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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Joy with the Unicorn Challenge from Andrea Goeglein, PhD [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 403 of Live Happy Now. Would your life be better if you are a unicorn? This week's guest invites you to find out. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Andrea Goeglein to talk about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. Andrea, who is also known as Dr. Success, holds a PhD in organizational psychology and hosts the Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast. She created the 60-day Unicorn Challenge to offer small daily tasks that will help you take steps toward reaching your goals while making yourself a priority. In this episode, she tells us how the challenge came about, why she picked the unicorn, and how you can get started on this free challenge. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:48] PF: Andrea, thank you for coming back on to Live Happy Now. [00:00:52] AG: It is me being allowed to live happy. The amount of information that your podcast enriches my life with, even though this is my field, you're one of the podcasts I personally come to to learn from. So anytime I'm asked to share what new inventions I've come up with, it's an absolute joy for me. Thank you. [00:01:14] PF: Well, thank you so much for saying that. Because, obviously, we at Live Happy, all of us respect who you are and your opinion, and it means so much. I so appreciate your support. You have something so fun, so unique that you're doing. I was on LinkedIn and saw it, and I immediately reached out and said please come on the show and talk about. So tell us about your unicorn challenge. [00:01:40] AG: Yes. My 60-day Unicorn Challenge is as much an expression of how I work with my clients and in turn work in my own life, how this came to be. But I will just start with one of the opening quotes, and I have to read it. If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately, William James. Now, William James was a psychologist whose work grounded a lot of the work that I was first introduced to in psychology and how the unicorn challenge came to be. I want our audience to really think about this in their own lives. They're going about their daily life, doing their jobs, doing the same things that they always do. Then one thing happens that inspires another. So I'll just start with that one thing to pay attention to the average things you're doing. Here was mine. Every year on Halloween, I have some sort of a costume. I actually generally go and give out candy downtown. I would dress up and all these different things. It was just a way that I loved being in my community because I live in a condo. People don't come to my door, yada, yada. Well, on this particular Halloween and for the last few years, I've been a unicorn. I have this fabulous unicorn head that I bought at some party city or something like that a few years back. I had a business lunch. A very high-powered Hollywood executive and I were going to be having a conversation, a check-in conversation, and they were planning out some fairly big moves. I showed up perfectly dressed for the restaurant, however, with my huge unicorn head in tow. [00:03:36] PF: Of course, you did. [00:03:38] AG: Of course, I did. It sat down right next to me. What I realized in that moment was that I was feeling joy, the person I was with was feeling joy, and we had some pretty heavy business things and life things to discuss. So I went home. I did my post. That was the beginning. I didn't have in that moment the idea to create the 60-day challenge nor the e-book that people can get for free. That was the next thing I want people to pay attention to. You don't have to know everything at once. Be inspired by something, flow with it, take a step, and then see what else happens. [00:04:24] PF: Oh, that's so well put. So tell us what a unicorn challenge is. Yeah. Let's just start with that. What is it? [00:04:34] AG: So what it is, one of the many positive emotions. Well, the top positive emotion that I work in in order to help people achieve their next level of success is the overarching emotion of love with the 10 most research attributes of that. One of which is joy. Now, I am a really – My image meant a lot to me, especially businesses. I've owned businesses. I work with people that own really big businesses. My image has always meant a lot to me. So joy and being joyous and being silly may not have been in the criteria. But like the rest of the world, the last 36 months has allowed a shift in my thinking, bigger than any other shift before. So it was me taking the one emotion, positive emotion, joy. I went from remembering the feeling of this one little lunch to the next day setting a personal challenge. There’s things within my work and many people that are listening may need to use social media as – I'm not a social media expert. I am an expert in the application of positive psychology. But social media is very critical. So there are things I am challenging myself with to learn. Of course, I don't like learning them. Not what I do for a living. I'm cranky as anybody else. So joy, how do you add joy to the work and the tasks specifically that you have to do so that, in fact, even those mundane things, even those things that you don't want to do, you can move forward? So I focused on that, and I'm going to be straight. I was doing it for me. I was setting me a challenge. I went to lunch with someone. I did a post for my work, I. There's nothing wrong with that. Every second of our days, we are informing ourselves of what new opportunities may lie ahead for the things we do, and I made a choice to focus on the emotion of joy. Unicorns happen to be – The legend around unicorns happens to be about joy. William James told me to start immediately and be flamboyant. I succeeded. So then I became thoughtful about it. I started doing one of the sets of tests. That's one of the many things I want to share. This did not all come together like in one big thought and all of a sudden – Honestly, it was this. First, I did one thing and did a few steps towards it. Then I did another thing. Then by the time enough pieces came into being, I said to myself, “Well, wait a minute. If I'm investing all of this energy doing this, in what I was doing –” One of my challenges was to put a one minute short on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, every day because I think that's a silly way to spend my life. Not silly in a good way. I think it is a time suck. The only way something can't be a time suck is if I'm helping someone else. That gets me personally over the hurdle. All of us have that thing, where not my choice. I always categorize certain things like cleaning toilets are not my choice, but I do like a clean house. So maybe I'll clean the toilet. [00:08:18] PF: Cause and Effect. Yeah. [00:08:20] AG: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's what the unicorn challenge is about, taking time in the smallest bites to shift a habit in a joyful way that adds to your success. [00:08:36] PF: How did – At what point did you realize this was not just a set of tasks you were doing for yourself, that you saw this is something that will generate real good for other people? [00:08:48] AG: Yeah. Feedback. I had my little list of why I was doing it. But then all of a sudden, I started getting feedback because people who have worked with me or who are working with me knew that this was the same exact work. All of it grounded. All of the tips in this free e-book are the exact tips you find in every reputable resource on how you do habits and how you take care of yourself, all those things. However, it was done in a different way, especially for me. So it caught their attention. Once I realized – What they were saying was, “That was so fun. I love seeing you do that.” They were telling me that that little one minute showed up at the right time for them. So as I said, for me, in my work, the impact on another is my return on investment. Always has been, always will be. So it was the feedback that others were feeling joy. Others were being moved in a way. That's what hooked me, and all of us have those things. I would say know your thing and start looking for it. [00:10:07] PF: So it's for anything that we want to improve, want to change in our life. It's not a I'm going to lose weight. It's not a I'm going to exercise. It's a whatever you need it to be for you. Is that correct? [00:10:20] AG: Yes. First and foremost, it's a commitment. So in one of the many things that I put out online for years, I have said, “If you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem.” [00:10:36] PF: There you go. [00:10:37] AG: Okay. So what I will challenge everyone, hey, it's free, if you don't start there. What is free? It is a systematic thing that is helping you nudge you each day in one minute to see. Is this an action I want to take, will take? Is it one that eats at your brain after you hear it? Because what we know in human development is you don't have to do all 60 days. You may do one day and spend the next six months working on that one task. Just the one step get you closer to what it is you're trying to achieve in whatever area of the life you're focusing on. [00:11:23] PF: Yeah. You say something very interesting about why you chose 60 days. I wanted you to really explain that to us because we see all the time all this 21-day challenge a 30 day challenge. We don't see 60 day challenges, and I think that's because we're like, okay, we're lazy people, and who's going to last for 60 days. Like imagine if you had to do dry January and February. [00:11:47] AG: Thank you. Thank you – [00:11:48] PF: Why 60 days? [00:11:50] AG: Therein lies the reason. I want to get you out of the conversation that there's really a time limit on it. I actually somewhere in the last week or so put up another video out in the playlist on my YouTube channel, but it’s not linked in this, where I basically say, “So you think 60 days is too long, eh?” This is about 60,000 days of your life. This is about you, taking the moment to make you most important. I start with a 60-day challenge. But when you really look at it, I'm saying take 60 seconds. The same way that my fee is not the problem if you're not doing the free stuff, if you're not taking 60 seconds to pause back and say, “Is there something I can do to make my situation better at this moment,” if you aren’t willing to give yourself 60 seconds, I could have put 60,000 days up there, it would not matter. [00:12:54] PF: Absolutely. So really, you're just resetting the way that we think and the way that we're looking at things. [00:13:01] AG: It's all an illusion. At the spiritual level, I work in the concept that we make everything up. Now, 21 days has been researched. So we have good solid research about 28 day things and 30 day things and 21 day things. What we don't accept is that's the beginning of these processes, not the end. This unicorn – Like joy should be in your life forever. It is not a 60-day challenge. [00:13:30] PF: Right. Don't check that one out the door when you're done. [00:13:33] AG: Exactly. And it is that kind of a thing that the more we can appreciate, the more breaking down of the illusions, these artificial barriers that we've put around, that success looks like this, and I've got to wear a suit jacket if I show up at this lunch with an important person, and I've got to work in an office 12 hours a day. Otherwise, I'm not productive. Illusions, illusions, illusions. So break them down, but rebuild it with habits based in joy, working towards you paying attention to what does matter in your life. [00:14:12] PF: Love that. So we'll talk, first of all, what it did for you before you even launched this course. What did it do for you? Because of your experience, you then knew that was going to work for other people. So talk about your experience with that first place. [00:14:26] AG: So as a business person, as I said, I have a team of people that work with me, with social media posts and videos and things of that nature. One of them came to me. The video person came to me, and he said, “You really need to do a bunch of shorts.” The minute he said the algorithm likes it, the minute you tell me an algorithm likes it, my New Yorker comes out. You would not be able to put it on this podcast. I do not live by algorithms. However, I do live to engage audiences because the work you and I work in and all of the people you have on the show work in works. It shifts the quality of your life, no matter who you are or what you're doing. So he planted that seed. I got snotty. That's why normal – I'm going to tell you something. [00:15:17] PF: Things don’t work sometimes. [00:15:19] AG: Know your learning pattern. When I am resistant, when I catch my resistance, when someone makes a suggestion, I am trained well enough in my own psyche to make note of that. So what this did was I started challenging myself. The challenge was get a video up. It started out with the proverbial one day at a time, and I already knew from past experience that trying to do something every day doesn't work in my work schedule or my life. What does work for me is blocking out time and doing a few things. So that's what it did for me, it caused me to examine my resistance about a goal and then create a system that works in the way I mentally and physically like to work. [00:16:15] PF: That makes so much sense. So then you put this together. [00:16:19] AG: Right. So the first thing – [00:16:21] PF: Like how did it all come together? Because you've got so many parts to it. [00:16:26] AG: Yes. So probably around the second week of me doing, working through the process of I went from every day to then one day, like I built on that. Then I thought, “Oh, gosh. It’s silly to let this all just go away after these 60 days.” I will have learned what I need to learn about putting videos on YouTube in a consistent fashion, but that means the people I care the most about in this process, those that engage with me, I know that it goes away. The thing about habits, the thing about repetition is that it's the most important thing for us to achieve next levels of anything. I wanted to create something that, in fact, solidified the work, and that was satisfying to me. I needed to see something because numbers on algorithms do not satisfy me. One of the many other things that I am known for in my social media post is that I would rather have my name on your heart than my name on a building. That's my legacy. I don't have visions that you're going to remember me after I'm gone, and I'm good with that. That is a very deeply grounded spiritual belief for me. It is not one that most people I work with align with. I work with a lot of people who have lots of names up on lots of buildings, and we talk about that, though. So I wanted something that left joy, respected the work I had done, is helpful. So by about the 15th, the 20th day, I had made a commitment that I was going to do the draft. [00:18:16] PF: So let's talk about these tips. Let's tell people what kind of tips they can expect to find. I think I'm just sitting here smiling as we're talking because I've looked at the book. I've been through it. It just makes me smile, even thinking about it. So talk about the tips and what people can expect to find in there. [00:18:35] AG: Okay. So the very first one, I love the very first one because this is the one we generally don't do and tortures us the most. I made a dump list. One place, all of the notes and ideas, all of the things that you think you have to do, want to do. Make it in one place. Then the other tips actually start taking you through. Okay, what do you do with the stupid dump list? Like I am a person trained in org dynamics. I was to be a consultant in companies and to build reports and have the one, two, three, four, five steps. But I was resistant to that because I knew he didn't use it. So a lot of the other steps will call you back to the dump list because I know you really didn't stop and do it like, “Oh, this is cute. Let me watch the video.” [00:19:23] PF: At some point, it’s just like, “Oh, man. I better go do that.” [00:19:26] AG: That's exactly right. I'll tell you very functionally how it worked today. I was having a conversation with a millennial who's part of the tribes of people, who have decided to relocate their work and their entire lives to a geographic different location. But in the process of doing it, and they realized that they were becoming overwhelmed by all of the things from childcare to where's the work going to come from, to where are we going to live, all of those things, who's going to be my tribe in this location? Everything that we do that keeps interfering with our thoughts on what I want to achieve today. They said to me, “I stopped, and I decided to make a list of everything.” We had a conversation. I said, “You have just lived a dump list because that's all it is.” Then from that point, you have a record of all of these crazy thoughts that we know through research just blocks up our minds. You've got a landing place for them. Then you can start to put it into procedure of, okay, what do I really have to do? Like do I really have to start buying Christmas presents in March so that I’m set up at the end of the year? No. I may need a new place to live. Or I may need new clients, that kind of thing. Yeah. [00:20:47] PF: Then as you went through, I like that you bring in other people. Like we have to think about what other people mean in our lives and how they affect it. Can you talk about that? I really – [00:20:56] AG: So what I did was merge the functional. How do you create a habit repetition? Have it written down, categorize, with all of the psychological skills and physiological skills that we know work through good research. So I did the daily habits that you should have, whether you ever want to achieve another goal or not, such as the reading, the writing, the meditation. Things like pick someone 10 years younger than you and go play with them for a day. Then another tip may be pick someone 10 years older than you and go play with them for a day. All the time trying to take what the crap that's going around in your mind and apply it to the process. Because once you step into the possibility that you can be joyful as you go through the angst of figuring out what you're going to do next and creating a habit, that alone helps. So it is a merging of the functional tests that we know works in creating good habit, with the spiritual and psychological tasks that research has shown us as you add them into your life that helps. [00:22:13] PF: Yeah. I could see this being applied in so many environments because I could see workplaces using it. Like if you're a manager who wants to enact change, this is a fun way to do it. But I also could see it being really effective for families to do together and make something fun and be able to create more joy and make a real difference in their dynamic. [00:22:38] AG: So here's one of the things that actually cause this to come to life. In the same exact first week, when I had done the lunch with the business person and I had my unicorn, a few days later, I was asked by a classroom, a fourth grade classroom, with Teach For America school to come in and do a career day. What is a success catalyst, and what is an applied positive psychologist? I showed up in this fourth grade class with my unicorn. I walked in, and I said to them, “Did you ever think you could have a job where, in fact, you could do this, and that job have a very serious aspect to it?” So it is your point about the spectrum. I have right now a one sheet being prepared because one of my many loves is the one-hour Zooms that I do, especially for hybrid teams now. I've always done it on the language of success and all the things in positive psychology, the tips that you apply to make the workday better. This is the next iteration or an additional iteration. So one sheets being prepared for my corporate clients, where when you're calling your people together, and they're all on these different schedules now, they'll have the factual stuff to do in a way that is more humorous. [00:24:01] PF: That's so huge. There's just not enough levity in the workplace, and we understand business is serious. But sometimes, we take it so seriously that we suck the lives out of ourselves and others. [00:24:12] AG: Yep. [00:24:12] PF: We're going to tell the listeners how they can find you and get this free book and start doing their 60-day Unicorn Challenge. I feel like this has so much potential to really put a smile on people's faces, like it's done with me, and really make a difference in how they live their lives every day. [00:24:28] AG: Okay. I'll challenge you to just pick one of the 60-day things. And when we get to talk again, let's come back, and we'll compare notes on what worked and what didn't. [00:24:37] PF: You got it. I love it. Andrea, thank you again for sitting down. It's always a treat to talk to you, and so looking forward to sharing this with our audience. [00:24:45] AG: Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity as always. The more happy, joyous people succeeding in our world, the better our world is going to be. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:57] PF: That was Andrea Goeglein, talking about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. If you'd like to download your free Unicorn Challenge e-book, learn more about Andrea and her other books, follow her on social media, or check out her Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Now that the month of February is here, we're starting to think about our annual Happy Acts campaign, and we'd love for you to do the same. Throughout March, we're offering a full month of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. It's kind of like an advent calendar for happiness. We invite you to visit the Happy Acts section of our website, livehappy.com, to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. 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 have to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Take the Next Steps to Happiness With Megan McDonough [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PP: We all have times in our lives that are filled with uncertainty and stress. Maybe it's career upheaval, a change in our life stages or the end of a relationship. Even as we wrestle with the challenges at hand, we wonder what the next step is. I'm Paula Phelps and this is Live Happy Presents, a podcast sponsored by the Wholebeing Institute, that looks at what to do when those inflection points arise in our lives. Megan McDonough is founder of the Wholebeing Institute, which is the world's leading educational organization, teaching the science of human flourishing. She is here today to talk about how the challenges we're facing right now, no matter how daunting they seem, actually hold the opportunity to explore, strengthen and reshape your life. Then, she'll tell us about an online program offered by the Wholebeing Institute to help you take the next step to move toward happiness. [EPISODE]   [00:00:59] PP: Megan, this is an incredible program that you're going to share with us today. I have so many questions, and I'm really excited to hear about it. But I wanted to start out by learning, how did you develop this and what got you here? [00:01:12] MM: For that, we're going to go back to the year of 1999. You remember that year, that was the year everybody was saying, computers are going to crash.   [00:01:21] PP: The end of the world.   [00:01:21] MM: End of the world when computers go from 1999 to 2000, the world was going to crash. It turns out thankfully, that the world didn't crash. But in a way, my own life crashed. I remember specifically the day I was working for DuPont, and I was in their corporate offices in a meeting. Even the day I recall, it was a gorgeous spring day, one with the depth of the sky, it was a beautiful baby blue. And there were these cherry blossoms all ripe and opening. It was incredible beauty outside. But inside, it felt like I had my back against the beauty, like I couldn't see it. This was metaphorical. Actually, literally, because I was sitting in a meeting thinking, "Ah, I'm just dying here." It wasn't because I didn't have a great job. I love my job, love the people. But I remember writing on my notepad, "This is killing me."   [00:02:20] PP: Wow.   [00:02:21] MM: So for me, that day, something became very clear. My work here was done, that this was an inflection point in my life. The reason I start with that sort of background back in 1999, is because we hit these, I think of as inflection points all the time in our lives. That was a big one in my life. But many people, as part of being human, because there's no getting around it. We had times when we feel like we've hit a termination, either we get a – either our relationships come to an end, our work feels like it's dying out, our health might be going downhill, our loved ones' health might be going. We look at these points as times of great change ang angsts. It feels entirely like a terminus and it's really a very rich place. Might feel really difficult at the time. That's when I started changing and moving in different ways in the world that looked at the science of flourishing, how we can go forward in a way that really liberated us to live more into an authentic life, in a way that feels rich, and happy and satisfying. [00:03:30] PP: Well, how do we know that we're at an inflection point versus just having a bad day at work? We all have those moments where it's like, "Okay, that's it. I'm going to go home tonight. I'm going to write my letter." How do we know? [00:03:43] MM: It's a great question, because life is full of little stress points anyways. Why is this an inflection point? One of the things that your listeners can pull from your website is a handout that's related to sort of this discussion we're having today. In that handout, I listed sort of all of those who have felt sense of when life is changing for you. When do I know that this is more than just a bad day? That it’s really an inflection here. Part of that answer is, it lasts longer than just a bad mood. It's like a chronic outcoming of this sense that maybe there's got to be something more, a clarity like I had that data. I've run my length around this thing or it might come from an external situation where you lost your job, or the kids moved out of the house and all of a sudden, you have an empty nest. In many ways, these inflection points, they become ways in which we have to actually redefine who I am. Actually, look at the different ways in which we're shaping ourselves because who we knew ourselves to be before is not who we have to be in the situation, as an empty nester, as a single person, as a person who realized their job no longer works for them or has been retired. These are all things that happen. So if you look up that list of handouts, your listeners can get a sense of, "Ah, maybe this is bigger than just a bad day." Part of that is, what is the felt sense. I mean, for me back in 1999, this wasn't just one episode. This was sort of a building of a felt sense over time where I'm just – there was a sense of dryness, a desiccation and it wasn't enlivened by this very sacred life. So those are sort of the key points that point to, "Ah, this is an inflection point. This is a change of who I see myself to be and where I'm headed." [00:05:48] PP: As you're getting that sense, and you realize this is an inflection point. That realization is one thing, but what to do with it is a whole big, scary next thing. What do you do once you've realized that you need to do something? [00:06:06] MM: It's so funny, because what is the first thing we do when we're having difficulties? Where do we go? Let's ask Dr. Google. [00:06:15] PP: I was going to say the bar, but I knew that was the long answer. [00:06:16] MM: Maybe the bar. So, still, maybe we go for a drink, maybe we talk to our friends, maybe we ask Dr. Google. But what we're really doing is just sort of splattering this – not desperation, but this angst that we're feeling, and we're reaching out and trying to find answers. Interestingly enough, when I was going through that inflection point in my own life, I mean, that's exactly what I did. I was reading, I was taking a little bit from this. I was Googling and getting all sorts of junk. Because when you Google, how do I live happier, you don't get your wonderful side of living happy, because that wasn't around back in the '90s. W What you end up doing is creating a smorgasbord of, "Let me try this. Let me try that. Let me try this. Let me ask the same people that I've always asked about and they're –." They might be wonderful, supportive people, but they might not have the answers either. So the first offer is to find a place, which is what we're talking about today. So program that systematically in step by step takes you through the process of living happier now, as you move into that definition of new self. Because what we're really in and this is actually in your handout, you can feel free to fill in these blanks. The place we're actually in right now is a place that the anthropologist, Victor Turner called the liminal space. When we know that one thing is ending, we don't yet know where we're going, that's a place of uncertainty. It's that liminal space of no longer and not yet. [00:07:51] PP: That's a very scary place. [00:07:54] MM: It's a very scary place. That's why we ask a lot of people, and we have a lot of conversations, and we ask Google and we go to the bar and drink. We try to forget about our problems. Because we're searching for this sense of stability in the no longer and not yet. We don't like uncertain places. It's very scary. So when you ask, "What do we do?" First, we realize, "Oh, this is an inflection point. This is a liminal space. This is a no longer and not yet." There are other words too for it. I think this place of inflection points is a really sacred time. It's interesting when you notice these inflection points when you're younger. You might have the graduation from high school, or college, or getting married, or having children, or finding a partner or landing a new job. There's lots of sort of inflection points when you're younger that are noticing as, "Ah, this isn't change." But when you're my age, I'm 60 this year. In midlife, all of a sudden you realize, "Wow, where are the big sort of milestones? Where are the inflection points?" That's why I wanted to elevate this for your listeners that this sort of challenge that you're going through with emptiness, retirement or even younger than I am into second jobs or more children. This no longer not yet time, along with being uncertain, scary is also a sacred time. It is deeply sacred time to do some deep work about who you are as an individual, and where you're heading in doing so in a conscious way. So that it comes from within out, versus the pressure of society, of norms, of expectations driving what you should be doing. When I think of the liminal space of no longer not yet, it's a sacred time. It's also the time that the mythologist, Joseph Campbell said, "This is a hero's journey" or Jack Mezirow in learning and development called it disorienting dilemmas. They're really times where we think about, "Ooh, what’s next for us?" So instead of this trial and error of going out to Google, to the bar, to your friends. How do we apply and study the evidence-based approach to move towards happiness? That's what our certificate in holding positive psychology does. It takes these uncertain times and it spells out clearly, step by step over the course of nine months, so that you can really use the sacred time to craft not only how you're standing in this present moment, but how you're shaping yourself towards the end. [00:10:39] PP: How important is it for us to prioritize personal happiness in this journey, because we – especially as women, I will say, we take care of our families, we take care of our spouses, we take care of the people we work with. We're caretakers and we tend to put ourselves last. As you hit an inflection point, what happens when you begin to prioritize your own personal wellbeing. [00:11:04] MM: It’s so interesting. When I made this change for myself, and I was just miserable at work. Again, not because it was a horrible place to work, but because I had reached the end of my rope that of doing work. I had two young children and my husband was a stay-at-home dad. In one way, it was extremely selfish of me to leave that role. I was the breadwinner. I had all the benefits. Talk about fear when I decided to stay home, but I would leave in the morning, and my kids wouldn't be awake. I would come home at night and they were asleep.   [00:11:35] PP: Oh my God.   [00:11:37] MM: This isn't what I was leaning into. This isn't what I wanted. My husband was 1000% behind me saying, "Yeah, let's do something different. Let's experiment with this." So part of that task of prioritizing happiness is first, realizing that it doesn't just serve us. We serve our children best when we're in a place where we're open, and giving, and loving, not when we're stressed, and unhappy and demanding. The other thing I would say is that, many times it's hard. We think that happiness, we think that prioritizing the successes will bring us happiness. If only I got the right job, if only I had more money, if only I had more time, then I would be happy. It says backwards, because we know that happier people actually set the conditions for more success. So we're actually starting with the primary view. This is what Live Happy teachers all the time, right? This is the basic premise that if we begin with a sense of grounding, and who we are, and using our strengths of showing up in the world in a way that's pointed to the best of who we are. People will enjoy being around us, we'll get more done. So what is selfish about that? We tend to think as women, we need to be martyrs to flagellate ourselves to do more, get more done, to give more, give more, and let me sacrifice myself on the martyrdom of motherhood or womanhood. It's just – how's that going for you? [00:13:09] PP: Yeah. There's a lot of people I'm sure who are seeing themselves right now in that, because I think we all do. It's become so second nature for us. So give me this high-level view of the steps that you took, and that you've learned and you use toward creating personal happiness. [00:13:27] MM: Sure. This was at first a struggle for me, because this didn't come about until I created the Wholebeing Institute. With that creation of Wholebeing Institute in 20 years of evidence-based work, both in yoga and mind body, medicine and in the field of positive psychology, I was grappling around. What I hope to do is give you an overview of how to save two decades of trying into a really cohesive path. I wish I had this program 20 years ago; I would have saved myself a whole lot of time. So I'm going to give you in the next 15 minutes or so an overview of the steps that we take our students through in nine months. This is nine months of community connectedness, where we're all working towards our highest and best and learning what does it mean to live a happier life. It begins at the very start of the course with the understanding that who you are is more than who think yourself to be. What I mean by that is the concept of self. It isn't just one self that lives within us. We identify the different selves of sometimes, we have an ought self speaking to us. I really ought to just work harder and give more to my kids and give more to my family. I really ought to bring on the paycheck, stop complaining, be – I really ought to be grateful for what I have. This ought self voice inside of us that is one voice of a self. We have our authentic self that in this moment might be happy, sad, challenged, angry, all the things that can come up now. But we also have these things in our head, these concepts of ourselves that are called possible selves. That when we do this mental time travel into the future, we see ourselves in different ways. Sometimes we see ourselves a successful business people, or a loving mother, or becoming a loving grandmother. Or sometimes we have these possible selves that scare us, "I'm going to want to die broke" or "I'm going to retire and be all alone or won't have enough money to get by" or "I'll never find happiness" or "I'll never find a mate." These possible selves are all mental concepts in our head about either what we want, or what we're afraid of. Usually, at 2:00 a.m. in the morning is when we’re creative, right?   [00:15:49] PP: Exactly.   [00:15:50] MM: The first thing to do is identify all of those selves that live in this ecosystem of your own experience. Then, when we get them on paper through this process of working together in this course, you can then decide upon the narrative of the possible self that you want to start taking action on and working into today. So we actually pick a possible self that we need for ourselves, the ideal self. This is my ideal. Why that's important and why it's different than goals? Then we have some sort of measure, "Oh, this is the direction I'm heading. This is how I want to craft my life." This becomes a deliberate shaping instead of a, "Let me try this, and let me try that." It's a deliberate shaping of today towards a possible self. And you'll find that, "Wow! There were times when my possible self is here right now and today." That's what's so brilliant about it. As we go through day by day in the program, we realized that there were times as we work towards our ideal self, that we have to understand the concept of learning as a goal before we perform as a goal. I know early on 20 years ago, when I left my corporation, started my own business, I was do, do, do in a performance type mode. Let me do this, let me try that, let me get this done. What we're saying in the sacred time of a liminal space of moving towards your ideal that there is a learning goal before you get to the performance. That's why we take nine months to do it. It's interesting when I think, even in the last few years with the pandemic, a lot of people are in a place of asking themselves. "Oh, that was a completely different experience. What did I want to take from that and shape from that into the next steps?" Because we're all of a sudden entering back into the workforce and feeling, "Wow, that pace has picked up again. I'm right back to where I used to be. How can I shape this more than ever?" [00:17:51] PP: Right. And you wonder, am I still willing to tolerate that? Is that still what fulfills me even/ I think that has changed the way we receive work. [00:18:01] MM: So true. Part of that is, we look at the course in the possible selves. Part of it is about defining ourself, our ideal self. I call that selfing. Selfing in a way in a positive way.   [00:18:15] PP: I like that,   [00:18:17] MM: Right. How are we constructing who we are in our experience as humans, such that it's enlivening, and engaging, and it’s being an expression of divine expression of who we are at the core of our being. This is what I would call selfing. But there's also another part of this work that's equally important. This I like to call unselfing. What are we letting go of? What are we realizing that this isn’t helping us anymore, this way of thinking, of believing. I don't need to hold on to. One of the things we teach in the course is a five-pointed a methodology for wellbeing. It's called SPIRE. [00:19:01] PP: I love this methodology. Yes, explain this to us.   [00:19:04] MM: Each of those belong to a different category of wellbeing. First is spiritual, mindfulness and meaning. What is it that you believe in that's bigger than yourself, that you can let go and trust into, meaning in your life? Because if you go at this happiness thing as you're carrying everything on your own shoulders, it really becomes heavy in and of itself. It's just builds on the ego, so what do you need to let go of and spiritually connect with? Could be your religion, divine, nature, God, the peace, your physical wellbeing. Not only your nutrition, your eating, your exercise, but how are you using your body as a container to express that idea itself? How do you move in the world? I is for intellectual or inquiry. What are you interested in? Curiosity and openness to experience enlivens us, so what are those things that do that for you? What's the relational wellbeing you have? We know that relationships are the number one predictor of wellbeing, so cultivate consciously in its course. How to map your network of relations? Which ones are you using in a way that's elevating? Which ones might you have to just clip back a little bit because they're actually not serving you? The last one of the models is emotional wellbeing, speaking about the power of positive emotions and how to use them to broaden and build your experience. So that the power of the negativity bias that we all have is decreased. So that's the SPIRE model that we use to both build the positive self and unself, letting go of what we don't need. [00:20:38] PP: That's fantastic. I know you've seen it change your own life. You're seeing it change the lives of others. What point in the program does that hit? Is that about halfway through, three-fourths of the way through that you've hit this point of being able to let go? [00:20:52] MM: Well, it's a process. It's so interesting to watch people go through the course, because it is sort of this unfolding. This unfolding doesn't have a specific timeframe. We've had people start at the very beginning of the program, where we unveil that SPIRE methodology and say, "Ah. This is a whole different way of thinking about how I'm working in the day" to then moving on to really defining happiness for ourselves. Actually, in defining that happiness and understanding the components of it emotionally, using our strengths, and using a meaning, it opens us up. So we begin not only to learn the content, but connect with others, the faculty, the group, because we all go through it as a cohort together. In that conversation, community is one of the most powerful. We hear again, and again, it's the most powerful, is working in connectedness around this topic, this content. Because in module three, what we do is we put people into small groups. We call the learning pods. So, you will be working very closely with other people in the group, define how you're using that content for yourself, and talk about how your day is unfolding and how you're utilizing it. That's usually a game changer for people this unfolding of angst, not just about happiness, it's not just about content, it's really working with others who are defining their next step in life. Or imagine, if you're in a small group, someone thinking about retirement and you're working with a woman who is looking at a career change, right? Or a coach who's looking to build this in their business. Those rich conversations inform. Then, in the next module, you talk about what habits am I building on a day-to-day basis. This is all about habit change. So we spend a month on what are you doing every day that's elevating you and bringing you towards your ideal. It could be something as simple as taking pictures or something beautiful every day. Could be doing a vision board, clipping a picture for a vision board every day for 30 days. It doesn't matter what you do, but what you're doing is activating over 30 days, a habit creation. We talk a lot about the science. Then, because no man is an island and a woman is an island, we talk about relationships. How do you really have conversations and relationships that are active and constructive? Mapping out that relational list is so important to understand. It's only then, after we've gone through all of this work, that we asked you what goals are important to you. [00:23:32] PP: That's the opposite of what we’re used to. I love that. [00:23:37] MM: Most people will start with – and then, do you ever find yourself picking a million goals, because you don't know which one is the right one to pick it and try –here, it's almost – with the start of this new year, people have already probably saying, "Oh, that was the wrong goal. I don't want to do that one." But after you understand what happiness is, how you're applying it in group conversations, and how you're creating habits, then you can ask yourself, "Okay. What's important to me? What goal do I want to reach?" So we have a change model where we get clear on what we want, we activate hope. We then activate our actions, and we go forward and navigate this change going for those things that are important to us. So this is the change model. We spend a month on this. Because our goals never go the way we planned them out in our head, right? Obstacles arise, difficulties arise, irritating people arise. The next month we spend on resilience, right? Things are not going to go the way we expected. Resilience is key. How do we have a setback, and then move forward, and then life happens and we move around? How do we think about in context of mindset, and a way of moving forward where we become better at resilience, of moving, of expounding no matter what happens, we're bouncing back, or bouncing forward passed where we were before. I teach the next module, which is the module on leadership. Because at the end of the day, you're becoming a leader in your own mind? How do we think about the power of leadership in our own life? What that does that mean in context with others? So we begin to actually be a hero in our own journey instead of the victim played out by others. Then we come together again, the last module, which is where the students present their final project, which is what was most personally compelling to them. You started this question, when does the unfolding happen? Anywhere and everywhere again, and again in that process, because this human life is about unfolding. What we try and create in the connectedness of the program is a positive, upward spiral that is ever broadening and growing over time. We keep seeing more, and more and more. It doesn't end even after – [00:25:59] PP: Even after the course.   [00:26:00] MM: It doesn't end.   [00:26:02] PP: Let me ask you. What are some of the most compelling stories you've seen in people, some of the transformations that you've seen in people who have gone through your program? [00:26:11] MM: What’s been really interesting, and one of the things that we look at is, what difference does this make in your day-to-day life. There was this one woman, I remember specifically was in tears when we first got together, because she was so miserable in her very highly successful job. She's just – you could tell, she was one of these goal getters, she would just get things done. She says, "But I'm miserable. I'm just absolutely a cranky woman." Her final project was about daily blessings. She set up this mason jar in her home, so when she got together with dinner with her husband and her children, they created a family ritual of counting blessings, and they would put blessings into that jar. Talk about it and put it into the jar. And it became sort of a habit in the family. So it changed not only her life. She came back like a completely different person, because her final project was about counting blessings, not burdens. She came back a completely different person. Her family life had changed, because of that interaction. Another example are people who are coaches, and I've been approaching their coaching work from the premise of how to be a good coach. What they wanted to do is understand how to ask questions that elicited the best out of the clients that they were working with. So they actually wanted the skills of positive psychology to increase their practice of coaching. What they found happening is that, help them get clear about who they were coaching, what they were coaching people towards, so they get clarity on their own business and their own self in it. So we have a lot of solopreneurs, who – whether they have therapists, or coaches, or teachers, wellness practitioners that not only want to use this in their practice, but they use it for themselves. So they go through this program, and they realize that their life is happier as they help others in their life. [00:28:13] PP: What a benefit of – you're doing it for somebody else, but then you end up being able to give this gift to yourself and a lasting one. I love the fact that people are going through this with someone else, because I've seen that power of connection. I know, I've been in programs where, say, a woman didn't feel supported by her family, or by her husband for going through this. That is so important to have that little community. So even if the rest of your world is kind of disintegrating or not supportive, you've got that community that you've built. I imagine that that community lasts long after the program. [00:28:51] MM: Long after. We've been in business for 10 years; we still have our first small groups back 10 years ago tell me that they're still meeting as a group. I guess, this is sort of close out this conversation by asking viewers to think about. If you stayed on the trajectory of doing what you're doing now, where will you be in nine months? If you took the program and helped you shape possible self future into your ideal self, what would look different in your day, nine months from today? That's really the promise of stepping into the science of human flourishing. [00:29:24] PP: That is so powerful. Megan, we're going to tell our listeners where they can learn more about your program. We're going to send them to our website. You've got some great handouts that we're going to let them download from there for free. Tell them more about the program and let them know how they can sign up for this. As we finish this out, is there any other message that we haven't covered today that you really hope everybody hears as I walk away from this? [00:29:50] MM: I want to say thank you to you. We've worked together for years. So my first thing is just gratitude for you in the work at Live Happy. The second thing I want to say is I look forward to seeing your listeners in the course and getting to work with them, and a certificate of Wholebeing Positive Psychology. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:30:10] PP: That was Megan McDonough, founder of the Wholebeing Institute, talking about how we can take the next step to move toward happiness. If you visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab, you can download a free set of worksheets to help you identify what internal signals you're receiving about personal change, and help you think about how this can become a time of positive growth. We'll also tell you more about Megan, the Wholebeing Institute, and the certificate in Wholebeing Positive Psychology and how this nine-month program can help you walk through the changes you're experiencing. We'll also give you a special link just for live Happy listeners to learn more about the program and how you can be a part of it. Enrollment is underway now for the program that begins in March. Again, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you have enjoyed this special episode of Live Happy Presents. From Megan McDonough and myself, Paula Phelps, thank you for joining us and remember to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Setting Boundaries for the Holidays With Melissa Urban  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 391 of Live Happy Now. It's beginning to look a lot like the holidays. For many of us, that can look more like walking through a minefield than a winter wonderland. I'm your host, Paula, Felps. This week, I'm so excited to be joined by Melissa Urban, whose best-selling The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free is changing the way people learn to say no. She's here today to talk about how we can set boundaries this holiday season with our friends, families, and coworkers to make it less stressful and more manageable. Believe me, once you've tried it, you'll realize these are habits you want to carry with you into the New Year. Let's listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Melissa, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:46] MU: Thank you so much for having me. It's really great to talk to you, Paula. [00:00:49] PF: What perfect timing to be able to talk to you because we have the holidays coming up. You have The Book of Boundaries. Oh, my God. Those two things go together. [00:01:00] MU: Don’t they, though? [00:01:01] PF: Or don't go together too often. Once I got this book, I really wanted to talk to you and especially wanted to do it with a holiday theme. Before we dig into all that, tell us how you became the boundary lady. Is that who you are? [00:01:14] MU: Yeah. It is now. At least that's how a lot of my followers spouses know me on Instagram. “Oh, you got that information from the boundary lady, didn’t you?” I've been helping people set and hold boundaries since the earliest days of the Whole30. So I'm the Whole30 co-founder, and I founded the program in 2009. If you're familiar with the Whole30, it's a 30-day elimination program. So you're eliminating foods and beverages for 30 days kind of as a self-experiment before you reintroduce them and compare your experience. For those 30 days, you're saying no a lot to break room doughnuts and your mother's pasta and the glass of wine at happy hour. I quickly discovered that people were uncomfortable saying no, especially in social settings, especially when faced with peer pressure or pushback. So I started helping people say no, in the context of their Whole30, around food and alcohol and talking about their diets and the food on their plate and their bodies. That naturally led to them asking me, “Okay. Well, what do I say to my mother-in-law who's always dropping by without calling, or the coworker who's always gossiping, or my nosy neighbor who's always asking if he can borrow power tools?” My boundary conversations just very naturally spilled over into that arena, and they really kicked into high gear when the pandemic hit. Because I think we all realize during the pandemic that we lacked healthy boundaries around work and home and kids in school. It was all starting to run together. Especially women and especially moms were really burned out and exhausted. So I've been doing this work really in earnest since then. [00:03:01] PF: This book is amazing. It is so comprehensive, and it covers everything imaginable. I was just so knocked out as I was going through it. In that book, you offer such a great definition of boundaries. I just loved it. It's like I was underlining it. H many times can I underline? Because we talk about boundaries, but we don't necessarily understand what they are. So can you tell us what you mean when you're talking about boundaries? [00:03:26] MU: Yes. I often think there's a misconception. Boundaries are about controlling other people or telling other people what to do. Or putting these big walls up between you and other people or holding people at a distance. None of that is true. So I define boundaries as limits that you set around how you allow other people to engage with you. So a boundary doesn't tell someone else what to do. It tells others what you are willing to do, the actions that you are going to take to keep yourself safe and healthy. Ultimately, boundaries improve your relationships. They're an invitation to the people in your life to say, “Hey, I have this limit. And you may not have been aware that I've had it but I'm going to communicate this limit to you clearly and kindly as an invitation. Because if you can show up in my life in a way that also respects this limit, our relationship can be so much more open and more trusting and more respectful and feel good to both of us.” [00:04:33] PF: So it improves relationships, but it also really improves our mental health. [00:04:38] MU: Yes. [00:04:38] PF: Can you talk about what does it do for us to be able to set and maintain those boundaries? [00:04:44] MU: So I want you to think about a situation in your life that brings on this idea of dread or anxiety. Maybe it’s – [00:04:51] PF: How many would you like? [00:04:53] MU: I know. Let's just start with one. Maybe it's a particular person, where every time you see their name come up on your phone or they walk by or you know they're going to be at an event, you just cringe like, “Oh, I do not want to be with this person. I don't want to engage.” Maybe it's around a particular conversation topic, where you know that if the subject of your weight or your body or politics or religion or when you're going to have a baby or your chronic illness come up, you just feel this sense of real anxiety or dread. Those are all signs that a boundary is needed. When you think about how a boundary can protect our mental health, boundaries are what help us eliminate or at least dramatically reduce that sense of dread and anxiety, resentment, mistrust, all of the things that cause stress and cause us to show up not as our full selves in relationships. They really help us reclaim our time, our energy, our capacity, our physical space, our sense of safety, and our mental health. [00:05:59] PF: Yeah. Your book really emphasizes how important it is to be able to create healthy boundaries. If they're so good for us, why are they so hard? Why? They should be easy, right? [00:06:10] MU: Well, first of all, and I'll speak for myself, but as women and then especially as moms, we've been conditioned our whole lives not to have needs. As a mom, I am praised the most when I am selfless, having no needs, having no wants, no desires of my own, and putting everyone else's comfort and sense of security and happiness above my own. Then when we do have needs and we express them, no matter how politely or kindly we do, we're told we're selfish or cold or that we have too many rules. Often we're told those things by the people who benefit the most from us not having any limits. I think there's a lot for us to unlearn before we think about setting boundaries. Then on top of that, I’ll acknowledge, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to advocate for your feelings, to point out a way in which someone you truly care about was overstepping. Even if their intentions were good, it's uncomfortable to advocate for yourself, and that does make the idea of boundaries feel challenging. [00:07:20] PF: So do you recommend that somebody starts with like small boundaries and then kind of works up to the bigger stuff? Or do we dive right in and tackle the big issues? What's the best way to approach this? [00:07:32] MU: I think there are a ton of entry points here. So for some, I'd say starting with boundaries around food and drink, whether you're doing a Whole30, which is essentially a boundary like boot camp, or whether you're just going into the next event, practicing saying, “No, thanks. I'm not drinking right now. No, thanks. I'm not eating gluten right now. No, I'm good. No, thank you.” Practicing that, I think, can be incredibly empowering because, A, you always have control over what you choose to eat or drink. Like I doubt anyone at that party is going to like sit on you and pour alcohol into your throat. Saying no to foods and drinks that you know don't serve you also brings you energy and better sleep and a happier mood and improved digestion. So that has a spillover effect into other areas of your life and can really help build confidence. In other times, when people read the book, they go, “You know what? My relationship with my coworker or mom or best friend has been bothering me for so long. I'm just going to go in and I'm going to like go in hard. I'm going to set the one limit that is going to bring me the most relief in my life. It's going to help me reclaim the most time and energy and mental health, and I feel prepared, and I have the script, and like I'm going to go in strong.” It kind of just depends on like what you're up for and how big you want to go. But I don't think there's any one way to start a boundary practice. I think the important thing is just to start practicing. [00:08:59] PF: Yeah. You just mentioned the script, and that's something that I love about this book because not only do you say this is why you should do it, and this is how you do it. You actually give a script to talk us through that. How did you come up with those because you have something for everything? [00:09:16] MU: I do. I have more than 130 scripts in the book, and each script has three different levels of boundary conversation. Your green level, which is sort of the kindest, gentlest. The yellow, which is, okay, you're getting some pushback, and you really need to reinforce the boundary. Then the red, which is like, “We are at code red here. The relationship is about to be permanently damaged if I am not able to hold this limit.” I started writing scripts many years ago because my Whole30 community would come to me and they'd say, “Okay, I need to set a boundary around going to my office happy hour but not drinking.” I'm like, “Okay, how can I help?” They were like, “What do I say? I know I need to set the boundary. I know how it would benefit me, but I don't know how to say it.” So I started helping people with actual scripts that sound very natural, very conversational. They don't sound like therapy speak. But because this is so uncomfortable, I find arming people with a script that they can practice at home. Tell your shower wall, “No, thanks. I'm not drinking right now,” right? Repeat it to your car, to your dog so that your body absorbs it somatically, and you get really comfortable with the phrase. I think it makes people feel more confident heading into the boundary conversations and makes them feel less like they have to wing it. It tends to help them not water down their boundaries so much that it's ineffective. Or come out of the gate so strong, too strong that they do end up damaging the relationship in an attempt to set the limit. [00:10:44] PF: What’s so great about it is the fact that you do give pushback, like if this is happening, instead of – Too oftentimes, if you're doing like a role playing type of thing, the other party is like too easy. They make it too easy on you. So that's something that's so great about that. People can really practice really setting that boundary. [00:11:02] MU: Yes. I want you to go into the conversations, assuming that the other person just didn't realize that you had a limit. Once you express it, they will be happy to meet it. Because most of the time, that's what happens. So you don't have to go in geared up for battle. I want you to assume the best. Also, of course, I'm going to prepare you if you do encounter pushback or peer pressure, or the people in your life continue to forget that you set this limit. I want you to have the words to be able to enforce it at the same time. [00:11:34] PF: That is so terrific and one area. This is why I wanted to talk to you. You've created scripts about the holidays. Oh, my gosh. There are so many minefields in the holiday season that I wanted to talk about. Can we start with families? This is so tough because the holidays are already challenging. Then we go home, and we start slipping back into these old family patterns and routines. So like, first of all, why do we do that? Why don't we remain the adults that we are when we go back home? [00:12:04] MU: I've never felt more like my 16-year-old self than when I sit down at my mom's dining room table. I think it's just childhood patterns and relationship dynamics run really deep. We absorb a lot of who we become as a person from our parents. So like my family, we didn't model healthy conflict. We kind of practiced avoidance. I'm going to want to keep the peace at all cost. I'm not going to want to bring up things that are uncomfortable or say something that I know someone's going to argue with. I'm going to want to be the peacekeeper. If your parents grew up fighting and always wanting you to pick sides, you may withdraw in family situations. There are so many reasons why setting boundaries with family and family dynamics can be really challenging. But at the same time, it's never too late to be the change agent in your family and start to create new relationships. The holidays can certainly feel like a perfect storm of boundary oversteps. I do want people to be prepared to go into all of these challenges thinking about, okay, what are the limits that I need to set specifically, and how can I communicate those effectively? [00:13:13] PF: Do you start setting those before the holidays? Do you wait till you're right there? How and when do you start unpacking all this? [00:13:21] MU: Anytime you can have a boundary conversation well ahead of the situation, when you are not enmeshed in it, when in the moment. Of course, I want you to set boundaries in the moment if needed but if you can set the expectation ahead of time. “Hey, mom and dad. Really looking forward to seeing you for Christmas this year. Just so you know, we're going to spend Christmas morning at home, just the three of us. We really want a quiet morning, and we'll come by at around noon before dinner.” Whatever boundary you need to set. “Hey, really looking forward to seeing you over the holidays. I know we disagree on politics, and it would make our visit far more pleasant if we could all agree just not to bring it up. Is that something we can all live with because it makes none of us happy when we have those discussions over the table?” Whatever the conversation seems like, if you can anticipate a boundary challenge and set expectation ahead of time and get buy in, that makes holding the boundary in the moment even easier. [00:14:17] PF: So what happens if they buy in in advance? But then in the actual situation, things start denigrating. Here come the political comments. What do you do then? Because you've already said it, and now they're breaking the rules. [00:14:30] MU: This is why I give you yellow scripts. You've already set the expectation. They say, “Yeah, we understand. It's not fun for anybody when politics come up.” Then you're at the table, and Uncle Joe brings up immigration. This is where you say, “Oh, oh. Wait, wait. We agreed. No politics at the table, Uncle Joe. But, hey, I know you just went on vacation. How was it? I don't think I even saw any photos. How did it go?” So you address the boundary overstep. You say, “I am not participating in this conversation,” and you quickly change the subject to allow everyone to move on gracefully. If they continue to talk over you and talk politics at the table, your red level boundary is, “I already said I won't participate in these conversations. Please excuse me.” You leave the table. You go for a walk. You step outside to make a phone call. You go in the other room with your kids, whatever that looks like. The red boundary is you holding the boundary by saying, “I am removing myself from this situation because it does not feel healthy to me.” [00:15:26] PF: You are teaching everyone at the table such a fantastic lesson because whether they want boundaries in that moment or not, there are other things in their lives that they're going, “Oh, I wonder if I can use this?” [00:15:38] MU: Yes, yeah. Often all it takes is for one person. It's a hard job to be the change agent in a family. But if you can do it, there's a really good chance that other people in the family have felt like you too, and they just haven't wanted to say anything. I have absolutely watched in my community the ripple effects of you setting your boundary trickle out very quickly to everyone else, who will then back you up in this limit. [00:16:03] PF: How can it change families if all of a sudden, gosh, we're not getting together, and we're not ripping open old wounds, and we're not fighting about our differences, but we're looking for ways to actually get along and be together and find commonality? How does that change your whole dynamic that time and going forward? [00:16:20] MU: Imagine what your upcoming holiday would feel like if you knew that when you showed up at your family's house, nobody was going to bring up politics. Nobody was going to comment on the food on your plate or talk about your weight loss or their weight loss or their diets or your bodies. Nobody was going to try to make you feel guilty when after the meal, you said, “Okay, it's time for us to go to dad's house now. It was so nice to visit with you. Thank you so much.” The sense of like immediate freedom and relief that you would feel, knowing you could go into these holidays with not only these preset expectations but the words to hold the boundaries, should you find in the moment that people overstep, I think would just absolutely feel tremendous. It would give you a sense of self confidence. It would remind you that you are in control and take responsibility for your own feelings. It gives you the power to actually hold the boundary because you're not relying on anyone else to kind of hold that for you or to join you. If they decide that they can't or won't hold this healthy limit, you know the action you're going to take to keep yourself safe. [00:17:29] PF: You also talk about managing that guilt of not spending enough time with the other side of the family. Once you're married, once you have children, it gets even more complicated. I've seen so many of my friends go through this, where they are just run ragged by the end of Christmas Day because they feel like they have to give both sides. Sometimes, it's like four sides because you have divorces with the parents and then the grandparents. Nobody's happy the end of the day because everyone's just exhausted. So how do you manage that kind of guilt and everything that's going on with separate sides of the family? [00:18:05] MU: This is what psychologists call unearned guilt. This is not guilt because you have done something wrong, and it is biologically serving you and your community by you feeling bad and remembering that you did something wrong, so you don't do it again. This is unearned guilt that we are choosing to take on. So in the simplest way, you don't have to feel guilty. You can just say, “No, thank you.” What I am doing now is creating traditions for my family. This is a time-honored tradition that my parents did when they had me and their parents did when they had them. We are creating a new family unit now, and I want to create traditions with my children the way that my parents did with me. There's a chance that your mom didn't feel comfortable setting boundaries with your grandmother. That might be a big part of the reason why they get so upset and defensive and hurt when you set boundaries with them from this sense of like jealousy that they wish they could have done this with you when you were kids. You're doing it now. That can be very challenging for older generations. But I think it's perfectly acceptable to think about and decide as a family together, what do we want our holidays to look like? Then to notify other family members what you are and are not willing to do. [00:19:24] PF: That's terrific because I know in our family, my partner's uncle, it was tradition. Christmas Eve was at his house. What was very funny is everybody complained. Nobody wanted to go there. For years, everybody has to go to Uncle Bobby's, and we're just like, “They're complaining the whole time.” So about three years ago, probably about five years ago now, her brother's like, “We're not going to do it,” and everyone's like, “Wait a minute. We don't have to do this?” “Let’s just say that's no longer a family tradition.” It’s amazing because it's like you get time back, and you get this freedom that just didn't seem to exist prior to that. [00:20:00] MU: That's such a good example of one person. Like everybody thinking it and just one person being willing to say it. Yes. I like to remind people, you can do it any way you want. So we have this nontraditional approach to Christmas with my parents, where it's like, “Hey, whether we celebrate it on Christmas Day or January 29th, it kind of doesn't matter. We're going to have Christmas in a way and a time that works for all of us.” They'll keep their tree up late, and we'll hold presents for my son. But we get to celebrate in a way that doesn't stress everybody out. So you can have those nontraditional celebrations. You can choose to not go anywhere at all, and you don't need an excuse to stay home. It doesn't have to be, well, we're going to take a vacation this year. It can be we just don't want to travel, and we want a quiet Christmas at home, and we're not accepting visitors, and we're not going to go anywhere. We'll happily FaceTime with you. If we celebrate Christmas in July, then that's fantastic too. But I encourage people to think outside the box because you can create traditions any way you choose as a family. [00:21:04] PF: We're just not used to thinking we can do that. We're just not used to thinking that we can go, especially in the holidays. That we can just say, “Yeah, we're not participating in that tradition. We want to create our own.” But how important is it for our children to see us taking that initiative and for them to understand like, “Yes, I can create my own boundaries going forward.”? [00:21:25] MU: Yes. It's so important for your kid. People often say, “How do I impart this idea of healthy boundaries with my kids?” It's setting and holding healthy boundaries on behalf of you and the family and modeling that for your kids. You're also doing this on their behalf. My son does not enjoy being in a car most of Christmas day, as we travel hours and hours between all of the families. But he loves that he gets four Christmases, one with us, one with grandma, one with Grandpa, one with his dad. He loves that we get to spread it out over the course of a month. So it really does make everybody's time easier, and you can acknowledge your family members’ disappointment, “I'm sorry that we won't be spending the day with you,” while still holding the boundary. We'll make sure we have plenty of time to visit two weekends from now when we come, and we'll do all of the Christmas things. We'll sing carols, we'll sit around the tree, we'll play games, and it will be just as festive. [00:22:21] PF: That is such a wonderful way to approach it. The other thing that really interferes – Not interferes. That can take some time is our work place during this time of year. You've got holiday parties, and those are often obligatory. How do we set boundaries around that? Because we're walking a fine line since it is work, and some things might be required. [00:22:43] MU: It is challenging, of course, to set boundaries in the workplace because of the power dynamics in play. I think a lot of times, companies sometimes – It’s not that they leave it until the last minute, but you've got projects. You've got deadlines. You've got goals kind of that you want to wrap up by year end. Again, setting expectations ahead of time is key. If you are going to be taking time off during the holidays, it's requesting that plenty early, reminding people ahead of time like, “Hey. Just so you remember, I’ll be out. I would send this email out like December 1st. I'm going to be out from this point to this point around the holidays. I will not be checking email or Slack. I will not be participating in meetings.” Make it very clear that you are out of office. If we need to have meetings ahead of time to set deliverables, let me know. I'm going to have XYZ cover my deliverables during this time period. So everyone knows who to go to. Those little reminders along the way can really help to set the expectation so that when somebody does send an email or text to you to ask you a question, you can say, “I am out of office and not responding to text. I'll be back in the office on this date.” So I think that's really important to communicate very clearly. But then you also have to set the boundary with yourself that if you say you're out of office, you're not checking email. You're not responding to just like that one Slack message really quick because now you're changing the expectation, and people will take as much as you are willing to give. [00:24:04] PF: Yeah. You have some great illustrations in your book about that. About the poor woman who was on vacation. [00:24:10] MU: That was my sister. That was my sister. It was – [00:24:13] PF: Oh, my God. I was horrified. [00:24:15] MU: Whose boss is like – [00:24:15] PF: [inaudible 00:24:15] story real quick because that's just horrifying. [00:24:18] MU: She worked in a very toxic workplace environment, where her boss tracked her down on her first vacation in over a year and like called her off of her paddleboard in the middle of the ocean for something that was absolutely not an emergency. Though my sister tried to set boundaries a number of times in that organization, they very clearly demonstrated that this was not a place where boundaries would be respected. So she did all she could to create a healthier workplace environment and could not and ended up finding a new job. But at least she tried. That's what I say to people in the workplace. Your only options are not to let your employer or coworkers continue to run you over or quit and get a new job. There are a number of options in the middle where you can try at least to set and hold boundaries around your work time, your personal time, your ethics or values or your personal space. If they don't hold and you're not able to maintain those boundaries because the workplace is simply not amenable to them, at least you know you've done everything you could to try to make your workplace culture healthy. [00:25:22] PF: Yeah. That is so terrific. Can you talk about what happens to us when we start practicing setting boundaries? Because it seems like once you've kind of mastered it, you're probably going to get pretty good at it in a lot of different areas that you didn't even think about going into it. [00:25:37] MU: I think you do. Boundaries kind of bring about this sense of inertia, where an object in motion stays in motion. What happens is it becomes like this self-affirming prophecy. So you steal yourself and you say, “I deserve to set this limit. My needs are worthy. My comfort is worthy. My feelings matter, just as much as anybody else's, and I am going to set this limit because I know it is for the best for my health and safety, and I know it's going to improve the relationship.” You set the limit, and the other person respects it, and your relationship improves. Now, you're like, “Okay. Now, I have the self-confidence to seek out other areas,” and you feel more comfortable setting them. You feel more comfortable holding them. Other people in your life experience this real sense of safety around you because they know that you mean what you say and that you will take responsibility for your own feelings and your own needs. That is a very comforting and reassuring place to be, and you're allowing other people in your life to say no to you. So now, you're both showing up where you want to, how you want to in a way that feels good to both of you. It has this tremendous cascade effect, this ripple effect that will move through all of your relationships at work, with family, with friends, with total strangers on the street. It really is such a powerful, transformative experience that anyone can start literally right now. [00:27:02] PF: That's so excellent. This book is absolutely incredible. It is so informative, educational, inspiring, and funny. There's just so much that we can take away from it. This is terrific. We are going to – In the wrap up, I'm going to tell people how they can follow you on social media, where they can find you, where they can buy your book. But as they enter the holiday season, what's the thing that you most want them to keep in mind? [00:27:27] MU: I want you to keep in mind that your comfort, your joy, the sense of magic and wonder that the holidays can bring are all at your disposal this year with a healthy boundary practice. [00:27:41] PF: I love it. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on the show, for writing this book, and for sharing this with us. [00:27:47] MU: Thanks so much Paula. It was a joy to talk to you as well. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:54] PF: That was Melissa Urban, author of The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free. If you'd like to learn more about Melissa and her work, follow her on social media, or buy her book, 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. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Why Sports Fans Have More Friends With Ben Valenta and David Sikorjak  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 390 of Live Happy Now. If you're a sports fan or you know someone who is, you're going to love today's guests. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I have the pleasure of sitting down with David Sikorjak and Ben Valenta, authors of the new book, Fans Have More Friends. These two strategy and analytics experts are diehard sports fans, who set out to prove their hypothesis that being a sports fan leads to happiness. Their research proved them right. And this week, they're here to talk about why cheering on your favorite team is doing more for you than you might have realized. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: David and Ben, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:41] BV: Thanks for having us. [00:00:41] DS: Thanks for having us. [00:00:42] BV: Happy to be here. [00:00:43] PF: Well, this is exciting because this is something we have not touched on at Live Happy, which is unusual. It feels like a lot of things we've looked at from so many different angles but not fandom. Sports are such a huge part of our culture, and I don't think we've ever touched on how it really affects us psychologically. So I guess for starters, how did the two of you meet, and how did you decide to write a book about this? [00:01:08] BV: Our relationship goes way back. We've been working together for, I don't know, 10, 12 years. We've always been kind of collaborators and like-minded in how we see the world and have been working in the sports business in some way, shape, or form for the last, I don't know, 8 of those 10 years and have constantly had some insight into – Or maybe the better way to say it is we had an intuition that sports fandom was all about social connection, and this came through kind of years of spending time with fans, of thinking about the sports business, of working in sports media. At a certain point, I think we became convinced that that intuition was actually a truth, and we could elevate it to the level of an insight, something that kind of defined how people approached the space. At a certain point, I think we decided we should prove this out. We should sort of see. We should put our insight to the test and see if it really does hold water, if we really can define fandom as a social enterprise. Eventually, we landed on – I think a testable hypothesis is what we're looking for, and that's where we got to. So the fundamental insight was that to be a fan is to be a part of a community. That’s a line that we landed on years ago, working for the New York Knicks. That stuck with us for some time. We decided that if that's true, if fandom is all about community, if it's all about the social connection, then fans would enjoy more robust social networks, more robust social infrastructure. So the shorthand way to say that is fans would have more friends. So we set out trying to devise a way to reliably test fandom and compare it to the number of friends in one social network. What we found over the last several years and 30-plus surveys and tens of thousands of respondents is that it's true. In fact, fans do have more friends, and that's the title of our book, Fans Have More Friends. [00:03:03] PF: So how long did it take you to go from an idea to a finished product? [00:03:09] DS: To be a fan and to be part of a community was something that we coined back in 2016, where we got to the point where like, “Let's test this out.” We’re seeing it come up in different contexts around sports over and over with different types of people, men, women, white, black, all sorts of people, younger and older. The same thing held that we were observing social relationships as the incentive for the devotional behavior of sports fandom. We didn't start testing this until – Devised a way to test this until the end of 2018. Then once we kind of landed on a method, it kept coming back. Fans have more friends. It's not only that. The bigger fan you are, the more friends you have. The bigger fan you are, the closer you are to all your friends. The more you interact with those friends, the closer you are to family. Just every single – It kind of – This is what we thought all along. We never thought we would be able to prove it out in such a consistent and robust way, and it's kind of held now for three years now in testing this. [00:04:16] BV: Just to draw a line into that, like the way to think about it is the bigger fan you are, the more likely you are to have a positive healthy relationship with your mother, right? It extends a great aspect of your social life. So it's not just that fans have more friends, as Dave points out. It’s that you have a close relationship and closer ties with your family, both as parent to child, child to parent, kind of working both ways throughout one's life. [00:04:39] DS: Just to give you an example on that, we ran surveys recently where if you have measured from non-fans, so basically the general population, and then rated them across the scale on how big of a fan they are, if you have children living out of your home, we ask if there are adult children, how close do you feel with child number one? How close do you feel with child number two? What we found for whether kids are at home or not, but it's really the most acute for when you are an empty nester, the bigger fan you are, the stronger of a relationship you report having with each of your children. [00:05:12] PF: Were you able to determine why that is? Because that's super interesting because people – I mean, parents struggle like, “How can I be close to my children?” Now, it's like go to games. Yeah. [00:05:21] BV: Well, it's really like the reliable rhythm of being a sports fan keeps you in constant connection. So I have three brothers. We all live dispersed around the country. I'm from Colorado, and my folks are still in Denver. The thing that we talk about most often is the Denver Broncos, right? That will anchor those conversations. Now, that will unfold into how are the kids and how's work and all that kind of stuff. But it usually starts with the Denver Broncos. Actually, this just happened. It's the NFL trade deadline when we're recording this. The Broncos made a big trade at the deadline, and my phone just lit up with text messages mostly from my family, my mom included, but a bunch of friends as well. When you start to see your fan engagement as that social connection, you sort of can't unsee it. Then you begin to recognize, “Oh, this is actually the thing incentivizing my fandom, but it's also the benefit of my fandom.” It results in more conversations. It results in more text messages. It results in more frequent interaction that is ultimately good for us and leads to strengthened relationships. [00:06:27] DS: Build on the point is it's like a covert way of just saying how are you doing. But sports just gives you many times over and over like your mom texting you have how's it going and after a while could be braiding. But if it's around sports, if the sky has something else, that conversation keeps on going, and it's just a fluid back and forth, which is just more pleasurable for both parties. [00:06:51] PF: That can even work if you are on opposing teams because I know in our house, there are friends who do not support the proper teams. When we'll have it, it's like that back and forth of like really just talking trash, but you feel closer. I mean, it really does kind of – It keeps you in contact, even though that's the way that you're going about it. [00:07:11] BV: Absolutely. I mean, that's the one thing we – The one question we get most often is like, “Well, what about the tribal nature of sports? What about rivalries and things like that?” What we find is that those things actually tend to make the experience of being a fan more engaging and more fun. That means that they animate those interactions and those connections in the same way. In other words, like they make those conversations with those people more fun, right? When you're talking trash, it's all with a tongue in cheek. It's all in good fun. We're able to kind of play in this space that is ultimately very playful, and we can have that kind of conversation, that kind of interaction, which leads to just more intimate conversations down the line that aren't necessarily about sports. It just kind of creates this space where we can bust other’s chops, and it's all good. [00:07:54] DS: There's not many spaces where we can do that, where we could actually mock a friend, a family member, or a stranger because of sports affiliations. With sports, you actually have that permission to do it in a way that is just – It’s fun. It's playful. It's childish. All those things are really good. [00:08:11] PF: What about right now? Because it seems everyone's pretty sensitive to people who don't agree with them. There's a lot of polarization. There's a sensitivity when someone disagrees with us. With sports, that disappears. Can you address that? [00:08:28] BV: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, because it's playful. Because it sort of seem to matter so much but not matter at all, that gives us that permission to not be so sensitive and to recognize that this is one space in my life that I cannot – I'm not taking these things personally, right? I'm not going to be overly sensitive. I can just go in there and have fun. I can receive the comments, and then I can take a lick in it. I can dole one out. It’s all good natured, and it's all in good fun. [00:08:55] PF: How can that help us? Or can it? Maybe I'm assuming. How can that help us in the real world? Because, again, there's so much polarization. Is there a way that sports fandom can help us get past some of that? [00:09:09] BV: Well, yeah. We addressed the notion of polarization, so we can get into that in the book. Before we get into the polarization piece, though, just to address the question kind of point blank, the way it can help us is we just have more interactions, right? So we have this safe space where it's fun to interact, and that incentivizes us to get involved and interact. As it turns out, we're social creatures, and those interactions, those connections are really good for us, right? We've talked a lot about so far fans have more friends, and they interact with those people more often, and they have better relationships with their families and so on and so forth. But it turns out that those connections have a meaningful impact on your wellbeing. So it's not just that fans have more friends. It's because of those friends, fans are happier. They are more satisfied with their life. They're more optimistic about the future. They're more confident in themselves. They're more trusting of other people. They're more likely to give to charity. They're more likely to be registered to vote. There's this whole cascade of wellness markers that come out of this connection, and it's partly because it's fun, probably because it's entertaining, probably because it's all of those things. But the connection is what's most important. [00:10:15] PF: Did you find what the connection is between being a sports fan and having those tendencies? [00:10:20] BV: The connection, I would say, is connection. Like it is that you're just more plugged into the world around you. You're more plugged in your community. You are more engaged in the world because you have all of these different touch points to draw on. [00:10:33] DS: You saw a game with friends, and your friends will tell you about, “Hey, there's this thing going on in town. You should go to it.” Probably you're going to go or you're out in the world, connecting with other people, and that's how you learn about other things. You're getting depolarizations. That's how you're exposed to people who may be slightly different than you. It doesn't mean that you kind of adopt their views, or it shifts your views. But it just means you feel a closeness to somebody else that's different to you. That's important, where – We talked about this in our book, and we mentioned there's this feeling thermometer to kind of get into the polarization piece that is used in political science. They're used in political science for years, and it measures how – It's a 0 to 100 scale, and you're taking the survey or asked, “How do you feel about Democrats with zero being cold and 100 being hot? Then vice versa, how do you feel about Republicans?” What we lay out in the book is the bigger fan you are, if you separate the sample out into Republicans and Democrats, Republicans have warmer feelings towards Democrats, the bigger fan they are. Democrats have warmer feeling towards Republicans, the bigger fan they are. To be clear, the feeling is cold from opposing views. That's the nature of our polarization. But the fact is, and we've read a lot about polarization in writing this book, and it often left us depressed. Like there's no way out. We're just growing apart as a country, as two separate countries, and we don't talk to each other. What kind of the psychology teaches us is that in group and out group becomes more solidified. Therefore, we don't talk. Therefore, we dislike each other more, more and more, regardless of how much we are into the politics of it. But our contention is sports fans, and it actually gets us to mix those in groups a little bit. If you're a Dallas Cowboys fan and you are a liberal that lives in New York, when there's a lot of Dallas Cowboys fans here in New York, you know there's other fans that are not – Don't share the same views as you. You also know that it crisscrosses race and religion and education and income. You're part of this one Dallas Cowboys tribe, and that actually has an impact on you. So that's why we see the warmer feelings towards the opposing party within both kind of Democrat and Republican tribes. [00:12:52] PF: That is so interesting. So how can that be used by individuals, if we start understanding that? How can we use this as a tool for trying to build a bridge? [00:13:04] BV: Ultimately, that's kind of what we're advocating for is to, I want to use your words, use this as a tool. We all – There's a lot of people who are sports fans. This cuts across a major segment of the American populace. So it's a mainstream behavior that people are engaging with but not necessarily consciously aware of the benefits that they're receiving because they're fans. So what we want people to do is become aware of this thing as a tool. Now, that tool can be used to mitigate polarization. It can be used to mitigate loneliness. But these problems that kind of befuddle us can be lessened, can be decreased, can be dampened by recognizing that that fandom is this thing in your arsenal that you can pull out at any time to create connection, to expand your worldview because it's going to create the interactions with other people around you and create that engagement in the world that we were talking about previously. [00:14:01] DS: Even if you're at the airport and see somebody with an Alabama jersey on and you make a comment about Alabama, it's a 10-second interaction. The science says you both are uplifted as a result of that interaction. You as a sports fan, if you're conscious of what's going on in the world, and you can go up to a complete stranger and talk about the Phillies and Astros game tonight, those interactions are really good. We encourage – As Ben was saying, this was our motivation of if you're a fan, lean into it. These are good things. It's good for you, good for others, good for society. Realize that this is the impact of it, and it's already happening. Now that you know it’s happening, lean into it more, and more good should come out of it. [00:14:41] BV: I guess what that means is, specifically, recognize that sports can be the anchor to a interaction, right? So one thing that I've changed in my life is I will say yes to anything that comes my way that sports-related I will say yes, right? To where I was kind of like falling out of love with the fantasy leagues and the pick’em pools, I will now say yes. Let's go do it. I realized that this is not a fatuous kind of obnoxious thing but actually something that's really meaningful for my life, right? But I'll also extend that invite. So whenever I see some – I’ve even started going through my contact with my phone. If there's somebody I haven’t talked to for a while, I'm aware of kind of like the teams that they follow. I'll use that as a way into sending you that message. Hey, I saw so-and-so traded so-and-so. What do you think of that? Oh, by the way, it's been a while. How you doing? Right? Or I'll invite people over on a Sunday to get together. Whether I care about the game or not, it almost makes no difference. It's just the device that gets people together, and then you're reaping the rewards of that togetherness. [00:15:36] PF: That's great, and it's interesting that you talk about fantasy leagues, things like that. So it's not just straight up fandom for the game. It reaches well beyond that. [00:15:47] BV: Absolutely. I mean, again, let's just change how we think about fandom for the game and all these different activities. The activity almost doesn't matter. It's the activity that creates connection, right? My fantasy league with 10, 12 college buddies generates on a weekend probably 250 text messages on average, right? Those would, otherwise, not happen. If I see now that the fantasy league across whatever 24 weeks of NFL season is generating 250 text messages a week, like that's a lot of interaction that I would have otherwise not had, if I didn't have that fantasy league. Now, all of a sudden, I've reframed how I think about and approach that entire enterprise, and it puts it in those terms. Now, I know it's impacting my wellness. I know it's actually causing oxytocin to be released and flow through my bloodstream. Like it's changing how I see the world. If you're aware of that and you can lean into it, then all of a sudden, you can really start to reap the rewards. [00:16:39] DS: I can give another example, a more personal [inaudible 00:16:42]. We wrote the book and we’re – Ben and I talked about this. We're living the book, so to speak, as kind of a – What we found is it’s like it's telling us to think of things differently. So I'm a Yankees fan. The Yankees had a great start to this season, looked like a dominant team. Then in August, it all fell apart. It often left me depressed on days, and I would go into work and work on stuff and be angry about going home to watch the game or having to watch the game. I have an eight and six-year-old boys, two boys who are obsessed with the games. Our family time, and my wife who is not a sports fan or who was not a sports fan, has now kind of signed up, as it is our best family time. Well, it's seven o'clock. We are – The four of us are on the sofa. We are talking. They’re asking questions. We're engaged in things. We are together as a family, watching this thing called baseball. So like learning from the stuff that we're writing in that book, it's like, well, just forget about that and stop being angry about all the stuff that's wrong with the Yankees and what's right with the family engagement around it. We just have this beautiful time every night when the Yankees are on that, otherwise, would – We’d still have beautiful time, but it just wouldn't be as kind of cohesive as sports has made it in our home. [00:17:57] PF: Yeah. How does that bring it together? When you're cheering together, when you're bemoaning the loss together, how does that tighten you as a family unit? [00:18:06] DS: Well, it gives you something else to talk about, and it's great that you bring up the loss because we often – Another question we get is, well, is this true for winning teams that you're happier, as opposed to perennial losers. It works. It works both ways. You can celebrate together, which is great to commiserate and find the occasion to do something together and celebrate. It's also great to commiserate. Yankees lost. When I get together with Yankee fans, I – We all want to like vent about it, and like venting is good. Like in other things in life, you keep it in, and you boil inside. With sports, we all vent, and it’s actually just like a positive release, and somebody else is listening on the other end and understands and gives examples of it. There's not much stuff that we can vent and do that stuff and have that kind of dialogue so freely with other people, whether it's somebody close or a complete stranger. [00:18:56] BV: You know, Paula, the way to think about it I think is you're going on an emotional ride together, and like all of those components are important. The emotional aspect amplifies the togetherness and vice versa. But ultimately, the celebrating, the commiserating doesn't really matter. It's just the fact that you're going on this ride together. [00:19:14] PF: I love that. I love that. One thing that you talk about is the importance of passing down fandom in your family. Two questions related to that is like why is that so important, and then how do you do that? [00:19:26] DS: Well, the first one, I think the reason it's important, we talked a little bit about the impact that this can have on your relationships with your children or your parents, kind of going both ways. So I think just recognize like in the data, what we see is that relationships are improved or the likelihood of relationship being improved are correlated with fandom. So basically, it’s just a way of trying to kind of stack the odds in your favor to ensure that you have a close relationship with your children or with your parents. Because, again, you come back to just the cadence of communication increases, and that's ultimately good for relationship. The way to do it, Dave and I are kind of like working through this right now. We both have young kids. My son is just kind of getting into it, and he calls every sport on TV baseball, whether it’s baseball or not. He calls every team the Los Angeles Rams, even though the Rams only play football. But it's getting them into the space where they can use sports and create social connections around sports, right? Like that's, I think, ultimately, what you're handing to your kids is a tool that will help them socialize, right? We see. We just did some polling with teens that this all holds true with 13 to 17-year-olds. So if you're a highly engaged sports fan as a teen, you're going to have more friends. You're going to be happier. You're going to do better in school. You're going to have closer relationships with your family. It's not so much the fandom that's doing anything there. It's just the fandom gives you a way to connect with people, and the connections are good for us. If I think about my kids, like one of the things that I want for them is to have close friendships. I think that that's an important to a fulfilled life. By giving them fandom, by kind of indoctrinating them in this school of fandom, what you're doing is giving them a tool that allows them to connect. It increases the likelihood that they will have more robust friend networks, if they're fans. [00:21:08] DS: One more thing of it kind of goes back to the playfulness of sports fandom. There’s not many things as a parent with kids that it doesn't matter. Like there's not an expectation. You have to do these things for school or even if you're playing in a sports team. Or did you work out? Did you prepare? Did you think about these things? It's all freedom sports fandom, and it creates a playfulness within the family that is highly beneficial. [00:21:31] PF: You also say that it can help us build confidence in other people. I found that interesting. What mechanism is at play there to make that happen? [00:21:40] DS: Well, it's all the same mechanism at work, right? You're interacting with people, and you will then kind of view them more positively. So we have several questions that we ask around. How trusting are you of other people? Do you typically trust somebody when you meet them? Or do you not trust them? So as you can predict, that the bigger fan you are, the more trusting you would be of that person, whether you're meeting a stranger. It really just comes down to your interacting with more people, and that exposure to other people [inaudible 00:22:10] them. You’re not always on guard in these interactions because you're happy to walk up to a stranger and talk about the Cowboys. Again, that's good for you. We see this time and again, and then we measured it further in confidence in institutions. How you feel about whether it's the police, the military, religious leaders, the news media, professors, scientists. We see with that that the bigger fan you are, the more confidence you have in those institutions. [00:22:39] BV: I think one way to just sort of sum up everything that Dave just said is a line that we include in the book. Actually, we quote Brene Brown, who I would assume, Paula, you're familiar with. [00:22:48] PF: Most of our listeners are. [00:22:49] BV: I would – Yeah. I guess we're playing to the right audience here. But she has a line that I love, and that resonates with us and really encapsulates a lot of what Dave was just saying, which is it's hard to hate people up close. The idea – [00:22:59] PF: I love that. [00:23:00] BV: Effectively, what we're saying is fandom puts you in a place where you are connecting with more people, both intimate connections, relationships, family, close personal friends, etc. But also just strangers on the street, right? You're going to have those interactions with the barista because she's wearing the Dodgers hat in Los Angeles, and you can have that brief 10-second interaction about the team that's going to impact your day. But it also exposes you to other people, right? It just kind of like helps build that muscle of connecting with other people. Ultimately, that's the thing. That exposure is the thing that changes your worldview. It creates that sense of trust in other people, it creates that sense of confidence in other people, and it just sort of broadens your perspective on the world. [00:23:39] PF: I like that. This is so well researched, and that's what's interesting too. How difficult was it to get research on this, put this all together? [00:23:47] DS: I mean, this is what we do, the research and fielding surveys, conducting focus groups, doing ethnography. So we feature a lot of people in the book that we tell stories about, and those came about. We met them in focus groups. We conducted ethnography, so I wouldn't do – We went into homes with people, with the games with people, with the sports bars. I mean, this is what we do. So we enjoy doing it. We felt like early on, we had an interesting thread to pull on. The book is about just continually pulling on the thread. Fans have more friends. Their measures of wellbeing, it leads to a broadened worldview. All these things just came out through the research that we conducted. [00:24:28] PF: Very interesting. So this is a terrific book. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find you, how they can find a copy of the book. As I let you go, what is it that you hope people take away from reading this book? [00:24:42] BV: I hope that they take away that they should lean into their fandom. If they’re fans themselves already, lean into that. Embrace it. I think maybe more broadly, we take kind of a step back. It's really to – We want to reframe the conversation we have around sports fandom. I think the current cultural conception of sports fans is sort of the obnoxious face painter bro, maybe a little drunk in the stands and making you feel uncomfortable. That person does exist, and that thing does exist. But when we focus exclusively or we frame our conception of fandom exclusively around that person, we miss all of this other connection that's really good for us. So what we want to do is get people to recognize, “Oh, this is actually really good for me,” right? I can lean into it. I can enjoy this. I can use it as a tool. But I should lean into it because it's going to impact my life. Dave on his line earlier, being a sports fan is good for you, good for others, good for society. We want people to recognize that. That's the ultimate takeaway here. [00:25:37] PF: I love it. [00:25:38] DS: It's available for anyone, everyone, young, old, male, female. Sports crosses everything. [00:25:45] PF: Yeah. There's a few sports out there that you can choose from. You can find one. [00:25:48] DS: We have a lot here. Yeah. [00:25:51] PF: Well, I thank you guys so much for sitting down with me. I just – I love this topic. I love the approach that you've taken and the way that you're opening this door that just really hasn't been walked through yet. So thank you so much for the work you're doing and for sitting down and talking with me about it. [00:26:05] BV: Thanks, Paula. It was a lot of fun. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:11] PF: That was Dave Sikorjak and Ben Valenta, authors of the new book, Fans Have More Friends. If you'd like to learn more about their research, follow them on social media, or buy their book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. A reminder that November is gratitude month, and what better way to show your gratitude to others than to gift them with a plate of homemade treats. The Live Happy Store has a brand new giving plate, which you can fill with your favorite treats and share with a neighbor, your kids’ teacher, a coworker, or anyone else in your life whom you'd like to show appreciation to. The poem on our Live Happy giving plate encourages them to continue spreading the joy by doing the same for someone else. You can check it out right now in the Live Happy Store 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. 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: Make Space for Happiness With Tracy McCubbin  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 387 of Live Happy Now. If you're like most people, you probably have a little bit of extra stuff laying around the house. But by the time you finish listening to this episode, you just might be ready to let it go. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week I am joined by decluttering expert, Tracy McCubbin, author of Make Space for Happiness: How to Stop Attracting Clutter and Start Magnetizing the Life You Want. Tracy has some surprising things to say about the relationship between clutter and happiness. And what straightening up the space in your house can do for this space in your head. Check it out. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Tracy, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] TM: Paula, thank you for having me. I love the title of your show. I love it. [00:00:51] PF: Thank you so much. Yeah, it pretty much tells what we're about. [00:00:55] TM: You know, I think there's this – I see it. I'm a professional declutter. I own a decluttering company. And I see with so many of my clients that they are waiting for something to happen to get happy, “Oh, if I get that bigger house, then I can start being happy.” Or, “Oh, if I just get my kids out of middle school, then I can be happy.” And my feeling from my own life is that there's no waiting. It starts now. You're not guaranteed tomorrow. You're not – so much can happen. And so, sort of putting off finding the happiness, I think we waste a lot of time. [00:01:32] PF: We do. And so, that's why we're here. We're here to give the little shortcut. [00:01:36] TM: I love. Happiness hacks. [00:01:38] PF: That's right. That's right. Well, you have several. I've got to say, I spent time with your book over the weekend, and I love everything about it. Because you connect decluttering and happiness in a way that I just have not seen done. And it's so concise. And you simplify it. And I guess before we really dive in, can you tell me how you discovered that connection between clutter and mental health? [00:02:05] TM: Well, I kind of came to being a professional declutterer. I've had my company for 15 years. I have nine people who work for me. We are unbelievably busy. I'm so grateful for all of our clients. But over the years of doing this, I just started to see – I live in Los Angeles. I have a lot of very – like, celebrity clients, and wealthy clients, and all stratas. And I just started to see that there was no correlation between stuff and happiness. And actually, what I really saw is that the more stuff people had, the more burden they are. It wasn't storage units full of stuff, or big giant houses, that wasn't equating happiness. And another component is I'm a child of a hoarder. My dad is an extreme hoarder. Diagnosed. And we're dealing with that right now. I've also watched the extreme end of someone really being a prisoner to their stuff, and how it's affected every relationship in his life. Everything about it. For me, just working with people, and then starting to do my own research like you, like, “Well, how can we be a little happier? What can we do?” And sort of realizing that it comes back to the same principles. Get some exercise. You don't have to run a marathon. Just take a walk around the neighborhood. Move around. Just move your body. Be of service. Help somebody outside of yourself. Connect with your friends. And have a gratitude practice. And know where in that stuff is buy more things. Nowhere in that as shopping will make you happier. [00:03:48] PF: That's such a great point, because how big of a problem is clutter in our world? I mean, when you said you have 15 people working for you? [00:03:57] TM: Yeah, yeah. [00:03:58] PF: Started answering my question right there. [00:04:00] TM: Yeah. Yeah, we are in a clutter crisis. This country especially is in a clutter crisis. And it's a perfect storm of a lot of things. And one of the things that I talked about in the book, Make Space for Happiness, is that what we don't realize today, 2022, that we are being marketed to 24 hours a day. Back in the old days, when I was a kid, I'm 57, there were three TV channels. You knew the commercials came on at 18 minutes. And you kind of knew the drill. And now, we are – commercials marketing to 24/7. And it's also never been easier to shop. You don't even have to put pants on now to go shopping. We're just buying, buying, buying at this breathtaking, breathtaking speed, and we're not any happier. [00:04:56] PF: Yeah. One thing, as I was reading your book, it made me think about how – as a kid, you and I are about the same age. And as a kid growing up, you get the newspaper. And if there was like a sale going on, that was a big deal. Like, Sears has having a sale on something. And now it's like you get the paper every – Okay, what's on sale at Target this week? What's on sale here? There's just a constant barrage of print as well that's hitting you. [00:05:21] TM: Yeah. And we have a thing around our house. I was at the grocery store the other day, and it was like, literally, almost everything was on sale. Buy three, get – And I was like, “Wow! If everything's on sale, nothing's on sale.” That it's sort of this. And also, speaking to you went school clothes shopping. I wasn't getting a new outfit every weekend. You went school clothes shopping. And you got some stuff for holidays and your birthday. But this constant I need, I need, I need, I need something new, it's really flipped our priorities. And so, for me that was taking the jump of working with so many clients. Dealing with my dad. Just going like, “This isn't fixing things. This isn't fixing things.” And look, I say this, I'm not saying that you're never going to shop again. I'm not saying there are some amazing people have done in podcast about not spent money for a year. And I think those are fantastic. I'm not saying that. I'm saying I want us to have an awareness. What are we bringing into our homes? Are we being mindful about it? Are we just shopping and shopping and shopping and shopping? And thinking that it's going to give us happiness? There's a little bit of science – there's a lot of bit of science, around shopping. And what happens, especially if you online shop, is you get a hit of dopamine when you put the thing in your cart and you hit by now. You get a hit of dopamine when the package shows up on your doorstep. You get a hit of dopamine when you open it. You've kind of had these little events where you're like, “Oh, I'm a little happier. I'm a little happier. I'm a little happier.” But it's not sustainable. It doesn't stick around. So, then you're like, “Oh, well, I got to buy more to get that feeling back.” Not unlike that first cookie made me feel good. Maybe the fifth one will make me feel better. You know? And so, it's understanding the shopping, the acquisition cycle, and really seeing what it does to go like, “Oh, right. I'm actually not getting any happiness from that.” And getting a good feeling for a few minutes. One of the things that I want people to realize about clutter, especially about bringing it into your house, is that there are forces working against us. It's not necessarily that you're weak, or that we're lazy, or we're bad housekeepers. It's that we're being told to buy all the time. All the time. And I think when people kind of realize that, they can sort of see their part in it and also not beat themselves up so much. [00:08:05] PF: Mm-hmm. Well, it happens once they look around and they say, “Well, I have all this stuff.” Do they then want to stop? Or do they keep going? Typically, when you're working with people, what happens? [00:08:16] TM: I define clutter as the stuff that gets in the way of what you really want to do. If you want to, every morning, cook yourself a really healthy breakfast so you can start your day off right, but your kitchen counter is covered with appliances that you don't use, and mail, and all this stuff, and it's not set up to cook, then that becomes clutter. If your closet is so stuffed with clothes that getting dressed in the morning literally brings you to tears. I cannot tell you how many people are like, “I cry in the morning.” I'm like, “That's not a good way to start your day.” [00:08:49] PF: No, it's not. [00:08:50] TM: That's when your stuff becomes clutter. It's realizing when it's crossed over, when it's become clutter, and how that clutter is affecting you. Your home should be the place of respite. It should be the place of refilling your well. That you come home, and you sleep, and you nourish yourself, and you connect with your family, or your partner. Or if you're by yourself, you take some downtime. But if you're moving your stuff back and forth laterally to make room for yourself, that is adding stress to you. It's understanding the effect that the clutter has on you. And in this book, it's really about understanding why you're bringing the clutter in. What do you think that's missing? What's the hole inside of yourself that you're trying to magnetize something to fill it? [00:09:38] PF: And one thing in your book, and you identify seven clutter blocks that keep us from getting rid of things that we don't need, we don't want, we don't use. I loved the way that you break those down. Can you talk about those a little bit? [00:09:53] TM: Absolutely. The clutter blocks are the emotional stories we tell ourselves about why we can't let go stuff that we don't want need or use. It's a complicated story. And the funny thing is we all tell ourselves the same story. This ranges from everything from clutter block number one, which is my stuff keeps me stuck in the past. This is maybe you have grown kids, and you still have their rooms exactly the way they were. This may be clothes that you don't fit into anymore. And let's acknowledge, let's acknowledge that there is gravity, and your body is going to change over time. It's going to change over time. Things that you wore 20 years ago, you may not be able to wear anymore. And I see so many people hanging on to that stuff, especially those clothes, “Well, I used to be that size.” And I remember – what that stuff does is tells you that your best days are behind you. [00:10:52] PF: Oh my. Wow! What a powerful way to look at it. [00:10:57] TM: Yeah, that you're not moving forward. Another clutter block is clutter block number three, the stuff I'm avoiding, which is, full disclosure, that is my clutter block. That is I hate to open mail. I hate emails. Everything about being a grown up is really stressful for me. And so, I avoid it. But it doesn't get better. That letter from the IRS, ignoring it is not going to make it better. [00:11:26] PF: I got to confess, that's my thing, too. [00:11:29] TM: Yeah, it's funny. Oftentimes, very productive, successful people fall into this, because they kind of are doing so much other stuff that they don't deal with being a grown up. We got to be a grown up. Another great clutter block, this is one of my favorites, and this came up so much during the pandemic, I'm not worth my good stuff. This is my people who have beautiful things, but don't use them. They don't burn the fancy candle. They don't wear the nice sweater. They're saving for a special occasion. It's always this time down in the future. And what I like to say is use the nice stuff. You're worth it. Even if you're just heating a piece of pizza, put it on the piece of China. Burn the nice candle. Why have all these beautiful things if you don't use them? What are you saving them for? Big part of my company, dClutterfly, our business is that we help families after someone has passed away. We'll help empty out the house. And I cannot tell you how many times I've been in homes where, literally, their wedding presents from 40 years ago that were never opened, that were never used. That they're sort of waiting for that special occasion. And then life comes and goes and they never used it. I'm like use it today. Today is the special day. Today is the special day. Another great one, and I really see this. This is clutter block number six. And I really see this with people, especially women kind of between 40 and 60. We're really starting to kind of get the impact of being the sandwich generation. Still have kids. And your parents are aging. And clutter box number six is trapped with other people's stuff. And this is really about inheriting. Someone has passed away. Someone has gifted you things that you're sort of got all this stuff from someone else and you feel guilty letting go of it. But you have no use for it. I work with people all the time who have rented a storage unit to pay to store the furniture that they don't want from their parents or grandparents, but they can't imagine getting rid of it. They're really trapped in this cycle of holding on to things that they don't – will never use, but can't let go of them. [00:13:53] PF: In that case, you're really dealing with a lot of guilt, aren't you? [00:13:58] TM: Yeah, so much guilt. So much guilt. And what I really say, this one, is start to have the conversations now. Everyone is so nervous, or they think it's morbid, or it's too emotional to talk about what happens when someone passes. But I am very big on getting your house in order, getting your stuff in order. Telling people what really is valuable. Not what's imagined valuable. Who you want to have stuff? I have a lot of my – I call them my little old lady clients. They're sort of 85 and above. And they're at their last chapter. And they're enjoying it. And they have started – I see more and more. They're starting to give their jewelry away now before they pass with the idea being – And one of my first clients said it to me. She was like, “I'm never going to wear this ring again. I can't get it on my fingers. But I want to see my granddaughter wear it.” I don't want to wait until I'm gone. I'm going to go to lunch with her and see it on her finger and know that she's enjoying it. And so, I think that we, when this generation starts to do that, accept it. Understand. Don't shy away from it. Really know, “Oh, they're celebrating. And this is something that we can share together.” [00:15:16] PF: I love that. And you don't have to wait until you're 85 to do that, right? [00:15:19] TM: Nope. No, no, no. My niece just went up to visit my mom. And she's like, “Nana was giving me all this stuff. What does that mean?” And I was like, “Because Nana doesn't need it anymore. Nana's retired. Take the cute clothes. She wants to enjoy it with you.” I think that if you're out there, and you're listening, and you're trapped with other people's stuff, remember this. You don't really want this stuff. You want the connection to the person who's passed. And so, we think by keeping all the stuff, we're going to keep the connection. And what I say is, if you're keeping more stuff than you're comfortable with, if you're keeping stuff and it's a financial burden, if your garage is full of stuff, you start to actually lessen the connection because you start to get resentful. And so, what I'm saying is maybe you just keep a small amount so that you can truly be happy. And when you look at it, you remember that person enjoying. Not like, “Ugh! I have a $400 a month storage in it full of my grandma's furniture. You know? That really honor that connection. I think that people are so – they think they have to keep everything. And it really becomes a burden. I mean, it's called trapped with other people's stuff for a reason. That people are really stuck. And I do gently joke with my clients, because they're like, “I don't know how I'm going to get rid of this. My mom would be so mad.” And I was like, “I've been doing this for a long time. No one has ever come back from the great beyond to be mad at you about –” And I feel like if people – Honestly, if people – If you were able to, let's say, have an hour with someone who passed away just by magic, they would want you to be happy. They wouldn't want you to be burden. They wouldn't – I really know this with all my heart, because they’re at the end with so many people. And so, if you're in this, if you're trapped with this, just change your lens on it. Just look at it a little bit of a different way. Would that person really want you to be beholden to their stuff? [00:17:28] PF: Yeah. Yeah, because you tell a really compelling story in the book about the woman had a whole storage unit full of precious moments, figurines, and it was costing money, and it was creating problems in her marriage. [00:17:40] TM: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That she was paying to store these things that were her mother's. And she had a very fraught relationship with her mother. And she was like, “Well, this was so important to her.” But it was really financially a big burden to them. And so, here she was financially putting her and her husband. And they were trying to start a family. They were trying to do all these things. And they have this giant storage bill for stuff that she didn't even want. And so, it's like she had to get real with what she was doing and the choices that she was making. And that those precious memories weren't her precious memories. [00:18:15] PF: Right. And so, how big a shift is it? Because it's not as simple as you sitting down with someone and saying, “Okay, here's what you're going to do.” And then they say, “Oh, that works.” And now everything's fine. How big a shift is it to turn around? Because we didn't get into this spot overnight. [00:18:33] TM: Well, I’ll use my favorite expression. Rome was not cluttered in a day. I think that it's a shift. It's a mindset shift for sure. And I think to start – before you even start decluttering, before you even get into it, the most important thing is to figure out why. Why do you want to make this change? Because the change will never stick if you don't have a compelling why. Do you want to declutter and have less stuff because you want to have friends over for dinner and feel comfortable at that? Do you want to be able to shut the door and go on vacation and not worry about it? Do you want to downsize to a smaller house? What is your why? And notice, in all of those whys that I list, it's never about, “Well, I want to just be a good housekeeper.” It’s not what it's about, right? It's just not there. And it's not about the shame. It's about what's the positive actionable thing that you hope to do by having less stuff? One of my favorite phone calls I ever got from a client, she had a cute little apartment, but the stuff had taken over. She had two bedrooms in it that she couldn't use. She hadn't had friends over in I think she said like 10 years. And so, we decluttered. And she did great. And a couple of weeks after we worked together, she called me and she said, “A friend of mine called me and said, “Hey, I'm just down the street. Do you want to meet for coffee?” And she said in the first time in 10 years, “I could have them come over to my house and have coffee.” And she said, “The joy that that brought me, that I wasn't like rushing to meet them at a coffee shop, or embarrassed about my house.” She said it changed everything. [00:20:25] PF: That’s amazing. [00:20:26] TM: Yeah. That for me is what's your why? Why do you want to go on this journey? And you know, Paula, it can also simply be as simple as like I just want a little empty space. I just want a little corner to breathe. I just want some peace. Right? It can be that. And so, it's definitely click into your why. Go easy on yourself. Start small. Be aware of why you've held on to the clutter. Why you're bringing the clutter in. Just start to make some changes. And don't be a weekend warrior. Don't think you're going to get it done in one weekend. It’s just not. You're just not. I think we got to go a little easier on ourselves. [00:21:14] PF: And then how do we remind ourselves about our goals and our purpose in this journey? Because just like a diet, or an exercise program, you can get gung ho at the beginning, and then get off track. [00:21:27] TM: You know, sometimes it's as simple as writing it out on a piece of paper and sticking at your desk where you see it every day. It's some visual reminder. It's also when you do declutter, like, let's say you do a shelf in your linen closet, or you do the junk drawer in your kitchen, take a moment to see how good that feels. When that the next time you've got to go find a rubber band, you know exactly where they are and they're not old, broken ones. Go like, “Oh, right. That's why I wanted to get decluttered, because it works. This just made my life easier.” If you celebrate those wins, if you celebrate how it feels and the change that came out of it, then the behavioral change starts to stick. [00:22:09] PF: That's terrific. And what about, at the top of the show, we talked about the constant marketing? The emails? The text alerts? All these things? How do we kind of put a bubble around ourselves to minimize or eliminate as many of those as we can? [00:22:27] TM: I think it's understanding, especially around social media. Look, I love social media, I have a big Instagram and TikTok presence. I love connecting with people. I do these five things you can declutter in under five-minute challenges. It's great. But also, having literacy, media literacy and understanding it's still a sales platform. People are still selling to you. Somebody went said to me about television years ago. They said, “Oh, the shows, we're just the filler between the commercials.” You know? And so, I think it's having literacy and understanding, “Oh, right, that influencer is not my friend. I may like them, but they're not.” Even though it looks like it's my girlfriend saying to me, “Oh, try this thing. That's not the case.” And so, understanding the reality of it, right? Understanding the cycle of acquisition. When you order something online, “Bing!” You get a dopamine hit when you buy it. The next day, “Bing!” When it shows up on your doorstep, you get a dopamine hit, “Bing!” It’s this. And that dopamine hit doesn't last. So, you're like, “Oh, I got to buy more to get it again.” Just really understanding what – just educating yourself. Like, everything, right? Educating yourself. How can you – when you understand, “Oh, these things can hack my happiness.” One of the most fascinating things, they did a study, and I think at Yale. And they found out, if you write a handwritten thank you note, you raise your serotonin for 30 days. [00:24:14] PF: Oh, my gosh! [00:24:16] TM: One handwritten note, you raise your serotonin for 30 days. That's amazing. Like, amazing, amazing, amazing. [00:24:26] PF: That’s a heck of a payoff for one night. [00:24:27] TM: It’s a heck of a payoff. And if you think about that, happiness hack, that not only are you raising your own serotonin, but you're also doing it for someone who gets the note, right? You're being of service. You're having a gratitude practice. It’s those little things that makes such a big difference. [00:24:48] PF: Yeah. And let's talk, because I know I have to let you go, but I don't want to. Talk about the payoff in this of reducing clutter and what it does for our happiness? Because you spelled it out so beautifully in your book. Can you tell us that? [00:25:03] TM: Absolutely. First of all, on the kind of simplest scientific clutter equals stress. They’ve proven it. They've done millions of studies. Visual clutter, it raises our cortisol levels. And women especially, and especially women who are perimenopause and menopausal, it is – You know, it's a real thing, this cortisol. It's kind of where the tummy comes from. And more clutter raises your stress. The other important piece of information is that every piece of clutter in your house is a decision you have to make. Do I want this? Where does it live? Will I ever use it? Do I spend too much money for it? And all of those constant decisions put you in decision fatigue, which is basically your brain is just tired of making decisions. So, what will default to making bad decisions. If you think about the science of this clutter, it's definitely working against you. This isn't – I really want people to take this in. This isn't about being a perfect housekeeper. This isn't about looking like a page from Pinterest. This is about creating a home that supports you. A home that makes you happy. [00:26:22] PF: And everybody has a different level of what they consider cluttered. And I have a friend who is very proud of being a maximalist. And I'm very much of a minimalist. And for her, it's not stressful. It stresses me out to go to her house, but she's great with it. Different people do have kind of like this different barometer of what they consider clutter, right? [00:26:45] TM: Of course. Yeah. And like in our house, my partner, his kids are older. I don't have kids. We're two people. But if I go into a house where there's a family of five, it's a very different amount of stuff. That's why there's no recipe for, “Oh, you should only have 30 books. And oh, you should only –” No. What works for you. But the caveat to that is, is it really working for you? [00:27:09] PF: Right? [00:27:10] TM: Is it really working for you? If you walk in your closet in the morning to get dressed, and you burst into tears, I'm going to tell you, it's not working for you. And that's another thing on the decluttering journey that I tell people, is just spend a day or two going through your house, living your life, and seeing where the log jam happens. Where are you not cooking a healthy meal because the kitchen is too cluttered? Is your bathroom full of expired makeup? And all that kind of stuff. Where's the log jam? And start there. [00:27:47] PF: That's terrific. Tracy, you have so much we can learn from you. I really am excited to tell our listeners about your book. We're going to tell them how to get your book. How to follow you on social media, because they can get all kinds of tips and great advice that way. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Because like I said, you've just got a lot that we can learn from you. [00:28:07] TM: Thank you. I love it. I love connecting with people. And I really love connecting with people who are on a happiness journey, and realizing that so much of it is in our own hands. And there are things – Look, life is hard. We just got through – I don't know if it'll ever be replicated in my lifetime what we just went through, you know? And so, the things that we can do within our power to bring ourselves and our community a little more happiness, I think we got to be both feet in. I think we got to – how can I make my world a little bit better? [00:28:45] PF: Yeah. And this is such a great way. It's simple. Not necessarily easy, but it can be done. [00:28:52] TM: Exactly. [00:28:55] PF: That was Tracy McCubbin, author of Make Space for Happiness: How to Stop Attracting Clutter and Start Magnetizing the Life You Want. If you'd like to learn more about Tracy, follow her on social media, or download a free chapter from her book, 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 Phelps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]