Family relationships are considered lifelong and unbreakable. However, being in a toxic or abusive family relationship can be devastating and estrangement becomes the way out wherein someone physically and emotionally distances themselves to cut family ties. It is often seen as an event or outcome with only two possibilities: estranged or not estranged. However, an alternate view argues that it is an ongoing process reflected in a spectrum with different degrees.
Family estrangement is nearly as common as divorce. According to a 2015 survey, nine out of ten adults were estranged from their mother or father. Similarly, from the parents’ perspective, more than 90% of parents were estranged from a daughter or a son. Meanwhile, the proportion of being estranged from at least one sister or one brother reduces to seven out of ten adults.
Causes of estrangement
It might not be easy to understand what would make someone cut a family member out of their life. The reasons to cut off communication and distance one’s self from certain family members differ from the parents’ and children’s perspectives as well as between siblings. It can be caused by a major event or disagreement and arguments that have been building over time to serve as a trigger.
The 2015 survey revealed emotional abuse as the most cited reason as to why adults become estranged from their parents. Other reasons include mismatched expectations about family roles and relationships, a clash in personality or values, neglect, issues relating to mental health problems, and traumatic family events. The report also cited that the parents’ estrangement from their grown-up children is caused by conflicting expectations in the family, issues relating to in-laws, and the experience of divorce. Aside from these factors, people also blame parental favoritism as the cause of estrangement between siblings.
Other issues that may lead to family tensions and estrangement include physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by other family members, conflicting political or religious views, a family member’s sexual orientation, and choice of spouse. This results in the feelings of being unloved, rejected, and hurt by people who are expected to be the main source of affection, safety, and support. While cutting off family members is a means to separate one’s self from these emotions attributed to them, it also acts as a double-edged sword to the person as they are separated from the ones they love.
Dealing with estrangement
There are a few ways to deal with estrangement:
Acknowledge and apologize. Meeting in person and apologizing for your share of the problem can be uncomfortable. However, it is necessary to talk through things, listen to each other, and acknowledge the trauma and pain that everyone experienced. Even if reconciliation is not the goal, letting go of guilt, shame, grudge, and other emotional burdens is an essential step to moving forward.
Give space. You and the person you are estranged from may need time to work through the pain. It is important to respect the other person’s decision by suspending sending texts, calling, or any other contact that may lead to conflict and worsen the situation.
Reconcile. Reconciliation may be expected after passing through emotional distress. However, every person involved needs to be physically and emotionally ready to reconnect. In a case where the estrangement is caused by conflicts that put someone’s life at risk such as domestic violence, you may reach out to professionals to mediate and to know what to expect from the reformed relationship.
Maintain distance. In some relationships, permanent distancing may be a healthy solution and empowering for everyone involved. This means either physically distancing while maintaining occasional contact or cutting off communication entirely. Depending on the effects of estrangement, you need to assess your tolerance to connect with your estranged family members.
Seek support. Whether you are the one cutting off contact or being cut off by a family member, you might need support to cope with the consequences such as feeling ashamed of going against social expectations. You can seek support from friends, other loved ones, and even a professional. For example, people going through family estrangement found therapy and counseling with a professional to be helpful as it makes them feel supported, develop insight and understanding, and move forward.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to family estrangement as it depends on the cause and its effects on your quality of life. Life is never ideal, and so is a family relationship. You might not talk or spend the holidays together with some family members. However, it doesn’t determine your capacity to love, especially if distancing is the only way to give you the comfort and safety you need.
Starting a business should be one of the most energetic and creative activities for any founder. Designing, talking, convincing — these are the most common tasks that an entrepreneur wannabe is thinking of. Once they start the process, they would need to plan, structure, and decide. The work starts to resemble a project manager’s work.
Though entrepreneurship and project management are distinctive areas with different competencies, Taavi Tamberg, Arvi Kuura, and Reet Soosar have researched that “project managers are expected to act as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs”. Could entrepreneurs learn something from project managers and transfer some of their competencies in their work?
Here are some examples, taken from Nathalie Udo and Sonja Koppensteiner’s research:
Knowledge of concepts, methodologies, practices, and vocabulary of the profession
When you start cooking something, you gather the tools and ingredients. Similarly, starting a business needs a good understanding of the terminology and the different information that is required by investors. Maybe in the field of entrepreneurship, they are not named like this, but for sure you can find some academic research and books on this.
Knowing the purpose of the business
Even though the founders do not have all the details figured out yet, having a clear purpose is crucial. Questions like where the business is headed and deciding on long and short-term goals are important to answer. There is a possibility that what the founder initially imagined will change in time, but defining the purpose and following it is important.
Knowledge of processes, methodologies, and tools & techniques
In project management, as in entrepreneurship, there are tested ways for structuring data. This is one piece of information that partners and investors are expecting the founders to know. Even if it is about a business model canvas or a pitching deck, they are known in the entire venture capital pipeline.
As processes, there is always the question of how much time should founders stay in planning or how quickly should they go to test the market. How much should stay and define different plans or just sketch something and give it a shot? This is also a recipe that differs for every founder.
Ability to recognize resistance and overcome it
Wishing to bring something new or something improved in the market is understanding that resistance is part of the game. There will be potential resistance on all sides, from the competition, suppliers, and even potential customers. Having strategies for this could be a lot of help for start-up enthusiasts.
Communication — the ability to provide information regarding tasks, plans, schedules, strategies to stakeholders
Using a methodology in project management gives you the clarity and structure of tools and ways to communicate. In entrepreneurship, this is something that has to be settled and decided by the founders. Here are some of the questions that should be considered:
How much should they reveal?
How should they create the stakeholder’s grid?
How often should they engage in communicating with them?
Who should communicate from the start-up side?
Ability to keep the project moving toward successful completion in face of aggressive schedules and discouraging developments
In projects, people are under pressure to meet deadlines and deal with the scarcity of resources. In building a startup, founders could take the structure and the discipline from project management, create templates, and use them in iterations. Yes, iteration is part of the entrepreneurship game also. However, the creative process can be formalized more and get inspiration from project management by creating steps to follow, milestones to overcome, and deadlines to reach.
Some aspects of project management can be transferred to entrepreneurship. A good idea is an idea in practice, even though it is not in the best shape. Plan, schedule, distribute roles, and structure information. Starting a business can look like the most complex project, so it is important to adapt to some of these techniques.
Finding happiness and having a purpose in life is a goal of many people. However, the concept of happiness is so broad that people can’t even begin to understand where they should start to look for it. People start to define their version of happiness and what could make them happy. Having a family, a successful career, and a big house are among the things that most people often associate with happiness.
One of the most prominent aspects that are often associated with happiness is money or how much money people can make. One famous study from 2010 by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton even tried to test this hypothesis by measuring people’s level of happiness with their income. They found that the more money people make, the more they tend to have an increase in emotional wellbeing. In other words, as someone’s income increases, their wellbeing also increases.
However, this effect stops at a certain point. Once people make about $75,000 a year, their wellbeing stops increasing altogether. This study answers some people’s earlier questions about how important money is to happiness and how they can achieve it by making $75,000 a year.
However, a newer study in 2021 by Matthew Killingsworth contradicted this research. They found that a higher income above $75,000 can still positively affect people’s happiness and wellbeing. In this study, they also measured wellbeing in greater detail by using real-time assessment in asking participants how they are feeling at the moment instead of how they felt in the previous week or month. The result was that they found higher earners felt great and happy.
So, does that mean that people with low income can’t ever be happy? Researchers argue that, although money does play an important role in people’s overall happiness and satisfaction of life, it is also only a modest determinant of happiness. There are many ways how money can contribute to people’s happiness.
Increased comfort
Although money is not everything, it is a means to have a comfortable life. When you have enough money, you can have all your basic needs fulfilled. Living in a comfortable house, eating healthy food, having access to health care, and feeling secure and safe are things that everyone needs. You won’t be able to think about happiness or enjoyment when you are feeling hungry or cold and have no home to go to.
This is in line with the NCHS data statistic that found people living in poverty were three times more likely to have depression. Another thing to highlight from Kahneman and Deaton’s research is that their participants are all American, so the living standard and income that they found is limited to them. An income of $75,00 a year might not be the threshold for everyone; it could vary, depending on the cost of living in a specific area and one’s interest.
As long as you have enough money to fulfill your basic needs, then you are halfway there. Having more money to buy things that you like can increase your positive emotions and comfort. You can also use the money to hire help to do your household chores so you can have more time to spend with your friends and family which is also important for your wellbeing.
Control in life
From Killingsworth’s research, they found that control in life plays a significant impact on their respondent’s level of happiness. People who have a higher income are happier, partly because they have an increased sense of control over life. Moreover, a sense of control accounted for a 74% correlation between income and wellbeing.
People that have more money can have more choices and options on how they want to live their life. For instance, having extra income can allow them to eventually afford a better housing arrangement or eat better meals. The more money one has, the more options become available to them.
However, it is also worth noting that making more money could also mean dealing with more pressure from work, leading to less time for socializing, and even lesser time for leisure and rest. So, the autonomy that you have by having more money might come with sacrificing other areas of your life. Therefore, you need to understand how much money is “enough” to avoid constantly chasing for more in exchange for the things that are more important in your life.
Value of money
How much money can bring you happiness also depends on how much value and meaning one puts into the amount of money one has. People who put a great emphasis on how money contributes to their happiness will feel happier when they have more money than people who don’t value money as much. A studyfound that for those living in rural areas, spending time with family, and having contact with nature are things that contributed to their level of happiness as opposed to those who live in a metropolis.
However, with increasing income that is commonly found in industrialized countries, social and economic factors have a bigger impact on people’s level of happiness. This finding suggests that people’s perspectives on the importance of money will affect how much money they need to bring them joy and happiness. In contrast, people who put less value on money are happy in a comfortable, safe, and strong community; they feel free to enjoy life regardless of how much money they are making.
Instead of focusing more on how you can make more money, try to understand what you think money will bring to your life. Having more money may help you gain certain things that will bring you happiness and other positive emotions. It is important to note that money can’t buy all of the things that will make you happy; in fact, you might find another way to attain certain types of happiness even without money.
Experience vs material goods
How you spend your money is also crucial on how it can affect your happiness. Some people spend their money on material or tangible things like bags and jewelry, while others spend more on experiences like going on vacation or attending a concert. A 2014 research found that experiential purchases bring greater happiness than material goods because they can effectively improve social relationships, form an important part of one’s identity, and lead to fewer social comparisons than material purchases.
Aside from that, a poll in 2014 also supports this research where they found that millennials prefer to spend their money on experiences than on material goods. However, this can’t be applied to anyone. For some people, material goods can bring them a lot of happiness if they have a very strong affinity for them. The main point is that spending money on experiences or material goods could increase wellbeing because it can fill one’s higher psychological needs like connectedness and a feeling of being alive.
Be it experience or material things, you need to understand why you feel they can bring you happiness. One does not better than the other because, in the end, it is still spending vs. spending. So, before you spend your money, ask yourself why you need a certain thing and what you can get from purchasing it.
Conclusion
A lot of evidence suggests that having more money will bring more happiness. However, money will not inevitably increase your happiness. The way you perceive, spend, and how much you value money will shape how much happiness you can get from it. How much money a person needs to be happy varies depending on how much to cover their basic needs and what can bring them joy without sacrificing other important aspects in one’s life such as time or rest. Whether it is a concert ticket or a new pair of shoes, ultimately money can increase your happiness if you spend it on experiences or items that are aligned with your values.
Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed. It is positioned in between a trait or an ability. Much research has been conducted on confidence over the years. The majority of this research accentuates the importance of confidence in life which leads to studying the techniques to build and improve confidence.
Additionally, Locke et al. have found that the stronger people’s self-confidence is, the higher the goals are and their committedness towards them. This shows that self-confidence could also indicate one’s willingness to act. In this sense, self-confidence is considered one of the most influential motivators and regulators of behavior in people’s everyday lives as it helps strengthen one’s resilience in facing adversity to succeed in life.
However, people often do not include developing confidence together with their competence. A peer-reviewed meta-analysis found an overlap of only 9% between how good people think they are and how good they actually are. This phenomenon could reduce one’s self-awareness and performance, which may result in the creation of a narcissistic culture. Therefore, the need to keep confidence in check must be highlighted and should be practiced with the following strategies.
Test your core beliefs
Core beliefs are the most basic assumptions about one’s identity. It determines the degree to which people see themselves as safe, competent, powerful, and autonomous. These beliefs become the foundation or rules of how one governs one’s behavior. Core beliefs and the associated rules are fundamental to one’s personality, hence to self-confidence, as a personality trait.
The role of core beliefs is also emphasized in the definition of self-confidence. While positive beliefs lead to becoming a confident person, too much positivity could become toxic which results in overconfidence. Meanwhile, negative beliefs could result in underconfidence. To change these two extremes, McKay, M., et al. mention a seven-step process in their workbook, Thoughts and Feelings: Taking Control of Your Moods and Your Life, to help test an individual’s core beliefs:
Identify your core beliefs by asking situational “What if” questions and exploring what that situation can mean for you.
Once the core belief is identified, assess its negative impact by thinking about how this can affect your work, mood, and relationships.
From there, identify rules based on your core belief by exploring its veracity through questions like “What do I actually do to cope with my belief? What do I avoid? How do I think I’m supposed to act? What are my perceived limits?”
Generate catastrophic predictions for each rule in case you break them. Think of scenarios that can possibly happen if you do not follow your rule.
After that, start with a rule that has the least consequence and test it based on the following five selection criteria: easy to set up the situation, allows a direct test of the underlying core belief, has a clear prediction of your behavior rather than suggestive feelings, has an immediate outcome, and has a relatively low amount of risk associated to it.
Test your rule in a real-life situation and keep a record of how you handle the situation based on the new behavior and the outcome it brings. Keep doing this until you are able to test out all the rules.
Once you’ve done all these, you should be able to develop a new core belief. With this new belief, go back to step three and repeat the process. Write the new rule as affirmations by using “I” language in the present tense rather than commands or restrictions.
The whole process can go on for as long as it needs to be until you are comfortable with the new core belief and its rules. The important thing to consider here is to continuously keep a log of everything as it may act as support for new rules in the future. This will also help guide you as you fortify and balance your self-confidence.
Control your worries
Confidence is closely related to a sense of worry. Worry represents a natural process of mental problem-solving on the uncertainty that invokes a feeling of anxiousness. It can motivate people to put extra effort into work or personal tasks, making them feel more confident as they face their problems. However, worry is more known for its negative impacts, such as cognitive bias, which may lead to either underconfidence or overconfidence.
Worry is also a cyclical pattern involving thoughts, body, and behavior. For example, the thought of being rejected during a job interview can chain into other negative thoughts, resulting in anxiety. Subsequently, physical symptoms associated with the fight-or-flight response begin to manifest such as heart palpitations and muscle tension. People may adopt a self-serving behavior to avoid this uncomfortable feeling by shifting the blame to others for making it harder to land a job.
Based on this pattern, it is recommended to control worry by approaching it in three levels. First, to deal with physical stress, you can practice relaxation exercises regularly. Relaxation provides breaks in the cycle of the fight-or-flight response. One of the techniques is progressive muscle relaxation which involves alternating tension and relaxation in a group of major muscles.
Second, practice risk assessment to know which risks to avoid and be prepared for instead of worrying to help your thinking process. There are two main aspects to risk assessment: probability estimation and outcomes prediction. You need to estimate the probability of a worst-case scenario from the feared event coming to pass, with 0% for no likelihood to 100% for absolute inevitability. Then, predict the outcome you most fear while trying to figure out the possible coping strategies that would help ease the worry.
Finally, these five steps can help in mitigating worry behaviors:
Record your worry behavior
Pick the easiest one to stop and predict the consequences of stopping it
Stop the chosen behavior or replace it with a new behavior
Assess your anxiety before and after
Repeat steps 2-4 with the next-easiest behavior
Being confident surely helps one overcome adversity. However, having too much or too little confidence without being accompanied with proper competence could have negative impacts. Therefore, verify your core beliefs and control your worries to have the right amount of confidence. As Charles Darwin said, “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
The internet has become the primary source of information for people around the world. According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center, 53% of US adults rely on social media for news, with 36% depending on Facebook as a regular source. Meanwhile, YouTube comes in second place with 23%, followed by Twitter with 15%.
New social technologies have accelerated information sharing, providing easy access to huge amounts of information. Despite that, internet-based media is also characterized by unregulated information flow and the spread of deceiving, inaccurate, and uncheckable information.
Inaccurate and deceptive information is often manipulative and used to evoke suspicion, fear, worry, and anger. Misleading information, created with or without intent, is designed to be sensational and provoking with an aim to attract attention and profit off panic and fears. Research shows that false information tends to spread farther and faster; while fake news brings about emotions like fear and disgust, people are inclined to find false news more novel than factual news.
Misinformation is a widespread problem. However, psychological explanations of information processing can help avoid falling into the trap of misinformation and build mental resilience by embracing a more critical and skeptical approach. It is important because individual and societal wellbeing is related to having an accurate picture of social reality.
Let’s first acknowledge what contributes to the pervasiveness of misinformation on the internet-based media.
The problem with the internet-based media
Digital media has allowed individuals to be active in content production, leading to a wide range of personalities and opinions appearing on online platforms. One of its drawbacks is the absence of assurance regarding content quality and credibility.
Digital transformation of media platforms has enabled algorithms and automation to govern content recommendation and filtering of information. In other words, not every user on social media receives the same news feed. As such, the algorithmic selection of social media sourced news plays a role in the creation of an echo effect in which users encounter information that resonates with their opinions and beliefs.
The term echo chambers is coined to describe the exposure people have only to opinions that they agree with on social media. This is regardless of being true or false. In turn, their opinions and preferences are being amplified.
Cognitive biases of information processing
The accuracy of information found on social media platforms is often unclear. Additionally, echo chambers limit users’ ability to encounter content that might challenge their opinions. Due to these two factors, the responsibility to evaluate the information’s credibility and make decisions now falls on the user and their conscious efforts to do this task. However, perceived credibility is not free from one’s interpretations and preformed notions. How users select reliable sources of information and evaluate their credibility presents new challenges in internet-based media.
Cognitive processes are involved in making a judgment while cognitive biases determine what information is accepted or rejected. Cognitive biases and faulty reasoning in processing certain information can influence one’s decision-making. This may make information seekers vulnerable to misinformation.
Information processing is influenced by one’s preexisting beliefs which connect to confirmation bias as it plays a role in shaping information consumption patterns. Confirmation bias consists of three components: information search, evidence interpretation, and memory recall. These three components are often biased in support of one’s previously held beliefs, expectations, and preferences for information that complies with their attitudes and justifies their opinions.
People unconsciously may engage in biased search processes to seek out information that supports their preconceptions about a certain topic. Biased searching for supportive information may result in poor decision-making. Information that confirms and reinforces users’ preexisting beliefs may be interpreted as being more persuasive. Simply put, confirmation bias means actively seeking confirmatory evidence.
As a result, users may end up outweighing positive confirmatory evidence without questioning the credibility and even refute or ignore evidence if it challenges their beliefs. Confirmation bias may also become salient when people rely on their background knowledge and experiences in information processing.
Bias blind spot is another form of cognitive bias. It refers to recognizing biases that other people have in their judgments while believing that one is free from their own biases. If you are likely to detect the existence of biases in others more than in yourself, it might be a good idea to do some self-reflection first.
Conclusion
Neither echo chambers nor confirmation bias can be eliminated completely; however, through digital wellbeing skills, their impact can be managed. The use of social media as a source of information presents both benefits and challenges; whether it maximizes or diminishes an individual’s wellbeing benefits depends on the user’s media consumption and online behaviors. Checking one’s own cognitive biases is one way towards enhancing wellbeing. Being aware of confirmation bias and taking steps to perform a critical stance towards one’s preexisting beliefs and preconceptions can be achieved by performing critical thinking and learning how to learn.
Being conscious consumers of digital media is a way to manage challenges and optimize one’s wellbeing as a result of online behaviors. To better equip an individual from the negative impacts, developing digital wellbeing skills can help in controlling stress resulting from the overwhelming flow of (mis)information and communication overabundance. This is done by efficiently filtering one’s attention to focus on one’s personal goals and wellbeing.
