Words Can Change Your Brain (26 page)

Starting Young

Most research supports the idea that our brain is heavily influenced by the environment in which we are born. Although a child younger than four or five really cannot engage in abstract conversations, from five on, they can. We also know that between the ages of five and ten, the brain is the most metabolically active it will ever be. The child’s brain is forming and reforming billions of connections, especially those that relate to language and communication.

Research also shows that the more our brain is stimulated, through loving interactions with others, the more our neuronal connections grow. So it stands to reason that if we can engage our children at these early stages with lots of compassionate conversations, they will develop better communication skills from the get-go. This, we know, will translate into successful students and adults.

For example, Betty Hart and Todd Risely at the University of Kansas recorded more than thirteen hundred hours of interaction between parents and children from many different racial and economic backgrounds. Their findings, published in the book
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children
, showed a direct link between a child’s academic performance in third grade and the number of words spoken in their home from birth to age three.
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They found that hearing about three thousand words per hour—about thirty thousand words a day—resulted in children being more successful later in life. In homes where the parents were professionals, this number was common, but in homes of lower socioeconomic status there was much more variability, ranging between five hundred and three thousand words per hour.

This means that over a year some children will hear over eleven million words while others will hear three million words or fewer. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you are born rich or poor: what makes the difference between success and failure in life, between happiness and unhappiness, say the authors, “is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their caregivers.” The good news is that children from families of lower economic status whose parents did speak close to thirty thousand words per day showed the same results as their wealthier peers.

It’s not just the quantity of words we use but the quality as well. Younger children first develop a larger vocabulary of negative words and have less ability to formulate positive words, especially when it relates to emotional states and the ability to achieve specific goals.
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Yet negative words literally strain a child’s brain.
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They raise anxiety, whereas positive words lower a child’s anxiety,
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and for children who are under a great deal of stress, negative words will interrupt memory performance. They simply won’t be able to recall the information that will best help them accomplish their goals. However, when we teach our children to use more positive words, we are actually helping their brains to have more emotional control and increased attention span.
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And when we teach them the language of success, they become more motivated and satisfied with their work.

Parents who use a lot of negativity at home also undermine the stability of family life. When researchers at the University of Utah compared different styles of conflict resolution between parents and children, they found that cooperative
planning
with family members was more successful than using adult power to “lay down the rules.” Thus authoritarian parents solved fewer problems with their kids.
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Between siblings, those who had positive verbal relationships with each other had fewer conflicts and were more likely to find creative solutions for their problems.
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If one sibling took the lead and moved away from negative competition by offering positive solutions, the conversation would shift to a win-win scenario.
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Thus by bringing the principles of Compassionate Communication onto the playground, and into peer-group mediation and training programs, we can effectively undermine the destructive emotional tendencies that many adolescents feel.
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That’s why we’ve begun to teach Compassionate Communication to a growing number of peer-to-peer support groups at colleges throughout the country.

We also need to teach students the rules of emotional intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence so they can more quickly understand their own feelings, as well as those of others. When we do, we strengthen the communication processes that weave empathy, reason, and cooperation together in a meaningful way for groups.
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Compassionate Parenting

This all points to how important it is for parents to teach siblings how to use their optimism, serenity, and positive words to resolve conflicts with each other, and to learn how to recognize that every person sees the world in a different way.
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When parents bring the principles of Compassionate Communication into their families, their children show less aggressive behavior and get along better with their siblings.
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When parents are taught how to listen deeply, they improve the dynamics with disruptive children.
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In Pennsylvania a team of university researchers introduced families to a program that showed them how to “intentionally bring moment-to-moment awareness to the parent-child relationship” by “bringing compassion and nonjudgmental acceptance to their parenting interactions.” They were taught to “pay close attention and listen carefully to their children,” to “become more aware of their own emotional states and the emotional states of their youth,” to “adopt an accepting, nonjudgmental attitude when interacting with their youth,” to “regulate their own emotional reactions during their interactions,” and to “adopt a stance of empathy and compassion toward their children and themselves.”
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They were also taught the same breathing, relaxation, and self-reflective exercises that we incorporate into Compassionate Communication, and they were shown how to focus their attention on deep listening. In teaching them how to avoid bringing anger or frustration into their conversations, they were given a simple phrase, “Stop, be calm, be present,” as a reminder to control their negative emotions.

As a team of scholars from the University of Oxford, the University of Amsterdam, and Maastricht University have shown, compassionate parenting has the following benefits: it reduces stress, excessive worry, rumination, and negativity; it enhances attentiveness and promotes kindness and self-compassion; it improves marital satisfaction; and, perhaps most important, it breaks the cycle of passing on bad parental habits to the next generation.
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When young adolescents were asked to count their good moments and blessings, their sense of gratitude, optimism, and satisfaction increased.
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They even felt more satisfied with going to school! However, if you choose to fill your diaries with details of your daily hassles, this will decrease your feelings of optimism and hope.
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The “Write” Way to Develop Positivity in Kids

As we mentioned before, just thinking about positive outcomes is not enough to build a solid foundation of optimism and self-esteem. Adults need to identify their unconscious negativity, reframe it, and repeatedly reaffirm it in positive words and actions.

For children and young adults, writing appears to be one of the most effective ways to achieve these important skills. High school students were asked to do the following task for ten days. Each night, before going to bed, they wrote down three things they did well that day. Then they stopped. At first not much improvement was seen, but with each passing month, for the next three months, the student’s sense of happiness and well-being dramatically increased!
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And yes, it also has similar benefits for adults.
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The author of these famous studies, Martin Seligman, who founded the field of positive psychology, added that the effects will not fade away, as is the case with placebos.

If just ten days of reflecting on what we do well can generate months of psychological improvement, imagine what would happen if you wrote down your accomplishments each day for a month? That’s what we recommend you do, and to repeat this exercise anytime you feel frustrated in your work, your relationships, or your life.

Studies such as these also emphasize the power of the pen. In other words, it’s not just your imagination that primes your brain for success. Writing deepens the impact by affecting different language centers in the brain thereby creating more permanent changes in how you think.

So if you want to transform a negative outlook on life, we suggest that you stimulate as many language centers in your brain as possible. Listen to positive words and messages. Read uplifting and encouraging novels. Think about the positive aspects and successes in your life and write them down. Then share your successes with others. Not only will it strengthen your own resolve, but it will also stimulate the listener’s brain in positive ways.

But beware: the pen can be a double-edged sword. If you write down your negative feelings and thoughts, or write in your journal about stressful events, you’ll tend to feel more emotionally distraught and report more symptoms of illness.
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In fact, the more often you write about negative emotions, the more anxious and depressed you’ll become.
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On the other hand, brief written commentaries about anxious feelings can alleviate those symptoms temporarily, and as researchers at the University of Chicago discovered, “Simply writing about one’s worries before a high-stakes exam can boost test scores.”
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Here’s another strategy children and adults can use to make positive changes. Keep a daily list of blessings and experiences for which you feel thankful. Research from around the world shows that this exercise will improve your mood and enhance your personal relationships.
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When 221 young adolescents were asked to keep a gratitude journal for three weeks, their sense of well-being, optimism, and satisfaction with life improved.
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But when they kept lists of daily hassles, their moods and coping behaviors did not improve.
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Children who feel the most gratitude toward others and about their lives exhibit greater satisfaction and optimism and have better relationships with their peers.
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When minority students wrote about themselves in positive ways, their sense of personal adequacy and integrity improved, along with their grades in school.
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And if you write down your most important personal goals, as specifically as you possibly can, research shows that you’ll be more likely to achieve them.
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When we teach our children these strategies, the benefits will continue into adulthood, where they will be more successful than people who do not demonstrate a consistent positive attitude toward life.

The earlier we teach our kids how to practice Compassionate Communication, the easier our parental roles become. And because positive language and speech is contagious, we owe it to future generations to practice kindness whenever we interact with others.

Bringing Compassionate Conversations to the World

The practice of Compassionate Communication is an important step toward creating greater empathy and dialogue among all types of people in all sorts of circumstances. By fostering such dialogues, we have the opportunity to create a new and deeper understanding so that we can improve the society in which we live. Together we can create winning conversations where everyone benefits from the encounter.

When we change our words, we change our brain, and when we change our brain, we change the way we relate to others. The choice is ours: do we choose to spread negativity with our words, or do we choose to cultivate kindness, cooperation, and trust?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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ny book represents a collaboration of many voices, and this book is certainly no exception. First we would like to thank our students, patients, and workshop participants: without your willingness to share your stories, experiences, struggles, and inspirations this book would have never come into existence.

We would like to thank our colleagues, friends, and family members, all of whom contributed endless hours of time to slowly refine the strategies described within this book. Special thanks is extended to Neil Schuitevoerder, Ph.D., one of the original codevelopers of Compassionate Communication who continues to work with us to bring this strategy into the therapeutic community.

Our deepest appreciation also to Dorianne Cotter-Lockard, Ph.D., who coauthored an academic article on Compassionate Communication with us and who presented the paper at the annual conference of the American Psychological Association in 2010. We want to acknowledge the generous assistance of Chris Manning, Ph.D., and William Lindsey, Ph.D., for bringing Compassionate Communication into the Executive MBA Program at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, and to thank John Baker, Ph.D., and Paul Mattson, Ph.D., at Moorpark College for bringing us into their classrooms to conduct our workshop research. To the ministers and congregations of the United Centers for Spiritual Living (with a special thank-you to Rev. Pam Geagan), Unity Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, and the many Christian and secular organizations with whom we’ve worked: warm blessings to all for your support.