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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Making Time for Kindness With Dr. Michelle Robin  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 386 of Live Happy Now. World Kindness Day is just a month away, but there's no reason not to start observing it right now. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm joined by Dr. Michelle Robin, Founder of Small Changes Big Shifts, the Big Shifts Foundation, and the 31-Day Kindness Campaign. Launched in 2019, The Kindness Campaign is a free inspirational email adventure that begins October 14th. When you sign up, you'll receive a daily email suggesting an act of kindness that you can do that day. Michelle is here today to explain why kindness is so good for our wellbeing, how the campaign came about, and what it can do for you. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:47] PF: Robin, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:50] MR: Thank you for having me. I love the mission. [00:00:53] PF: Oh. Well, I love your mission, and it aligns so well with everything that we do at Live Happy Now. So you've got a wonderful campaign we're going to talk about, but I've got to know, why is kindness your jam? Like why is it such a hot thing for you, and how did you get so involved in it? [00:01:09] MR: Well, it's kind of a funny story. So my background’s around wellbeing. I’ve been around the space about 40 years. As I replay my life, which you tend to do the older you get, you got to kind of see where people have enriched your life. So in my second book, The E-Factor: Engage, Energize, Enrich, I really talk about getting engaged in the wellness journey, and then you have more energy. Then once you do that, you try to just enrich. So part of my mission right now is to enrich other people's lives and make an impact. As a kid, my mom was married four times. By the time I was 17, I had a little bit of sexual trauma and a little bit of alcoholism trauma, and just really didn't feel like I mattered, especially to the people that you think you should matter to. But by the grace of God or universe, there are people that came along in my life that were kind to me. You don't really see it until you can reflect older and realize what has happened and what has sustained you through some of those tough moments. But this Kindness Campaign is pretty funny. One of my friends, Ann Koontz, who's in our wellness movement in Kansas City, she's a mental health advocate. I happen to be working with her daughters when they were teenagers about 15 years ago, and she knows that I have other online programs that we do around sleep and around posture. She said, “You know what? You really need it.” You know when somebody says, “You really need to do something around kindness. You need to do a 21-day kindness program.” Paula, I don't know about you. But sometimes, it's like, “Really, you want me to do one more thing. I'm already running a practice. I'm running a movement. I do a podcast. I've got seven books.” [00:02:37] PF: Like, “Sure. Let me just tack that on to my to-do list.” [00:02:40] MR: One more thing, it happened to be the fall of 2019. Thank God that she kept insisting that I do something. She said, “I'll even help you. But we need to start it, and we need to end it on World Kindness Day with Lady Gaga’s movement.” I said, “Okay, Ann. You win.” She kind of wore me down. I believe in being kind. I'm the person that holds the doors for people. That's just kind of who I've become. Interesting enough, I talked to one of my friends, Dr. J. Dunn, and she's a genetic specialist, and she said, “Michelle, you actually have the kind gene.” Some people actually have this kind gene, which is pretty fascinating. So that was put inside of me, and then Ann kind of poke the bear. Then we know what happened in March of 2020. Thank goodness, we'd already built The Kindness Campaign. [00:03:22] PF: Let’s go back to that for a minute. When you talk about the kindness gene, one, if there's people out there saying, “Oh, crap. I don't have it,” let's talk about how they can develop this like a muscle. But what is that? What do you think that does, the kindness gene, and how does that change how you're interacting in the world versus how someone else might interact in the world? [00:03:42] MR: Yeah. We all have a genetic roadmap called the genome, and that genome has different – I like to call it divisions. So like if you were, let's say, in a Walmart or a Target, they have different divisions. They have a toy division, and they have a home goods division, and they have a food division. They may have an auto division. Well, you have these different divisions in your body that make your systems work because we're chemistry. We work because of chemistry, right? Those divisions sometimes have hiccups, whether it's in the way your liver detoxes or in the way your body – In my case, I have a vitamin D receptor defect, and so my body has trouble keeping my vitamin D up. So I have to work really hard at that. It could be where I have trouble with the thyroid genes. It could be where I have trouble with the genetics that go along with neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. I mean oxytocin. So what we have found out through the work of, especially, Dr. J Dunn, who's a chiropractor by training as well, but she specializes in kinesiology, in genetics. So there's a way to start to, in a sense, hack the genes in a positive way through chemistry, not necessarily pharmaceutical. Sometimes, that's necessary, but more through the right supplementation because those – I think about them as wheels. Those cogs in the wheels move because of chemistry, whether it's a cofactor like vitamin D or a B vitamin or B12 or B6 or magnesium or calcium or boron, whatever type of maybe nutritional supplement. For myself, personally, I got my genetic genome. The cheapest way to do it is through someplace like Ancestry. There's some places that don't give other people access because they're not owned by Big Pharma. Then I have a functional medicine doctor who practice kinesiology that will actually help test through and compare to my blood work what I can be doing. So some of us have this cup half full, and some of us have a cup half empty. If it's half empty, you got to work really hard to make it full. Paula, for me, I suffer from anxiety, and I believe after caring for people for 30 years that most people have a level of anxiety. Some people manage it through music. Some people manage it through medication. Some people manage it through alcohol. Some people manage it by maybe playing a video game. For me, I actually manage it by being a connector. That's probably one of the biggest ways I manage my anxiety is be of service for people. [00:06:06] PF: That's so interesting because your mission and kindness has been – You've created something so incredible and so big. It started with your Big Shifts Foundation. Can you talk about what that is? Then we'll get into The Kindness Campaign. [00:06:20] MR: Sure. Big Shifts Foundation is a foundation to make generational change for 30 and younger. You can say, “Michelle, why 30 and younger?” Think about a pond. If a pond has a bunch of dirty fish, you probably don't want to be fishing in that pond, right? Because you don't want toxicity. [00:06:35] PF: That's a great point. Yeah. [00:06:37] MR: So if you have a child who has autoimmune disease, anxiety, depression, maybe some cancers and allergies, how could you clean up their pond because their pond got toxed out? In our medicine, we believe people are sick because of two reasons. They're toxic or they're deficient. Toxic in, let's say, gluten. Deficient in vegetables. Toxic in hate. Deficient in love. Toxic in medications. Deficient in the right supplementations. Toxic in sitting around, being an office potato too much, versus movement. So the foundation's job is to really pour into young people, ideally, before they have babies, so we can clean up their pond. Because our parents, they did the best they could. If you really look at our parents did the best they could, but their training was by – In my case, my grandparents and my great grandparents and my great, great grandparents. Sooner or later, you go back to evolution and whatever your beliefs are. Something got messed up. Because as we talked earlier on a previous show is that we innately are pretty designed to be well. Some people come in with a few hiccups, but innately we come in. We're happy. We're cooing. We have this ability to bring smiles to some of the hardest people as a little baby, and then something changes, and what is that that changes? Is it the thoughts we were told? Is it the food we're fed? Is it that we sit on a device too long? Is it that we're not sleeping because we're scared? So the foundation's job is to pour into young people to help them realize that they were designed to be loved, and they're designed to be well. So we teach them about posture, we teach them about sleep habits, and we teach them about labs. We actually do their functional medicine. As I'm sitting here, one thing that we've not done yet, this will be our third year doing a scholarship program with them, is we've not talked about their genetics. So I'm going to add that to the program. We have a six-month discovery program where they get to go to therapy, and they get functional medicine, blood work, and they get a wide membership, and they get to get massage and acupuncture and chiropractic. We just love them. Or they get Reiki. Can you imagine being an 18 to 25-year-old? Some 18 to 30s are arranged for our scholarship program. All of a sudden, you have a bucket of money to really take care of yourself. They do they do the Hoffman weekend experiments. Experience was really how do you start to heal your heart for some of the bullying you've had done too. [00:09:01] PF: That’s so important because I've been doing some research. I just did a report on Gen Z and how different they are. This generation, more than any previous generation, is interested in mental health. They're concerned about their wellbeing. They will put their mental health above a work situation. It’s like they're not going to tolerate some of the things. I think it's such a huge generational shift. The fact that you're giving them the tools to be able to do some of these things is really going to help propel that forward. [00:09:34] MR: I think the word – When you look up the dictionary wellbeing, it means happy. I think people want to be happy, and it's hard to be happy when you have a bellyache, or you have a headache, or you are nervous of what somebody's saying about you, or you're in pain. So how do we help them really make that shift to be happy? It's a super fascinating time that these young people are forcing us to really look at mental health, and they're forcing parents to really identify and think, “You know what? I've had depression my whole life, and I've not sought help for it.” So it's time. There are so many tools to living your best life that don't cost a lot of money. Of course, some do. But there's a lot that don't. Being kind is one that doesn't cost a lot of money, getting sleep. But how do you do – I mean, I understand that some people don't feel safe enough to sleep. So how do we try to address that? But for the average person, at least in America, we can put down our device. We just don't. [00:10:27] PF: Yeah. Right. We’re connecting. [00:10:28] MR: So there's all those little things that we can do to try to help ourselves, and that's what we're on a mission to do. We're on a mission to reach a billion people that the small changes they can do can lead to big shifts in their life and that our foundation, Big Shifts Foundation, ultimately, is really how do we help 30 and younger, not that we don't want to help the people that are older. I mean, this campaign is for everybody. But we do know that if we change a person before they have kids, they change their genetic makeup for the future generations, and it's going to take 2.5 generations to change what we're in right now. We can do it inch by inch, wellness is a cinch. [00:11:03] PF: I love that. Absolutely love that. So let's talk about The Kindness Campaign. 31 days and it's not a challenge. Tell us why it's a campaign, not a challenge. [00:11:12] MR: Yeah. So one of our friends here in Kansas City came to me. One of our corporate clients said, “Okay, Michelle. We've talked about building rhythm and resilience through this whole thing called COVID.” I know resilience is kind of a buzzword for people, but the word I was hearing when this came on like COVID, and I've heard before, even when I had a bad accent is, “Michelle, you got to develop a rhythm or consistency so that you can have resilience.” To me, resilience – I know a lot of people are super resilient, but it's hard to be resilient when you are dehydrated. It's hard to be resilient when you are having irritable bowel syndrome and just like I talked about being happy. So they came to me and said, “Michelle, you know, we're at August of 2020. We know mental health is at all time high right now. What do you think we should do?” Who wants to hear how to not to have anxiety? That doesn't sound like a great class to go to, right? Not that we all don't need it, but I said, “Well, you know what? We have this Kindness Campaign.” In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, “That Ann hounded me about doing it.” “Why don't we do that?” They said, “Yes. But we don't want it 21 days. We want it 31 days.” They actually made that call because we used to do our online programs for 21 days. They said, “Because we are in this nasty 2020 election cycle,” like we're in a nasty 2022 election cycle and the 2023 and 2024, probably, they wanted to overlap that. But I wanted to end on World Kindness Day. That's important to me. [00:12:27] PF: I love that. [00:12:28] MR: So that's what we did, and they helped us take it around the world. We just have grown it, and another company helped us take it last year around the world. Then we went on a listing tour to some of the schools, and they said to my team, they said, “You know what? We love what you're doing. But can you make it more specific for kids? Because kids are really suffering.” They said, “Can you not only make it? But can you make us a curriculum for the whole year?” We said, “What we can do this year is we can make a specific deck. So we have seven kindness acts for elementary, seven for middle and seven for high school. Then we have the 31-day deck and campaign for anybody who wants to do that. So we said okay. So we thought, “Well, wait a minute. This fits with our foundation's mission.” The reason why it started is that's why once again and kind of kicked it off. Then some other corporations got behind us. Now, we have 11 sponsors. [00:13:24] PF: So tell me how this works. People sign up, and then what happens? [00:13:28] MR: Go to bigshifts.org, bigshifts.org\kindness, and you can just sign up right there. Then all of a sudden, on October 14th, you're going to get an email that says, “Hey, Paula. Thanks for joining us. Here's what this is about.” We have this fun thing that my team – I've got a great creative team, Desiree and Zach. They said, “You know what? Why don't we give people an opportunity to kind of keep track of which ones make them feel the best?” Because I believe we all have medicine inside of us, that the creator put medicine in me that says, “Michelle, you're able to be a connector.” Paula, it may say that you have a singing voice. I don't have a singing voice. Or you have a writing voice, right. So you're a good writer. I personally am not a great writer. I have great ideas and thoughts. But sometimes, I forget even how to spell the – So that's not my skill set. But I do believe that once we start practicing these acts of kindness, that we’ll realize, “Well, wait a minute. I am really great at this act,” and that we start to realize that's one of our secret sauce. That's some of the magic that makes us who we are in the medicine. So you're going to get an email every day for 31 days. That's going to say, “Hey, here's an act of goodness today.” If it feels right to you, execute it. Why we called it a campaign is people were already challenged. We don't want people to be challenged more. We want them to be inspired that they can not only shift their lives but they can shoot somebody else's. [00:14:49] PF: I love that. So what are some examples of the kind of acts of kindness that’ll get recommended? [00:14:54] MR: Well, it could be smile at somebody. [00:14:55] PF: That’s an easy one. We can do that. [00:14:57] MR: That's an easy. It’s easy. It could be to wave at somebody in the car next to you. We all have on our forehead an MFI, make me feel important, and we just want to want to know we matter. Last year, we got a chance to talk to the YOU Matter team, which was fabulous. This gal actually had signs in her car that she had put on boards, and she had pulled them up. “Hey, nice smile,” or, “Nice color of car,” whatever that would be. Or, “You matter.” It could be that you write a note to a friend, maybe a snail mail or a card. It could be where you send a text to somebody and say, “Hey, I'm thinking of you.” So many little tiny things, and I'm excited to see what people love, and I want to hear new ideas, so we can continue to always freshen up the content. [00:15:38] PF: I love that. So you're a health practitioner. So what is it that you see about kindness that is so crucial to our overall wellbeing? [00:15:48] MR: That is a wonderful question. I want to tell you, I would not have known that answer four years ago. [00:15:53] PF: Really? [00:15:53] MR: I would not have known it. I mean, I would have intuitively known it was good for you. But I would not have known the science behind it, probably much like the work you do with Live Happy Now, you find out the science. This is a soft skill. But this is a soft, soft skill that the research and the science proves is beneficial. So the science shows that by doing kindness to yourself, for yourself, or your pets. I’m a dog person too. I know you are too. Or somebody else, it changes your neurotransmitters. We talked about neurotransmitters just a little bit, but you've got the oxytocin which is what helps you feel like you belong. We do know that people are disconnected more than ever, and they don't feel like they matter, and they're lonely. So people want to matter, and they want to feel like they belong. Then it also – You've got the serotonin and the dopamine that'll give you some motivation and also just help your brain think more positive. So kindness actually shifts those brain chemistry. It is a natural drug to shift your mental health, and it's one of the greatest tools you can use. [00:16:54] PF: Let’s talk about what's going on in our brain when we start practicing kindness. What is that – How is that changing the way that we think? [00:17:03] MR: Well, you think about a couple things. You think about there's something in the brain called the amygdala, and the amygdala helps control the anxiety control centers in the adrenal glands. If you're able to help down regulate that, so instead of kind of – You know when you have caffeine, and you've had nothing else, and you've had maybe three cups of caffeine too much, and you're jittery, and you're kind of on edge. So kindness kind of takes that down a notch. [00:17:26] PF: Then as we start practicing it, how does it then become part of our daily being? Because it is kind of – You and I have talked about this. It's not – I wouldn't say it's addictive, but it does become a pattern if you do it consistently. [00:17:41] MR: I think people start to pay attention. Once again, sometimes it's harder for young brains to get that. Under 25-year-olds, they don't see the patterns yet. But as you get more age, you get more wisdom, and you start to see the patterns, happiness and kindness, if you start to just practice those tools on a regular basis. Sometimes, people forget. I have moments where I forget. I wouldn't say I had days I forget. But sometimes, I get tripped up maybe to an old pattern of some of those negative thinking that we all have. The committee that gets tripped up and you're like, “Gosh, where did I go from there?” I can almost pinpoint the minute where I'll be like, “Michelle, at 10:00 AM, you were fine. And at 10: 20, you weren't fine. What happened between 10:00 and 10:20 AM? Did you forget to eat today? Did you get a phone call that you're processing, and you're thinking it's the end of the world?” So I believe for myself that the more I practice this lifestyle. To me, kindness is a lifestyle. [00:18:38] PF: I like that. Yeah. [00:18:38] MR: Eating vegetables is a lifestyle. Moving is a lifestyle. Listening to positive music is a lifestyle. Reading affirmations is a lifestyle. So when you practice this lifestyle, you have more life in you to share with the world. [00:18:53] PF: Then how do we remind ourselves even after the campaign ends? How do we kind of remind ourselves to make this part of our daily routine? [00:19:01] MR: Well, it could be you printed off a few of the ones that you absolutely love that really spoke to you. Once again, I believe we all have medicine inside of us, and that is what was planted inside your soul for you to find. That is your gift for the world. I don't know what it is, and I hope that people will find something in this campaign that they say, “Oh, wow. That is it. That is what gives me juice and gives me jazz.” So you might post it. We’re seeing each other live by camera right now, and other people are listening to us. But I'm looking to my right, and I know you probably see me look to my right occasionally. I have a board over here to my right in my studio, and it says, “Thank God for this moment.” Underneath it, I have some affirmations, but I also have some of my people in my community that have poured into me. So when you say, “What's my why,” this kind of can be, “I am just pouring it back to the world.” Because people have cared enough to pour it into Michelle Robin, this young woman who, to be totally transparent, is living the best life she could have ever imagined because people poured into me. I wasn't meant to succeed. I wasn't – I grew up poor. I grew up abused like a lot of people. For some reason, I'm sitting, and I have a home, I have a car, I have my health, and I've got community. It doesn't get much better than that. So I think that if you start to plant stuff around you to remind you, “Oh, you know what? Today's the day or this moment I could choose another way to be.” I could be grumpy at that person who pulled out in front of me, or I can bless them. I could send them love. That's – I think it just becomes who you are, almost moment to moment. [00:20:38] PF: I love that. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing and for sitting down with me today and talking about it. [00:20:45] MR: Well, thank you for getting behind the movement. Like I said, I love what Live Happy stands for, Live Happy Now. I love following your show. You have brought on some really insightful guests through the last 380-some episodes. That – [00:20:58] PF: Yeah. Number 386 right here. [00:21:01] MR: The last 386 episodes. It matters, and you just don't know what a person's life is tuning in today that’s going, “Wow,” that maybe make a different decision, and maybe it's to stay alive. [00:21:12] PF: That’s terrific. Thank you again. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:18] PF: That was Dr. Michelle Robin, talking about the 31-Day Kindness Campaign. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle, sign up for The Kindness Campaign, or follow Michelle on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Live Happy’s Halloween Happy Acts  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 385 of Live Happy Now. Now that it’s October, it’s time to start looking at how to make this a truly happy Halloween. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I’m joined by Deborah Heisz, CEO, and co-founder of Live Happy, and Casey Johnson, our ecommerce marketing manager to talk about our all-new Halloween Happy Acts Campaign. If you’ve been with us for a while, you already know that every March, we encourage wellbeing with a month of intentional activities that we call happy acts. This year, we’re combining happy acts with our favorite holiday to create an entire month of happiness while celebrating the spirit of Halloween. Let’s hear what it’s all about. [INTERVIEW]   [00:00:45] PF: Deb and Casey, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] DH: It’s such a pleasure to be here. As usual, always excited to get on a podcast, Paula. I know we have a lot of fun stuff going on. [00:00:55] PF: This one, I’m particularly excited about because Halloween is my favorite time of year. I absolutely love Halloween. When Casey told me about the Halloween happy acts, I got super-duper excited about it. I guess the first thing we need to do is talk about what happy acts are. Since Deb, you’re pretty much the originator of the happy act, why don’t you tell us what happy act is and where those came from? [00:01:19] DH: I’d love to. But also, everybody, say hi to Casey. Casey, say hi.   [00:01:23] CJ: Hi, guys. [00:01:25] DH: She has come up with some great ideas for Halloween happy acts.   [00:01:28] PF: Oh my gosh! Yes.   [00:01:28] DH: I am excited to have extended it out of the month of March, which is when we typically do happy acts. Because they really should be an all-year thing. They shouldn’t be confined to March where the International Day of Happiness is, but of course, putting some attention on it and doing it at that time of year, we get a lot more coverage, we get a lot more people participating. Because it’s something you can hang your hat on and say okay, “In March, I’m going to make sure I’ll up my happy acts game. But doing it in Halloween is great because like you, it’s one of my favorite times of the year, one of the happiest things for me at Halloween is Halloween specials for whatever reason. All the shows that just run specials that are Halloween themed, I think back to Roseanne when it was on in my childhood and how the family got dressed up in elaborate costumes every year. It was just a lot of fun. One of my happiest times a year and I’m an October baby.   [00:02:20] PF: Oh, you really.   [00:02:21] DH: Yes, and my mother’s an October baby, and my older daughter and I actually share a birthday in October. So October is like my month, it’s great. [00:02:28] PF: That is the month. It’s like the whole month off to celebrate. [00:02:33] DH: I think it really works that way, but you asked me what happy acts are. Happy acts are little things that you can do or big things. But things you can do intentionally with intention to make the world a happier place. It’s as simple as, you always hear about the pay it forward, buy somebody a cup of coffee when you’re in the Starbucks line or something like that. But it’s also donating a book to a library, reading to your kids’ class, it’s checking on a neighbor, it’s making a phone call to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time, it’s sending a thank you note because you know how big I am on gratitude. [00:03:10] PF: It comes up once or twice. [00:03:11] DH: It has a few times, but it’s sending a thank you note to someone for making a difference in your life. It’s something that you’re doing actively and intentionally to help make the world a happier place. It doesn’t have to be for a person either. It could be picking up litter, it could be donating time at a pet shelter. It doesn’t have to be anything massive or significant. In fact, we do the happy acts walls in March. That’s where we put up walls, challenging people to commit to doing a happy act. We do a lot of them in schools, because kids come up with things like, “I’m going to smile more. I’m going to eat my vegetables my mom tells me to.” Whatever it is, but it can be something simple. But the point here is that, you’re doing with intention, you know that you’re doing it. It’s not just, “Oh, I held the door open for somebody and I didn’t give it a thought because I always hold the door open for somebody.” Doing something with intention to make the world a happier place, because we know the science says that whoever you’re doing whatever it is for is likely to feel happy. It’s likely – we always say happy, but what we mean is likely to feel grateful or have an elevated sense of well-being. But the reality is that you are going to have a greater sense of well-being by doing happy acts, doing things with intention, with positive intention really does affect your overall mood, you overall – how you perceive the world. All of those things are improved when you do happy acts. That’s what happy acts are. [00:04:38] PF: And they’re a wonderful thing. Then when Casey said, “Hey, we’re going to do Halloween happy acts.” I remember that call because I was like, “I love this idea.” Casey, I mean, that was such a great idea. What made you want to tailor these happy acts tradition to our Halloween? [00:04:38] CJ: Yeah. So kind of like what Deb was saying earlier. Happy acts aren’t just for March and International Day of Happiness on March 20. We encourage people to practice happy acts all year round. Halloween and Christmas, I read this earlier, I heard it somewhere, someone defined them as like gimme holidays. Getting rather than giving. I just thought it would be a good chance to kind of practice maybe some like reverse trick or treating and tie in some happy acts to that month. [00:05:27] PF: I love I, because, as I said, you’ve done such a great job of coming up with happy acts. There are times when you’ll send out, “Hey, these are happy acts. This is what we’re going to do.” I’m like, “Wow, how do we –” like the fact that you can come up with so many new things each time, that always impresses and amazes me. How did you come up with, here’s how we can celebrate it for Halloween? [00:05:47] CJ: Well, thank you. First of all, it’s definitely a team effort. It’s not just all me. But yeah, you know, just Halloween happy acts, there’s so much you can do to spread kindness in October and still kind of celebrate that spooky holiday. Though, I guess I’ll just kind of jump into some of our Halloween happy acts. [00:06:02] PF: Yeah. Tell us what we’re going to do.   [00:06:04] CJ: So we’re kind of thinking of making it a competition, right? We want to spread the love. The plan is to highlight a different happy act every week. If people want to participate, they can tag us in a post, a reel, a story, as long as they tag us of them performing a Halloween happy act of the week, or they can get creative, and it’s not our Halloween happy act of the week, and they’re still out there spreading kindness that works as well. But so, I’ll just kick it off. So week one, we encourage people to donate blood. Deb and I actually went and donated blood together, which was amazing. Week two, trick or treat with UNICEF. Every year, UNICEF, they encourage people to kind of do that reverse trick or treating, donate candy to people in need, who don’t have the luxury of being able to go trick or treating. Week three, paint a pumpkin, we always encourage people in March to paint positivity on rocks. In October, we’re encouraging people to paint pumpkins. On week four, we’re encouraging people to wrap someone in love. So basically, give someone a big old bear hug. Or if you’re someone who doesn’t like hugs or like to be touched, you can – [00:07:15] PF: Are you talking about me now?   [00:07:17] CJ: Of course not. [00:07:18] DH: She might be, Paula. She might be.   [00:07:20] CJ: I might be. Wink wink.   [00:07:22] DH: No, I’m just kidding.   [00:07:24] CJ: But yeah, so I mean, not everyone likes to be touched and that’s okay. You can wrap yourself in like a warm blanket, or we’ve also got some awesome Live Happy hoodies on the Live Happy store, and they’ll make you feel nice and cozy. [00:07:37] DH: Shameless plug there, but they do. They’re awesome. [00:07:41] CJ: I’ve got like two Live Happy hoodies. They’re my favorite. Then week five, so that’s the actual week of Halloween, so we’re kind of going big that week. We’re going to have two Halloween happy acts. The first one is to bake a healthy treat for your class or office. I’m kind of thinking of baking like some pumpkin muffins, or some zucchini bread for our office.   [00:08:02] DH: Let me know what day. I’ll make sure I’m there. [00:08:02] PF: I can fly in. [00:08:07] CJ: I’ll make sure you guys are in the office. Paula, I’ll send you some zucchini bread or pumpkin muffins.   [00:08:11] PF: All right. Okay. That’s a good deal.   [00:08:14] CJ: Then on Halloween, we encourage people to create a Halloween card for your neighbor. So like maybe like –   [00:08:21] PF: I like that.   [00:08:22] CJ: – picture of a Halloween pan or just something, spread the love. [00:08:25] PF: Yeah, I like that a lot. Because especially making a card, or doing something, or even painting a pumpkin, and giving it to them, giving it to a neighbor. I think that’s so important right now, because I feel like we’re still a little bit disconnected from each other. We talked about getting back to normal, but it still feels disconnected in so many ways. I think these are great ways. Go ahead. [00:08:46] DH: No, you know, you’re talking about that getting back to normal. But if you think back, before what we’re all talking about how we didn’t know our neighbors, maybe we are back to normal, and we just realized that we didn’t know them anyway. I bring that up, because it’s not just getting back to normal, it is a proactive activity or asking somebody to do. It’s not just being in your comfort zone, it’s reaching out just a little bit to somebody that you wouldn’t ordinarily be having contact with, and helping them have a happier day or a happier Halloween. I love the idea of the reverse trick or treating with UNICEF. These are all things that are super easy to do. I love them. Thank you, Casey.   [00:09:25] CJ: Of course. [00:09:26] PF: Yeah, they’re fun. Then, how are we going to turn this into a challenge? [00:09:31] CJ: So, it’s kind of like our gratitude challenge if any of our listeners remember when we did that a few years ago. Say week one, you donate blood, post a picture, video, whatever on your story, tag us and also, tag a friend and encourage them to keep the momentum going. [00:09:49] PF: I like that a lot. Because really, that’s the way we’ve seen that with other challenges, where that’s really what makes it take off. People were like, “Hey, I just didn’t think about doing that.” I think that’s what’s so wonderful about the happy acts. It’s not that we don’t want to do them, we just didn’t think about it until someone says, “Hey, this is a great idea” and then they start – next thing you know, you’ve got a movement. [00:10:09] CJ: Exactly, or a new Halloween tradition. [00:10:11] DH: Yeah. Well, and the guinea holidays are something I’d never heard of before. I’m glad that you brought that up, but you’re right. I think that’s especially true of kids. They really look forward to Halloween, and they look forward to Christmas, based on the gimme, right? And you can even throw Valentine’s Day in there. I think it’s important to involve your kids in something like this. I mean, certainly, if I painted a pumpkin, it might look like my 10-year-old did it. But I could actually –   [00:10:35] CJ: No one has to know that.   [00:10:37] DH: I could actually –actually, in this particular case, but my next to her, she’s quite artistic. You’d probably think I painted hers and vice versa. But I mean, involve your children, and teach them as well. But giving back to others, or doing things for others, or taking the time to do something to make the world a happier place is worthwhile and not just a march. [00:10:57] PF: Yeah. How does this kind of set us up for the holiday season? Because I do like the fact that so oftentimes, we kind of rush through October. Well, not this group, because we love October. But many people kind of rush through October so they can get to the start of the holiday season, which starts now apparently. the day after Halloween. But how can we kind of shift our thinking, because of the way we’re approaching October, and maybe even approach the holidays differently? [00:11:25] CJ: I just think a bit more of as – so Halloween, Christmas, it’s all about kind of like what we touched on earlier, it’s about getting, so it’s – this shifts your mindset into – okay, rather than getting, I’m going to give back. [00:11:40] DH: Well, we spend a lot of Thanksgiving. Thank giving, right? It’s the, you should be thankful this day, whether you are or not holiday. [00:11:51] PF: Sorry, if you’re having a bad year, find something to be thankful for. [00:11:54] DH: There is always something to be thankful for. We talked about that a lot. But you know, you go into Thanksgiving with the, “I’m going to be around some of my relatives, I don’t want to be thankful for them.” But others I’m wonderfully thankful for. I just think that setting up the concept that life isn’t about getting something, and your happiness isn’t about getting something. Very rarely will a gift truly change your life. You can ask my kids what they got last year for Christmas, I guarantee you, they probably don’t remember. Every now and then, you’ll get that life changing, “You know, I got my first 10-speed bicycle on my 12th birthday kind of gifts.” But it’s not, it’s not usually about getting, but giving and creating positive relationships, and being a larger part of the community, and doing things that are within your control to make the world a happier place, and frankly give you greater positive well-being is something kicking out off in October is great. Because as we all know, and we all read every year, the holidays are some of the most times a year when people are most depressed. I think starting that in October, and leading into it and remembering to be thankful for Thanksgiving, and for the month of November, and right into the holidays. You might see some marketing from Live Happy during that timeframe about being thankful and giving.   [00:13:09] PF: It’s possible.   [00:13:11] DH: Because it’s thanks giving. It’s not thanks taking, right?   [00:13:17] PF: I like that.   [00:13:16] DH: I should do some stuff on that. But I think it sets us up in the right mindset and the right frame of mind for the rest of the year, where we’re doing something positive every month. We don’t have to wait all year for that. [00:13:28] PF: Oh, there we go. We can start doing happy acts every month. [00:13:30] DH: Well, you know, you can. In fact, I want you to do them every day. But as marketing campaigns go for those of us who’ve got degrees in marketing, it’s better if you coalesce everything around a particular time of year. But it doesn’t mean we don’t want people doing happy acts every day, it doesn’t mean we don’t do happy acts every day. It simply means that we just run a really large advertising campaign to get people involved in March. So now we’re doing the same in October, but it’s something you do every day. I think it’s a good reminder, particularly this time of year where the weather starts changing and people start feeling more isolated, to just get out in front of that and start a little bit early this year. [00:14:10] PF: I like that. Casey, how are they going to know about the campaign, and how are they going to know what to do, and how to keep up with what’s going on? [00:14:17] CJ: So we will be sharing each happy act on our social channels. So if you’re not following us, make sure to hit that follow button. We’ll also be sending out an email that highlights each of the happy acts and how you can participate and join in on the challenge. Excellent. [00:14:37] PF: What do both of you, each of you want to see out of this? What would make you just go, “Wow! I’m so glad we did it because –”? [00:14:43] DH: I’d love to see a lot of social engagement. I want to see a lot of people flagging Live Happy, and discovering the content that’s on there, and hash tagging, and liking us, and sharing what they’re doing. But you know, it really is about – I want to see people actively doing something. I want to see hundreds of pumpkin pictures, painted pumpkin pictures. Because the reality is, it doesn’t matter how many people you involve, how many people you touch, just knowing that some people are making a difference, and it’s making a difference in some people’s lives is really the most rewarding thing for me. Running into somebody and having them share some of their experience, which does happen is just a phenomenal, humbling experience for me. I think everybody who works at Live Happy know that while we’re talking into a computer screen, what we’re saying, or putting on a computer screen eventually has a positive impact in the world. So for me, I just want to see activity, I wanted people out there doing stuff.   [00:15:42] PF: I like it.   [00:15:43] DH: Tag us, tag me. By the way, I’m the only Deborah Heisz on Facebook or probably in the universe. You can find me; I promise on Facebook or Instagram. Tag me. I’d love to see it.   [00:15:58] PF: That’s cool. That’s cool. How about you, Casey? What do you really hope for this because you’ve kind of masterminded this campaign? [00:16:04] CJ: My hope, and Deb and I, we were kind of talking about this a few weeks ago. I just want to see people being assets to their community, whether it’s donating blood, painting a pumpkin, donating their candy to a food shelter, or like a senior living home, no happy act, big or small. It makes a huge difference. [00:16:25] PF: Yeah. What if people come up with their own happy acts. Can they call it a happy act? The #halloweenhappyacts? [00:16:32] CJ: Absolutely. Yes. So I mean, we’re only highlighting about five or six happy acts that we can do in October. But there are so many that people can go out and do their own. So like donating candy to a food shelter. I don’t think we have that on our list. Donating Halloween costumes. There are kids out there who can’t afford Halloween costumes. So donating materials or just old costumes, that makes a huge difference in kids’ lives. [00:16:57] PF: That’s great. I saw one thing where there’s a group, and they do this anyway, they paint rocks, and it’s like abandoned rocks, they call it. They paint them, and then they go around, and they put them in neighborhoods, and they have positive messages on them. I saw that they were doing that for Halloween. They’re painting a bunch of stones, like orange, and black, like pumpkins, and then putting a positive message on the back, and sharing them. I thought that would be cool. But again, I fear that I paint even not as well as Deb, so I shouldn’t be doing that. Well, thank you guys both so much for coming on and talking about this. I’m really excited to see this happen. I know it’ll get bigger each year and we’ll keep it going. But thanks again for making it happen and then come in and telling me about it. [00:17:41] DH: Well, thanks for being the hostess with the mostest, as usual. [00:17:46] PF: Thank you. [00:17:49] CJ: Thank you, Paula. Happy Halloween everyone. [00:17:51] PF: Oh yeah, Happy Halloween. [00:17:53] DH: Happy Halloween. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:17:57] PF: That was Live Happy’s own Deborah Heisz and Casey Johnson, talking about our all-new Halloween Happy Acts Campaign. If you’d like to learn more, you can follow Live Happy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, or visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you’re on the website, why not pop into the Live Happy store and checkout are brand spanking new, Choose Happy tote bag. This cool and useful bag is great for work and play. Oh, what the heck, it can even double as a trick or treat bag. Check it out in the new merch section at store.livehappy.com That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Escaping the Comparison Trap With Dr. Ronald Siegel  [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 379 of Live Happy Now. Whether we admit it or not, most of us spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others. What if our true superpower is learning just to be ourselves? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with psychotherapist, psychology professor and mindfulness expert, Dr. Ronald Siegel, whose latest research looks at what a climate of self-comparison is doing to undermine our happiness. His latest book, The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary, looks at the trap of constant self-evaluation, and explains how we can learn to let go of our comparison culture, and live a more satisfying happy life. Today, he's talking about how we got here, and what we can do about it. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:51] PF: Ron, thank you so much for being on Live Happy Now. [00:00:54] RS: Thanks so much for having me. [00:00:55] PF: This is such a fascinating book that you've written, and I think one thing that would surprise people, surprised me right off the bat, is where you say in the foreword, that you yourself were doing the self-comparison and the self-evaluation. I think, anyone familiar with your level of expertise, and what you've done would be surprised so. So, how did you come to realize that that was something that you were falling into? [00:01:22] RS: Well, it's interesting. The idea for this book came about when I was in my 60s, I'm in my later 60s now. And there I was, having spent a good four decades, actually, involved in meditative practices, mindfulness practices, in particular. Those come out of wisdom traditions that have as one of their goals, to be less self-preoccupied, to be more connected to the wider world, and particularly to be less preoccupied with ego, right? To getting my desires met, or proving myself or self-aggrandizement in life. At the same time, I have spent at least as many decades working as a psychotherapist, and that involves also in my own training, in my own life, being patient or client in psychotherapy, and working with countless clients over the years, and you would think that fruit of that would be to have something called a coherent or stable sense of self, or as sometimes happens in a lot of Western therapeutic traditions, stable and high self-esteem. And being fairly aware of what goes on in my own consciousness as somebody who does a lot of mindfulness practice, it was quite clear to me that neither of those things had happened. I was neither done with self-preoccupation, nor had arrived at anything like a stable, coherent sense of self. I mean, I'm not saying that I wasn't able to function well, in the world. I function quite nicely and I do and accomplish all sorts of things. And I have family and friends and I actually have a rather blessed and good life in that way. But to be honest about what was going on in consciousness, is still quite regularly going up and down in various ways. I would, for example, have a session in which I'm the psychotherapist, and it would go well. It would feel effective. It would feel poignant. It would feel connected. I think, “Yeah, all these years of training and practice, I'm good at this. This is great. I'm a good psychologist.” And then I'd have another session that didn't go so well, and I'd be back feeling like, “I was a bright guy. I could have gotten into so many fields. This is clearly not my calling.” Similarly, in other realms of my life, I'd have days or moments where I'd feel like I'm a good, loving husband and other days where I feel like I'm a self-preoccupied lout, as a father, as everything. Just noticing the constant shifts, and the constant hunger for some kind of positive feedback or good feeling. I do a lot of teaching, a lot of training of psychotherapists, and even after all these years, showing up, and if more people show up for the other person's workshop at the conference than mine, well, this feeling of disappointment or not good enough, where people show up in mind this feeling of, “Oh, yeah, I'm great, I'm capable, I'm confident.” I started noticing that virtually everybody that I work with professionally, virtually all my clients or patients, are struggling with this in some way also, are often feeling somehow, they're not good enough, and they’re either in one state or another. Either in the state of feeling disappointed, inadequate in some way. Feeling like we've failed or not met the mark, or the opposite. Feeling like, “Hey, I'm doing pretty well here”, but then constantly stressed out either pursuing achievements or pursuing feedback from others, trying to feel good about ourselves. That got me curious as to what the causes were as to what it was based on, and also, what are the antidotes? What are the solutions? How do we live with less of this preoccupation, more freedom, more connection, more joy, more flexibility in our lives? [00:04:47] PF: Yeah, and I think one thing, people will feel immediate relief that okay, it's not just me. I think that was the first thing, and then to realize, like wow, there are way more people feeling this way than I thought. As I look at the examples that you created in the book, and it's like, “Oh, my gosh, so many I can check that box.” It's like, “Oh, yeah, that's me. Oh, yeah, that's me.” I think that there was something both alarming and reassuring about that. [00:05:14] RS: Both alarming and reassuring, I think you put that well. I want to say there's a mythology in our culture that really adds to the torment. And the mythology is, it's only losers who have these doubts. It's only losers that have insecurities. It's only losers that might have an interaction with a friend and think, “Hmm, was I being too self-centered? Hmm, did they think that I wasn't being caring enough?” Or who go to the party and feel, “These other people, they're more accomplished than I am. What do they think about me?” It's this fantasy that if only we could achieve enough, if only we could be an Internet influencer or entrepreneur, who's wealthy and famous by the time we're 30, then we wouldn't feel these things. It's just because we went wrong somehow that we suffer from this, and it is one of the steps on the road to freedom from this, is realizing its universality and realizing that we're really in this together. [00:06:07] PF: How pervasive is this problem? Is it like pretty much everybody that you know? [00:06:10] RS: I think it's everyone who's ever been born. [00:06:13] PF: There we go. [00:06:14] RS: There's a reason for this. This is actually rooted in our evolutionary history. The brain evolved for survival and for reproduction, and for passing on genes. The way that natural selection works as we the best we understand in the scientific community, is that those random variations in organisms over the years that are helpful for survival and passing on our genes, those are the ones that are going to persist, because those are the organisms are going to successfully reproduce. Now, why do we care about this? Why did chickens and so many other species organize themselves into what we call pecking hierarchies? Why are there species of crickets that if you put them in a box inside of a few seconds, they've got a dominance hierarchy going? Why do kids do this almost immediately, when you add them together into groups? Well, it turns out that those who were more dominant in all these different species had a better chance of reproducing successfully, they had more access to more partners, and they had a better chance of having the resources that they needed for their kids, so as to be able to support them. We might imagine in ancient history that there were happy hominids, holding hands, singing Kumbaya, focused only on cooperation and love, and none of this kind of competitive dominant stuff. But they didn't tend to reproduce the ones as efficiently as the ones who were focused on this. So, we got that. And the way it shows up for us in humans, it's more subtle, we're not just beating our chests like the chimpanzees do. It plays out at a much more subtle level in fluctuating self-esteem. Every time that we either think highly of ourselves or less highly of ourselves, it's by comparison, either with others, with our friends, our co-workers, our peers, or it's in comparison to some image that we have in our mind about who we're supposed to be or how we're supposed to be. So, if I think I'm a good dad, I'm implicitly comparing myself to either a model I have in my mind of what a dad should be, or other actual dads. The same thing for, if I think of myself as smart or strong or weak, or kind or caring. It's all this comparison, and it's the same kind of comparison that these other animals are doing in the field of dominance, only, we do it in all these subtle, symbolic ways. So, we are actually hardwired to be concerned with how we rank in the group and how we compare to others. That's why this is so universal. [00:08:39] PF: Well, something that we have that the animals don't, is social media, and the self-comparison, that was already an issue for us. It has been through time. But now with social media, it's really become amplified. You have an entire chapter on resisting ‘selfie esteem’, which I love that term. But can we talk about what social media is doing to drive this self-comparison and what that is doing to us? [00:09:08] RS: Yeah, it's so powerful. I'm on the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the story actually comes out of Harvard of this guy who noticed that people are always comparing themselves to others. He came up with the scheme some years ago, where he took the photographs that were on the intranet, the internal network of Harvard, and there were pictures of the undergraduate class, and he took them and he basically posted this on this website that he built, and he had people rate them for who's more attractive or less attractive, right? Suddenly everybody was into it. All the undergraduates were into it and it took a few days before the university caught wind of what was going on and shut down the website and actually expelled the guy. Well, the guy was Mark Zuckerberg, and he hit upon this idea that if we can get people to have the experience of getting a like, the sense of the thumbs up like, they'll do and it’ll motivate a lot, right? Because this gives us this little boost to self-esteem. So, you'll notice all the social media sites all have some way to either follow, well, that's a little practical, but also to like or not, posts that other people put on there, and we all become very addicted to this. The psychologists who study this, put people in brain scanners, and they find that the part of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, which is our reward center, it's the part that's activated from gambling wins, or for that matter, hits of cocaine, lights up when we get a like on Facebook or Instagram. So, that's going on, and that's being monetized, obviously. But it keeps us attached to it. And then there's the other thing, the way that people curate their images on social media. I don't know about you, but I don't see a lot of posts on Facebook or Instagram that, say, “Woke up this morning, had the runs again. I'm going to get a bad performance review at work. And I think my partner is going to dump me.” No, it's, “Here I am at this fantastic place, doing fantastic things, with fantastic people, looking beautiful and you're missing out.” That is the average post on social media. So, it leads all of us not only craving and being stuck in this addictive cycle of looking for things that are going to boost our self-esteem, but also looking at other people and having our heart sink. If we were countries or nation states, it would be as though we were looking at our own crime and poverty statistics and comparing them to other people's travel brochures. It's agonizing. It's an absolute setup for feeling that we're not good enough, and then feeling stressed out, like, I got to do more. I got to do more to somehow become a winner, instead of a loser. [00:11:49] PF: Now, we also know that’s very addictive. So, what is kind of the solution to be able to learn to step away from that? I know, for myself, I made an intentional move to be very mindful on Facebook, and on Instagram, and not post things to be like, “Hey, look at us doing this. Look at us.” It's like, I'll post something funny, I'll post something uplifting, but I won't post things really about what I'm doing. It's been an interesting little experiment for me, and I feel it's helped me. What can we do to – if we're going to live in that world, but then we want to still maintain our mental health? [00:12:26] RS: Right. Well, what you're doing is a really good place to start, right? To actually be – and it's part of the larger project. The larger project begins by simply taking an honest look at the degree to which our hearts and minds are captured by this worry about feeling good enough about ourselves. And by the whole world of social comparison, by all the ways in which we have thoughts all day long about how am I compared to others. I'm teaching a workshop here for mental health professionals, and when talking about this idea with them, just saying, how many of you notice since you came here, comparisons coming to mind? Everything from who's the psychiatrist? Who's the social worker? Who's the one who's running a program? Who's the one who's just working in one? Who's thinner? Who's taller? Who looks younger? On and on and on, our minds are constantly filled with these kinds of thoughts. So, the first thing is just noticing this, and noticing how it plays out when we use social media. Noticing when our feeling about ourselves goes up, we sit up a little taller, and our chest stands out a little bit more when we feel, “Yeah, hey, people like me. Hey, they think what I'm doing is great.” Or when we have the opposite feeling and that feeling of collapse. So, it starts simply with observation, with simply being aware of what's happening, and then really deciding what here is going to sustain my wellbeing, what is a reliable pathway to wellbeing? What is ephemeral and constantly going up and down? When we start realizing that, the likes and stuff and the showing off, that's very ephemeral. It goes up and down. It means deliberately withdrawing from it. Like, okay, exactly what you're doing. I'm not going to post these things. “Hey, look at me. Hey, look at how great I'm doing.” And in fact, maybe I'm even going to refrain from too much of this liking other people or not liking other people. Maybe I'm actually going to step back from it. And then what we do instead is look at what are the more sustainable pathways to wellbeing, because the really good news is we not only inherited from our evolutionary history this tendency to be worried about how we're doing, and this concern with social comparison. We also inherited other instincts that can bring us happiness or wellbeing that are much more reliable and that aren't zero sum games where our win is someone else's loss. [00:14:54] PF: Yeah, and let's talk about that. What are some of the other like, as you said, the steps that we can take toward changing how we're approaching ourselves and thinking about ourselves to jump off of this treadmill? [00:15:06] RS: Sure. Well, one of the most potent things that we can do, and we should talk about self-compassion, because that's also one of them. But one of the other ones is, and I have a whole chapter with this title. What if we went through life trying to make a connection rather than an impression? [00:15:20] PF: Oh, I love that. [00:15:23] RS: So often, when we interact with other people, we're kind of worried about how we look, how we sound, what they're thinking, and we're trying in some way to impress them, even if it's just to impress them that I'm a decent human being. But what if instead, we had all of our interactions be about how might I connect with this other person? How might I share honestly my experience of being human, and inquire with them about their experience of being human? Most of us who have had the privilege of having a good friend, have had situations in which we're talking to our good friend, and they're being honest, we're being honest, which usually means talking about our insecurities, or talking about our disappointments, or talking about ways in which perhaps our heart is broken, or we're afraid of something. In the process, our guard is let down, and our whole sense of self shifts. It shifts from a preoccupation with me to feeling like part of a, we. It's us, not me and you. That shift in how we experience ourselves, when we're connected to another human being, is a wonderful antidote to all of this kind of self-esteem preoccupation. Because in those moments, when we're with a friend that way, and kind of comparing notes and living a life, we're not so worried about how we're evaluated. We're not on that channel. We're on this other channel, which is that we also evolved to be social animals, social beings, who cooperate with one another, who lean on one another, who had been huddling together in caves since the beginning of time for mutual support. And when we feel that, all this other stuff starts to fall away. So, one broad avenue to be working in is, how do I connect safely to other people? A really good friend of mine, named Dr. Bob Waldinger, he wears a number of interesting hats. So, he's a Harvard psychiatrist. He's actually trained as a psychoanalyst and trains people in psychoanalysis. He's the head of the Harvard Study on Adult Development, which is the longest running longitudinal study asking the question, what really makes people thrive in life? It's been going on since 1933, and he happens to be a Zen priest. So, he wears quite a few hats and has quite a bit of wisdom. In his role as the director of the study of adult development, which has been following this cohort of men, because Harvard was all male back in 1933, and it was this set of some 700 odd men, some of whom were Harvard undergraduates, and some were matched in other ways. But they were poor kids from poor neighborhoods in Boston. And they've been following them for all these years, and looking at all sorts of measures of health, blood pressure, lipid levels, that kind of thing, looking at their social lives, looking at their career lives, and really seeing so what does it? What's important? And Bob would say, “The jury is in. It's the nature of our relationships.” People who have relationships in which they feel safe and connected with other people, they tend to thrive in life. When we don't, not so much. The interesting thing is that the relationships don't have to be continuously harmonious. It's fine if we bicker. It's fine if we argue. But we have to feel like we fundamentally understand and trust one another. That allows us to let down our guard, and it gives us a lot of freedom from the constant stress of this kind of social comparison. So, that is certainly one important thing to be cultivating. Whenever we find ourselves anxious or feeling bad about ourselves, or striving to stay on top, how can I connect other people? [00:19:01] PF: You give so much wonderful advice, recommendations and insight in this book, but where can people start? Because it's something we all need and even if we're farther down the path in this, and are a little bit more evolved and take better care of ourselves with our inner critic, I think we can all work on it. So, where does someone start today to start making that shift? [00:19:24] RS: Well, I think we start by just watching what's going on. I spent many years practicing and teaching, you know, mindfulness practices, which many people think of as, well, those are good for reducing stress. And yes, they're good for that. But they're even more useful for noticing the patterns of mind that create suffering for us. So, having some kind of practice where we regularly step out of the busyness of our goal-oriented activity, to just notice what's going on in the heart and mind, is really helpful because it starts by just noticing, “My gosh, how often these little ups and downs are happening during the day.” And my experience and the experience of others that I've talked to about this is when we're sensitized to it, we notice it's happening all the time. I mean, in this conversation that I'm having with you, there are moments where the idea comes readily, and I think, “Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. I'm glad I share that. I hope people will like that.” And then other moment, “Well, maybe that wasn't the best thing to say.” So, it's happening all the time, even right here now. We start by being sensitized to it and noticing it, and trying not to despair, if we noticed that these sorts of evaluative thoughts are happening frequently. But that starts with recognizing it. The next thing is really recognizing that winning is not going to work to make this go away. I've worked with so many people who are super accomplished at what they do, and have done wonderful things in the world. But they still frequently feel not good enough, what happens? There are two reasons for this, and if I may include this. This is part of what we need to be aware. One is that we recalibrate. The things that once floated our boat, stopped working after a little while. We habituate to it. We get used to whatever the thing was that used to make us feel okay about ourselves, and then we wind up needing something more, and just seeing this pattern is really helpful, so that we don't just keep putting all our energies into this crazy idea that if only I can get it right, if only I can lose five pounds, then I'm going to feel good about myself. If only I can accomplish this or that. The other reason why the accomplishment doesn't work is because what goes up, goes down. Let's say you're really good at what you do. You're an Olympic gold athlete, what are the chances of winning the gold in four years? In eight years? None of this is going to last. So, the first is simply observation. And then what we do is once we really see what's not working, is we start turning our attention to what does work. Making the connection, practicing self-compassion, looking for ways to really give oneself a hug. And in the book, there's instructions for how you would do this, practicing gratitude, which we haven't spoken about yet. In a moment of gratitude, two things are going on. One is, instead of thinking what I don't have and should have, we're noticing what we do have. So as a result, we're not striving for something else. We're being with whatever is already here. And when we're grateful, we're connected, because we're usually grateful toward somebody or for something. It could be grateful to my parents for the care. I got grateful to my partner for being loving. Grateful for the fact that my body is still working. What a miracle that is. Grateful to have enough to eat. Whatever it is, in the moment of gratitude, we feel connected to something larger. So, that winds up being helpful to us. So, it simultaneously noticing the addictions and noticing what doesn't work, and then turning our attention toward these other things that are more reliable sources of wellbeing. There are others in the book as well. But those are some of the greatest hits, I'd say. [00:22:56] PF: That is fantastic. You have given us a tremendous gift with this book, because there are so many wonderful practices, there's exercises that people can do, and you really walked us through this entire process, and I think it's something people can use over and over. Because after one read, it's not going to all go away and I think it's a constant journey for us, and this is such a wonderful guide book to help us on that journey. [00:23:21] RS: Yeah. I hope it's of use to people because I've certainly seen the unnecessary suffering that being caught in this has caused me personally, has caused the people I've worked with. It seems to account for a lot of what goes wrong in the world, so much of what goes wrong in the world is at least partly fueled by these desperate attempts to feel good about ourselves, sometimes by being above someone else. It's important for our personal wellbeing, it's important so that we can get along together in this planet. [00:23:51] PF: Wonderful words. Ron, thank you again, for taking the time. Again, you have so much to teach us. We've gotten just a little taste of it here. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find your book and how they can find more of the work that you've done. But again, thank you for sitting down and for everything that you're contributing. [00:24:08] RS: Great. Thank you for what you're doing and thank you so much for inviting me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:15] PF: That was Dr. Ronald Siegel, author of The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary: Finding Happiness Right Where You Are. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Siegel and his research, download a free chapter of his latest book, or follow him on social media. Visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Right now, we're all going back to school, so why not make sure you have some cool Live Happy gear to start the year. Right now, we're offering 20% off our back to school merch when you use the code Happy Learning at the Live Happy Store. Whether you want to stock up on are adorable mop-top pens, our super popular positive sticky notes, or grab a gratitude journal to start every day with a positive thought, you can find it all 20% off. Just visit our store at livehappy.com, and remember to use the code Happy Learning. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Learning to be a Kind Traveler With Jessica Blotter  [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 375 of Live Happy Now. Now that we're taking vacations again, have you thought about how to bring more kindness to your travels? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Jessica Blotter, a speaker and journalist who specializes in sustainable and regenerative tourism. After witnessing extreme poverty on a vacation to Belize, Jessica launched a movement in 2016, called Kind Traveler, which allows travelers to positively impact the communities they visit, and enjoy incredible experiences as well. She's here today to talk about why it's so important to travel kindly, and how you can make every trip you take, make a difference. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:48] PF: Jessica, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:50] JB: Thank you so much for having me, Paula. It's such a pleasure to be here. [00:00:54] PF: It's exciting to have you on the air. We've had you on our website. We had you when we had the magazine. And you have such an incredible mission, because you are all about sustainable tourism and giving back. So, before we dig into what you're doing, let's start by explaining what sustainable tourism even means. [00:01:11] JB: Sure, happy to. So, sustainable tourism is really about asking the question, how one can maximize, their, perhaps, positive impact when they travel and minimize their negative impact when they travel. We're really looking at the entire cycle of the traveler journeys. So, from how you get there, your transport, the type of lodging that you choose, the behavior and activities that you have on the ground, and throughout all of those, that travel cycle, looking at that question, and how can I maximize positive impact as a relates to communities and the environment, and the actual destination that you're, in minimizing things like your carbon footprint, or preventing food waste, or things like in that nature. So, that's the essence of what it is. [00:02:09] PF: Why is it so important for us to not just continue those practices, but really to step it up when we're going to go on vacation? [00:02:15] JB: Right. Well, when you look at the volume of travelers taking international trips, especially if we look at pre COVID, you have 1.4 billion travelers traveling around the world, right, and then you have 1.8 or more billion projected by 2030. So, the power of the travel industry can actually be a force for good, or it can be a force for the negative. You see things on the negative side, such as over tourism. You also see things like communities adversely being affected. Whereas on the on the positive side, if travel dollars can be situated and manifested in such a way that it can actually do a lot of good, it can support communities, it can support the environment. So, it's just really important to think about how one can vote with their dollar, and perhaps choose things that are good for the planet, because of its sheer impact that it can make on a global level. When you look at the amount of people that are traveling in today's world. [00:03:24] PF: It's so interesting, because I know a lot of friends who travel, have come back and said, “Oh, man, it was horrible. Because to get to our resort, we had to go through this village.” And they would talk about the poverty that they saw on. I used to go to Cabo a lot and it was that same kind of thing where you're staying in a very opulent place, and you're surrounded by poverty. So, doing this, we don't really think that we can make a difference in that community. Like it doesn't even register with a lot of us. How do we make sure that that is happening and how do we become a part of that? [00:03:57] JB: It's great that you say, that because that's actually how Kind Traveler began is that my co-founder and I, we were actually on a vacation and witnessed a lot of poverty. We saw a lot of emaciated dogs roaming the streets, families living in shacks next to polluted swamps. And we had a really hard time sort of turning away from those experiences and getting excited about the vacation itself. We had been and still are, animal rescue volunteers, and for us, it was virtually impossible for us to turn a blind eye to these rib protruding dogs begging for food. So, we decided to feed them, not knowing really what else to do. And we unintentionally inspired other travelers to get involved with this small act of giving back. When we walked away from this experience, the mood had really shifted and see how the other travelers went from this feeling of sadness and despair and helplessness to one have a little bit of hope and joy and laughter. We just started to think about how perhaps we could create a way to make it easy for travelers to give back and make a positive impact in the destination that they visit, specifically through giving back. And we realized that there are so many wonderful nonprofits that are on the ground that are supporting animals, or supporting the environment. They're helping lift local communities out of poverty. Not everybody wants to volunteer necessarily on their vacation. They might not have time. They don't want to do it. And it's also earned a bad reputation over the years, frankly, in some other countries. That act of giving back and when you're traveling, seemed like something that was very important to help create a sustainable future for the travel industry and utilizing the potential power of those 1.4 billion trips that happened, at least pre COVID. That was actually that story just described, was something I think a lot of people have experience. They're often left with this feeling, something that's called travelers guilt. And when it's not easy to do something and they don't know how to do something, it can be quite frustrating, and lead to someone perhaps not feeling quite satisfied or happy even on their vacation. [00:06:23] PF: What you did was different, because a lot of people go through that. You have that travelers’ guilt, and you hear like, “I wish I could do something”, and then you go home and you get on with your life. That is not what you did. [00:06:34] JB: No. No, we did not do that. [00:06:38] PF: So, tell me how you went about this experience and how did that become a movement? I mean, I think that is so fascinating to me. [00:06:46] JB: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so when we had that experience, keep in mind, both Shawn and I, we were at this point in our careers in our lives, where we both were entrepreneurs and involved with other businesses in the past. And we're kind of very comfortable in this space of entrepreneurialism, and we were very passionate about travel. We were both doing a lot of volunteering at that time. I was also a travel writer at that time. I was doing some freelancing with travel writing. So, our hearts and our minds were really in this very special place when we had that experience. Our hearts were definitely in an open place where we were actively kind of looking to find certain gaps that that existed. We saw this gap. We started just asking ourselves like, “Wow, what if we could use our passion for travel, and for helping nonprofits? What if we could use that passion to create a pathway and make it easy for travelers to give back to the destinations that they visit?” That got us so excited. We came back, we started doing research after the trip and we realized, and there are research that a lot of travelers, in fact, at that time, it was 70% of travelers want their travel dollars to make a positive impact in the communities. [00:08:10] PF: That's so great to hear. [00:08:11] JB: Yeah, but then we saw that the challenges were, that about half of travelers find this completely confusing and don't know necessarily what that means or how to do it. So, we started talking to hotels as well and we decided that we wanted to build a platform that would essentially make it easy for travelers to give back to the communities that they visit and in turn, be rewarded for special offers from hotels that were also committed to the same values within the community and the environment. Because of that trip, Kind Traveler was born. We launched it in 2016 and it was the first and only, I should say, socially conscious give and get hotel booking platform that empowers travelers to give back and make a positive impact on the communities that they visit. The way it works is really quite simple. It's a $10 minimum donation to a locally vetted charity that is in the community that you're going to, and that donation or more will unlock an exclusive offer that we've negotiated with our hotels, and they even offer whether it's an exclusive rate or some special perks. Through that booking, we see a triple win happens because the traveler is winning, they get to have this amazing offer they give back, the charity is winning, and the hotel is winning. 100% of donations are given back to the charity through this model. And a couple other things that make it special is that we measure the impact across the entire site. So, whether you're giving back to a local wildlife group or an environmental organization, whatever it is, you're going to learn about that charity, specifically. Why it's important? What your $10 donation will do? And become very educated about your impact that you're able to make. [00:10:12] PF: That is so cool. And as you said, you started this in 2016. What have been some of the challenges to launch it and get it up and scale it, so that you can start really giving people these offers? [00:10:27] JB: So, in 2016, I think that we are definitely ahead of the curve. Today, in 2022, a lot of folks are really starting to think about sustainable tourism. Regenitive tourism has become quite popular. But back then, we found ourselves doing a ton of educating to everybody about why this was so important. I feel like it was just starting to – sustainable tourism was really becoming slowly more popular over the years in terms of a topic that the media wanted to cover and such. But we started out with 20 hotels on the platform, just based mostly in the US and the Caribbean. And today, we have 140 hotels in 22 countries around the world, and represent around 125 nonprofits around the world. All of the nonprofit goals are aligned with something called the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development. And it just ensures that all of our impact goals are essentially working to either fight poverty, advance education, and communities, create equality in communities. And then on the environmental side, it's largely about addressing the climate crisis and working with environmental groups that are protecting biodiversity and wildlife, or working to advance ocean conservation. So, that kind of gives us like a framework around that. But it's been a really rewarding journey, and now that people are talking more about how to do this, I think that the timing of our platform really becomes more important. [00:12:05] PF: Sure. And obviously, we went through a time of not traveling much in the last couple of years. [00:12:11] JB: That’s true too, of course. That was a huge challenge. [00:12:13] PF: Yeah, oh my gosh, I can't even imagine what it looked like from your end. But do you see, as we come out of this a little bit, do you see a difference in the way people are approaching travel and, in their willingness to give? [00:12:25] JB: Absolutely. I mean, we took that time during the pandemic, to actually launch a new platform. So, we launched a brand-new platform in January of this year of 2022, and we wanted to create some additional things that would make it even easier for travelers to use the platform and added several dozen new properties during that time as well. But I do think that yes, that the pandemic has indeed created a greater appreciation for travel, because we all stayed home, and we got to see what destinations look like when there aren't any visitors, and there were lots of great stories around that time, around wildlife being regenerated, and communities that became better, in fact, because they weren't dealing with the plagues of every day. Over tourism, even. Since then, we've seen destinations come back and, and take measures to even prevent some of those things that were less desirable from happening, like certain places like Venice, cruise ships aren't allowed anymore. And certain destinations, you have to now pay environmental fees to access. So, we're seeing the destinations and governments really double down on sustainability, which I think raises the bar for everybody to start thinking about it more, and there's an overall raising of consciousness that is happening around this topic. You have a climate crisis that was officially declared, The Cop 26 Summit. So, you have a lot of conversations going on right now in a time where our world is at a critical point, to embrace positive change if we want to create a sustainable future for it. [00:14:21] PF: I think, as you mentioned, the climate crisis, it's now we can't deny it anymore. And how then does this affect how we raise our children to be sustainable travelers and how does having a way to give back change the travel experience that they grow into? [00:14:38] JB: Absolutely. I mean, family travelers really see this as an educational opportunity to teach their children about the importance of giving back and even the feel-good associations that come with giving. Making that connection early on is so important, but there's also so much insight out there about the younger audiences, like Gen Z, who, at the oldest right now is 25. But they've listed that one of their number one concerns is the climate crisis. And millennial audiences have also listed this as one of their top concerns as well. So, you see these younger generations being very concerned about these topics and actively looking for ways to become more sustainable, responsible traveler, but also in their everyday lives. What you do in your everyday life should be no different than when you travel as well. There's this movement taking place, and there's a lot of interest with it with younger generations as well. The goal for brands like Kind Traveler is to make it easy, essentially, for these choices to be made that create a sustainable future that we can all thrive in and feel good about. [BREAK] [00:16:00] PF: We're going to take a break from the show right now and bring back Casey Johnson, our ecommerce marketing manager. Casey, how are you doing today? [00:16:07] CJ: I'm great. How are you? [00:16:10] PF: Fantastic. We've been talking about Organifi the past couple of weeks, and how we love being able to just take a scoop of it and add it to water and have a super healthy beverage during the day. And Organifi has this whole line of products that meets a variety of needs. One that we haven't talked about that is great for wrapping up the day is Organifi Gold, because this has like all the things our bodies need to recover like turmeric, ginger, lemon balm, mushroom, and I personally like it mixing hot water, but you can also do it with more milk or ane alternative to hot chocolate. Casey, how about you? How are you enjoying the Organifi Gold? [00:16:51] CJ: First of all, I just want to say the Gold is – [00:16:53] PF: The bomb. [00:16:56] CJ: Yeah, but seriously, I love it. And you know, contains nine superfoods. You mentioned a couple of them, and this specific juice is meant to promote rest and relaxation. Who doesn't love that, right? I personally like to drink this with warm oat milk. I like the milk alternatives and it's like a hug in a mug. Caress all day. [00:17:16] PF: Oh, that's awesome. But it really is. I love it. So, how can our listeners learn more about it and start enjoying the benefits of it? [00:17:25] CJ: So, our listeners can go to organifi.com/livehappynow and they'll save 20% off automatically at checkout. Or you can go to organific.com, and use code Live Happy Now to save 20% off. [00:17:42] PF: That sounds awesome. I hope people check it out. And we're going to go check out more of our Organifi Gold. Right now, we're going to go back to the show. [EPISODE CONTINUES] [00:17:54] PF: Doing good and giving back does release endorphins, and people feel good about themselves and they just feel good. Can we talk about that? Like what it does when you give back to local communities as you travel? How does it help you as a traveler? And how does it increase the way that the satisfaction that you feel with that experience? [00:18:15] JB: There are a few great studies out there that actually link trip satisfaction to giving back. And it's because when you give a donation or you volunteer or you just help somebody, endorphins are released in the brain that allow you to feel happier, healthier, and even more connected. We feel that that really is the perfect storm for the traveler who's looking to build purpose and meaningfulness in their vacation experience. That feeling when we're trying to get the most of our vacation, if we think about how we can optimize our travel dollars in a way that gives back and makes a positive impact within communities in the environment, not only are we doing good for the world, but we're also going to feel really good about our decisions and in fact, have a better vacation experience. I love just making that connection so clear for people and that opportunity that it exists for those that want to get the most out of their vacation. [00:19:21] PF: And then how does that change how they look back at that experience? [00:19:24] JB: There's lots of evidence around how you're giving back, how this also creates a more memorable experience. So, the way you look back and remember, your experience might even be more vivid. Also, on Kind Traveler, I want to mention that beyond just giving a donation, a lot of these charities actually offer really unique experiences. There's a little section when you click on the charities on our website, it's called How to Travel Kindly. If the charity offers unique experiences, which like I said, many of them do, you can also go and visit them and have a very memorable experience that also gives back and supports these nonprofits that are on the ground, doing the good work in destinations. So, that is a sure way to also create a memorable experience that gives back and creates a memory that will be very different than perhaps other trips. [00:20:23] PF: What I love about this is children that are growing up this way and going and having these incredible experiences are more likely to then, as they become adults, not only will they continue doing that, but then they're going to raise their next generation of children who see that as part of the travel experience. [00:20:40] JB: Yeah, absolutely. It's a cycle. So, it's a great way to have fun with your family and teach them a very powerful, meaningful lesson of what it looks like to in fact, live a fulfilled life through giving back, and how that looks, perhaps, when you travel. [00:21:00] PF: That's terrific. You show so many different ways to do it. So, I think that's what's cool, too. People might even be inspired to do things on their own when they're out there as they travel. [00:21:10] JB: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have a few examples I can share on the website. I mean, we do a lot of work here in California, where we're based in, up in Northern California is Sonoma County, which is such a sustainable destination. 99% of their vineyard acreage is certified as sustainable. So, that in itself says so much about the destination. But we have a variety of hotels out there that you can visit, such as the farmhouse and vintners and so many others. But we have at least six different charities out there that are so unique that you can give back to, but also that you can have experiences with. So, charities like farm to pantry, Charlie's acres, the Russian River Keeper, the Sonoma Land Trust, just to name a few. And for an experience with a charity, one of the ones I love so much is with Charlie's Acres Farm Animal Sanctuary, which is a nonprofit that's dedicated to rescuing farm animals who were abused or destined for the dinner table. This organization offers unique ways to connect with these animals that are recovering from different situations, and they offer like sheep meditation. [00:22:29] PF: Oh, wow. [00:22:31] JB: Yeah, or even like goat yoga. It's just a way to kind of slow things down a bit, enjoy the sounds of nature, and learn more about animals. So, that’s one experience that you can have that, is directly with a nonprofit that really goes back into supporting the community. [00:22:49] PF: Oh, that is terrific. That sounds like so much fun. [00:22:52] JB: Thank you. Yeah, I have another one. I'll share with you if you’d like. [00:22:55] PF: Yes, please. [00:22:56] JB: Over in Florida, we do a lot of work with Fort Myers, and over there, we have a couple of hotels that we work with from the Western Cape Coral Resort, Diamondhead Resort and the Pink Shell Beach Resort. But our local nonprofit that we support is the Crow Clinic, The Center for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife. When you book on Kind Traveler, of course, and you support Crow Clinic, a $10 donation, and we measure this on the platform, but it can provide up to five days of care for an eagle with a broken wing as an example. So, that's the other thing that a lot of people ask, “Well, what can a $10 donation do?” Well, it can go a really long way and do a lot of really cool things. And we tell you, all of that on the website when you book. Another thing it can do is provide two weeks of antibiotics for a gopher tortoise that was hit by a car. So unfortunately, they have a lot of that happening there. But this organization is there, doing a lot of the wildlife rehab. And you can also go to the Crow Clinic as a visitor. They're very child friendly. You can go and visit these rehabilitated animals, those that can be released in the wild or released those that cannot be, we'll call it a sanctuary. But it is a great way to engage, learn and support a nonprofit that is really vital to the health and wellbeing of that destination. So, that is in fact, sustainable tourism right there. [00:24:29] PF: This is terrific. I love the work that you're doing and the way that it continues to spread. On our website, we're going to tell people how they can find you, give them more information. We'll share the previous stories we've run on you and just let them know how they can get in touch with you. But as we're entering these final weeks of summers and families are trying to squeeze in those last-minute trips, what do you recommend? What can families do differently to make a difference as they get in their final travel of the summer? [00:25:00] JB: Think about a couple of things. I say it's easiest to look through a lens of kindness when you make your travel planning decisions. And the lens of kindness I look at is a quadrant of four pillars. So, it's kindness to communities, to the environment, to animals, but also to oneself, to one's looking at individual wellness. So, when we kind of look through this lens of kindness, we can ask ourselves that question in the beginning, how may I maximize my positive impact and minimize my negative impact? So, with transportation, for example, because we know that both aviation is a – the aviation industry, for example, contributes to 8% of all carbon emissions. And the ground transport industry is responsible for 26% of all carbon emissions. So, we might want to look at how the word traveling. Can we look at slow travel? Can we travel perhaps by a train as a very slow way of traveling that reduces carbon emissions up to 55%? So, looking at ways that we might be able to travel in such a way perhaps, it's with an electric vehicle, or it's with public transport, it's by carpooling, perhaps. Looking at some of those ways that we can reduce our carbon footprint specifically, then, of course, choosing a hotel that is also abiding by not just environmental sustainability initiatives, but also community impact. And so, choosing the type of hotel that you would stay at, that would in fact, embrace all those values. And then, of course, the activities that you choose. Are there nonprofits that you can go visit and support such as little local sanctuaries or classes that you could take offered by different nonprofits? Doing your research, right? You have to spend a little bit of time asking these questions, doing your research, voting with your dollar, while looking through a lens of kindness. [00:27:09] PF: Fantastic stuff. We have so much to learn from you. You are doing so much good in the world. It's truly appreciated and you are making a difference. I appreciate you coming on the show and telling us about it. Again, just thank you for everything that you're doing. [00:27:25] JB: Paula, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. I so enjoyed being here and talking with you. Thank you for the opportunity. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:36] PF: That was Jessica Blotter, CEO and founder of Kind Traveler, talking about how to make a difference by changing the way we travel. If you'd like to learn more about Jessica's work, check out Kind Traveler or follow Jessica on social media. Visit our website at live happy.com and click on the podcast app. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paul Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: How Humor Can Save the World With Shepherd Siegel  [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 374 of Live Happy Now. We know that laughter and humor feel good, but did you realize how much good they can do? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm talking with Shepherd Siegel, a musician turned educator whose recent research has centered around the idea of play, playfulness, and humor as a driving force of change. His latest book, Tricking Power into Performing Acts of Love: How Tricksters Through History Have Changed the World, looks at the trickster archetype and the role it plays in social change. Shepherd’s here today to talk about the importance of finding fun and humor in our lives, and how to reclaim those habits as adults. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Shepherd, welcome to Live Happy Now.   [00:00:47] SS: Thanks very much. It's a real pleasure to be here, Paula. [00:00:48] PF: You are all about fun, and humor, which is really in short supply right now, for a lot of people. One thing that really stood out about your messaging is that you say laughter, humor and playfulness can get this world back on track. Big question, how are we going to do that? [00:01:07] SS: I've written a couple of books about this, and I do look at playfulness and play and how it connects to culture and how it connects to politics. Play is something that all animals do all the time, except humans. So, a lot of us have kind of lost – I mean, there were there are playful humans, but they stand out. They're the exception rather than the rule, and I really got into investigating the play of very young children, children under the ages of four and five, because that's when we are most like other animals and they have this intrinsic sense of playfulness, and so forth. But as my research progress, I went to this conference about play, and I met someone there, and she talked to me about the trickster archetype, and realize that the trickster archetype was this personality type that represents a more grown up person who's playful. And of course, archetypes can be semi divine, they're semi divine, but people can aspire to them. So, to get to your question, our personalities are made up of, we all have all the archetypes in us, but different ones are stronger. Like in Star Wars is all about the hero and the warrior, and when someone has a lot of that in them, we go The Force is strong with them. So, I really got into looking into tricksters, because I feel that part of what's wrong with our society today is that we're infatuated with the warrior. So, many of us believe that our problems can be solved through conflict and war and argument and just defeating our adversaries. Now, you can't kill an archetype, you can't get rid of them. You have to have them there. We've become hyperbolic about the warrior to where we're not giving the other archetypes whether it's the mother, or the true hero, or the sage or the magician. Or in the case of my research, the trickster, giving them enough play in an in enough to say. So, tricksters can really I think, be part of the magic elixir to make our society a better place. Tricksters just one to have fun. And as tricksters stumble through life, just having fun, playing tricks, just for the fun of it, eventually, they get to a place of moral discovery, and that's why I think they can kind of be a refresh and a reboot for our society, if we would listen to them more. So naturally, when you look at comedians, and people who trade in humor, and even people who make comedies in film and TV, very often the trickster force is strong with them. [00:03:51] PF: How do we use this humor in this trickster mentality to get the world back on track? [00:03:56] SS: Yeah, I mean, I can't give you an exact a blueprint. But I do believe that comedy is part of it. I can give you like a contemporary example of satire. Satire is what helps us get there. One of the things that people have really enjoyed, and they've said back to me about my book is I write about slapstick. And they go, “I never really liked slapstick. But when I read your book, I appreciated it more because slapstick of one thing that connects the playfulness of the young child to the grown up, and for another, slapstick is always pulling a prank on the ruling class and bringing the rulers down to the ground.” Charlie Chaplin famously said, if I dropped a scoop of ice cream from a third-story balcony, onto someone on the street. If I drop it on a poor person, no one's going to laugh. It's going to arouse sympathy for that person. But if I drop it on a rich person, everybody gets that and everybody laughs. So, that’s how we bring it into today's world. That's why Sacha Baron Cohen and the kinds of things that he does are so funny. So, satire is a way of kind of overturning the power structure, and I think that's part of what we have to do. So, let's start with the personal. I walk around a lot, I walk around my neighborhood a lot, and I have this little discipline, some days, I'm better than others. I say hello to five to eight strangers every day. Now, if they're wearing earbuds, it doesn't count. If they're very deliberately avoiding eye contact, doesn't count. But anyone who otherwise walks near me, I'm going to greet them. And I'm going to say hello to five to eight strangers. Now, why five to eight? Well, if you don't do it with five strangers, you're not really trying. But if you try to do more than eight, it's going to kind of bring you down, because people, at least in my town are afraid. There's too much fear in the world, and they're afraid of the human contact. So, we have to build community. And that's like the very basic building block that I do to build community, and you have to build trust. So, it starts with greeting people and getting to know the people in your neighborhood, and just say hello to folks, and maybe it leads to something. Now, what does that have to do with humor? Well, if I'm going to joke around with you, you have to trust me. Otherwise, if I tell a joke, and you don't trust me, you don't really even know whether I'm joking or not, especially the kind of humor that I trade in. And so, building trust is kind of the groundwork, it's the prerequisite, if you will, for humor, and also for community as well. That's more than a coincidence. The second thing that I think folks can do is you have to join a movement, that for your heart and your mind is making the world a better place, and where you are in contact with other people and working with them. So, it could be feeding the hungry, it could be fighting racism, it could be fighting war, it could be fighting for human rights. Set aside all the things that are taking us down right now, and look for the folks who are working to build us up and to make the world a better place. You got to do more than click on your computer, although do that, make your donations. But get out there and make a circle of friends and colleagues, and then find the joy and the humor that will inevitably come as you work with those folks. [BREAK] [00:07:33] PF: We're taking a quick break from talking with Shepherd Siegel about how humor can save the world. And we're going to bring in Casey Johnson, our lovely ecommerce marketing manager. Casey, welcome to the show. [00:07:45] CJ: Thanks for having me. [00:07:47] PF: We've been talking about a product called Organifi, that you and I are both really, really high on and I've been drinking the green Organifi, but you have really taken to the red Organifi. Tell us about that. [00:07:59] CJ: Yeah, so I really liked the Organifi red juice. It has 13 superfoods that work together. I personally really like it just because it's, it naturally boosts your energy throughout the day. What blows my mind is that it contains zero caffeine, I love to drink the Organifi red juice, typically in the mid afternoon when I start to feel a little sluggish or don't have any brain power, or even right before a workout, or if I'm going for a walk. So, all I do is I drop a scoop and a glass of water and boom, it tastes so good and that's really all it takes. [00:08:31] PF: Yeah, it gets the job done, because I love the fact that it is so nutrient dense. So, Casey, why don't you tell us how our listeners can find out more about it and get some of their own? [00:08:41] CJ: Yeah, so they can go to organific.com/livehappynow. That's organifi.com/livehappynow, and that 20% discount will be automatically applied at checkout. Or you can just go to organifi.com, and use Live Happy Now at checkout and you'll still get that 20% off. Who doesn't love that? [00:09:03] PF: All right. We love it, and what else we love is talking about humor. And so, we're going to go back, talk some more with Shepherd Siegel about how humor can save the world. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [00:09:14] PF: So, one of the things that you talked about earlier, it was really interesting where you talked about how you study like four-year-olds and five-year-olds, because that's where they're most playful. We do we start losing our ability to be playful, and is that something that gets taken away from us or do we give it up? Why does that happen? Why we get so serious? [00:09:35] SS: Yeah, so my mentor on this was a gentleman named Fred Donaldson, and he wrote a wonderful book about playfulness and he goes out there and he plays with dolphins he plays with wolves. He also had does forms of therapy in a way where he uses play to help young people who have been damaged or abused and help them reconnect to their lifeforce, so to speak. So, what he calls the state of playfulness that comes very naturally to all animals, and to children, say under the ages of five and four, is what we call original play. If you have children or grandchildren who are that young, you can connect with this. So, instead of always being the grown up around them, you create a safe place on the floor, and you get on the floor with that little kid, and you roll around and you wrestle. It's a very physical thing. There's no biting. There's no clutching. [00:10:32] PF: Ideally, there's no biting. [00:10:36] SS: Yeah, no biting, no clutching, no tickling, it's not sexual, obviously. But you're wrestling around, and what will happen is, little games will start to emerge. But then the games dissolve just as quickly as they emerge. So, there's no winners and losers. There's no competition involved. It's just strictly playfulness. So, this is a very physical thing and it's very refreshing, and for a lot of us, grownups, it's really hard to get into that space. I would also suggest that the artist, the person who's creating music, who's a painter, or a poet, or an actor, that they are also engaged in a cerebral analog to this stuff called original play. So, then what happens as about the ages of four, or five, or six, is the grownups start, they start putting rules around play. And they start saying, “That's really neat what you're doing Johnny, and you can keep score and you can have winners and losers.” You can go for your personal best, whatever. We can turn this into a sport activity or a game that you play. That's called cultural play. So, there's nothing wrong with cultural play. That's what we need in order to – when you go to see the doctor, you want the best doctor, you want the doctor who's competed and succeeded and achieved. When you hire any kind of professional, that's what you want. So, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with cultural play. But I am saying it's kind of gotten out of hand, and we become so enamored of winning, and playing games that we can win with the most toxic form would be this war. The sort of war, you've got politics, and a lot of the politics is so competitive, that it has overshadowed and blotted out that ability to have original play. So, I do believe in trying to bring that back. Now, I invented this third form of play. We've talked about original and cultural, this third form is called disruptive play. Disruptive play is the algebras, very simple, with you take original play, and you introduce it into the arenas of cultural play, you will create a disruption that hopefully done well, is going to kind of raise people's consciousness and make them think maybe we do take this competitive side of ourselves too seriously and we're not playful enough. [00:13:16] PF: So, what about as adults now that want to –there's a real importance in reconnecting with our playful side. But honestly, a lot of people aren't sure where to start, especially if your kids are already grown, or they're out of the house or you don't have access, you can just steal the neighbor kid. You get in trouble for that. So, how do people reintroduce play? Because it's not we don't value that as something. We say, “Okay, I need to work on my mindfulness or I need to work on this, or I need to work on my physical fitness. But we don't say I need to become more playful and here's how I'm going to do it.” [00:13:52] SS: Right. Well, I'm more of a writer. But I love working directly with people, and I haven't yet chosen to create play shops. For example, this guy talked to earlier, Fred Donaldson didn't do workshops he did play shops. He did this with a bunch of us where he set off the mats, and he kind of trained us on how to do this. I don't have the name of his organization right now and he's getting on in life, but he has enough followers that have continued to do these play shops. And then the other guys I'm interested in are these guys called he Yes Men. And the Yes Men actually also do trainings and they call it the Trickster Academy. They tell you how to pull pranks and some of these have a political edge to them. But they're guys who really believe in the playfulness of the adults, and that this can be done, so I'd encourage folks to look up the yesmen.org, I believe is what it is. [00:14:59] PF: I know if I let you go, but before we do, like for parents who say, “Alright, I want to regain my playfulness, but I also don't want my children to ever lose theirs.” How do we prevent that? Because there's got to be a way to say, as children are growing up, to help them retain that playfulness. I think there's so many great character strengths that are developed through humor and through teaching them playfulness. So, what can we do to keep our children playful instead of relinquishing that? [00:15:29] SS: I'm so glad you asked me that, because it's probably a little bit less more, what can we stop doing? [00:15:36] PF: That's usually the case, isn't it? [00:15:38] SS: Right, that when we get our kids overly scheduled, when we press them so hard to great achievement, every time you do that you're squelching their ability in their time for unstructured play. And there is this – she'd be a great person for you to have on, from New York. And what does she call it, free range children, and she even lives in New York City. When I was a kid, I get home from school, and my folks said, “Go play, see you at dinner.” It was easier in those days, I guess, to just roam the neighborhood, and have adventures and be playful. And to the extent that parents today can still do that, and I contend the world is not as dangerous, as we often think it is. It's sometimes the dangerous nasty things, if it bleeds, it leads. So, we're saturated with news media, that's always talking about these terrible things that are happening. But maybe the percentages of that are actually not much higher than they've ever been, in some cases, enough so that you can let your kid have that unstructured playtime, and ensure if that you want him to learn how to become a great musician, or a great athlete or a great scientist, there's time to do that. But it doesn't have to completely squelch that unstructured playtime that children need to have. [00:17:05] PF: Should you schedule that? I mean, that sounds like an oxymoron to schedule on structured playtime. But it seems like it would be important. [00:17:14] SS: Yeah. I think the good test would be that as the kids approach teen years, is there still part of them that wants to be playful. Dare I say that, that word is silly. To even be silly as they grow into their teen years. I think that's a really healthy thing. I think our society would just be a much more fun place to be, if we could all retain that. [00:17:40] PF: Before I let you go, what is it that you hope people start to figure out about humor and fun, as we kind of march through – as we're trying to come out of a pretty dark time? So, what do you hope that they can discover? [00:17:55] SS: Well, discover the humor. Discover the comedy. This is not the first time that we've been in dark times. If you look to the people in our in our own nation who have historically suffered not just recently, but historically suffered, and look at the comedy that they come up with. I write in the book one time, sometimes the tougher it gets, the funnier the humor, and that even if you find yourself addressing what you think is a terrible wrong, try not to take it overly seriously. It is serious and do the serious work, but laugh too. Also, Paula, I just want to say it's okay to imagine a better world, and it's okay to talk about utopia. When people talk about utopia, they're usually dismissed and kicked out of the room and they're laughed at. But I think the darker times get, the more important it is that we go ahead and have the courage to have that discussion. Okay, you're unhappy. What do you think a perfect world would look like? Whether we get there in this lifetime or not, we've got to have a North Star and that's what gives me hope. I've never stopped talking about that. [00:19:06] PF: I like that. That is a great way for us to wrap it up. Shepherd, I appreciate you spending the time with us today and teaching us a little bit more about how to have fun. [00:19:16] SS: Well, thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to be here and I look forward to hearing more from you, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:19:24] PF: That was Shepherd Siegel, talking about how fun humor and playfulness can save the world. If you'd like to learn more about Shepherd’s work, check out one of his books or follow him on social media. Visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Remember throughout July, we're celebrating Live Happy’s Summer of Fun Month. And as part of that, we're giving away some prize packs that include great Live Happy merchandise, the Happiness Workbook for Kids by Maureen Healy, and some very cool family friendly gifts including sunny sunglasses made just for kids and Yipes plant-based face and hand wipes. Keep those little hands and faces clean while you're out having fun this summer. Visit our website or follow us on social media to learn more and find out how to enter. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Building Better Relationships With Eric Barker  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 371 of Live Happy Now. This week, we're talking about relationships, and you might be surprised to find out how little we actually know about them. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with bestselling author, Eric Barker, whose newest book Plays Well with Others, takes a deep dive into friendships, marital relationships, and every other kind of relationship to explore what we're doing right, where we could improve, and how the pandemic has changed the way we look at our relationships. This is such an enlightening conversation that we all have plenty to learn from. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:40] PF: Eric, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:42] EB: It's great to be here. [00:00:43] PF: It is great to have you. You have a new book out called Plays Well with Others. I just told the listeners a little bit about it in the intro. This is about relationships, but it's about all types. It's not your typical relationship book. So starters, how long has it been in the works, and where did this idea come from? [00:01:03] EB: Well, it's been in the works. It was funny because my first book was basically looking at success and all the maxims that we had around success, and then looking at the science and testing them. So I thought, hey, for my second book, I'm going to look at the maxims around relationships like love conquers all, a friend in need is a friend indeed. So I'll look at the social science, and I'll test those maxims, and I thought that'd be pretty straightforward. Well, two weeks after I closed the deal for my book, like California, where I live, locked down for the pandemic, and I realized, “Oh, geez. Relationships are going to be an even bigger issue than I thought. This isn't just an abstract investigation. People are people are going to need this.” So I felt like this was really going to be something. I've personally struggled with relationships. I'm a pretty introverted guy and I'm not – It’s never been my specialty. So I was like, “Hey, this will be good for me to research. I'll learn a lot.” Then I realized with the pandemic hitting that I wasn't going to be the only one who might need some help here. [00:02:02] PF: Yeah. The pandemic was such a game changer for many relationships. I know people who got married. I know people who got divorced. I knew people who wanted to kill their spouses and sometimes their children. It was just such a big game changer in relationships overall. So did that change how you were researching and writing the book as the pandemic evolved? [00:02:24] EB: I mean, definitely, I started thinking about – Because most relationship books are generally very love-focused, and one of the things I write about in the friendship section of the book is that friendship is so powerful. I mean, you look at the research from Nobel Prize winner, Daniel Kahneman. Friendships make us happier than any other relationship, even more so than spouses. Even in a marriage or a partnership, the friendship is actually the most powerful part of that relationship. Yet, as you kind of point to, friendships – If you're having trouble with your marriage, you go to a marriage therapist. If your child's having a problem, you go to a child therapist. If friendships having a – It’s like we don't really have a kind of, “Oh, well. It’s going to die like a pet goldfish.” You’re just not – Yeah. It’s like, “Oh, well. Too bad. Better get a new one.” It's like we don't really give them the respect they need, and yet they make us happier than anything. [00:03:18] PF: I'm so glad you bring that up because there are friendships that have ended in my life, and I'm kind of like I don't even know what happened. Because of the way our world is, it seems awkward to be like, “Hey, can we go talk about this? Can we find out what this was all about?” That you're right, we don't do it. We're just like, “Yeah, there goes another one,” and here's hoping somebody else comes along. So why do we approach that so almost cavalierly when they are so important? [00:03:46] EB: It's a great point because the real issue here is that friendship is the one major relationship that basically doesn't have any institution behind it. It doesn't have a proverbial lobbying group. Somebody doesn't stop being your boss because you stopped liking them. Someone doesn't stop being your spouse because you stopped liking them. Someone's certainly doesn't stop being your four-year-old child because you stopped liking them. But friends is 100% voluntary, and that means that the upkeep of that relationship has to be very proactive and very deliberate. If you don't talk to your spouse for two months, expect divorce papers. If you don't talk to your friends for two months, like there's no lobbying group there. That's the downside, the positive side, and this is the reason why friends make us happier than any other relationship is because it is 100% voluntary. You don't have to. Because you don't have to, that fragility of friendship means it's pure. You're only there because you like them, and they're only there because they like you. That's why it comes up not only the health data – I'm sorry, the happiness data, but also the health data. When they did a broad study of both men and women, women who are dealing with breast cancer, a spouse had zero effect on health and happiness. A number of friends correlated with recovery, men recovering from a heart attack. Spouse had zero effect. Number of friends was strongly related to whether they came back. Friends are really, really important. Sadly, they don't get enough respect. [00:05:20] PF: No. Was it difficult to find research on that? [00:05:23] EB: You don't know how much you saying that means to me. I mean, because I'm sitting there and I'm like, “Oh. A friend in need, a friend indeed. That'd be a great maxim to explore. Oh, God.” I mean, no, you totally hit the nail on the head. There is more information on love and marriage. Just each chapter had its own challenges. Like love and marriage, it was sifting through the mountains and mountains and mountains of research studies. Friendship was the exact opposite. It was like panning for gold. I mean, it was like I needed a Geiger counter, like trying to find real research, and it really hasn't been done. Again, it's reflective of that sad neglect. A friend is the relational term most used in the English language. In other words, we use the word friend more than mother, more than father, more than brother more than – The most used, and yet it gets so little respect. It's crazy. Yes, it made my life very, very hard. But luckily, I did find plenty of research. [00:06:23] PF: So basically, we're saying to researchers out there, “Here's your niche. Go figure this friendship thing out.” [00:06:29] EB: We definitely need more help here. No doubt. [00:06:32] PF: Well, so what should we be doing to improve our quality of friendships? Because clearly, we're not going to go read a book on it, unless it's yours. So what is it that we can do differently? Because, to your point, friendships are so important. [00:06:48] EB: I mean, the thing here is it was really funny. 2,000 years ago, Aristotle defined a friend as another self, which is like a very heartwarming notion. [00:06:58] PF: I like that. [00:06:59] EB: Yeah. It took science about 2,000 years to catch up. But now, over 65 studies show that it's like that's actually pretty accurate. When you test people in an MRI, when you look, when people say their friends’ names in a brain scan, the areas of self-processing in the brain light up. If I ask you, “Is this trait, this quality, is this true of you or your best friend,” it will take you longer to respond than if I say, “Is this quality true of you or a stranger?” The closer we are to someone, where close is actually very accurate, the more they blend. It's like a Venn diagram. A friend is another you. It's like they're a part of you in the brain, and that's what's really so powerful, so wonderful about friends. Because if you think about it from a Darwinian evolutionary perspective, it's like, “Hey, they don't have my genes. From a biological point of view, why should I care?” That's the fun little trick that our brain plays is we see our friends as part of us, and that leads to what do we need to do. In the book, I go down the rabbit hole on Dale Carnegie's book, How to win friends and influence people, which largely is very accurate. Social science has largely proved most of what he said is very accurate. The only one that was inaccurate was he said like to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Think from their perspective. The research actually shows we are really terrible at that. But overall, yeah, we correctly read the thoughts and feelings of strangers about 20% of the time. For friends, we hit 30%. Oh, yeah. For spouses, we only hit 35. So whatever you think is on your spouse's mind, two-thirds of the time, you're wrong. [00:08:43] PF: So we need to stand down is what you're saying. [00:08:46] EB: We need to ask. We need to stop thinking that we're mind readers because we're really bad at it. But in terms of improving friendships, most of what Dale Carnegie recommends are good for the early parts of relationships, but it's not good for those deep friendships. Creating another self, like Aristotle said, we need to focus on more costly methods. By costly, I mean time and vulnerability. We need to spend the time, and we need to really share things that might be a little bit scary to show people that they mean something to us. Those are the two big secrets to it. I can talk more about it, but those are the two big secrets. [00:09:22] PF: But do you think the quality of our friendships increased or declined during the pandemic, during the lockdowns? [00:09:29] EB: I think it inevitably declined because that issue of time is huge. [00:09:34] PF: It seems, though, it would have done the opposite. I concur with you because I've – Just from talking with people and some of my own experiences, it seemed like that would have been the perfect time for us to really nurture and deepen our friendships. [00:09:48] EB: I would love to think that was the case. I think for some people, that's probably true. I think for other people, it was a very stressful time. We had a time we had a lot of transitions. All of a sudden, a lot of people were homeschooling. All of a sudden, a lot of people were trying to adapt to work from home. I think we got busier in a lot of ways. We got scared. I think with a lot of that going on, it probably just distracted us, and I think a lot of people became much more reliant perhaps on social media or television or other things that aren't as fulfilling. I think for our closest friends, maybe. But for those more tertiary, I think they may have got lost in the mix. [00:10:31] PF: So is there a way for us to correct that? Do you offer tips on how to take those steps to deepen friendships? [00:10:38] EB: I mean, first and foremost is those key things of time and vulnerability. Notre Dame did a study of eight million phone calls and basically saw that the people who talked to each other at least every two weeks over the course of the study, I think it was a year or more, they saw those were the relationships that were more likely to persist. Also, research shows that one of the biggest arguments that people get in with their friends is over time. Making time for one another is really tricky, especially in adulthood. Especially as we get to later years, we just get more responsibility. Then the other thing is vulnerability, and here's a point where I think the pandemic can actually help us, in the sense that we've all been through some difficulty here. We've all had some real challenges. I think some people might be reluctant to discuss that. They might be reluctant to acknowledge the difficulties they've had, being afraid, being scared, being alone. I think we've all felt it. It's okay. It's safe and to mention that, to discuss it. By giving up a little bit, by showing vulnerability, we let people know that we trust them. The key to having people trust you is to first show the trust in them and to say it's a safe place. By giving somebody something that could make you look bad, that could make you look weak, you're saying, “I trust you.” You're saying that, “This is important to me.” That trust in them usually makes them trust you more. Vulnerability is critical not only for the relationship. Research has shown that, basically – Friendships go on. If there's more small talk later in the relationship, that's a negative. If we don't open up, it increases the chance of minor illnesses, it increases the chance of a first heart attack, and it increases the chance that that heart attack will be lethal. We need to have a release valve. We need to be able to share things. If you can't share the difficulties you're going through with friends, then how good a relationship is it? [00:12:36] PF: Yeah. That's really great insight, and I think people will kind of take a step and go like, “You know what? I haven't been doing that since 2020.” [00:12:45] EB: For years now. [00:12:46] PF: Yeah. Another thing that we saw, like loneliness was already epidemic before the pandemic, but it's even worse now. But you – I found your research really interesting because you're saying that lonely people actually spend as much time with others as non-lonely people. So can you talk about that, and tell us what the difference is? [00:13:08] EB: This shocked the heck out of me. [00:13:10] PF: I mean, that – I stopped. I just was like, “How? I can't be reading that right.” [00:13:15] EB: Well, I mean, what's crazy is you hear that that can't be possible. But the thing we forget is that loneliness is not the mathematical absence of a number of other people. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. Loneliness, because we have all – The great insight, wherever people go, that's impossible. The thing I mentioned is have you ever felt lonely in a crowd? We all have. I mean, hey, face-to-face contact is fantastic. I highly recommend it. Two thumbs up. But if it's just the presence of other people, then we wouldn't ever feel lonely in a crowd. But we do because loneliness isn't just the absence of other people. It is a subjective feeling. It's how you feel about your relationships. Well, when I really dove deep into the data, Fay Alberti is a historian at the University of York, and what she found is before the 19th century, loneliness barely existed. Now, again, were people alone? Yes. Did people experience solitude? Yes. But the thing was we were tied into communities. People were strongly – They were part of their religion. They were part of their nation. They're part of their tribe. They're part of their group. They were part of a team. They had an extended family. So you may have been alone, but that feeling of, “I'm a part of something. People care about me. I'm not with them right now, but they care about me,” that feeling was always there and it was – After the 19th century, the rise of individualism, which produced some very great things in many ways, but in other ways, we stopped feeling like we are part of a team, part of a tribe, part of a religion. Our brain says our brains – Loneliness is correlated with pretty much every negative health metric. [00:15:04] PF: Right. Yeah. It's worse than smoking now. [00:15:07] EB: Exactly. What's interesting, though, is, and this is quoting Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General the United States, solitude is a positive. So, again, we get to that subjectivity. Being by yourself is not necessarily good or bad in short periods. The issue is how do you feel about your relationships. If you feel good, “Hey, I'm traveling. I’m not with my family right now. I'm not with my group right now. But I know people love and care about me,” that's more like solitude. But when you feel, even if you're close to people, “But these people don't care about me. These people don't know me. I don't matter to them,” that's loneliness, and that can happen even when people are there. [00:15:48] PF: So knowing how bad loneliness is both for our emotional and our physical health, what should we be doing differently if we are experiencing loneliness? [00:15:58] EB: That’s the interesting part is the knee-jerk response, and it's not wrong. But the knee-jerk response is, “Oh, spend more time with other people.” Hey, you could certainly do a lot worse. But what's really important there is feeling a part of something. There was some – Another really interesting piece of research I found was that if you have five friends, that's above average, five close friends, that's really good. You know what's even better? Five friends who all know each other. Same number of friends but five friends – If it's like hub and spoke where you're the center, and you're the only line connecting to each one of those friends versus a community. I have five friends, but all those five friends know each other. Now, all of a sudden, everybody's looking out for everybody. Everybody's talking to everybody. Hey, Eric. You know what? One friend says, “I'm a little worried about Eric. He's not doing so well.” The other four friends say, “Hey, you know what? They’re right. They can coordinate. They can work together.” There's more support. There's more caring. There's more thought and involvement than five separate friends. So it's one thing to say spend more time with people, which like I said, is very – It's a good idea. But it's having a feeling of community, of connection, taking those friends and introducing themselves to one another, joining a group, going to your local church or synagogue, going to any kind of a movement or organization, volunteering, doing something where you feel like you're a part of something, you're contributing to something, people would miss you, you add value, you are needed and necessary. That's a step above and beyond simply seeing other people more often. [00:17:34] PF: That is terrific advice, and I'm so glad that we talked about that. Because, again, as you noted in your lack of research that we just don't talk about it. I think those are such great guidelines for us to have to go forth and start really working on improving our friendships. [00:17:51] EB: It's really important because we don't talk about it yet. The backbone of so much of our lives is our friends, especially at the office where most likely your spouse, your kids, if you have them, are not going to be there. But we can have friendships at work, and those can be critical. People have just a handful of friends more than average at the office, report being 96% happier with their life. That's not 96% happier with their job. That’s 96% happier with their life. When you look at relationships overall, relationships overall produced a happiness equivalent of an extra $131,000 a year, which when we typically think, it's like try asking your boss for $131,000 raise and see – [00:18:38] PF: Let me know how that works out for you. [00:18:40] EB: Exactly, exactly. Yet friends accomplish that, and it's something relatively easy to do. We just need to make the time and effort. [00:18:49] PF: So we got to talk about the big relationships. That is marriage, long-term relationships. I love your cover because it boldly says that everything we know about relationships is mostly wrong. You get our attention right away. So what are we doing wrong? What's the number one thing we're doing wrong with these romantic relationships? [00:19:13] EB: Well, I mean, there's a number. I have a warning before the love and marriage section of the book because I don't want people getting angry at me, where I discuss a lot of the hard truths that some people wouldn't like to hear. But we need the facts so that we can address them. One thing that I think surprises a lot of people is that, basically, 69% of long-term issues in a relationship never get resolved. So those ongoing issues, 69% of the time, they don't get solved, and that can be very distressing to people. But I think if you look at it through another lens, it can actually be a big positive when we realize that for happy couples and unhappy couples, more than two-thirds of these things they don't get solved, and don't have to in order to have a happy partnership. What you have to do is it's more about the regulation and the resolution of conflict. That some things you're just always going to differ on and that's okay, as long as you handle it in a compassionate and thoughtful way. Some of these things, they're not going to get fixed, and they don't have to. You just have to be a little bit more polite, considerate, compassionate about how we deal with them. Because one of the biggest insights from John Gottman, who's probably – He’s really the king of marriage and love research. This is something that people can put to use immediately, and it's relatively easy to do. He found that just by listening to the first three minutes of a marital argument, he could tell you with 96% accuracy how that conversation was going to end. In other words – [00:20:52] PF: Really? [00:20:53] EB: Yes. Just the first three minutes. If it started harsh, it was going to end harsh 96% of the time. If we just take a second, calm it down, we don't have to give them both barrels immediately. [00:21:09] PF: Save some for later. [00:21:13] EB: Instead of making it an accusation and finger pointing and you, if we just dial it back a little bit, we can change that. But when it starts harsh, it's going to end harsh. Not only were those first three minutes being harsh correlated with the end being harsh. It was also correlated with divorce. It was immediately jumping on the attack. Nobody responds well to that. Nobody. It’s – [00:21:36] PF: Yeah. No one's like, “This is my favorite fighting style.” [00:21:39] EB: Exactly. I'm so glad you mentioned that so viciously. We're going to deal with this so much more effectively, now that you've called me names. [00:21:53] PF: Did you learn anything about your own relationships, while you were doing this research? Was there anything that you went, “Oh, maybe I should do that differently.”? You don't have to tell us what it was, but did it change you? [00:22:03] EB: Yeah. I mean, so much changed me. I know, personally, in terms of the friendship arena, I'm sure I've spent many years striding around like a big tough guy. I'm not good at being vulnerable, and I don't think most guys are. You look at the research in general, and women have much better friendships than men do. It’s one of the reasons why after a spouse passes, women live longer is because they still have friendships, and that's because women put in the time, and they give up the vulnerability to sustain those. For a lot of men, their wife is the center and primary source of their social life. When she's not there, they don't have anything, and it can be very hard for men to be vulnerable. I realized that there were a lot of friendships that – A lot of acquaintances that could have been deeper friendships, but I didn't open up. Or a lot of friends I may have lost because I held back and things. It’s a tough thing to navigate. But when you see the research, both in terms of duration, depth of relationship, but also what effects it has on your health, it’s like – Robin Dunbar, who was a professor at Oxford, looked at all the health data, and he basically said – He put it in a very funny way. Basically, what he said was that one year after a heart attack, what determines whether you're alive or not, and he said, “Basically, whether or not you smoke and how good your friendships are.” He's like, “Yeah, there's other stuff. It did matter. What you eat matters. Whether you exercise matters.” He's like, “But those two things are so heads and tails above everything else. Don't smoke. Have good friendships. Those are the two biggest determinants of whether you are alive a year later after a heart attack.” That's really sobering, really sobering. [00:23:50] PF: Yeah. So important. I think we just don't put enough weight into what all of these relationships are doing for us. Whether it's a friendship or a marriage relationship, it's like learning what they're doing for us is just an incredible discovery, and there's so much to take away from this book. Well, first of all, is there hope for us? Is there hope for our relationships? [00:24:14] EB: There's plenty of hope for our relationships. I feel in every arena – The book’s got four sections. I talk about judging a book by its cover. So like reading people, understanding people. The second section is a friend in need, a friend indeed. The third section is does love conquers all, love and marriage. Then the fourth is, is no man an island, the issue of loneliness and community. With all four, there's hope for us. We’re just a little out of practice because of the pandemic. We just need a little bit of insight from science, and we can all be much better, and we can be better than we were before the pandemic happened. [00:24:50] PF: That's terrific. Thank you so much for writing this book. Who knew that your timing was going to be so spectacular? I really look forward to having our listeners learn more about it. We’ll tell them about it in the show notes, how they can get a copy of it. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking about this. I've truly enjoyed this conversation. [00:25:08] EB: Oh, thank you so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Eric Barker, talking about relationships and how we can improve them. If you'd like to follow Eric on social media, learn more about his book, Plays Well with Others, or just find out more about Eric in general, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. As a reminder, as part of Pride Month, we're offering 20% off the entire Live Happy store right now. Check out our great pride t-shirt, as well as our mental health buttons, and our Live Happy hats. Just enter the promo code LOVE IS LOVE and claim your 20% discount. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]