PDF Summary:The Light We Carry, by Michelle Obama

In The Light We Carry, former US First Lady Michelle Obama explains that everyone has the potential to improve the world in a way others can’t since everyone has unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. Since our potentials are unique, Obama believes we have a responsibility to fulfill them: No one else can fulfill your unique potential to create positive change, so you must do so.

In this guide, we’ll explore the benefits of nurturing and sharing one’s unique abilities, strengths, and perspectives. We’ll also discuss the major obstacles to doing so and the tools Obama recommends for overcoming those obstacles. In our commentary, we’ll compare Obama’s ideas to those of self-help authors such as Stephen R. Covey and Maxwell Maltz, and we’ll examine how her suggestions intersect with psychological principles.

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(Shortform note: Obama says people who fixate on quickly meeting their overarching goals are less likely to feel successful because they don’t recognize smaller progressions. In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone rejects the idea that recognizing smaller progression is important. He says you must set extreme goals to feel successful because motivation is tied to how ambitious your goals are. Setting extreme goals results in extreme motivation, which lets people take “massive action” and succeed in ways they couldn’t if they focused on smaller progressions. Cardone says people who feel unsuccessful haven’t set high enough goals, and would likely tell Caleb to increase his motivation by focusing on winning a Grammy rather than getting a record deal.)

Feeling unsuccessful can cause mental health issues, Obama says. If you don’t feel successful in your efforts to create change, you won’t feel satisfied or confident. You’ll doubt your abilities and efforts, which can lead to feelings of hopelessness and depression.

(Shortform note: Feeling unsuccessful may cause mental health issues by specifically reducing dopamine production. Dopamine provides motivation and is part of the pleasure system. Scientists believe this hormone helps you remember times you’ve felt pleasure before and alerts you when you’re in similar situations, encouraging you to repeat that experience and earn more pleasure. When you meet a goal, dopamine connects “meeting goals” to the pleasure of success, increasing motivation. If you don’t succeed, that connection weakens. Over time, your brain stops producing dopamine when you try to meet your goals, leaving you unmotivated and unhappy.)

Embrace Gradual Progress

To nurture your personhood and avoid misunderstanding change, embrace gradual progress, Obama says. By doing so, you can recognize the steps you’ve made toward your goals, increasing feelings of success. In addition, understanding how much you’ve advanced helps you determine how to succeed further. (Shortform note: In The 12 Week Year, Brian Moran agrees that embracing gradual progress and assessing how far you’ve advanced toward your goals is important. He suggests doing so by reviewing your progress every week. Regular reviews help you recognize any problems that may stop you from reaching your goals and give you the chance to adjust your strategy going forward.)

Embrace gradual progress by setting small, manageable goals. Obama stresses that these tasks should be easy to fulfill so you’re almost guaranteed to succeed in meeting them and thus feel a sense of satisfaction and confidence. These goals can be as small as making your bed or attending a town meeting. Over time, these small steps compound to create large change. (Shortform note: Setting small goals strengthens your brain’s connection between meeting goals and pleasure, as discussed previously. The stronger this connection, the more motivation you’ll feel, which makes it easier to graduate to larger goals.)

Continuing our example, let’s say Caleb sets the manageable goal of gaining five followers every week for one month, then 10 followers a week the next month, and so on. Meeting these goals makes him feel successful and confident, which encourages him to make more videos. In turn, making more videos helps him gain followers faster. After building up a large following, he starts playing live shows and reaching out to record companies. With the confidence and success from completing his smaller goals, Caleb reaches his larger goal and signs a record deal.

Obstacle #3: Neglecting Mental Health

Another obstacle to nurturing and sharing personhood is our tendency to neglect our mental health. When we do this, we become discouraged and exhausted, making it difficult to nurture our purposes and create positive change. (Shortform note: This difficulty may be caused by stress, a common mental health affliction. Unmanaged stress causes the body to continually release the hormone cortisol. These high cortisol levels damage the brain, reduce productivity, and increase susceptibility to mental illness.)

Often, this tendency to neglect mental health stems from guilt: We believe taking a break means abandoning our cause. This isn’t true, Obama says. Maintaining your mental health is essential to completing goals. The healthier you are, the more energy you can use to meet your goals. This is one of the reasons Obama made it a point to maintain her mental health as First Lady by going on walks, talking to her friends, and getting enough sleep. These activities may have cut into her working time, but they made her more effective.

(Shortform note: In Give and Take, Adam Grant agrees that people can work toward a goal while also taking care of themselves. To do so, think about how you spend your energy and identify the quickest, most effective way to reach your goal. Being efficient lets you use any remaining time for rejuvenating activities. Obama’s tactics are good examples, as outdoor physical activity, socialization, and adequate sleep are all essential to overall health. Using these tactics to avoid burnout lets you work longer and more efficiently, generating greater positive change.)

Maintain Mental Health by Balancing Independence and Interdependence

According to Stephen R. Covey in First Things First, neglecting your mental health out of guilt might stem from an over-inflated sense of independence. Embracing independence can be good, as it forces you to take accountability for living up to your potential. If you only focus on independence, though, you’ll feel responsible for everything in your life. You’ll always feel rushed and pressured because you’re the only one trying to meet your goal, arguably impacting your mental health. This pressure and rushing also lead to worse outcomes: Your work will be haphazard; you’ll focus on quick solutions to problems instead of effective, long-term ones; and you’ll be less likely to notice when others need help since you’re too busy to pay attention.

To counter this tendency, balance independence with interdependence: Take responsibility for causing positive change, but recognize that you’re not the only person responsible. Share tasks with other people, learn from them, and trust them to take over when you need rest.

Obama offers three tips for maintaining your mental health so you can nurture and share your personhood:

Tip #1: Recognize When You’re Struggling

Previously, we discussed how understanding your fear can help you recognize when it’s restrictive. The same tactic can apply to mental health. Reflect on times you’ve been in a healthy place mentally and how you achieved that state, Obama says. This can reveal patterns of behavior that help you feel happy, confident, and in control. After recognizing these patterns, use them to improve your mental health and nurture your personhood. For example, if mindfulness meditation always makes you feel happy and fulfilled, make it a regular part of your schedule.

(Shortform note: It can be difficult to recognize when you’re in a healthy mental state or how you achieved that state. This might be caused by “negativity bias,” a tendency to be more affected by negative situations than positive ones. Negativity bias means you’re more likely to notice and remember when you’re in a bad place mentally, rather than a healthy place. This tendency can protect you from reexperiencing negative situations, but it can also make you depressed. To counter this tendency and recognize your healthy mental states, take time every evening to write down three good things that happened that day%20Challenge%20the%20Negativity%20Bias). Your brain will start emphasizing positive experiences, making it easier to track and improve your mental state.)

In addition, Obama explains that the more you reflect on your healthy mental state, the easier it’ll be to recognize when you’re not in that state. This knowledge helps you practice self-care and escape negative spirals. To use a popular metaphor, a frog that’s put in a pot of gradually heated water may not notice it’s being boiled alive. However, if the frog regularly notices the state of the water, comparing it to its past experiences and evaluating how the water makes it feel, the frog can better detect changes in the water and react accordingly.

(Shortform note: Reflecting on your healthy mental state can improve self-confidence, your ability to use positive self-talk, and emotional intelligence. To reflect on your mental state, try mirror mediation: Sit in front of a mirror and practice being aware of your thoughts and feelings. Seeing your reflection solidifies your sense of self and personhood, and tracking your expressions helps you identify and accept your emotions. This in turn encourages you to be empathetic and kind toward yourself.)

Tip #2: Prioritize Personhood Over Self-Criticism

Second, Obama suggests prioritizing personhood over self-criticism to maintain your mental health: Focus on recognizing your unique personhood and expressing joy at your existence, rather than focusing on your imperfections. Doing so separates your worth from your appearance, status, or success. It emphasizes that you deserve to be loved and celebrated simply because you’re a unique individual who can’t be replaced. This realization makes you happier and more confident, improving your mental health.

(Shortform note: Rooting your worth in your existence rather than your appearance, status, or accomplishments is an example of showing yourself unconditional love. Unconditional love is usually associated with interpersonal relationships, but it’s also important for individual mental health, as it increases happiness, life satisfaction, and resiliency. Unconditional love requires respect, open communication, and support. Thus, avoid disparaging self-talk, take time to understand your feelings, and treat yourself kindly. Ask yourself, “Would I treat my loved one like this?”)

In contrast, Obama notes, focusing on imperfections hurts your self-esteem. It makes you self-conscious, magnifying the flaws in your mind until you can’t recognize your inherent worth.

How to Prioritize Personhood

When you have negative thoughts about yourself, replace them with an acknowledgment of your inherent worth as an individual, Obama says. After reinforcing your self-worth, you can address any issues you experience, secure in the knowledge that you’re more than your flaws.

Prioritize Personhood by Fostering a Positive Self-Image

Many people prioritize criticism over personhood, leading to low self-esteem (as Obama warns). In Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz says this is due to their self-image: the way they let their past experiences affect their identity. Someone who fails a test and says “I’m a failure” applies that experience to their identity, while someone who says “I failed that test” attributes the experience to a specific incident. When people let negative events affect their identity, they behave in ways that reinforce this new, negative identity. The person who failed a test might not study for the next test because they believe they’re already a failure and there’s no point. Since they don’t study, they fail again, reinforcing their negative self-image.

To replace criticism with an appreciation for your personhood, Maltz suggests using imagination to shift your self-image:

1. Follow Obama’s advice to replace critical thoughts with positive ones. Maltz states that greeting yourself kindly involves imagining yourself to be worthy of that kindness because if your self-image doesn’t believe it, your conscious mind can’t either.

2. Do a small task differently, such as putting your left shoe on first instead of your right shoe. While you do this, imagine yourself being able to change your thought patterns just like you’re changing that habit. This can shift your self-image to one that’s capable of change, making you more receptive to changing your thought patterns.

Tip #3: Create a Support System

Prioritizing personhood over criticism is helpful when following Obama’s next suggestion: creating a support system. We all need support, care, and companionship to remain mentally healthy, Obama says.

(Shortform note: Studies support Obama’s claim that having close relationships improves both your mental and physical health. Relationships reduce stress, increase happiness, and can provide a source of motivation to live a healthy lifestyle. Humans’ need for a support system likely stems from our evolutionary roots: Belonging to a group was essential for survival when humans were primarily hunter-gatherers, so the desire for companionship is genetically wired into our brains.)

It’s specifically important to build a whole system of these relationships, Obama stresses. Many people rely on their spouses to provide the care, companionship, and support they need. While your spouse is an important source of support, forcing them to hold all the responsibility is unfair and could damage both of your mental health by increasing their stress and exhaustion, leaving you unsupported. Having a wide support system spreads this responsibility among many people while also increasing the odds that someone will be available to help you whenever you need support.

(Shortform note: Relying on a single person (such as your spouse) for support likely increases stress by using much of their time and energy, making it difficult for them to relax. Ironically, this stress can actually decrease their ability to recognize when you need support. As Obama says, having a variety of people for support alleviates this stress. In addition, people need different kinds of support, from a friend’s empathy to a therapist’s advice. The more people in your support system, the more likely it is that someone can meet your specific needs.)

Obama says a support system requires two main things: intentionality and acceptance. (Shortform note: Obama discusses both friendships and spousal relationships in her book. Her advice for both is largely the same, so we’ve consolidated the information into a single section.)

Practice Intentionality

Intentionality is vital to creating a support system and maintaining relationships. Obama says relationships are a process of building trust, reaching out, supporting each other, and celebrating each other’s personhood. You must commit to creating relationships and must care enough to put in effort. This includes interacting with strangers, getting people’s contact information, and scheduling time to interact with and learn about others.

(Shortform note: In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves agree that intentionality is an essential element in creating and maintaining relationships. They add a few specific areas to be intentional about: 1) Be open about yourself. 2) Be clear about your actions and intentions, and be mindful of your communication style. 3) Be respectful by treating others well and showing appreciation for them. Being intentional about these areas increases trust, reduces misunderstandings, and makes people feel more comfortable around you.)

Practice Acceptance

Obama notes that acceptance helps you overcome conflict, an essential part of maintaining relationships and celebrating other people’s personhood. No two people are the same, so conflict will appear in all relationships. Whether it’s as minor as different methods of folding laundry or as major as conflicting worldviews, you must support the other person despite your disagreements.

Acceptance is important because the core of a person doesn’t change, Obama explains. People are molded by their personal history. The way they were raised, their life experiences, and the examples of intimacy and relationships they’ve had all affect the way they behave and approach relationships. Since people’s personalities and worldviews solidify through these decades of experiences, they’re not going to change just because they entered a relationship with you and added one new experience. They may adjust their behavior and compromise, but entering a relationship expecting them to change fundamentally will lead to heartache and further conflict.

Obama says learning about other people’s pasts can help you practice acceptance and celebrate their personhood. If you recognize how the other person’s history affects their actions, you’ll understand them better and be better suited to adapt and compromise in a healthy way.

Understanding and Balancing Conflicting Rules of Engagement

Obama describes the way that we’re molded and influenced by our experiences growing up. The customs and worldviews that we develop from childhood are called rules of engagement. These are unspoken familial rules that dictate how we’re allowed to behave. We learn these rules through trial and error: When we engage in a certain behavior and receive negative reactions, the brain prohibits the behavior. Common family rules include discouraging talk about feelings or difficult topics, requiring members to act in certain ways because of their age or sex, and enforcing that worth comes from success.

Every family has different rules of engagement, and it causes interpersonal conflict when people’s rules clash. For example, if you grew up not talking about difficult situations, your husband wanting to discuss them feels threatening. If you grew up with a healthy communication dynamic, your friend might seem cold and standoffish because she doesn’t open up emotionally. Expecting people to change their rules of engagement entirely will only result in more conflict, as these rules are so deeply ingrained that they can’t easily change. Thus, it’s important to accept and understand both your own and other people’s rules to reduce conflict.

While Obama stresses that people can’t change the core of who they are, she also points out that they can learn to compromise or adjust their behavior. This applies to people’s rules of engagement as well. Once you’ve identified the ways your and another person’s rules conflict, you can foster a stronger relationship and practice better communication. Be open with your loved ones about your experiences and why you behave the way you do. At the same time, push yourself to go beyond your comfort zone—for example, be open even when it’s uncomfortable, or remain calm even when you’re upset. Over time, you can become comfortable with healthier rules of engagement that better serve your relationship.

Obstacle #4: Discrimination

Discrimination is another obstacle that prevents people from nurturing and sharing their authentic selves with the world. Discrimination occurs when a person is different from the majority in some way and is treated poorly because of those differences. Obama says discrimination makes people self-conscious. She defines self-consciousness as a shift in perspective in which people focus on behaving in a way that’s acceptable to others, instead of behaving in a way that nurtures their personhood and makes them happy and fulfilled.

For instance, Obama faced discrimination during her college years. As one of the only Black and female students at Princeton, she worried constantly about how the rest of the student body saw her, and she struggled to feel happy or fulfilled.

Overcome Self-Consciousness Stemming From Discrimination

Discrimination likely causes people to feel self-conscious due to shame. Shame erodes people’s sense of identity or, in Obama’s words, negatively impacts how they see themselves. This often occurs when people believe that something about them is inherently wrong or negative. Discrimination arguably ignites shame by treating the parts of a person’s identity that differ from the majority as unacceptable, implying these differences are wrong or negative. To overcome shame, confide in others. They’ll be able to reassure you that discrimination is not a valid source of shame and help you overcome it. For instance, Obama says she found minority students to confide in at Princeston’s multicultural center, which helped her recognize and overcome her self-consciousness.

Obama says there are two main types of discrimination that cause this shift in perspective:

Type #1: Lack of Representation

One way discrimination causes minorities to experience self-consciousness is by underrepresenting their identities in many fields. Obama says minorities often struggle to find role models since most industries are dominated by the majority. This lack of role models makes minorities feel isolated and powerless: They have trouble believing they could complete an ambitious goal in their field because they lack examples of how to do so. This disbelief makes it harder for them to challenge themselves and nurture their personhood.

Why Representation Matters

Representation helps minorities believe that they can achieve their goals, as Obama says, because humans can more easily identify with people who are similar to them. This may be an effect of people’s tendency to categorize themselves and other people. While this tendency traditionally causes people to glorify their own group and treat other groups poorly, its greater function is to mold people’s sense of identity. People attach their identity to their group and consider their own abilities and opportunities in the context of their group members’ experiences. Thus, a minority seeing a member of their group in an area traditionally dominated by the majority tells people that this kind of success can be part of their identity too, rather than solely belonging to a different group.

Often, Obama says, a lack of representation makes minorities either give up their goals or suppress parts of their personhood to emulate someone very different from themselves. They behave self-consciously, changing their behavior to fit others’ expectations. For example, if Emma loves science but she’s never learned about important female scientists, she might feel discouraged. She might believe that only men can be scientists. This might make Emma give up on science, or she might believe she has to act like a man to be successful. Thus, Emma becomes self-conscious, either abandoning her interest in science or suppressing her more feminine traits to fit the standards she’s been exposed to.

How Minorities Can Meet Their Goals While Staying True to Themselves

This phenomenon may occur because of a conflict between people’s identity and actions. In Awaken the Giant Within, Tony Robbins says your sense of identity dictates your behavior and vice versa. Without role models, a minority may exclude certain actions from their identity—they believe they can’t do something because they’ve never seen a minority do it. This creates a conflict in their identity: They want to do something, but they believe their identity doesn’t let them. To resolve this conflict, they either abandon the action—giving up their goals—or change their identity to fit the action—suppressing the parts of their identity that contradict the action. Instead, they should expand their sense of identity to meet their goals without losing part of themselves.

Type #2: Minimizing Personhood

Discrimination also causes self-consciousness when the majority fixates on minorities’ differences to the point of minimizing their personhood. They focus on how minorities differ from them and overlook those people’s talents, personalities, achievements, and the things they might have in common. Obama implies that this happens because members of the majority value their own personhood and consider their attributes part of said personhood. As such, any departure from these valued attributes is seen as negative and reducing someone’s worth.

Over time, minorities begin to internalize this method of assigning value, Obama warns. They focus on the way they and other minorities differ from the majority, and they’re more likely to value themselves and others less based on these differences. (Shortform note: Internalized discrimination affects people’s ability to use their skills. Studies show people who identified as minorities on a test scored significantly worse than those who didn’t. By requiring them to identify as a minority, the test focused participants on their minority status and the majority’s negative perception of their abilities, making it hard for them to focus on accessing their skills.)

Obama says encouraging diversity is the key to reducing this kind of discrimination. As members of the majority encounter more minorities, they’ll become more used to the differences people have and start seeing beyond those differences to the minorities’ personhood. Realizing that minorities have equal worth and personhood encourages the majority to realize their worth doesn’t depend on attributes such as ethnicity, gender, or sexuality. Thus, they’ll be less likely to devalue people who don’t share those attributes, reducing discrimination.

In-Group Bias and Discrimination

Obama explains that discrimination occurs when a person is treated poorly because they’re different from the majority. According to some experts, this is caused by in-group bias: people’s tendency to glorify groups they belong to while treating other groups poorly. As mentioned previously, humans have a natural tendency to categorize themselves and other people. This categorization is important to people’s sense of identity, but it can also make people look only at the group a person is in when determining who they are—only at their differences, as Obama puts it. The more different a person is from them, the easier it is for someone to draw hard boundaries between groups and not look beyond those boundaries.

This tendency to categorize leads to unfair treatment because people want to boost their self-esteem: They attach their sense of identity to the group they belong to, so their self-esteem depends on the status of that group. They’ll glorify their group and denigrate others because if their group is the best, they’re also the best for belonging to it. This becomes discrimination when one group is in a position of power and uses that power to make their in-group bias systemic. For example, if in-group members who break a law are regularly treated more leniently than members of other groups, that’s discrimination.

In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt agree with Obama that diversity is important for reducing discrimination. They add that choosing the right method of encouraging diversity is important: Focus on providing equal opportunities, they stress, not attaining equal outcomes.

According to Lukianoff and Haidt, focusing on equal outcomes means people still overemphasize minorities’ differences, though this time the focus is caused by the need to fulfill a quota. For instance, instead of fixating on an athlete’s gender because they don’t believe women can play as well as men, a university fixates on their gender because they need to attract a certain number of women athletes. In both cases, the women’s ability to get on the team is dictated by their gender, rather than their skills.

Focusing on equal opportunity lets people be judged on merit: The university welcomes women athletes, but since they aren’t worried about meeting a quota, they can judge the athletes by their abilities, ignoring their gender. This may result in slower change, as it takes time for minorities to use the equal opportunity, but it’s ultimately more effective at reducing discrimination.

Turn Self-Consciousness Into Empowerment

To nurture your personhood in the face of discrimination, Obama says to refocus on doing what makes you feel happy and fulfilled. Shifting your focus empowers you to direct your own life, instead of being controlled by other people’s expectations. It also helps you become comfortable sharing your authentic self because you’re proud of who you are and your achievements.

(Shortform note: In The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin says personality type may dictate how easy it is to focus on what makes you happy and fulfilled. Rubin identifies two sources of motivation: external expectations, where someone else’s desires or needs motivate you (for example, a work deadline), and internal expectations, where your desires or needs motivate you (for example, committing to daily exercise). If you’re externally motivated, you’ll struggle to focus on your own internal expectations, as Obama suggests doing. You can overcome this issue by finding an accountability partner who imposes external expectations that you’ll pursue your own goals.)

Obama offers several tips for turning self-consciousness into empowerment, which we’ve organized into three steps:

Step #1: Acceptance

The first step is accepting things you can’t change. This lets you focus on things you can control, helping you nurture your personhood and making it more likely that you’ll improve things. By contrast, focusing on things you can’t change makes you feel powerless and bitter.

For example, let’s say Tom couldn’t buy a particular house because the seller dislikes Black people. Focusing on this discrimination makes Tom feel miserable and powerless, but if he focuses on finding a non-discriminatory seller or reporting this instance of housing discrimination, he’ll feel more in control and hopeful.

(Shortform note: People who focus on things they can’t control often have one of two reactions: They waste energy trying to change things anyway, or they feel like their entire life is out of control. The former reaction leads to burnout and the latter to helplessness, and both increase cynicism and stress. If Tom tries to change the seller’s mind, he’ll be frustrated and experience more racism, leading to exhaustion and even depression. By focusing on finding a different seller or resisting the injustice of the housing discrimination he faced, he can cultivate positivity about his situation, motivating and empowering him to find a better house.)

Step #2: Gratitude

The second step of turning self-consciousness into empowerment is to focus on what you have, not what you don’t. This can include everything from objects to relationships. Obama says focusing on these positives helps you feel successful and worthwhile. Feeling successful and worthwhile helps combat the discrimination that lowered your sense of self-worth and helps nurture your personhood. For example, Tom can focus on how he feels valuable as a father and husband, rather than focusing on his lack of a house.

(Shortform note: While Obama frames gratitude as focusing on objects and relationships you have, you can arguably apply her advice to your successes, too. Research shows that focusing on your successes actually makes you more successful: It helps you keep momentum to meet future goals, increases motivation, and helps you understand your situation accurately. This boosts your self-worth, encouraging you to focus on how your life works for you, regardless of other people’s expectations. In turn, it reduces self-consciousness and increases empowerment.)

Step #3: Reframing Thoughts

Finally, Obama states that people must reframe the way they think about their and other people’s personhood: Specifically, they must combat internalized discrimination by changing their thought patterns. In other words, instead of saying “I’m different and that’s bad” or “Others are different and that’s bad,” people should say “I’m different and that’s good” or “Others are different and that’s good.” Over time, everyone’s thought patterns will become more positive, encouraging themselves and others rather than tearing them down.

(Shortform note: People can change their thought patterns because of neuroplasticity, the ability to develop new neural connections between a stimulus and reaction. In this case, you develop a new connection between the way you differ (or someone else differs) from the majority and your opinion of yourself (or them). Forming these connections requires sustained, deliberate focus: Analyze how you react when thinking of your own or someone else’s differences. Determine whether this reaction is beneficial or prejudiced. If it’s prejudiced, think about the reaction you’d like to have instead.)

Changing your thought patterns is difficult. Obama suggests exploring how your differences are also strengths. The challenges minorities face often make them adapt in ways the majority don’t. This means minorities’ perspectives—and thus their personhood—are unique and help them have innovative ideas. By identifying how their differences are also strengths, minorities can feel empowered and help solve problems.

For example, imagine a programming team is making an app that helps people with autism communicate. If one team member has autism, they can recognize that their experiences provide a valuable window into the communication needs of people with autism. Therefore, they’re well-equipped to design innovative features for the app.

Ignore or Embrace: How to Deal With Being Different

Some people believe that minorities’ differences don’t matter and that people shouldn’t focus on the ways they or others differ from the majority. This mindset can actually harm minorities: Rather than combat discrimination, it can encourage people to ignore it, allowing it to continue.

In contrast, acknowledging minorities’ differences can help them. In one study, working-class, first-generation college students attended panels discussing how their backgrounds could help them persevere in stressful college situations—for example, how a strong work ethic could be beneficial. These students were later healthier and better at handling stress than those who didn't attend the panels. This implies that accepting the way their differences affect them lets people nurture their strengths, resulting in a better quality of life.