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Loneliness hurts. Most of us have experienced this. Especially in this time of quarantine, many can feel lonely. With the advent of technology and social media and the ever-increasing speed of life, we may feel more connected in some ways, but, on the other hand, “human moments” of actual face-to-face exchange without interruption can become more rare. A sociological study shows that disconnect seems to be on the rise, with one out of four Americans feeling like they have no one to talk to about personal problems. Loneliness is the leading reason people seek out therapy, and one study suggests that loneliness is a risk factor for mortality. As I have written about in previous posts, social connection is critical to our health and well-being, as is vulnerability, an essential ingredient to intimacy. We thrive in community, in connection, in giving and receiving love. In a survey I conducted with Stanford students, when I asked what single activity brought them the greatest fulfillment, the most commonly given answer was spending time with friends and loved ones. It is not surprising that loneliness hurts. A brain imaging study showed that feeling ostracized actually activates our neural pain matrix. In fact, several studies show that ostracizing others hurts us as much as being ostracized ourselves. We can hypothesize that, similarly, loneliness is associated with the pain matrix. From one perspective, we are all fundamentally alone. We come into the world alone, and we leave it alone. We are all independent entities with thoughts, feelings, and emotions that no one else can fully understand or experience no matter how numerous our friends. On the other hand, we are always completely interconnected no matter how few our friends. We are connected to millions of people all over the world through the intricate web of economic and social relationships that bring food to our table, clothes on our bodies. We are literally connected to every other human being who shares this same ecosphere with us simply by the air we breathe. We are in touch with every other person and animal on the planet by the ground we walk on. We are both alone and deeply connected. When the pain of loneliness takes hold of you, here are some tools that can help build resilience. Connect with yourself 100% Most of us have learned to distract ourselves the very moment that we feel an uncomfortable emotion such as loneliness surfacing. We may engage in “healthy” forms of distraction such as reading, exercising, or working or “unhealthy” forms of distraction such as overeating, drinking, or watching hours of television. While these options may provide temporary relief, they often lead to other problems, such as weight gain in the case of overeating or drinking, exhaustion and burnout in the case of overexercising or overworking, and even addiction. Moreover, as explained by Harvard’s Dan Wegner, when we try to resist something, it tends to persist all the more. Distracting ourselves from a core problem does not get at its root. Children, on the other hand, often give free rein to their emotions. Though this may seem immature to adults, children also get over negative emotions extremely quickly and are able to move on to the next thing as if nothing had happened. Adults, in an attempt to bury and control their emotions, often carry them with them for years. Allowing the emotion to arise and giving it our full attention may be a key to letting it go. Here are three exercises for embracing loneliness: 1. Give the emotion full expression. Let the emotion take center stage. Especially if you are used to distracting yourself from your feelings, this exercise may feel uncomfortable. But if you let yourself feel the emotion 100%, it may just move through you more quickly: Observe the sensations of the emotion, notice the thoughts that it triggers, cry if tears come. Be with the discomfort fully. 2. Go into silence. Silence can be difficult and even scary for some people. We are used to televisions blaring background noise, car radios jingling, iPods playing, text messages beeping, cell phones ringing, Facebook notifications pinging, tweets tweeting, and emails downloading. Set yourself a time limit for the silence, such as half an hour. If you wish, you can take a walk during that time or engage in a relaxed form of exercise like swimming. Makes sure that the activity is not one that becomes a distraction. Choose to do something that simply allows you to be in silence. Be as present as you can with everything around you and within you. 3. Engage in mindful meditation. No longer deemed an exotic, esoteric, or mystical activity, meditation has become mainstream. Though meditation is very simple, it also can require great courage. Simply be with the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that arise without trying to control or change them. Observe them with the kindness of a mother watching her child at play. Be patient. If the emotions get uncomfortable, muster up your valor, strength, tenacity, and patience. Set yourself a time limit and do not get up until the time is over. You can start with five minutes and eventually work up to sitting for 20 or 30 minutes at a time. For those readers who want to jump to the next point because the very sound of being 100% present with your feelings sounds too difficult, remember that being present allows the emotion to pass whereas, in distraction, you may just be holding on to and extending the feeling. Moreover, in a recent study, researchers found that being present with what is happening, no matter how unpleasant that experience, tends to be more pleasant than not being present. These findings suggest that we are actually happier if we do not distract ourselves from the present, irrespective of how much we dislike it. Cultivate inner and outer connection Research shows that we reap the psychological well-being and physical health benefits of social connection not from the number of friends we have, but from our internal and subjective sense of connection toward others. In other words, we could have only one friend, or no friends at all, but if we feel connected from the inside, then we reap all the benefits thereof. This research finding is empowering because whatever starts from within is within our hands. 4. Take care of the body. As part of our distracted lifestyle, we often don’t listen to our body. We eat the wrong foods, drink, stay up too late, and forget to exercise or over-exercise. We also carry around the false notion that our body’s well-being is independent from that of our mind. This is not the case. As anyone who has started a healthy diet or exercise regimen knows, when we start to take care of our body, we naturally feel better and, with a positive state of mind, our whole outlook on life changes. As a friend of mine who was going through a divorce once told me, “If my mind is OK, then everything is OK.” One of the best ways to take care of our minds is to take good care of our bodies. 5. Serve. “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” is a quote that resonates with us all. There is always someone suffering more than we are. This gives us the opportunity to approach others with kindness and a sense of service. No matter what our capabilities, we can always contribute to others with as little as a smile or more. Service is very simple. “Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you,” said Mother Theresa. Whether it is the person working the cash register at the grocery store or your neighbor, even one small act of kindness can brighten someone’s day. We can be of service to people, animals, or even nature. Whatever you are drawn to, your act of service is an act of connection that will help lift your loneliness. Research shows that compassion and service can be of tremendous benefit. Often, when we feel down or alone, our vision and universe become very narrow. Helping others can immediately change our perspective and re-energize us, which is why compassion has been linked to well-being. As Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” 6. Connect with nature. If connecting with people is a challenge, connect with nature. A recent study shows that taking walks in nature can increase our well-being, even in the case of depression, and another study showed that exposure to nature increases our sense of connectedness and closeness and even makes us more caring and ready to share with others. Connecting with nature can help broaden that vision and inspire an experience of awe at the view of a landscape. Cultivating awe through nature can also help broaden our perspective. Research on awe, which is often inspired by beautiful natural sceneries such as a starlit sky or a vast horizon, suggests that it slows our perception of time by bringing us into the present moment and enhances our well-being. 7. Practice loving-kindness meditation. This exercise is a meditation designed to increase our sense of love and kindness toward others. A study I ran at Stanford showed that even seven minutes of this exercise can make us feel more connected to others in a deep-seated way. Read instructions for loving-kindness meditation here. 8. Fall in love with yourself. “If you make friends with yourself, you will never be alone,” wrote Maxwell Maltz. We often run from solitude for the same reasons we run from loneliness. We fear being alone. But being alone also means doing what you please. You can dance at your own rhythm, eat whatever you fancy, watch the movies you wish to watch, and make choices that are entirely your own! Being alone is often the only time we can truly rest, undistracted, unstimulated by the environment and other people. Audrey Hepburn said, “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.” Being alone can be a great source of replenishment and even bliss. Beneath the thoughts and emotions is a vast ocean of silence, peace, and well-being. We all access it at times: Sometimes it can be experienced when you lose yourself in a sunset, or just as you wake up before thoughts flood the mind, or in an act of service or love, in meditation or prayer. The more we can access that space, the more that well-being also permeates the rest of our day. Finally, know that you are not alone. We are all deeply vulnerable. This knowledge alone may open your heart and make you feel connected to all. Moroever, the pain of loneliness is also one that gives you tremendous depth and empathy. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who worked with dying patients all of her life in the depths of their vulnerability, wrote: “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” Every difficult experience can make us deeper, wiser, more compassionate and grateful, and, ultimately, happier and more fulfilled. This article was originally published on EmmaSeppala.com. Read the original article.

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Starting in March, education leaders have been working furiously to create a school experience that must satisfy a dizzying list of public health, education, economic, and labor concerns. Now that classes have begun, educators face the daunting task of making up lost ground from COVID-19-related learning loss, which hit low-income students and students of color particularly hard, against the backdrop of high-profile police violence and anti-Black racism. Students are being asked to learn in an atmosphere of prolonged stress and anxiety, often through a Zoom call or a plexiglass partition. In a situation like the one we all face, how can educators possibly meet students’ needs? Our new report, “How to Meet Students’ Social-Emotional and Academic Needs When Schools Reopen,” adds to existing research in ways that are timely and relevant for educators embarking on a new and unconventional school year. In the report, we tracked indicators of school culture, social-emotional competencies, and academic outcomes over time in 58 schools supported by NewSchools Venture Fund. The findings in this year’s report are consistent with those from our previous ones in 2018 and 2019, providing nuance to the research on the interdependence between students’ social-emotional and academic learning. We found that though the pandemic has complicated how schools address students’ social-emotional needs, some have adapted their models to provide for them in a remote or hybrid setting. Their willingness to innovate can help other schools explore and implement similar practices. Here are our four key findings—along with questions for school and system leaders to consider. 1. Students who feel physically and emotionally safe tend to do better academically For three years in a row, our research has shown that feeling physically and emotionally safe in school is the strongest factor correlated with academic performance. All seven school culture factors that we measure (such as student engagement and student-teacher relationships) have an effect on social-emotional learning. However, student safety is the only one with a statistically significant positive effect on academic outcomes after controlling for students’ social-emotional competencies. When students rate their school highly on our safety scale, we estimate the difference in their academic performance to be similar to moving from the 50th to the 56th percentile on nationally normed assessments. Clearly, a lot of attention has been paid to keeping students safe from the coronavirus, whether that means keeping them at home or reconfiguring their classrooms, overhauling class schedules, upgrading ventilation systems, providing hand-washing stations, and giving out face coverings. Emotional safety is equally important and must be cultivated regardless of the mode of instruction. At Statesmen Preparatory Academy for Boys in Washington D.C., establishing warm, caring, and trusted relationships is central to their model so that students feel emotionally safe and know that they belong. When adults see behaviors that are not aligned with the school’s core values, their first response is to tell a student, “You belong to me; you are not going to get suspended; you are not going to leave school.” They then work out agreements for what to do differently moving forward. Students participate in a daily advisory session where they learn social-emotional skills. And both students and teachers participate in morning and end-of-day check-ins on how they are feeling and whether they have what they need for learning. The school provides mental health support for its teaching staff, predominantly Black men, through Georgetown University, so they can process their own trauma to better support students. When Statesmen moved to distance learning in March, the team immediately focused on maintaining strong relationships with students. They mapped which faculty member had the strongest connection with each student and assigned every staff member five students to check in with during planned advisory sessions and by phone. Every student had at least two touch points daily from a staff member. The full school community continued to come together online twice each day for morning meetings and end-of-day check-ins, just as they did before the pandemic. Over 95 percent of students logged into learning activities every day during distance learning. In creating a sense of physical and emotional safety for students (and staff), school and system leaders should ask themselves:How have you communicated with students and their families about your plan to keep them physically and emotionally safe? How might you create opportunities to hear and respond to feedback from students and families about the plan and how it is working? Does your school already have support groups and counseling services available on campus? If not, how might you create them as part of your reopening plan? If so, did your students access these resources and trust the adults who administer them before the transition to distance learning? If not, how might you strengthen them going forward? How might you gather student perceptions of safety and monitor changes in this data over time? How will your team respond to trends in the data? 2. When students believe their abilities and skills can grow with effort, they are more likely to have higher learning outcomes Getting better at something—whether playing the piano or learning biochemistry—requires persistent, focused practice. Students are more likely to stay motivated and persist in their learning when they believe their knowledge and skills can improve with effort and that mistakes are a learning opportunity, not a sign of failure. Our findings this year reinforced the importance of a growth mindset. We estimate that students with well-developed perceptions of their own growth mindset experience a difference in academic outcomes similar to moving from the 50th to the 63rd percentile on nationally normed assessments. The magnitude of this finding is large enough that the What Works Clearinghouse run by the Institute for Education Sciences would consider it “substantively important.” At a time when it’s easy for students to blame themselves for struggling to progress academically amid the chaos of the last six months, establishing and maintaining a growth mindset is critical. There will certainly be mistakes and setbacks as schools and teachers try new ways of teaching and students attempt new ways of learning. Framing these as opportunities to solve problems and persist through adversity is the stuff the growth mindset is made of. Comp Sci High in the South Bronx works explicitly to develop students’ growth mindset by helping them to process the external factors that could make them doubt their own abilities. For instance, this year, the entire ninth-grade orientation aimed to help students process the effects of the pandemic and understand why school needs to look so different this year. Then, teachers moved to lessons that helped kids identify long-term goals, see the connection between this school year and those goals, and understand how they will become more independent and self-driven this year to meet their short- and long-term goals. All of this culminated in a round of parent-student-teacher conferences where students presented their vision for the year to their advisor and their caregivers. Throughout this process, teachers try to help students see setbacks and challenges as inevitable; developing responses to them is part of the learning process. School and system leaders should ask themselves:How might you support teachers to try out and evaluate evidence-informed classroom interventions and practices for fostering a growth mindset? What steps can you take to create an environment in which teachers feel comfortable reflecting on aspects of their instruction that might inhibit students’ development of a growth mindset? Have you adopted a common framework to help educators understand growth mindset through an equity lens? 3. Students who develop ways to cope with stress, emotions, feelings, and behaviors in different situations are likely to do better academically Learning to cope with stress is a normal part of healthy development. But excessive, prolonged stress can be debilitating. With so many students of color handling high levels of stress created by the perfect storm of COVID-19 and persistent racism, it’s more important than ever that schools help them develop ways to cope with their own stress, emotions, feelings, and behaviors. In our schools, students’ perceptions of their self-management skills are associated with higher math and reading outcomes. Our analysis shows that when students rate them highly, the difference in their learning is similar to moving from the 50th to the 59th percentile on nationally normed assessments of reading and math. At Zeta Charter Schools, a network currently serving early elementary students in New York City, teachers conduct lessons on social-emotional learning twice a week and students share how they have lived these lessons each Friday during circle time. The first lesson of the year is focused on “how to identify your feelings,” based on the belief that if students are unable to identify and name their feelings, they will not know how to respond to them appropriately. Every classroom also has a “zen den” with sensory materials and other tools to support students when they need additional help coping with their emotions. Students also use “Mood Meters,” developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, to show their teachers and fellow students how they are feeling, which they can update throughout the day. Zeta shifted to shorter daily lessons that they can apply to virtual or in-person instruction to ensure the focus on social-emotional competencies does not get deprioritized in different scenarios. In helping students to develop coping mechanisms, school and system leaders should ask themselves:How might you encourage practices that help students identify and verbalize their feelings and emotions and develop multiple techniques for coping with them? How might teachers support students in setting learning goals, developing plans for reaching them, and reflecting on their progress? What is your district or school’s approach to supporting those students and teachers who return to school with heightened anxiety and might need access to mental health services? 4. Two “power pairs” are associated with higher learning outcomes than any single culture factor or social-emotional competency Our findings suggest that the relationship with academic outcomes is larger when students:believe their abilities and skills can grow with effort and feel physically and emotionally safe, or believe their abilities and skills can grow with effort and feel their teachers expect a lot from them in terms of effort, persistence, and learning. We estimate that students who rate the power pair of growth mindset and safety highly demonstrate additional learning similar to moving from the 50th to the 67th percentile on nationally normed assessments. Similarly, students who rate the power pair of growth mindset and rigorous expectations highly demonstrate a boost in learning outcomes that we estimate to be similar to moving from the 50th to the 66th percentile on nationally normed assessments. Research is illuminating which specific school culture factors and social-emotional competencies will accelerate academic success. Knowing what they are and seeing how they can be integrated into instruction can help educators focus their limited time, energy, and resources on creating learning environments that support the many dimensions students bring with them to school—a goal made even more important by the public health crisis and current events that we’re all living through.