Leadership is one of those topics that seems to come up time and time again. Back in episode 486, we examined what it means to be a supervisor, and the fact that only one-third or so of people aspire to any kind of leadership at all. Even with that, however, it’s often true that those who become leaders may or may not have wanted to be named that, or are even officially in leadership positions.

Once you are in a leadership position – if you want to be or not – there is no dearth of options of what kind of leader you might be, number of books to read about leadership, or even entire degrees of every level you can get in leadership studies.

The HubSpot blog outlines seven different types of leadership styles, ranging from democratic to autocratic, strategic to transactional.

Meanwhile, the Association for Talent Development instead breaks leadership up into five styles – managerial, relational, motivational, inspirational, and transformational.

Blog WiseToast goes even further, with 12 different types of leadership outlined and The Executive Connection outlines nine common leadership styles.

While there’s crossover in all of these, there’s also a drive here similar to ones we have talked about in the past – a drive to categorize and organize the experiences we have, ways we interact with others, and ways we think about ourselves in a way that may be useful to us. The power of that kind of examination, however, comes not in the fact that we can name our leadership style (official or not) as one thing or the other — the power comes in using that information, feedback, and  framework as a jumping off point for determining how we want to interact with that world.

There’s a variety of things that could be called “allergies,” and often are called allergies by those who experience reactions to various types of foods. Medically, an allergy is when there’s an immunological reaction to a particular food that causes hives, anaphylaxis, itching, sneezing, runny eyes, and the like. However, there are a number of reactions that individuals will often refer to as an allergy. Gastrointestinal distress, for example, of the type that lactose-intolerant individuals may experience when consuming milk.

The World Allergy Organization reports that, quote:

It is generally accepted that food allergy affects approximately 2.5% of the general population, but the spread of prevalence data is wide, ranging from 1% to 10%

In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control in the United States reported that, quote:

From 1997 to 2007, the prevalence of reported food allergy increased 18% among children under age 18 years. Eight types of food account for over 90% of allergic reactions in affected individuals: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy, and wheat.

In 2007, a study carried out in Poland took a look at the prevalence of children’s allergies in urban and rural environments found that in general, children who live in urban environments tend to have a higher prevalence of allergies while those in rural environments do not tend to. As the Journal of the American Medical Association Network highlights, quote:

food allergy prevalence estimates from these recent national surveys exceed 9% of US adults, suggesting that food allergy may affect more US adults than previously acknowledged. Although some children with food allergy develop natural tolerance, others retain their food allergy as they enter adulthood. Adults can also develop new food allergies, and evidence suggests that certain food allergies (eg, shellfish and fin fish) may be more likely than others to develop during adulthood.

In other words, allergies aren’t really all that uncommon, and the things that we tend to refer to as allergies even more so. The prevalence seems to be growing, too, but even if that wasn’t the case, you or someone you know likely has an allergy to something.

The circadian rhythms that govern how we sleep are impacted by many of the things that around us, the things that we experience, and the environment that we live in. That environment includes the light and dark cycles around us – both natural and electric.

There have been a variety of studies done throughout the years on the impact that the natural rhythms of night and day have on human bodies. There was one particularly interesting study done in 2012 on the impact of long winter days on the individuals working in the arctic.

That study found that, when deprived of light for long periods of time, many individuals maintained some semblance of a 24 hour light cycle, though some do end up defaulting to cycles that are more or less than 24 hours.

While it’s easy to think that conditions such as Seasonal Affective Disorder are simply a function of latitude, that may not be the case. Quoting from a 2005 overview of Seasonal Affective Disorder :

An estimated 10 to 20 percent of recurrent depression cases follow a seasonal pattern.3 Although a summer pattern of recurrence is possible, the predominant pattern involves fall/winter depression with spring/summer remission. In U.S. community surveys, SAD prevalence ranges from 9.7 percent in New Hampshire to 1.4 percent in Florida.4 In North America, SAD prevalence increases with latitude, but the correlation is nonsignificant in other parts of the world.

In fact, it may be that the impact late nights and long nights have on our psychology is partially a function of the mindset we have going in. Quoting from Science Nordic:

Leibowitz and Vittersø found a correlation between how far north people lived in Norway and how positively they viewed winter and winter darkness. More importantly, “Vittersø and I found that positive thought patterns in winter were related to life satisfaction, positive emotions and seeking challenges that can lead to personal growth,” Leibowitz, an American psychology student, said. Vittersø emphasizes that the study has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal, and that the correlations they found do not mean causation.

Nevertheless, he says that the study suggests what might make life easier for Norwegians during a time of year that most people don’t really like. “We who live in Norway are probably not aware that we see so much to enjoy during the winter, because it is so normal for us,” Vittersø said. “But it is probably much less common to look at winter this way elsewhere in the world.”

Self-care is a whole lot more than a throwaway phrase… or a multi-billion dollar industry.

As NPR put it in 2017, quote:

Self-care existed long before millennials did. Ancient Greeks saw it as a way to make people more honest citizens who were more likely to care for others. In her 1988 book, A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde wrote that “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.” In 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, more millennials reported making personal improvement commitments than any generation before them. They spend twice as much as boomers on self-care essentials such as workout regimens, diet plans, life coaching, therapy and apps to improve their personal well-being. They’ve even created self-care Twitter bots.

No matter how many financial resources you may or may not have at your disposal, there seems to be a question of what may or may not be considered a luxury. After all, luxury has a number of definitions, many of which are based on the kind of world we live in.

As Vice reported, quote:

“We live in a society where structures are extraordinarily powerful in defining who people are and what will happen in their lives,” Carl Cederström, an associate professor of organization studies at Stockholm University said. “Yet at the same time, we seem to live in a time where we refuse to see that that is the case. We really do want to believe in the American dream or in the fantasy that everything could be solved through individual measures, through self-care, through techniques of magical thinking, the power of positive thinking, or whatever it might be.This is like when Paul Ryan suggested that poor people see a life coach as a requirement to receive federal aid, in order to “design a customized life plan to provide a structured roadmap out of poverty.” The sad irony is that much of the history of popularization of self-care comes from activists as a reaction to institutional shortcomings—women, people of color, and the LGBTQ communities. Self-care was a kind of protest. It was a way to look after marginalized bodies and minds when no one else bothered to.”

So how do you manage to treat yourself to luxuries, especially when your position financially or socially may not allow for what general society considers a luxury? There was a 2018 survey done by a hotel chain asking Brits to name what they considered to be luxuries, and many of them were the type that require time more than money. A few of the options?

Reading a book

Catching your favorite movie

Spending five minutes with yourself

Going for a picnic

So how about you?

Though the phrase “style switching” is generally used to refer to how someone chooses and then alters their words, phrasing, and cadence of speech, there’s a number of other situations where that same type of shifting applies. It’s important to note, too, that fashion and style are two different things. Quoting from fashion blogger Sarah Scoop:

Personal style is something different entirely. It’s the style you cultivate for yourself and – most importantly – it doesn’t move with fashion. Sure, you can add and change things if you find something on trend that you particularly love, but your key looks at the same. […] and no fashion whim is going to deter you from them.

Style switching — changing or altering the fashion that you choose when it comes to your personal clothing style can have just as much of an impact on the view others have of you.

As seamstress Burke Brewer put in on her blog, quote:

[…] our clothing tells the world who, and where we are in life. Regardless of why you wear what you wear, I believe in wearing clothing that I love, that makes me feel fabulous & invincible, and that celebrates the uniqueness of my body with all its curves and flaws. I believe in wearing clothing that genuinely feels like me. My style will inevitably shift again — when I become a mother or age gracefully — and I’m excited to see what I’m creating 10, 20 and 30 years from now. I look forward to looking back to see where life, and my style, takes me.

In fact, that style and the choice of what clothes you put on can be more than just a choice. In fact, it can be a powerful and empowering moment to choose the clothing that you present yourself with.

As Tom Rasmussen wrote for CNN about trans and non-binary folks, quote:

For some of us, fashion allows us to pass, and to remove demarcations of a gender assigned to us. For others, it’s a way to opt out, to ask questions, to curate a whole new gender away from a binary. For all of us, it gives us autonomy over our bodies. The clothes we wear allow us to make a choice, they allow us to escape the expectation of normativity, and the boredom of homogeneity.

As with many things related to how we define ourselves, the religious traditions we grew up in and around have a big impact on the religious choices we make as adults — and the religious choices we don’t make. Stepping aside all of the discussion of if particular religions are good or bad for the world, or for individual people, even the numbers themselves are particularly interesting.

The Pew Research Center has had a long-ongoing study of both nation-specific and worldwide religious trends, and while you can dig through the UNData demographics statistics database, I would suggest setting aside an entire afternoon for that – at the minimum.

Worldwide, religion is still going strong – very strong. In 2015, those reporting no religious affiliation — which includes those that are atheists, yes, but also includes those that consider themselves spiritual or religious, without any specific affiliation to an organized religion — accounted for 16% of the world population.

In that same year, Christianity accounted for just over 31 percent of world population, Muslims 24%, and Hindus 15%.

Taking into account birth rates, conversion patterns, and other available data, the Pew Research Center estimates that somewhere between 2030 and 2035, Muslims will overtake Christians as the world’s most prominent religious affiliation.

Though this is the worldwide pattern, it certainly is not the pattern in individual countries. In the US and in much of Europe, those reporting no religious affiliation at all has been steadily — though very very slowly increasing, In the US, it is around 23 percent of adults who are religiously unaffiliated.

In the UK, the numbers are even more stark – in 2017, 53 percent  of the residents of the UK reported themselves as having no religious affiliation, which went up by a full five percent from a similar survey just two years before.
Then again, none of these surveys have any kind of box to tick for the phrase “spiritual but not religious” or “not religious, but spiritually practicing,” which is a phrase being used more often to differentiate from this historically synonymous terms.

There’s almost no debate, though there is research aplenty: extracurricular or organized activities tend to be a net benefit to kids. From learning teamwork and social functioning to working through challenges to trying out new interests, doing organized activities outside of the school day is generally considered to be a good thing.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s an equal opportunity thing, though – country-to-country or within the United States.

Quoting from an Atlantic article that explored the economic differences of extracurricular participation in the United States:

While there’s always been a gap in access to extracurriculars, participation numbers for the two groups increased at about the same rate until they started to diverge precipitously—in the early 1980s for non-athletic activities and in the early 1990s for sports teams. In 1972, roughly 61 percent of low-income high school seniors, and 67 percent of their more-affluent peers, participated in one more more non-athletic extracurricular activities. A decade later, participation rates rose to about 65 percent and 73 percent, respectively. But by 1992, while 75 percent of upper- and middle-class seniors reported participating in extracurriculars, involvement among disadvantaged students dropped back to 61 percent. By 2004, the number for low-income seniors was down to 56 percent.

These numbers are echoed by the Pew Social Trends report of 2015 looking at parenting in the United States, which found that, quote:

Parents with higher income and education are more likely to report that their children participate in various extracurricular activities. Among parents with an annual family income of $75,000 or higher, 84% say their children participated in sports or athletic activities in the 12 months prior to the survey; 62% say their children took music, dance or art lessons. By contrast, some 59% of parents with annual incomes of less than $30,000 say their children participated in sports, and 41% say their children took lessons in music, dance or art over that period.

This is not something that happens just in the United States, though. One of those hoping-for-the-clicks surveys, this time that came out of the UK,

Over a quarter (28%) of parents in the UK have been put into financial difficulty funding their child’s extracurricular activities, such as sport and music classes. The study revealed that nearly a third of children (31%) take part in three or more extracurricular activities at school a week, with the average UK parent spending £237.32 a year funding them. However, a fifth of parents spend more than £300 every academic year on their child’s after- school activities, with a further 10% spending more than £500.

In other words, organized activities can be an expensive add-on to a child’s education — and in more ways than just money.

In the blog Tellement French, a working mother who has lived both in the US and France draws a comparison of the extracurriculars in both countries. Quote:

The practice of activities in the US is very time-consuming: every musical or sports activity requires at least 2 days of practice per week. In France the Conservatory asked us several weekly participations but the sports activities were

Avoidance – actively running away from or mentally staying away from something that’s in our world – is a lot more than just doing dishes and cleaning the bathroom to ot do our taxes. Avoidance is a recognized in psychological research, and has even — no shocker — been categorized. In the book “Mind and Emotions: A Universal Treatment for Emotional Disorders,” the authors break down five specific types of avoidance. They are, quote:

1- Situational avoidance, where someone just completely avoids a situation that they are concerned may cause them stress, panic, or anxiety. This can also count for particularly avoiding a trigger, such as dogs for those that have a fear of dogs.

2- Cognitive avoidance, where someone takes actions to suppress or reject certain experiences, thoughts, feelings, or emotions. This type of avoidance often comes in to play when someone does not want to process or confront something, so instead suppresses or replaces it with something they find more pleasant.

3 – Protective avoidance, or taking actions to protect one’s self. While there are healthy — and important — ways to protect yourself, this is also the kind of avoidance that can manifest in obsessive compulsive disorder.

4 – Somatic avoidance, which happens when someone attempts to limit or tamp down the physical responses associated with emotions, such as tightness in the chest or getting out of breath. The idea is by suppressing the physical symptoms, the emotional reactions are experienced less.

5 – Substitution avoidance – straight-up trying to replac one feeling with another that feels more tolerable.

The thing is, all of these mechanisms of avoidance can be very useful coping mechanisms – but as with all coping mechanisms, there is a time that the mechanism may not serve your emotional health. As a 2011 study of breast cancer patients published in the Journal of Health Psychology found, breast cancer patients who actively avoided dealing with and processing the topic of their cancer showed higher levels of depression, stress, and anxiety.

So what topic are you avoiding right now?

Today’s question: What “failure” in your life has turned out well?

There are millions of ways to fail, and only one to succeed.

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable

Giving up is the only sure way to fail

There is no failure except in no longer trying…

And that’s just the very beginning of a very, very long — nigh on endless — list of quotes about failure. Almost all of them from individuals that would be viewed as “successful” in many measures — money, fame, or professional quote-unquote success.

The interesting thing is, what we often don’t spend a ton of time talking about is failure. This isn’t just my personal feeling — it’s something backed by research. In the 2016 research paper “Even Einstein Struggled: Effects of Learning about Great Scientists’ Struggles on High School Students’ Motivation to Learn Science” the authors discovered that when students were let in on the fact that Einstein, Marie Curie, and other well-known scientists struggled in their own work, the students were much more willing to work through what they perceived as failures and continue in science education.

And that finding – and the lack of other research to back it up – is what prompted one of the authors to get to work creating the Teachers College at Columbia University EPIC — Education for Persistence and Innovation Center. In their own words, EPIC is, quote:

dedicated to studying the critical role that failure plays as a catalyst for learning, innovation, leadership and career development.  EPIC is founded on the premise that success is often the fruit of persistence in the face of failure and adversity, which in turn motivates individuals to become creative problem solvers on the road to success. EPIC is dedicated to deepening our understanding of failure

In other words, studying how failure itself may actually, ironically, be what is absolutely necessary for success. It’s all a matter of how you define it.

Today’s question: What was your favorite tv show growing up?

The 80s and 90s are haunting us. Everything from the comic books that kids of those years read to the TV shows that hundreds of thousands of people watched are being constantly resurrected, re-worked, or re-built. For shows that aren’t being reworked for the modern world, there are also shows being set in those worlds.

The favorite TV shows we have growing up are the favorite TV shows being created again, much to the viewership joy of advertisers and both joy and frustration of fans who loved those shows growing up.

And this isn’t a new phenomena. In the 70s, shows like Happy Days tried to re-create the shows and feeling of the 1950s,

Our favorite shows are, in many ways, coming back to haunt us. But they may be more literally haunting us than we realize. In an article for Buzzfeed News, Sara Tatyana Bernstein writes, quote:

Nostalgia is only one way of looking at history; it functions, essentially, to make the past a safe place to play. The ’80s are over, so GLOW can tell stories about sexual harassment and the danger of stereotypes, and Stranger Things can deliver horror stories about government conspiracies. These stories are disturbing in the present, but nostalgia provides a sort of protective shield between now and then. In other words, even if we’re using these shows to work out contemporary issues, a nostalgic story requires the past to stay put. But revivals in which a show’s original characters are unearthed to exist in the present are inherently unsettling; they are hauntings. And because of that, they can offer us a way to see how we got from There to Here — and maybe even help us deal with the consequences of our history. Nostalgia also enables us to rewrite the past so it looks more like we wish it had been.

So be it She-ra or Pokemon, Rosanne or Full House, the shows that were our favorites growing up may just be a useful lens through which to look at our current experience.

After all, it is entirely possible to both acknowledge that something is problematic, and enjoy it. Especially when we recognize that we’re doing exactly that.