THE "GEORGE BAILEY" EFFECT: Its A Wonderful Thing

Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in
Its A Wonderful Life

     When It’s a Wonderful Life came out in 1946 - Frank Capra’s film about a suicidal man whose guardian angel shows him what the world would be like had he never been born – audiences were lukewarm.  Reviews were mixed- The New Yorker hated it - and earnings barely covered what it cost to make. It wasn’t until regular airings around Christmastime on TV fostered a dedicated audience that critics took a 2^nd look – nearly four decades after it came out. Now we can hardly imagine the holiday season without the story of George Bailey, whose lifetime of dreams delayed for the sake of others and then denied by circumstance comes to a pivotal moment when everything he is and has given to the world comes into focus and he sees the reality that he is, in fact, “the richest man in town.”

     Like George Bailey, many people are seeing their fortunes crash and hopes crushed by this roller-coaster economy, family stress, or circumstances beyond their control. To suggest “it's a wonderful life” to a person facing unemployment or loss of a loved one is insensitive and callous, but something researchers call the “George Bailey Effect” can be found through a self-empowerment technique that yields an upsurge in positivity and psychological strength to face what must be faced.  The effect occurs through telling our story through the lense of "what if" a specific event or relationship had never happened, e.g. "What if I had never met my partner? What if I had never gone back to school? "What if I had left my relationship instead of working on it?"

     "'What if' thinking is always a bit tricky. Too much focus on 'what might have been' can mire us in regrets and feelings of powerlessness or keep us from savoring our good fortunes," writes Wray Herbert on the Scientific American blog. "But some scientists are beginning to think that imagining an alternative reality might have ironic and tonic effects, and indeed might be a practical tool for strengthening commitment to country, workplace and relationships."

     The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published results showing that this exercise significantly increased participants’ level of positive emotion – much more than the participants who were asked to write the story about how they met their life partner. Another study – published online in Psychological Science - asked participants to focus on imagining "what if" specific events in their company's or their country's history had not occurred. Imagining their group's story minus specific stressful events that had threatened the group was found to deepen the participants' level of commitment to the group. We applied these findings in a "Navigating Transitions" workshop at Lifestage, using an adaptation of this exercise with people going through unexpected and dramatic change. In a writing and verbal sharing exercise participants were instructed to reflect on both sides of the "what if" question with regard to the transition they faced. By focusing on "what if" the transitional event had not occurred they were able to articulate and express not only what was lost, but also the transformative aspects of their unexpected life situation - the new people they had met, the talents unearthed, and inner strength discovered in the process of getting through a rough experience.  
     Just as George Bailey’s darkest moments are the opening to seeing his life in a new light, it is just this co-mingling of light and dark in the same experiences that render them rich with meaning. To a recovering addict, the lowest low is often the turning point toward an entirely new and wonderful path.  The torturous ending of one phase of life contains seeds of possibilities for the next. We can use this knowledge – and these techniques – to have more energy and creativity to rise above difficult circumstances and focus on the richness within ourselves and in our relationships. “Unlike the movie It’s a Wonderful Life,” write the researchers who gave us the “George Bailey” effect “it is not necessary for an angel to show us what the world would look like if we had never been born. Instead, spending a few minutes mentally subtracting a good thing from our lives can make us feel better.”  And If the difference we make to others in this world – if depth of relationship and appreciation for what we contribute could be measured in dollars - many of us would feel very rich indeed.

Jude Treder-Wolff is a trainer/consultant, writer and performer. She is performing her new show CrAzYToWn: my first psychopath at Broadway Comedy Club in New York, NY on Feb. 18 and 25. Click here for more information

About CrAzYToWn: How do you know that nice, helpful guy in the next cubicle is a psychopath? You don’t. In Crazytown, real-life therapist/performer Jude Treder-Wolff takes you down the rabbit hole of belief that led to her being blind-sided by reality. It’s a comic take on an over-eager therapist getting over herself (when nothing else seemed to be working). And these days, when our phones are smarter than we are, and we can meet, fall in love, shop for a ring and get some counseling with someone and never meet them in person – it’s a cautionary tale about how authentic a completely fake person can be. Click here for information about upcoming performances.

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