We use rituals every day: morning rituals, evening rituals, holiday and birthday rituals, anniversary rituals, as well as religious rituals. They increase meaning, significance, and evoke a sense of tradition and family. New research also suggests ritual behaviors increase the satisfaction in behaviors like eating.

A recent story on NPR (June 20, 2013) by their social science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, covered a soon to be published article by Harvard University Behavioral Scientist Francesca Gino and colleagues, Kathleen Vohs, Yajin Wang and Michael Norton, giving evidence to the idea that creating rituals before eating increases the satisfaction of the experience.

Gino's study had volunteers divided into two groups, with each person being given a chocolate bar to eat. Half were instructed to follow a procedure where they carefully unwrapped half the bar, savored it, and ate the second half later. The second group just went ahead and ate their bar all at once. 

Guess which group enjoyed their chocolate bar more? It was the first group who ate their chocolate more mindfully. This process was retested with carrots, and the same effect occurred. Those who ate more mindfully experienced better taste and indicated they would pay more for the experience.

What did the researchers conclude? Performing rituals before eating increases the satisfaction and enjoyment of eating. The ritual must be done each time in the same way, like communion at a church service. 

So, singing happy birthday and blowing out the candles after making wishes before eating the birthday cake will likely increase the enjoyment of the cake. A shared toast or prayer before dinner will add to the meaning and satisfaction of dinner.

The researchers determined that it is not enough to observe a ritual, it is essentially different to participate in it. It's the active participation that seems key.

There are rituals which have existed for thousands of years, traditions we either inherit from our families or create for ourselves, and habits which we develop. Ritualistic behavior can get out of hand and become a problem if it makes us obsessive, but the right amount of ritual in your life can make your life more satisfying, enjoyable, and meaningful. (Not to mention tastier!)

You might reflect on how traditions and rituals in your day and your week make your life better. Perhaps you enjoy a first cup of coffee or tea each morning, bond with your dog through play, water your flowers after work, tuck in your children in bed with stories and cuddling, enjoy a walk in your neighborhood and notice little changes as the seasons pass. Mindfulness in living does create more meaning in the small things of everyday life, including the chocolate.

Siblings: It's Complicated

This week, I heard a story on NPR about several recent studies on the impact that older siblings have on younger siblings that got me reflecting. Siblings can be our oldest friends. They hold our past, and we hold theirs. We may be a good fit, but we might not be. We didn't pick them out. We compete as children for time, attention, and parental resources. Brothers and sisters help form our identity, for better or worse.

The NPR story featured interviews with an OB/GYN who works with pregnant teens, who noticed a pattern that if they were helping a pregnant teen with medical needs during her pregnancy, they were very often seeing her younger sister(s) in the coming years with a teen pregnancy of their own. In a follow-up study, they showed that girls with an older sister who got pregnant as a teen are 5 times as likely to have a teen pregnancy themselves.

Another study quoted in the NPR story followed the substantial increase in smoking if another sibling smokes. It's enough to make you wonder how your siblings can impact your life, your choices, and your personality. Perhaps siblings can influence us for good (as in being responsible, getting good grades, etc.), or for bad (smoking ,drugs, alcohol, shoplifting, early sexual activity). In some families, I see children working hard at differentiating from older siblings to be different on purpose.

Birth order also comes into play. Are you a typical oldest child who is responsible, seeks to please parents, and tries to influence younger siblings? Are you a middle child who got lost in the shuffle and can get along with anybody? Are you a typical youngest who was babied a little?

As a family therapist, I sometimes feel having siblings gives us our first opportunity to learn how to have a voice, assert ourselves, and learn how to become socially skilled in working things out with other people.

Siblings can be extremely different, or amazingly similar. Sometimes all you have in common is your parents, and growing up together. Different siblings can also have markedly different childhoods growing up in the same family. Growing up you may each be competing for a niche in the family. Parents will play into this, as in "Mary is our athlete." As parents, we want to be sure to see each child in a complete way, and not stereotype their strengths or roles. You can have as many 'good children' in the family as you have children. Try not to play favorites.

With adult siblings, an attitude of tolerance is helpful, and trying to stay out of judgment. Lowering our expectations also helps. It's wonderful if they end up becoming your closest ally and supporter, but it often doesn't happen. Try to appreciate what you can about them, respect your shared past, and set boundaries if and when you need to if you have a sibling who is destructive towards you. It can be hard when you have to work together as a team with aging parents if you aren't close.

The sibling relationship impacts many of us profoundly. It helps to define your core self. It can be a source of support, understanding, and strength, or it may be the source of sadness, hurt, and the feeling that you wish you could be closer. You can do your part to be a supportive sibling, and then some of it is up to chance, parenting, the goodness of fit between your personalities, and your ability (and theirs) to accept the differences between you. Having a sibling you feel close and connected to is a great asset, but it's a team sport that takes both you and the other person.

Are You Committed?

There’s a big difference between being interested in something and making a commitment to it. Whether it's making healthy changes to your diet, how often you exercise, making new friends, changing jobs, saving money or the decision to be a better partner or parent, it’s making a commitment to yourself and to others that really counts.

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at what their schedule says. What are your priorities? Adjust your schedule to reflect what you say you value. I am often working with my coaching clients on setting and reaching their most important life goals. It is sometimes useful to ask, “How is doing what I am currently doing helping me to reach my goal?” It might not be.

For example, if your partner is unhappy because you are working too much and you continue that behavior, and yet you say you value the relationship, you have a dilemma. A true commitment to being a more responsive partner will take setting boundaries around work, halting the people-pleasing of unreasonable clients or your boss, limiting your perfectionism about finishing everything in your emails and on your desk before you leave, and redefining your ideas about what it means to be truly successful at home as well as at work. Interest in being a better partner is a feeling, but leaving the office on time as a sacred ritual to preserve time with your partner is a repeated, new behavior.

Interest is passive, and it might be fleeting. Commitment is continuing to keep the faith, and do the hard stuff even when you don’t necessarily feel like it. Commitment takes the long-term view, and recognizes that most things that are really valuable take some sustained effort.

Parenting comes to mind as a perfect case for the need for commitment. It’s common to be interested in having children. Most prospective parents picture a sweet and loving baby or small child who loves you back. As I coach parents through some of the unanticipated and difficult chapters in parenting, that’s when I call for commitment. I’m thinking about when your teenager is rude, defiant, and testing all the boundaries.

Commitment is also needed to have the tenacity as a parent to hang in there for answers when your child has learning disabilities, physical challenges, ADHD or ADD, depression, anxiety, or chemical abuse problems. This past week, I was moved by an NPR interview with David Sheff, author of a new book, Clean, about what he has learned about addiction treatment in the US through trying to help his son, Nic, now 30, and sober for 5 years, through his addiction to heroin and crack cocaine. Sheff never gave up on Nic. That’s commitment. What a lucky guy Nic is to have a father with that level of care and tenacity.

In marriage, commitment translates into listening to your partner, making a decision to do loving and thoughtful behaviors (even when you don’t feel like it), closing the exits by deciding to go direct with courage towards your partner about any concerns rather than passively complain to someone else, and continuing your own journey to bring your best self to the relationship. Being committed in relationships means making a positive decision to create regular time together for fun and for play. This takes being aware of the energy you bring into your closest relationship, and taking some effort and care into keeping things interesting and setting new goals.

It’s okay if you don’t want to be committed to something, but own it. Take responsibility for not just being interested in the people, causes and changes closest to your heart. Making a real commitment can inform your daily choices and behaviors, and that can make such a difference. Interest is passive and transitory. Commitment is more solid, fixed, and has some muscle and follow through behind it. With the things you want in your own life, stop to reflect on whether you are interested or whether you are committed. Make sure to check that your behaviors match up with your most important commitments.

Facebook, Texting, And Your Marriage

To have a wonderful, deeply intimate, and lasting marriage, both partners have to "close the exits". In our parents' generation, this might have been not ignoring your partner by reading the newspaper at meals, instead of conversing with your partner. Or, it might have meant don't zone out watching television next to each other every night. Mix it up, and keep the relationship fresh by having some high-energy fun together. Get out together to date nights and to do active things frequently. Pay attention to the sexual relationship you have with your partner. Be fun, and don't take the many available exits to intimacy.

In the past several years in my counseling practice, I am seeing more marriages hurt by social media, and the availability of secret texting,to create dangerous detours to the marriage. When old flames can become your Facebook friend, and a veil of secrecy hides hurtful secret messaging, the temptations abound. Some couples are beginning to discuss these dangers, and how they want to handle potential boundary violations to the marriage, which may hurt your partner and ultimately end the marriage. These are important questions couples should discuss. What do you and your partner feel about recognizing each other as partners on Facebook? Some couples share their passwords. Others discuss it with each other when an old romantic interest surfaces and makes contact. There are no easy or universal answers, but each person should be mindful of the terrible risks involved and the temptation to the middle-aged ego.

Couples therapists across the country are noticing the same trend and risks with social media and technology that I am seeing here in Newport Beach, California. On November 2, National Public Radio ran two related stories by my AAMFT colleague, therapist Jennifer Ludden. NPR's program All Things Considered ran a story on "Can Social Media Break Up A Marriage?", and one titled "I-Phone Makes 3: Marriage In The Digital Age". The world is clearly changing, and relationships and marriages are trying to figure out how to navigate these uncharted waters. Both of Ludden's articles and her interview can be accessed through NPR's website, http://www.npr.org and look for All Things Considered, under programs.

Here's what I know as a couples therapist for these last 20 years. Be careful. Be mindful. Things can start innocently, and go very wrong. Be aware of how lies, secrecy, and confiding emotionally in someone else, besides your partner, can distance and undermine your marriage. Be conscious of not interrupting your sacred time with your partner to do business on your I-Phone. Protecting the special bond between you and your mate is each partner's sacred responsibility, or you cheapen the value of what it means to be your partner. Temptation is more available----and more secret----- than ever before. And a deep and enduring marriage, with a marriage partner who loves and cares deeply for you, has never been more valuable. Closing the exits to secrecy and betrayal means protecting something more real and more lasting than flattery. Real intimacy requires real boundaries.