Affirmation - the frosting on the cake

I've been incredibly taken by the above Sesame Street video the last few days. Though I'm a pale girl with stick-straight hair who heard about this on NPR (how white can I get?), I applaud this African-American puppet's message. And it's even sweeter since the song was written by a daddy for his daughter who was struggling to appreciate her awesome afro locks.

One thing I love about being back in America (the land of self-esteem) is how many encouraging messages I'm constantly privy to. Even though I've heard countless Brits deride my culture of cheesy encouragement and mock how AWESOME!!! everything is to Americans, I strangely enjoy the abundance of compliments flying around here.

When I moved to England in 2005 I was in for a bit of a shock. There are plenty of encouraging people in the UK, but in general, the main method of connecting with one another is through cynicism and self-deprecation rather than positivity and praise. As my high school counselor for at-risk students friend once told me, in America self-deprication is a signal of a mental illness: not liking yourself is suspect. But in England (and New Zealand actually), it's a mark of social prowess: liking yourself too much is suspect.

So when I got to the shores of the mother ship, I wasn't prepared to not be told how great I was every five minutes. I couldn't read people and thought surely they hated me because they didn't tell me straight up, "I like you Alisha!" I didn't realize yet that being made fun of was a signal of endearment or that most compliments remain unspoken but understood in the UK.

When Dan and I were living in New Zealand, our friends Mel and Mark (which sounds suspiciously close to "Mack" in a kiwi-accent) had us over for a night of Chinese take-out, Hong Kong cinema and as a grand finale, a self-saucing chocolate cake! Definitely evidence of kiwi-ingenuity, this cake is not only delicious and practical, but also a premium metaphorical vehicle.

After enough times feeling shot down by failed friendship attempts and wondering if the people I was working with thought I was the worst employee in the world when I first arrived in England, I slowly learned the lesson of the self-saucing cake (though the lesson was unnamed at that point). Instead of waiting for other people to frost me up real good with positive feedback, I learned to do it myself, with inner resources of proverbial chocolate goodness.

Instead of waiting for a new contact to gush about how wonderful they thought I was (rare), I'd just assume they liked me and get on with it. (And even if they didn't like me, I learned not to care). Instead of waiting for a boss to tell me things were OK ever 5 minutes, I assumed they were unless told otherwise. Instead of waiting for a coating of sweet frosting, I'd just muster up some good British resourcefulness and create my own.

On Monday at Shari's over a yummy pie, a new friend of mine was talking about a phenomenon called "nurture shock", which basically means that kids who are overencouraged and affirmed too much (read: American kids) can actually be adversely affected. They can come to depend on constant approval or set their expectations of themselves way too high and be paralyzed by the reality that they're not perfect.

I will always be a "words of affirmation" girl and I enjoy encouraging people, so that's never going to change. But I do recognize value in learning not to be dependent on affirmation and positive feedback. Going through an affirmation drought was difficult as first, but in the long run was a great way to confront hidden insecurities and my need to please people; I had to dig deep, be my own self-saucing cake and then get over it.

It's nice to be back in the land of positivity. But looking back I am also thankful to England for teaching me a thing or too about not being so dependent on external affirmation. I'm also thankful to New Zealand (and the Gregans specifically) for introducing me to this saucy little delight.

This is kind of a big question, but do you think you depend on other people's affirmations to keep you going? Do you think you're a people-pleaser? Or do you just want the recipe for the now infamous self-saucing cake?