Search Results for: giving

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming Unhappiness at Work With Greg Kettner [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 439 of Live Happy Now. If you aren't loving your life at work, you're not alone. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with Greg Kettner, Founder of the organization WorkHappy and an expert in workplace well-being. New research shows that workers are the unhappiest they've been in years, and Greg's here to talk with me about why we're becoming less happy on the job, what it means to our mental health, and what we can do to make things better. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:35] PF: Hey, Greg. Thanks for coming back. [00:00:38] GK: Hey, Paula. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you. It's been a couple months. But, yes, life is good. It's always good to see your face. [00:00:44] PF: That's so awesome. Well, so new study is out and the first thing I thought – okay, two things popped in my mind when I read it. First was like, “Man, that's really sad.” The other one was like, “I need to talk to Greg about this.” [00:00:56] GK: Well, good. [00:00:58] PF: As you know, that's what I did. I reached out, and I wanted to talk to you because this study, it's telling us that workers are the unhappiest that they've been in three years. Then when you trace that back and it's like three years ago, we were in a pandemic, and we were all pretty miserable. So when we say we're less happy than we were then, that's a sad state of things. I guess for starters, before we talk about the why, does that kind of line up with what you're seeing in the work that you do? [00:01:25] GK: Yes. I think we all went in hunkered down, and it was brand new, right? Nobody knew what to do. Are we working from home? How do we work from home, right? I mean, remember Skype. I mean – [00:01:37] PF: Who had Skype anyway? What? [00:01:40] GK: Now, Zoom is a verb, right? [00:01:42] PF: That's it. [00:01:43] GK: So now, we've learned how to go through it. But now, people are struggling with I have to bring my employees back to the office. Or employees are like, “I don't want to go back. I enjoy working on my pajamas and getting my work done.” So it is. I'm finding the same thing that people are just like, “I want to do meaningful and purposeful work and do something that's going to mean something, not just a paycheck anymore.” [00:02:09] PF: So do you think that's a big part of what's driving this dissatisfaction? Because I noticed in the study, they talked about it's not like the ups and downs that we used to have with work where it's like, “I'm really mad at my boss.” It’s just a complete apathy and disinterest. [00:02:24] GK: Yes. I think also, too, people have kind of had more time and even me personally, right? I got a phone call two weeks in the pandemic, and my boss was like, “We've taken away your job. You're no longer essential.” [00:02:38] PF: Which is everybody wants to hear that. I'm nonessential. [00:02:42] GK: I go, “If I'm going down, I'm going down.” So I'm like, “Well, I think you're nonessential, right? [00:02:47] PF: I'm not nonessential. You are. [00:02:50] GK: He felt that he could save money by eliminating my position, and I was mad. I was like no fault of my own. I had increased sales. I had done everything that he’d ask, and here I was. But looking back three years, I took the lemons and made lemonade and transitioned like a lot of people did. Now, I'm helping people. How do we work happy, whether we are back in the office or working remote? It is a struggle for a lot of people. [00:03:18] PF: Yes. Do you think there are people who feel like they might have missed that window to reinvent themselves, and they've now – instead of doing as you did, you were kind of forced into a situation where you had to make a change, and you created basically your dream job. I know other people have done similar things. Do you think people who didn't take that opportunity are feeling depressed and trapped in their old jobs? [00:03:44] GK: Yes. For sure, right? Because they look back and going, “Well, Greg's doing it. Paula's doing it? Why am I not, right?” You missed the boat. Some of it is the older workforce, they were getting towards retirement. They didn't know how to pivot, right? I mean, I'm on the older end, too, right? Whereas my daughter who's 18 would show me how to use Zoom, right? So I have that advantage. But I think that is a lot of people like, “Well, I guess I missed my boat. I've got 5 to 10 years left. Let's just keep our head down and keep grinding.” That's no way to work. [00:04:18] PF: How dangerous is that for us to stay in that kind of a work mode? Because work constitutes such a huge part of our day. Then whether we're unhappy or happy, it affects how we go into that night, which then sets up the following day. So for us to stay in a mode where it's like, “I'll just suck it up and hate what I do,” what does that do to us? [00:04:42] GK: Well, it brings us down. It's not good for our mental health, right? You get in that spiral and in the mindset. There's ways to deal with that depression, right? I mean, a lot of people who work really hard, they turn to the bottle. I've done that before myself, and that's one way to get rid of like, “Uh, my job sucks.” But the other way is want to take the other approach and do meditation or get a hobby or increase your friends, right? One of the biggest predictabilities of happy people at work are the friends that they have, right? If you have one or two good friends at work, life is much better because you have those people to confide with. You can go to lunch with them. You can talk about your problems or your successes, that kind of thing. Yes. If you don't do something, it's a long 5 to 10 years if you're miserable at work. [00:05:33] PF: Yes. Those friendships at work are everything. I know, especially in my 20s and 30s, that's where my friend group came from. I'm still friends with people in my very first newspaper job. We were little hooligans, and we're still friends and basically because we know where all the bodies are buried. But blackmail can be a great bonding experience. But that is. We had such great times. We had such a great friendship. Even though we were getting paid dirt, and we didn't like the kind of stories we’re were having to write, we had a great time. That changes that whole experience. [00:06:11] GK: Yes. The happiest I've ever been at work were jobs where I did have good friends, where we loved what we did, and it necessarily wasn't money. Because I've had jobs that have paid more money but I wasn't happy. I was just reading a study a couple of weeks ago where people now would rather felt like their voices heard, that they matter, a pat on the back, congratulations. Those kinds of things versus a $10,000 raise. [00:06:37] PF: Which is stunning because we used to really think about the money, and that was our measure of success. What changed? What has changed that mindset a little bit? [00:06:45] GK: I just think we came to a realization during the pandemic that anything can happen to us, right? I know that as horrible as it was, I tended or tried to stay on the positive side, and I did well. But there were days of overwhelm and whatnot. But just being in the mindset of I'm here to serve. I'm here to help other people. It's just amazing how much better we feel. Then that leads, obviously, as you know, into our personal lives, into our families, into our spouses, into our kids, right? If we come home from work and we're all grumpy, well, then your family's going to be grumpy. Our friends are going to be grumpy. It spirals. [00:07:22] PF: Now, what practices do you use or do you recommend? Because I think you don't come home from work grumpy anymore. But what do you recommend when someone – when you have a bad day, it is hard to detach from that, to disengage and reset yourself. Do you have any tips that you offer people of if you're in a situation, you don't like your job? You're trying to get out of it, but you're not there yet. How can they do that? How can they do that little reset before they walk in the door and bring down the entire house? [00:07:49] GK: Yes. No. I think it's whether meeting someone after work or going and doing something. I like to golf. So if I have a bad day and when I pick Becky up, and she's like, “Ooh, do you need to go golfing tonight,” right? I mean, you can – but golfing, to me, I usually go by myself, just because I like the solace of it but just doing stuff like that. But in the morning, it's a routine, right? I get up and I exercise and I like to exercise before I do my meditation and my breathing because it gets me in the right frame of mind, right? It gets the endorphins going. So I'm feeling better already. Another thing is I don't check my phone until eight o'clock, until I start working, or my email. Whatever it is, right? Because you can spend hours, and I'm just as guilty of it. Now, I'm keeping my phone in the office. When I go to bed, I got an Alexa that wakes me up in the morning but not the doom scrolling, right? But it's doing little things. I have ADHD, so I'm all over the map. But I never thought I would be able to meditate, and I started out. I went to YouTube, and there was a three-minute meditation. Man, that first one was so long. [00:09:00] PF: Yes, the longest three minutes of your life. [00:09:04] GK: Right? I know I was nowhere near meditation because meditation is trying to get your mind to think of nothing. But now, I'm up to 20 minutes every morning. [00:09:12] PF: Oh, wow. That’s incredible. So it's a practice, right? But if we do the right things and then we have to do brief. Some people, it's journaling. Some people, it's going for a walk. Some people, it's just listening. Now that I'm married, I've learned how to listen instead of fix things, and that's so much better, whether I'm the one who's listening or Becky is the one who's listening, when I've had a rough day as well, too, right? It's that release valve. It's like a pressure cooker. Take the lid off for a bit, talk about it, and you're just like, “Ooh, okay.” The rest of the evening is going to go better. [00:09:43] PF: That's terrific. So what about people who are still working at home? Because I know there are some really interesting findings from Gallup about remote employees, and that's getting a lot of attention right now. Basically, it's saying that remote workers are feeling very disconnected from their workplace, from their mission, and the purpose. That brings up, too, what you were talking about having your friend at work. If you're not going to work and you're working remotely, even if you have banter on Slack or something like that, it's not the same. So you don't have that connection. So I want to talk about how you can deal with that. Then it's like why is – since remote working, we're looking at that as being this next big thing. How are we going to get through this feeling of disconnection? [00:10:25] GK: Yes. Well, I've certainly felt that, right? I'm an extrovert. So I sit in my room all day, in my office here. My wife is inverted, and she's going into the bank and working, right? So she has all the people, I don't, and our personalities are completely different. So what I've been doing twice a week, I will set up lunches or coffees with a friend, right? Even if it's just a half hour, I go talk to them, get out of the house. But I also – I set my phone for 45 minutes. Every 45 minutes, it goes off, and I get up, and I go outside, and I walk for 15 minutes or change laundry or whatever it is. But when we're at our desk – and you know this well, too. You work from home a lot as well. We're sitting here sedentary, and that's not good for our health or mental health, so whether it's getting up and going and seeing a friend. The other thing is be more intentional about getting together. My brother is a psychologist. He just wrote an article about how men are feeling more lonely even than women are, right? Because women are really good at connecting. Guys are good at getting together, watching football, and drinking beer. But being more intentional, right? Maybe it's have a couple buddies over and cook burgers with them if it's during the summer and spend time because we are humans. I know AI is taking over everything. Legitimately, there's reason for concern. But AI is never going to replace a hug or a conversation or a laugh or a pat on the back, right? So we still need to do those things. If we're working from home, try and have that outlet, those two or three friends that you can get out once a week or a couple times a week and be social again. [00:12:07] PF: Then what do you do if you're remote working and you don't really feel connected with anyone on your work team? Again, how do you start creating connections at work when you're not at work? [00:12:20] GK: Yes. That's tough. Again, I just have to go back to be more intentional. Maybe even reach out outside of work. Maybe it's a phone call or a coffee or get together. I've had really good success with connecting with people. As you know, I started the group on The HumorLab on Facebook. I came up with it one night at the beginning of the pandemic, and it's been really helpful for me because people reach out saying, “Thank you so much. I work at home all day long, but I checked The HumorLab, and there's no political stuff.” It's HR-friendly. It's PG-13 because I wanted my kid to see it and my mom. But now, there's over 40,000 people sharing their sense of humor. So it's a think tank. When we laugh together, it creates bonds. [00:13:07] PF: Well, that brings up a great point because that is one thing I've done in remote workspaces. I've got a company that I work with, and we use a Slack channel, too, for all our communication. Of course, we've got like the random channel and the humor channel. That is a great way. There's a pets channel, so people put pictures of their pets. So that is a really good way to kind of like, one, show your personality and be able to share that with people. Through doing that, I found people in that group that I know I connect with. Like I can see, okay, I have a similar sense of humor. I can – that person didn't turn me into HR, so I guess I can connect with him or whatever it is. But that is. As you bring that up, that really is a great tool to be able to use remotely to connect through humor because talk about what a great connector humor can be, especially in the workplace. [00:13:57] GK: Yes. It’s great, right? It takes [inaudible 00:13:59]. It releases the endorphins. A powerful example for our family, my stepdaughter lost her dad to suicide 5 years ago. Two days before, we had gone and seen a Brian Regan concert about 45 minutes from here. She loves Brian Regan, and through my connections, we were able to do a backstage meet and greet with him and stuff. So we found out two days later that her stepdad had passed away. It was, obviously, very traumatic for all of us. I remember distinctly about two weeks after, we were sitting around the dinner table, and Rachel started crying, and then Becky started crying, and then I started crying. My default is to humor. When I feel awkward or emotional, I'm like, “Okay, I need to laugh.” So I said, “You know what? Time out. We're going to go sit down.” We put on Brian Regan. Within 10 minutes, we're all laughing. It didn't get rid of the pain, but it got us through this, and it bonded us, right? So time to time, all the time, we pull up Brian Regan. It takes us back, and it makes us laugh, and it created a bond between me and my stepdaughter that I may not have had had we not gone to that show. [00:15:04] PF: That's terrific. Yes. Humor is – it can just really be such a powerful bonding tool. I know a lot of times in the office, it might be dark humor. Maybe what you've done is you've banded together against the evil overlords that are commanding our workplace. But that really is a great tool for helping it. [00:15:23] GK: Yes, yes. Well, the saying is laughter is the best medicine. Unless you have diarrhea, then probably not. It’s probably not your best choice. [00:15:34] PF: I love that. So who's responsible for turning this whole work dissatisfaction thing around? Does it have to come from leaders? Is it – what do we as workers do? Where do we start? Because, obviously, if you read a recent Newsweek article about hybrid working, it's a mess. If you read the study that you and I are talking about, it's a mess. The study that Gallup just had their findings about remote employees, it's like nobody's happy. It doesn't matter whether they're in the office, working at home, or doing a combination. The research would indicate that nobody is happy at work, except maybe you and me. [00:16:09] GK: Yes. [00:16:10] PF: So where do we start turning that big ship around before it becomes the Titanic? [00:16:14] GK: Well, happiness is an inside job, right? I can do things that make you happy. We can get on the phone. We're smiling. We're having a good time. But if you were in a bad mood or if I was in a bad mood, I can't go, “Hey, Paula. Snap out of it,” right? That's a choice that we have to make ourselves. I think it can go from top and bottom. Obviously, it's easier. If you have a manager that is happy-go-lucky and in the right frame of mind, it disseminates through everybody. But it can boil up as well, too. I've had jobs where I did not appreciate my manager. But what I did was connected really well with my teammates, and we would laugh and have fun. We go out for lunch. We do different things. So we became a bond and a team. Even though our manager wasn't the most – he was prickly. Let's put it that way. [00:17:03 PF: That’s nice. [00:17:03] GK: Right? So we were still able to work happy because we knew that it came from within. Whatever he did, yes, it was part of the job. But when he went home, we didn't worry about it. Just because somebody else isn't happy, it doesn't mean that I have to be unhappy and fall in their footsteps. [00:17:20] PF: That's a huge skill to develop, to be able to leave it like that, to say that is their thing, and I don't have to take it home with me. What are some tools that you can give us to be able to implement that kind of thinking? Because it's just human nature to be like, “Man, he was on my butt all day about this. I'm mad at him.” Then all night, it's like, “I should have said this, and why doesn't this happen to him?” Just it eats and eats and eats away from you. So how do you do that, where you kind of say, “No, his deal, not mine. I'm going on. I'm going to be happy.” [00:17:52] GK: Yes. I think it's a learned trait over time. I, obviously, wasn't born that way, and it took me a long time to figure it out. But another thing that we can do, even if you don't like your boss, try taking them out for lunch or her or whatever. Showing kindness, right? Maybe they've got something going on in their life, and it's coming down at work, right? Maybe he's not happy with his marriage, or his kids aren't in school, whatever that might be, that dynamic, right? But if you try and reach out, and you have to, obviously, be careful what you do, especially in this day and age with often politics. But maybe it's having a conversation or saying, “Hey, I had an idea. Why don't the whole team go out and watch a comedy show one night, right?” So everybody's paying for their own ticket, their own drinks or whatever. But, again, you're all sitting around the same kind of table, and you're having fun. Most people, when you're out, and you want to have fun and be friendly and converse, most people, I don't know what the right word is, but will lean into that, right? You're not going to have a manager go to a comedy club with you and just sit there with his arm crossed and be grumpy. If he is – [00:19:00] PF: Hopefully not. [00:19:00] GK: It means you got to call him out, right? [00:19:03] PF: Exactly, yes. [00:19:04] GK: It's doing those things, right? If he's not or they're not leading the way they should be, maybe we can level up and say, “Hey, this is how it is to be happy,” and maybe they'll take notice. Some people won't. At that point, at some point, you need to say, “Is this worth my health? Is this worth my family time?” But I always caution people, if you are starting to look for another job, don't quit. It's always easier to find a job when you have a job, right? [00:19:31] PF: Yes, yes. We talked earlier. I think before we had started recording, we were talking about people not having a sense of purpose and how much that affected work. I want you to talk a little bit about that, and then how we can use that drive to find purpose, to start something on the side that may or may not turn into our business, may or not turn into our next endeavor. But before we talk about how to leverage it, talk about how important it is to feel that your job has meaning. [00:19:59] GK: It's very important. It's night and day. It has been for me. One of the best corporate jobs that I ever had, I was working in the National Hockey League selling tickets. I grew up in Canada. See Gretzky's jersey behind me. It was a fun job. It was a high-stress job. But there were times where it was fun, but it wasn't my purpose because I've always been a happy-go-lucky, and I love making people happy, right? So my purpose is to help other people be happy like I am, right? So if you can find a job that matches your purpose. Not everybody's going to do that, but maybe your purpose is service. But if you're a computer programmer, how are you going to service people writing code? If your purpose is serving others, maybe it's finding a group that you can go volunteer. We have a group here in town. Every fourth Sunday, it's a bunch of dudes. We get together, and we cook dinner at the Christian Aid Center for homeless people. It's giving people purpose because there's older guys who are retired. Some guys bring their kids. It’s showing them that serving other people can be your purpose. So work doesn't necessarily have to align with your purpose. If it doesn't, find an avenue that you can still share your purpose because for the first time over the last three years, first time in my life, I've been chasing my passion versus chasing the paycheck. It’s made a huge difference on my mental health. It's made a big difference in my marriage, my relationship with my kid, and with my friends. [00:21:29] PF: Yes. If someone says, “That sounds incredible, but I don't know what my purpose is,” where do we start? Because that happens, too. You lose – one, your purpose can change throughout your lifetime. [00:21:40] GK: Oh, absolutely. [00:21:41] PF: Then, two, it's like you realize you're so locked down into your job and your routine and your pressures and obligations that you're not even sure what your purpose is. So where do you start when you're at that point? Because once you find that, that can override a lot of your dissatisfaction. Even if you just figure out, wow, this is my purpose, and this is what I can do, you've made this huge leap in mindset. So where do you start discovering that? [00:22:10] GK: Simon Sinek. I'm a huge fan, right? Simon Sinek, I got his book and went through the workbook, Find Your Why, which is really great. But I think also, too, is be more selfish, right? Because how can I serve other people if I'm not taking care of myself? So what do I need, whether it's meditation or listening to podcasts, reading books, talking with people like you? That gets me in the right frame of mind, and that's my purpose. So not 100% of what I do lines up with my purpose. But when I did find it, I can now – that's my North Star, and everything is starting to line and go towards that. But take some time and do some self-discovery, whether it's journaling or like I said. I mean, another person I started following during the pandemic was Jay Shetty, right? He took three years out and became a monk to learn how to serve other people. [00:23:03] PF: That’s such an incredible story. [00:23:05] GK: Yes. Now, his purpose is to make education go viral. Who would ever thought of that? [00:23:10] PF: So in doing that, you talk about journaling. Is it really a case of sitting down and just writing about what do I want to do, asking yourself the questions? Or where do you go with that? Where do you start discovering what you're – [00:23:21] GK: Well, when I read the book or either read it or listened to it on Audible, the Find Your Why, I went through that process and took my time. But now, I still journal, and the journaling that really helps me is when I get frustrated, right? A deal goes sideways or a friend or my wife or my kid, and something's not aligned. I will just sit down and just start writing. It is amazing how much of that crap you can get out of your head by putting pen to paper. Sometimes, when I'm stressed out, I would just start writing. I was like, “Whoa.” I never realized how much that was affecting me, right? It's almost like going to a therapist, but it's just you in a room. But it's amazing, whether it's 5 or 10 minutes a day. But journaling has really helped me as well, too. [00:24:08] PF: I think it's surprising what your higher self will tell you, instruct – you realize. You look back and you read it and you realize, “Oh, I already had this answer. I just wasn't asking myself that question.” It comes out, and it starts developing some clarity. That is also effective for dealing with a frustrating work situation, beyond finding your purpose. But just how am I going to manage it? That is a great way to handle those conflicts and pressures at work. [00:24:36] GK: Yes. Whether you're in the office or at home, if you have a disagreement with your boss or somebody at work, you sit down and journal and write about it for 5 or 10 minutes. It's way more productive than having an argument or saying something that you're going to regret, right? Because you can say whatever you want in your journal. You can tell your boss where to go and how to get there and how fast. If you did that face to face, you're looking for another job very quickly. [00:25:04] PF: When you're journaling, you might be, “That is really funny, and I'm actually going to use that on him when he does fire me.” So you always keep those nuggets. [00:25:14] GK: Yes, exactly. [00:25:16] PF: So with everything that's going on and all the things, you're seeing all the things we're reading, the things we've been talking about. Do you still have hope for the workplace that we can turn this into a happy work world? [00:25:28] GK: I do. I'm an extreme Optimist. I know we can do it. It's going to take a lot of work. But it's a lot easier to work happy than to work sad, right? [00:25:38] PF: True, true. [00:25:39] GK: When we're in a good mood. I mean, anybody, if you're in a good mood, life is great. Things are good. I'm going on vacation, all those kinds of things. But we can. It's just a matter of figuring out what works for us, what works for our companies. Some companies, they need to have people back in the office. Some people are okay with – I had an issue with my bank the other day, and I called in. This guy was in the call center, but he was in his house, 150 miles away from the bank. So there are jobs that you can do that. If that's what you want, if you want to stay at home, maybe take the next three months and come up with a plan on finding a job, something that you like to do, and that is remote because there's a job for everybody out there now. [00:26:22] PF: I love it. I love it. I'm going to come for yours. [00:26:25] GK: Okay. Well, and you do the same thing with the podcast. It's great. I listen to it when I'm on the road. I'm like, “Oh, Paula. Thank you. You made me happy today.” [00:26:37] PF: Yes. You'll shoot me a text sometimes, and that just makes my day whenever you do that. [00:26:40] GK: Yes, right? The one I remember I was driving, I think, from Vancouver to Seattle. It was about some gal who was a teacher, and now she's helping parents who are having kids at home, and they're teaching their kids, right? She's got the toolbox and everything else. So it's being creative. We're no longer stuck to a nine-to-five job. We can do what we want. I mean, look at all the people on Etsy that are doing what they love, right? Turn your passion into profit. [00:27:08] PF: Yes. I love it. I love it. There are so many resources out there for people now of like how to do that. It’s not like you're walking blindly anymore. So there's a lot of ways to do it. I love it. I hope that people feel encouraged to start looking at not just thinking I'm going to quit my job but that positive inside of it. Like that dissatisfaction is actually about finding your purpose, and finding what does make you happy, and being able to live a purposeful life, and get paid for it. [00:27:37] GK: Absolutely. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:43] PF: That was Greg Kettner, talking about happiness at work. If you'd like to learn more about Greg, check out his podcast, or follow him on social media, just visit us 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 happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating The Purest Bond With Jen Golbeck [INTRO] [00:00:08] PF: Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Derrenbacher, presented by Live Happy. We know that the bonds we have with our pets are special, but today's guest may have you thinking about that connection on a deeper level. Jen Golbeck is the creator of social media's popular channel, The Golden Ratio, dedicated to sharing photos and videos of her rescued golden retrievers. With her new book, The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, she provides the science behind those incredible bonds and offers new insight into how we can use that information to improve our relationships with our own animals. Listen in as Jen and Brittany talk about how our pets can improve our well-being, as well as our community. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:53] BD: Hi, Jen. [00:00:54] JG: Hey, Brittany. How are you? [00:00:55] BD: Good. It was so interesting because when we were looking for guests for the show, I was just looking on Amazon for books that were coming out. I saw your book and was just immediately drawn in because of the cover and the topic. But when I started reading your book, I realized that I had already followed you on Instagram. Yes. So tell us a little bit about The Golden Ratio. [00:01:23] JG: Yes. So we rescue special needs Goldens, so a lot of seniors, medical cases, hospice cases, usually. Occasionally, somebody else sneaks in there. We've been doing that since – I guess 2016 is really when we grew from having a couple dogs in an occasional foster to four and five and six and sometimes seven. But, yes, it was after the 2016 presidential election, and like everybody was angry online, regardless of who they voted for. It was also the same time as Brexit, so everyone there was angry. I was like I just need a corner of the Internet to take a break from all of this. I couldn't really find it, and I was, “Well, poor Golden Retrievers,” at the time. Like that's happy. So I started posting them, and it really resonated with people, both for kind of a wholesome little piece of online life and then also following the stories as we would take in senior dogs or dogs that came from really traumatic backgrounds and rehab them. I think everybody likes to see that really hopeful story unfold over time, see them get better, see them live their great life. Even if it’s a hospice case, where we know that we don't have a lot of time with them, to see them like get their first swim in the ocean or their first KONG and have a good couple months, even if that's all they have left. I think it feels a need for people. [00:02:44] BD: I love this. So I have the same background as you in the same year that my husband and I started our special needs rescue. It’s breed-specific with Boston Terriers. How long until you really started brainstorming writing this book? [00:02:58] JG: So I had off and on thought about it because now across all the platforms, we have close to a million followers. It's like a 100,000 on Instagram. I was finding that we were getting a lot of people coming to us for questions often around end-of-life issues or treating medical things. But also like as a scientist, my area of expertise isn't animal science, but I have always followed these stories about the benefits that we get in our life from having dogs and read those articles. But it was really the pandemic, early in lockdown, when everybody started rescuing dogs and bringing them in that I started talking with my agent, my book agent, to be like, “You know, there's a book here about this idea where we can really share that science but also the really uplifting stories of how dogs have helped people in their lives and put that together in a happy book, which I feel like we don't have a ton of happy books coming out lately.” So it was a great opportunity, and the pandemic kind of gave a little extra time to work on that and get this coming out now. [00:04:05] BD: The title of your book is The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection. I love this because the purpose of this podcast is to illuminate the gifts and the lessons and the magic that animals bring into our lives every day often in very unassuming ways. Every chapter of your book hit that on such beautiful notes. I actually wrote down a quote from the beginning of the book because I just felt like it was so spot-on with our message. You say that this book, the goal of it is to explore and illuminate the profound impact the human-canine connection can have on our physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health and well-being often without realizing it. I love that. It's so spot-on to the message that we want for this podcast. That brings joy into people's lives too. Like you said, it's a happy topic, and we need that right now. [00:05:01] JG: Yes. I think on one hand, when we were thinking about writing this book, it's like who's the audience for this. Is it people who are thinking about adopting a dog? You can hear mine maybe barking in the background. Is it for people who have dogs? I really think people who have dogs are going to come to this. On one hand, I'm not going to tell them anything they don't know in terms of this being a really important connection. But I hope what I'm going to do is give language and kind of expand the understanding that they have about the role that dogs can play in their life. [00:05:34] BD: I love that. Tell us more about what readers can expect from your book, The Purest Bond? [00:05:42] JG: Yes. It's both science and story. So you're not going to get hit over the head with like really deep statistics or anything. We try to give like the good overview, so you get the gist of what the science was trying to achieve. But we want to ground all these insights in actual rigorous peer-reviewed scientific studies. So that will be everything from how do dogs help kids when they're learning? How do dogs detect cancer in their owners or tell you when you're having a heart attack. What role do service dogs play in the community? How are communities impacted by people having dogs and look at the research of that? But we mix it with stories from a lot of people that we recruited on social media of the really profound personal impact that their dogs have had. So we can say, “Look, here's a bunch science about how dogs’ noses work and how they can smell diseases or if we're going to have a seizure.” Then we're going to share some stories with you that people have given to us about how their dogs saved their life or saved their baby who was dying in a room, and they didn't know, how they detected their cancer. You really get to see that on a science level and then in a really intimate personal level. I mean, I'm so grateful that so many people trusted us with these really intimate stories. I think you've read them and you agree that you get these glimpses into sometimes dark and difficult points in people's lives and how their dogs were really there for them. So I think it gives this well-rounded picture of how dogs help us and how we see it play out. [00:07:13] BD: Yes. I felt as a reader that I was getting that dopamine hit as I was reading those personal stories from people. So I really appreciated that because when you get statistics and facts in a book but also paired with these really beautiful human stories and, I mean, very heart-centered stories, I just felt like it was the perfect balance. [00:07:33] JG: I mean, that's exactly what we wanted, right? That this isn't – like I love all the dog science books that are out there. I have all of them. Even before I was writing this, I have them all. But I wanted to make sure like that this was a very heartfelt book, right? That there was soul in this book because that's the critical thing about this relationship that it's not just a bunch of statistics. It really is something that speaks to like the real depths of what makes us human. [00:08:00] BD: What was the most surprising fact that you learned and you found out while you were researching for this book? [00:08:06] JG: The one that I like the best which I wasn't expecting was on one hand, we know if you have a dog, and you go out and walk them, that you learn who other people are in your neighborhood from their dogs. You often don't know their names. I'm terrible at human names anyway, but like, “Oh, that's Rufus's dad, and that's Phyto’s dad.” So, of course, like you get that connection if you're out walking dog. Of course, science says like that makes us meet more people, and that's great. But a result that I was really surprised by is that scientists have found that in communities where there are more dogs, like if your neighborhood has more dogs, the community has a stronger sense of cohesiveness. Often, we'll have like lower crime levels and better community participation, even if you don't have a dog. It tends to because you see a lot of people in your neighborhood more, and you have a chance for positive interaction. Even if you don't have a dog, you get to meet them. You get to see their dog. So the presence of dogs in a neighborhood brings a greater sense of civic responsibility, a greater sense of community, connection, even to the people who don't have dogs there. That really surprised me, but I think it's beautiful. On reflection, it makes sense. It kind of carries over that benefit that we dog owners feel into the whole neighborhood. [00:09:21] BD: I love the civic responsibility of that. We were talking about this on our last episode, just the benefits you can get just from petting. Like if you don't have an animal, you don't have a dog, and you're out walking, and you get to pet your neighbor's dog. You also get all of those feel-good hormones, and you get this very reciprocal exchange that can be healing in unassuming ways. So I love that. [00:09:43] JG: Yes. I mean, it's amazing that it's only like a few minutes of petting a dog. Even if it's a dog you don't know, that you get all these like biological indicators of your stress levels going down, which is pretty amazing. So absolutely like ask to pet every dog that you go past if you get the chance. [00:10:00] BD: Yes. In your opinion, what lessons do you think that we can learn from our dogs? [00:10:06] JG: This is such a great question because it's one that we're looking into more in-depth for the book that we're writing now, which is going to come out a couple years, November 2025. But really looking into like how our dogs think about things. So there's an area of psychology. If you think about going to a therapist, right? Psychology is normally looking at stuff that's going wrong with us and helping us fix it. But there's a complementary area of psychology called positive psychology which is about like joy and happiness and gratitude and civic responsibility, loyalty, all these kind of good things because we want to make sure we've got a lot of those too. What we found in this book, and we're going to explore more in-depth over the next couple years, is that dogs have a lot of those positive psychology traits. They're able to feel and show and express gratitude. We can kind of measure that scientifically. Obviously, they feel love. We talk about that in the book, how you can see the parts of their brain light up that you see in babies light up when they see their mother. Our dogs have that same activation when they see us. You can see it in the hormones that you measure in their blood, for example, that they really do love us back. I think being able to be mindful and in the moment and forgiving, right? To be able to allow for people to change, it's hard to do that as a human with other humans. But I think we can look to dogs. If you do rescue, you know this too, right? You can bring dogs in from really traumatic backgrounds, where they have no reason to trust or have joy or have anything good in their life based on what they've gone through. In like two months of being in a loving household, they’ll bond with you. It’s not like they're completely over what was there, but they're really able to embrace a new life and trust again. I certainly aspire to have more of that kind of trait in my own life. It’s a thing that really inspires me watching my own dogs. I think in this book, we really see that they're good at that. It'd be great if we all could be a little more like that. [00:12:08] BD: Absolutely. When I think of all of the dogs that we've brought into our home and the conditions that they've come from and the neglect or maybe even just physical abuse, emotional abuse, just the amount of forgiveness and trust is so profoundly beautiful. I mean, you're so right. That is a message that we can all take away from our relationships with our dogs and other animals as well. [00:12:35] JG: For sure. I mean, if we could all be like that, especially like in our close personal relationships, right? Stop holding those grudges because the person you love did that one wrong thing that one time. That'd be better. [00:12:48] BD: Can you talk a little bit more about the profound love connection that we share with our dogs? [00:12:55] JG: This is really amazing. So we kind of came in with a little bit of research on oxytocin, which is this neurotransmitter. It's a chemical that you can measure in your blood, and it's kind of this feel-good hormone. So if you get an oxytocin hit, like that's great. That's what you want. Parents will often describe feeling it when they like cuddle with their newborns. It's important for bonding, the release of this hormone. We know that if you stare into the eyes of your dog, you will get a release of this oxytocin. But your dog will, too. I think this is so interesting, right? That it's not just us feeling good because we're with our dogs. For a long time, we tried to like dismiss and be like, “Dogs don't really have the same kinds of emotions as people. They don't really love you. They're just operating on instinct.” That's clearly not true. We know how these chemicals operate in people. We get them when we interact with our dogs, but the dogs get them too. Then I had mentioned earlier, in people we look at a kind of relationship called an attachment bond. So in psychology, these are the bonds that infants form with their mothers primarily. If mothers and infants are looking into each other's faces, this helps create the attachment bond. They do have this oxytocin, but it's also like a psychological bond. Psychologists have done studies where they will use functional MRIs, FMRI machines. That’s the thing you've seen pictures of where like different parts of the brain light up. When they show infants pictures or play them the voice of their mothers, certain parts of their brain will light up. That really shows that there's an attachment bond forming there. They don't get it when it's a stranger talking. When dogs are put in an FMRI and they're given the smell or shown a picture of their owner, the same part of their brain lights up. So we've been able to measure because we can talk to people that we feel like we have these really close attachment bonds to our dogs. They're like the bonds we form with our closest family members. But it's so interesting that our dogs form them back to us. So it's a real like deep biological and psychological connection that we form with each other. It's not just one way. It's not us kind of anthropomorphizing onto an object. They love us back, and they do it all the way down to like the deepest parts of their brain in biology, which I think is so beautiful and a really lovely way to like see the science play out in something that we all go like, “Yes, I totally felt that.” But, man, can we measure it in a lot of ways. [00:15:22] BD: You're speaking my love language. So I'm a therapist, and there were so many parts of this book where I was like, “Yes.” The attachment styles was one of them because I talk about this a lot. I specialize in pet loss grief. So when I'm working with my clients, I actually try to help them understand that about themselves in their relationship with their pet. Because oftentimes, I have clients that come in, and they're so shocked by their grief. They're like, “Oh, well. It was just my pet.” I'm like, “It's not just your pet, and this is why.” So we talk a lot about attachment styles. When I read that in the book, I was like, “Yes.” [00:16:00] JG: I got to say like I started – I was on sabbatical from my professor job for a lot of the writing of this book, and I started getting a master's degree in psychology while we were writing the book. So literally, like every week, I'd come back to Stacey, my co-author, and I'd be like, “Stacey, I just did this thing in class this week, and we have to go back and put that in chapter five.” So the attachment bonds were one of those things. We had written that chapter already. When I finished my class on close relationships, and we did a lot on attachment bonds, I was like, “This totally recontextualizes for me the kind of stuff we had in there.” So I'm very happy as a therapist that you found that relevant because, yes, for me, it really added this layer of, okay, it's not just that we're measuring. This is a really important relationship, and we know how to talk about that. That became one of the major themes of the book. It tied together so much different science to think about the relationship that way. [00:16:51] BD: You and I, we share a love of seniors. We share a love of hospice cases and dogs with special medical needs. Can you share with the listeners what being an advocate for these animals has taught you about yourself? [00:17:05] JG: I think I've always had this feeling that I want to find the ones that weren't wanted the way that they should be, and like show them that they've got value and that they deserve better than that. I'm sure I've got some like deep-rooted trauma that informs that. But that's always what I'm really drawn towards is like who are these dogs that like everybody's forgetting, that no one has treated right? Let me come along, and like I will take care of it. That feels really rewarding and like I'm fulfilling some need and probably trying to like heal myself by doing that. But taking them in has really shown me how easy it is to do so much work, and you don't even really know that you're doing it. So there was one point where we had two hospice dogs and another senior who was close to the end of his life. We had seven total at that point, including three very high-maintenance dogs. We had to hand-feed them, and it was no problem. I wasn't like, “Oh, my God. I can't believe I've got to like hand-feed spaghetti and get covered in this.” It's just like, “Of course, this is the thing we do.” I suspect parents often have this feeling. I don't have any kids of my own, and so I suspect parents who like really love parenting are like, “Yes. Of course, I got up at like three in the morning. It's like not like the most fun thing, but like it's fine. It didn't bother me at all.” I think about doing that with a kid, and I'm like, “Man, that's the reason I didn't have any.” But with a dog, I'm like, “Of course.” I'm hand-feeding them in different rooms and doing this. When you lose them then, you go, “I had no idea how much our life had started revolving around taking care of this.” But it's not a problem at the time, and that's a thing that I was like very happy to kind of realize about myself that it can get to be a huge amount of work. But it's just you're taking care of a soul that you love, and it doesn't really feel like work then. [00:19:02] BD: Yes. I resonate with that so much. I tell people a lot that this work has taught me just how much love I had to give. [00:19:09] JG: For sure. [00:19:10] BD: I loved that you in your appendix included the quality of life. Will you talk about that for a minute? [00:19:17] JG: Yes. A question that we often get from people on social media when their dog either has gotten a pretty catastrophic diagnosis or is just clearly at the end of their life is like how do I know when it's time to make this decision. It’s decision that I've made more times that I can count about when to say goodbye to your dog. I have guilt over every one of those decisions, even though I know I have made it correctly every time. But it's hard to talk through with people if you don't know their specific dog. Frankly, you don't want to tell them, yes, it's time or, no, it isn't. What I wanted to be able to do was tell people like here's how we make this decision. So that quality of life survey that's in the appendix is not a – it's a bunch of questions, and they have scores. But it's not like, “And if it's above this level, you're fine.” Or below that you say goodbye. It's more for you to get a sense of the different parts of your dog's life. Because like we were saying, when you're in it and you're taking care of a dog who's declining, you may not realize that like, oh, the fact that they're not eating actually has gotten to a pretty extreme level, the fact that they don't want anybody to really be around them. Or if you try to move them, they snap at you, which is something they didn't do before. To really see where do they fall in a bunch of different aspects of the quality of their life and be able to track it over time and see like, “Oh, it's going down,” or like, “Man, I didn't even think about this part.” I have sent that to so many people like since we wrote it. We pulled together from a bunch of different surveys to make that one. That is really helpful for us. That's basically the kinds of things that we think about. I also tell people, we kind of set a threshold, depending on the dog. So sometimes, we have Golden Retrievers. A lot of them have hemangiosarcomas, which are these very fast-growing cancers. A dog can be fine on Monday and be dead on Friday. They just show up really fast. If we're able to catch them, you can't really treat them, and we go, “Okay. If they are up all night panting because they're uncomfortable, like that's kind of going to be the marker for us.” We give ourselves the freedom to reassess. But I think having some objective things to help guide you can be really helpful. Of course, you can make whatever decision you think is right at the time. [00:21:28] BD: Yes. It's a really great resource, and I'm glad you included it. [00:21:31] JG: Thank you. [00:21:32] BD: What do you hope readers will take away from your book? [00:21:36] JG: I hope they come away, if you're a dog owner, with a really deeper appreciation of the complexity of the mind of your dog and the depth of the relationship that you have with them. I don't think anybody's going to love their dog more. Hopefully, you love them the maximum amount already. But, hopefully, you come away from it really understanding that they are complex creatures that have the capability for so much emotion and connection. They give that all to us freely and willingly and to the fullest of their abilities, which is pretty amazing. It's hard to get that from humans, right? It's a relationship that we can feel safe in. Maybe it'll get more people like telling their secrets to their dogs or wanting to take him out for a walk and like deepen that connection. I always think it's great if you're like, “Is there a thing I could do now that would make my dog happier? Let's go do that thing.” That's what I want people to do. Put this book down and be like, “You know what? Let's go get some French fries, and you can have a few.” [00:22:37] BD: I'm so glad that you came on this podcast because your message is exactly what we want our listeners to leave every episode thinking is like, “Man, I have so much gratitude for the animals that are around me.” Kind of switching that way of thinking where we've always thought, well, what can animals bring into our lives and reversing that? Well, what can we bring into animals’ lives? How can we kind of return the favor to them for all of the profound gifts that they bring into our life every day? I love to close out the episode sharing a story of an animal in your life that has really brought magic or done healing or taught a lesson in an unassuming way. I know you've had so many animals in and out of your home. But is there any one particular animal that stands out to you? [00:23:26] JG: For sure. So Voodoo was our epileptic dog. We only had him for like a year and a half. He was, obviously, a very complicated dog. But that dog did not care about anything you wanted him to do. He was just like the most mischievous dog. We had to actually move the toilet paper roll holders up the wall in our house because he would eat the toilet paper. Not just grab it and drag it around the house. He'd, like an apple, just take bites out of it. He would eat anything, the recycling. Anything below like shoulder height of a human, he would eat it. You couldn't make him upset. Like if you were to yell at him, he'd be like, “Whatever. I'm going to go eat it again.” He just didn't care at all. He’s just absolutely his own dog, doing whatever he wanted but loved us and was like so happy to spend time with us. He thought he'd want to go for walks, and he'd get all excited. He'd walk halfway down the block and throw himself to the ground. I'd have to call my husband to like bring the car and put him in the car, and he'd be fine. He just didn't want to walk anymore. He was very independent and did whatever he wanted. It was the like most joyful amazing thing ever. He was really a magical dog, and I miss him so much. [00:24:40] BD: Voodoo. [00:24:41] JG: Voodoo. [00:24:42] BD: Jen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was such a beautiful conversation, and I'm so excited for people to read your book. Yes, The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, it’s amazing. [00:24:56] JG: It's been a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:58] PF: That was Brittany talking with Jen Golbeck, author of The Purest Bond. Brittany, that was a fantastic interview. I know that as a therapist and as a grief specialist, you really enjoyed it and as a rescuer. So it's so easy for us to think like, “I got this out of the interview.” What did you get out of the interview as you were doing it? [00:25:17] BD: I felt like Jen did a really good job of bringing that happiness message. Listeners that go out and get her book and read it will see that there really is this kind of like dopamine hit that you get from reading her book because there's so much happiness in it, the stories. I read this on an airplane, and I remember at one point like putting my hand on my heart like, “Oh, my God. I wish I could go home and kiss my babies right now.” I just felt so much gratitude towards them reading through the stories and just like the research and the way that Jen's able to put that together. That's the purpose of Happiness Unleashed is to share the these little moments of happiness and the happy lessons and all the joy that animals bring into our lives. So I love that she led with that immediately. [00:26:08] PF: I love it. I love it. That was a great interview. Lots that we can learn from her. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find her book. Of course, how they can find out more about you and the work that you're doing. We'll have them meet us back here again next month for another fantastic episode of Happiness Unleashed. [00:26:24] BD: Thanks, Paula. [OUTRO] [00:26:26] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher talking with Jen Golbeck. If you'd like to learn more about Jen, check out her book, The Purest Bond, or follow her on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, you can also learn more about Brittany and the work she's doing with animals. Of course, Brittany will be back here again next month to talk more about how pets bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our best teachers. Until then, for everyone at Live Happy and Happiness Unleashed, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Introducing Happiness Unleashed With Brittany Derrenbacher   [INTRO] [00:00:08] PF: Welcome to the very first episode of Happiness Unleashed with Brittany Derrenbacher, presented by Live Happy. Each episode, we're going to look at how our pets bring us joy, help us heal, and just make us better humans. To kick things off, Brittany is talking with me, Live Happy Now host, Paula Felps, about what to expect from this new podcast, why we're doing it, and why it's so important for us to get in touch with our animals. Then we'll talk about why petting other people's pets is scientifically proven to be good for you and why you should stop phubbing your pets. [00:00:41] BD: Hi, Paula. Thank you so much for coming on the very first episode of Happiness Unleashed. [00:00:46] PF: I am so excited. First of all, I'm honored that I get to be your very first guest, and I am just so excited to see this finally coming to fruition. Congratulations on making this happen. I'm really happy for you. [00:00:58] BD: Thank you so much. I can't think of a better person to kick off the show with. [00:01:02] PF: I know I live happy wanting to do this. Why don't you tell us like how this all came about, and why it's so important for us to do this podcast that's devoted to pets and happiness? [00:01:13] BD: Well, first, what I love is that, really, animals brought us together. So just in us having conversations on Live Happy, I think everyone was kind of able to see just how much people wanted to hear about our relationships with animals, how much people really tuned in for that. So it kind of validated just how much we wanted to talk about animals and bring that to public knowledge. I really think that we are doing ourselves a disservice and future generations a disservice if we don't include the human-animal bond in our research. Research on animals’ interactions with us is still relatively new. As that research really evolves, so does the role that animals play in our lives. So I think it's incredibly important that we continue to support this and understand just how happy animals can make us and what we can learn from that. [00:02:06] PF: You're very right because I even think about how I grew up and the role the animals had then and how different it is now. We couldn't do the things for our pets that we're able to do now. Last weekend, I was doing some spay-neuter volunteer work. The woman was helping me get these cats into my truck. I opened the back, and she saw I have dog beds with – they're very nice little dog beds in the back seat. She said, “Animals at your house have it really rough, don't they?” It’s true. We are able to make them true members of our family. I'm able to take my dogs with me on trips and on little errand runs and things like that. We get so much out of it. They get so much out of it. I love that we have changed how we view animals. I love that the research is giving us more validation and showing us more ways to do that. [00:02:57] BD: Yes. I love how much it's evolved from this understanding that animals or outdoor animals, they were kind of in the background. Now, they are people's children. They have more rights in the home than sometimes the humans do. [00:03:13] PF: Especially when it comes to that bed space. It's like – [00:03:15] BD: Right. [00:03:17] PF: “I'll be taking that. Thanks.” I know that you are so well-researched on this, which, obviously, that's why you're hosting this podcast. You want to share some of the things that they do for us emotionally and physically as well. [00:03:31] BD: Our relationships and understanding of animals can be a powerful tool to increase a lot of things in our life, so joy and happiness, first of all, health, longevity, emotional and social skills. Then also, interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol. That's the stress-related hormone in our bodies. Then it also lowers blood pressure. So I find that so fascinating that animals have this ability to uniquely shift that in us in our bodies, in our mental health. So this mental, physical, emotional support that they give us. Other studies have also found that animals can reduce loneliness and increase feelings of social support and boost our mood. That's just to name a few. That is so profound to me and almost magical that these animals can do that for us, and we don't talk about it enough. [00:04:24] PF: Right. Do we know the why of it? We're seeing the action and the what. But why is that? Like why is it that the act of petting my dog can absolutely lower my blood pressure, can decrease my anxiety? What is it that's happening that makes that? [00:04:40] BD: Yes. This is stuff that we're really going to be diving into in this season is exploring from a very unique lens and heart-centered lens how we can understand animals benefiting us from those perspectives in our life, so that mind-body-spirit approach. [00:04:57] PF: So those are some of the things. Like you said, those are some of the things that you're going to talk about. I know that you've already been lining guests up. You've got some great things in store. Do you want to talk about some of the things that we can learn and what we can expect from the next several episodes? [00:05:12] BD: I think listeners are really going to be in for a treat, the topics and the guests that we’re kind of brainstorming for the season. Uniquely, I think that animals, not only are they a part of our house and our families and our hearts, but they are out in communities healing people. They're out doing a lot of really unseen work and behind-the-scenes work that is bringing a lot of joy and healing to people. I think that needs to be illuminated. So that's really the goal of this podcast is to have those conversations and really take a dive into how animals can bring so much to our lives. [00:05:52] PF: Yes. Because once we realize that, I think we give them a lot more space, and we give them a lot more credit maybe than we have in the past because I think we all know like, “My dog makes me feel good. My cat makes me feel good.” But we don't realize just how far-reaching that is. [00:06:07] BD: Right, and understanding that animals are our teachers. Animals prompt us to experience the world more like they do. They bring us happiness. They bring us comfort. They bring us love, wonder, and awe, living in the moment, purpose, and like I said before, healing, which is huge. I think that animals heal us on a mind-body-soul level. When that happens, I think they begin to heal us on a cellular level. What I mean by that is studies show that interacting with animals reduces cortisol, like I mentioned before. But also, it's increasing dopamine and serotonin. So that's on the chemical level, which improves our mood. [00:06:48] PF: Yes. Explain to us what dopamine and serotonin do for us. [00:06:52] BD: That's the happy feel good. That’s the opposite of the stress hormones. That's what puts a smile on our face and an ease in our bodies. So understanding that we can get that support on a chemical level, but also realizing that animals and playing with animals and interacting with animals can be an intellectual and an inner child experience for us all. [00:07:14] PF: You bring up such a good point because as adults, we forget to play. We've done episodes on play before, and I'm guilty of that myself. It's like I love to play probably more than the next person. But I get caught up in work, and I forget to play. Newsweek just had a huge cover story on this about how dangerous it is for us not to play. What I love about animals is they kind of force you to do that. Whether you want to or not, they are ready to play. That is so healthy for us. That is doing so much more for us than we even realize. [00:07:47] BD: Yes. Play is healing. Play is used a lot in trauma work, reconnecting with that joy center and those hope receptors. Animals can be that safe and supportive space to then navigate that trauma, even using play. This can physically help us but also mentally help us. [00:08:06] PF: Because you have a healing center in Louisville. Do you use animals in that center? [00:08:11] BD: Yes, yes. Several of the therapists have a support animal, and I also bring in animals. I also encourage my clients if they have emotional support animals and therapy dogs to bring them in with them because they will always aid and speed up the process if they're involved. [00:08:28] PF: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. I'm so excited to see how this season unfolds. What do you want to talk about today because we can't tell them everything that you're going to do? We'll ruin all the surprises. I think you said you had something you wanted to talk about today. [00:08:42] BD: Yes. There's actually a new study that came out, and I think it fits perfectly into our conversation today. Last month, we celebrated International Dog Day, and it just so happens that this study was published around this time. What the study shows is that petting other people's dog is good for your health, even – [00:09:01] PF: I saw that. That was a great story, actually. Actually, just reading it made me smile. But, yes, I love that. Tell us about what they found out. [00:09:09] BD: I feel like it's so powerful. Who else does that? Who else does that? Just briefly any interaction with someone. [00:09:17] PF: In positive psychology, we talk about micro moments. Barbara Frederickson, that was a big area of study for her and how even just short exchanges with people can lift our mood and help us feel happier. But we had never applied that to pets, to animals. So to think about the fact that when I'm reaching down and I'm petting somebody's pooch as they're walking. If we’re walking in the neighborhood, there I am. I say hello to the dog and pet it. It's like it has done something for me that we don't even think about how much good that can do. [00:09:48] BD: I think the reason that this study seemed like something that really would fit into what we were talking about is because we're talking about how animals can do all this behind-the-scenes work that we're not even aware of. This is a perfect example that just a quick exchange on a walk, getting the okay to pet someone else's dog because PSA, everyone. We should ask. [00:10:11] PF: Always ask first. [00:10:12] BD: Always ask consent to pet someone's dog because not everybody likes to be pet. Not every dog likes to have that engagement. But stopping someone and asking if you can pet their dog and having that interaction. Maybe stopping by a friend or family member's house and getting greeted by the dog or even being at an event or a gathering where dogs are allowed. This is the interaction that the study's talking about is that 5 to 20-minute period that can make you more relaxed and happier in that space. [00:10:39] PF: They said that it aids in releasing oxytocin, which is that love hormone, which think about that. If you go out, and you're in a grumpy mood, and you get to run into a pet, and it releases that love hormone, I mean, it might change the way that you're dealing with the next person you encounter. [00:10:54] BD: Yes. It's that cellular chemical change that I was talking about. That evidence shows that it will lower cortisol, the stress hormone, and it will increase all the feel good stuff. So we see that increase in oxytocin, which is the feel-good bonding hormone, really. So you have that bonding moment happening. What's awesome is that the dog we're petting also gets that exchange, so it's reciprocal. [00:11:18] PF: Yes. Everybody benefits from it. You've done so much work with people and with animals. I think that you've had experience of seeing how animals have done exactly what we're talking about, which is sharing joy by just letting people be with them. [00:11:35] BD: Yes. I love sharing stories of animals doing incredible work in very unassuming ways. I think through thousands of years of domestication, dogs have really developed a wondrous ability to read us as humans. They can connect to human beings from the heart without words, which I think is so beautiful. A friend of mine, [inaudible 00:11:57], she does really beautiful community work here. She creates a space called [inaudible 00:12:02], where people can gather and heal through music, poetry, food, group connection. She also does a lot of work with small groups. But really, and this is no shade to [inaudible 00:12:12], I share the story with you because of her dog. She has an emotional support dog named Arlo, who wanders around greeting and spending time with everyone. He is this beautiful, gentle, scruffy, majestic, golden healer. I love that. [00:12:30] PF: I love the fact that he's a healer. [00:12:32] BD: He's a golden healer. He’s so loved and cherished by everyone. He means so much, and he seems to know exactly who needs a kiss, who needs a quick touch, or who might need a good cuddle session, even acting as a weighted blanket for some people who need some extra soothing and processing time. So it's really amazing to watch him just live his best life while enriching and healing the lives of others as he does it. I think every person in the room who interacts with him are experiencing all the benefits that we just talked about. I think Arlo is really a perfect example of a dog who can just heal others by being himself. I think this is a gift that dogs possess that we can all learn a lot from. [00:13:18] PF: That is so amazing. There was also something in the story where it talked about how it aids children. Like children that were able to interact with animals had better cognitive function after that. That kind of blew me away because, yes, the well-being make you happy. That's very clear, and that's easy to understand. But my gosh, the fact that it can also change the way that your brain is functioning, do you have any insight into why that is because they didn't really talk – they just said it did that. They didn't say why. [00:13:47] BD: What I think they were getting at in the study is that dogs induce a very calming effect. So it's like a chill pill for kids and not just kids but for adults, giving our nervous systems permission to relax and really come back online, which can then bring you cognitively back online. So I kind of just look at that moment as like this chill pill moment for kids, right? [00:14:07] PF: I love that. So what we're saying here is that every parent whose child is running crazy should go get a pet. Is that what? [00:14:16] BD: Parents are going to love us for saying that. [00:14:18] PF: Yes. I had a situation, as I mentioned. I mentioned the kitties, the little spay-neuter thing I had going on. We'd get got some strays. We were trying to adopt them out. I had a single mom come out and meet one of the kitties and was like, “I really think this will be good for my little girl.” Oh, my gosh. It was like instant love, these two. The look on this little girl's face, I'm still in love with just that look that they had. She and this little stray cat bonded almost immediately. The mom has for this past week been sending me photos of the two of them together, and it's just so touching. She said like she has never seen her daughter that enamored and that happy. It’s like I just think about what that's doing, this relationship that it's creating, and this joy that it's bringing to her life and how that's got to be affecting her in other areas of her daily being. [00:15:09] BD: Yes. It’s also teaching that child the kind of simple pause, the taking a moment and really just being in that moment. Animals always uniquely teach us that if we're open to it. [00:15:21] PF: Yes. Animals are really good for mindfulness. You know what? That is another thing that you and I had talked about at one point because there was a study about phubbing your pets. Then if anyone doesn't know, phubbing is phone snubbing. Our animals can tell. They actually get hurt when we are ignoring them and looking at our phones. So if we can use our walks or our play time with those animals and to really be in the moment, to really be noticing what's going on around us and really put the phone away, it makes a big difference for both of us. [00:15:58] BD: Right. I think we can apply this phrase that the Gottman Institute uses about relationships. It's called bid for affection. I think we can use that in regards to animals too because that is their bid for affection. That's their bid for, “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Love me. See me. Spend this time with me.” When we actively avoid that snub, whatever you want to call it, phub, that is received in the same way in animals as it is with humans, which is, “Oh, I'm not being paid attention to. That doesn't feel good.” [00:16:32] PF: Yes. When I was still in Nashville, I'd see this a lot where someone's walking their dog. They're looking at their phone. The dog wants to stop and sniff and enjoy the moment. They just are kind of pulling him along like, “Got to go.” They’re not even looking up. I was always like, “Man, that's such a lost moment because you don't know when you're going to have your last walk with that animal.” Nothing's guaranteed, and that's such a precious time that you can spend with your animal. It’s so good for you to put your phone down and not be looking at that. Even if it wasn't good for the animal for you to be giving him that undivided attention, it's good for you to get away from that. [00:17:07] BD: Yes. Again, animals are our teachers. If we are open to receiving those messages and being present for them, we can learn so much. [00:17:14] PF: I love that. This is going to be a fun journey. I'm really excited to see where this goes, what some of the things are that we learn and the guests that you bring on because I know you have a lot to teach us. The animals have a lot to teach us, and you have a lot of great people that you're tapping into who can tell us how we can access that. [00:17:31] BD: I can't wait. This season's going to be incredible, and I can't wait for everyone to just learn right along with me. [OUTRO] [00:17:40] PF: That was our very first episode of Happiness Unleashed with Brittany Derrenbacher. Brittany will be back here next month to talk about how pets bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our best teachers. Until then, for everyone at Live Happy, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Using Your Mind to Improve Your Health With Dr. Ellen J. Langer [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 433 of Live Happy Now. When it comes to our health, most of us believe that we just have to live with ailments and declining well-being as we grow older. But this week's guest is about to flip the script on everything you thought you knew about health and happiness. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with the mother of mindfulness, Dr. Ellen J. Langer. Ellen is highly regarded as one of America's most influential psychologists. In her new book, The Mindful Body, she presents decades of research that shows how our thoughts and perspective can change our health. She's here to tell us how we can use the mind-body connection to rethink what we believe to be true, and explains how our thoughts could be undermining our health and what we need to do about it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:52] PF: Dr. Langer, thank you so much for being on Live Happy Now. [00:00:56] EL: My pleasure, Paula. [00:00:58] PF: You have written many books, but your latest one is truly remarkable. It has had me absorbed since the moment I got – well, actually before I even got it in the mail. I have to say that one of the first things that struck me about it was the subtitle and that is Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. I love the idea of chronic health. Can you tell us what that means? [00:01:20] EL: Well, we have a sense of as we get older, we're going to become sick, and we have little control over being sick. All of the work, hopefully, we'll talk about some of it now, suggests to me that, no, we don't have to get sick. We don't have to go to doctors. I'm not putting down the medical world. Certainly, if I just broke my arm, I'd go to the hospital. But there are so many ways we can take care of ourselves. So much control that we have that people are totally oblivious to. So I saw it as an opportunity for me to make people aware of all this control by doing all of this research. [00:01:57] PF: Do you find any pushback from people initially when – [00:02:01] EL: You know what? It's really interesting. I would expect it, right? Doctors know or they don't know. But they're under the impression, I think, that you're going to heal faster if they pretend they know. I think that it depends on the particulars but most of the time that what we need to do is exploit the power and uncertainty. Let me talk to you about mindfulness because that's the basis of all of this. When I'm talking about mindfulness, it has nothing to do with meditation. It's the simple process of noticing. Now, why then aren't we all mindful all the time? Because most of the time, we think we know. When we think we know, we don't pay any attention. If you simply notice five new things about the environment, the person you're living with, talking to, five new things about your work, what happens is you come to say, “Gee, I didn't know it as well as I thought I did.” Then your attention naturally goes to it. When we're actively noticing, the neurons are firing. Our research has found that it's literally and figuratively enlivening. So it feels good and it's good for us. Now, what people are taught by parents, by speakers, myself excluded, are absolutes. You go to school, and they tell you things like, oh, I don't know, “One and one is two.” So, Paula, how much is one and one? [00:03:29] PF: Oh, I guess it's two. [00:03:30] EL: No, not always. If you're adding one wad of chewing gum plus one wad of chewing gum, one plus one is one. If you're adding one pile of laundry plus one pile of laundry, one plus one is one. One cloud plus one cloud, one plus one. So in the real world, one plus one doesn't equal two as often as it does. But once we think we know, we stop paying attention. So I'm sorry, Paula. For the rest of your life now, if somebody asks you how much is one and one, you're going to have to sit up and pay attention to the context to get the answer. Now, what – [00:03:59] PF: Well, because I’m already a writer, so they think I can't do math, and they're not wrong, so. [00:04:02] EL: Okay. That's great. Let me tell you something important that happened to me a while ago. I was at this horse event, and this man asked me if I'd watch his horse for him because he was going to get a hot dog for him. Well, I'm Harvard, Yale, all the way through. Nobody knows better than I. Horses don't eat meat. That's the starting point. He comes back with the hot dog, and the horse ate it. Oh, my. Everything I thought I knew now I realized I might not know. Now, some people in hearing this or figuring out that they don't know very much might be worried. But for me, I was excited because it meant all sorts of possibilities open up. That's what this book is about, possibilities. So there was a study I did. I don't know if it, although I talk about it in this book, so you'll pretend you did, even if you didn't read it yet. [00:04:54] PF: How far is it because I'm like two-thirds through. [00:04:57] EL: Okay. I'm sure. It doesn't matter. I'm sorry I put you on the spot. [00:05:01] PF: Oh, we're good. [00:05:02] EL: Okay. So basically, this was the first test of the mind-body unity idea, which goes through this new book. Now, mind-body unity means mind, body, they're one. If they're one, then wherever you put the mind, you're necessarily putting the body. You're thinking about, “My gosh, all the places I can go with my mind, and that's going to have an effect on my health and well-being.” So in this first study, we took old men to a timeless retreat that – oh, you know it. [00:05:30] PF: Oh, my gosh. I love this. I was telling a friend about this yesterday that this blew my mind, and now I want to create a retirement home like that. [00:05:38] EL: Okay. So what we did, we retrofitted the retreat to 20 years earlier. We had old men live there for a week as if they were their younger selves. That means that they talked about the past in the present tense, okay, as well as other things. Now, just a week, right? What we found was that their hearing improved, their vision improved, their memory improved, their strength improved, and they looked noticeably younger. To me, this was incredible because when have you ever heard a 90-year-old's hearing improve without any medical intervention? [00:06:12] PF: Exactly. [00:06:15] EL: So in this new book, I talk about all the new research testing this mind-body unity idea. The next study we did in that series was with chambermaids. If women are listening, they'll find this especially interesting. So we asked six chambermaids. How much exercise do you get? They said, “Oh, I'm too tired. Exercise is what you do after work, so I don't get any exercise.” So we divided them into two groups. We took one group, and we taught them that their work was exercise. They were told making a bed was like working on this machine at the gym and so on. So at the end, we have two groups. One who believes their work is exercise. The other group doesn't realize. We take many, many measures before we start. At the end, simply changing your mindset resulted in people losing weight, a change in body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, and their blood pressure came down. All right, let me hurry along here to the newest research, although there are many in between these two testing this mind-body unity. So we inflict a wound. Now, it would have been more dramatic if I could really hurt people, but I didn't want to do that. [00:07:21] PF: Like cut an arm off or what. [00:07:22] EL: The review board wouldn't let me, even if I did live in that world. So it's a minor wound, and people are in front of a clock. For a third of the people, the clock is going twice as fast as real time. For a third of the people, the clock is going half as fast as real time. For a third of the people, it's real time. The question we're asking is how long does it take the wound to heal. Well, it turns out the wound heals based on perceived time, clock time, not real time. We have so much control over everything, and we're simply blind to it that I think, although I don't have data specifically for this, so you can imagine when I tell you how hard it would be to do the studies, that the major cause of illness is stress, major cause. Now, stress is psychological. So if you say to yourself – and it's also the case that when we're stressed, two things are going on. The first is we think something's going to happen. The second is when it happens, it's going to be awful. Well, it turns out we can't predict. If you think about it, you go back over the times you've been stressed, almost all the things we're stressed about never even happened. [00:08:37] PF: Right. It’s the stuff we're not thinking about that gets us. [00:08:40] EL: So if you said to yourself, what are three reasons this thing I'm scared of won't happen, and you're usually able to generate them. So you went from thinking it's definitely going to happen to maybe it will, maybe it won't, so you immediately feel better. But now, what I think people should do is say let's assume it happens. What are three, five reasons that it's actually an advantage? You can always come up with things. Now, what people don't realize is that events don't come pre-packaged. This is a good thing. This is a bad thing. It all depends on the way we understand our world. So the more mindful you are, the more potential understandings of any event you can come up with. An example I've used too often but I can't come up with another one on the spot now. [00:09:27] PF: So let's do it again. [00:09:28] EL: Okay. Let's say you and I go out to lunch, and the food is wonderful. Wonderful, it's a win. You and I go out to lunch. The food is awful. Wonderful, I'll eat less, and that'll be better for my waistline. [00:09:39] PF: I like that. [00:09:40] EL: All right. There is always a way of interpreting things. It's also true for people, which we don't tend to realize that we tend to see people by dispositions. Paula, you really are getting on my nerves because you're so inconsistent. I'm getting on your nerves because I'm so gullible. Well, it turns out for every single negative description we can give to somebody, negative way we understand what they're doing, there's an equally strong but oppositely balanced alternative. What is negative is equally positive. So you're not inconsistent. From your perspective, you're flexible. I'm not gullible. From my perspective, I'm trusting. This is true no matter what words we come up with to insult ourselves or other people. So now, all the times you're stressed because I keep trying to change you, I can't stand you’re so inconsistent. Now that I realize you're being flexible, hey, now I appreciate you. As I appreciate you, you appreciate me. Because we're both less judgmental, our relationship improves. As our relationship improves, we get more support. With that support, we're going to experience less stress, and we're and going to end up healthier. [00:10:54] PF: I love the way you tie that all back together. As we talk about health, it's really clear that we have turned the power of our health over to our practitioners. Will you talk about how we can kind of start reclaiming control of our health from our practitioners because to your point, they don't know everything. [00:11:15] EL: Oh. Well, you can challenge them, but why bother? What I would suggest is that we stay healthy in the first place and that when we have symptoms, we engage in what I'll talk to you about after, the next three things you want to talk about, attention to symptom variability. Let me throw one thing in there, is a one-liner that I've come up with that is so meaningful to me. You can ask yourself with anything. Is it a tragedy or an inconvenience? Almost all the time, you realize so what I burned the dinner? So what I missed the bus? So what I didn't get the project done on time? Just by asking that question then we relax. Again, as we're relaxing, we're becoming happier and healthier. What we need to understand is that symptoms, no matter what we have, if we're depressed, we're stressed, we have Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, a broad range of things, the mistaken assumption people make is that their symptoms are going to stay the same or get worse. Well, it turns out nothing only goes in one direction. Now, so what we did, we took people with major diseases, and we set this up where we were going to just call them at random times throughout the day, throughout the week, and ask them, “So how do you feel now? Is it better or worse than before, and why?” Okay, now what happens, the first thing you see is that, gee, I'm not stressed all the time, or I'm not in pain all the time. So you immediately feel a little better. Second, by asking why, why does it hurt now and it didn't before, you're going on a mindful search. I didn't mention it explicitly, but several experiments that we've done showed just by becoming more mindful, you live longer. So it's very potent, even if you stop there. Then finally, if you look for a solution, you're much more likely to find it, and you're engaged. Engagement itself is the essence of being mindful. You're taking care of yourself, so you feel good about it. We've done this now with people who have Parkinson's, stroke, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, chronic pain, depression, and just imagine stress. Paula, let's say you feel you're stressed all the time. No one is stressed all the time. It's just that when you're not stressed, you're not thinking about being stressed. [00:13:44] PF: Oh, that's a great point. [00:13:44] EL: Then you get stressed again. So point A, you're thinking about it. Point C, you're thinking about it, and you assume it's all the time. You do this thing. How do you feel right now? Are you better or worse than before and why? After you do this, you discover I'm maximally stressed when I'm talking to Ellen Langer. Well, if that's the case, the solution is easy. Don't talk to me or talk to me differently. Talk to me in the way you talk to people when you're not stressed. This is just part of the control we have over ourselves. That placebos may be our strongest medicine. As everybody knows, the placebo is a sugar pill, or it's something inert. You take this thing that's nothing, and you get better. Okay. So clearly, you're making yourself better. All of my work is designed to find out how to do that more directly where we don't need to go to a doctor. People would be surprised. I don't know if I should reveal this or not, but much of the medication that we're prescribed are, in fact, placebos. So you go to a doctor. You get a placebo. You take this placebo, and now you get better. One of the things that people don't realize, and there's no reason why people who aren't scientists necessarily should, is that experiments, the medical experiments, all experiments only give us probabilities. All right, now those probabilities say that if we were to do the exact same study again, and we can never do the exact same study, but let's say we could, we're likely to get the same findings. Those are translated as absolutes. You have cancer. Horses don't eat meat. One and one is two, so on and so forth. So the first thing we have to do when we're given a diagnosis is to say, “Well, okay. Maybe, maybe not.” Even if so, it doesn't mean it has to follow any particular course. Because once we assume that we have this disease, and this disease follows plan A, B, and C, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe that way back when, when people were told cancer is a killer, that many of the deaths that occurred were not a function of the cancer but a function of giving up because of the belief that the cancer is a killer. [00:16:11] PF: You showed – you gave a wonderful illustration. It's early in your book, talking about being diagnosed as pre-diabetes and showing like that borderline, that 5.5 difference to 5.6. [00:16:24] EL: I'm glad you mentioned that. Yes. Okay. You want to tell everybody, but I want to tell everybody. [00:16:28] PF: No. I want you to tell it because I'm going to mess it up. [00:16:30] EL: Okay. I don't think so. But as I said, I'm on a roll. All right. So this – what I call the borderline effect, if people just imagine. So let's say, Paula, you and I take an IQ test, and you get a 70. That means you're normal. I get a 69. That means I'm cognitively deficient. What we used to call retarded. All right. Now, nobody in their right mind, even if nothing about statistics, would think there's a meaningful difference between 69 and 70, right? I could have sneezed, misread the question, so on and so forth. All right. However, once we're in those two different categories, our lives unfold in very different ways. Everybody knows we treat you differently from poor me who is cognitively deprived. All right. Well, it's the same for every diagnosis. There are some people who fall right above the line saying you're healthy, those who fall right below it, which means you have the disease. Now, if those two groups are not different at the start and go forward a month, three months, six months, and they're different, well, what's causing that difference? They’re the same, and now they're different. It's their psychology. All of that, again, speaks to the control we have over our health. [00:17:52] PF: If we have so much control over our health, how do we think better? Because as you point out in your book, every thought we have affects our health. [00:18:02] EL: Yes. That's the mind-body unity. It's one thing. [00:18:05] PF: So how do we think better. [00:18:07] EL: Yes. Okay. [00:18:07] PF: How do we start practicing that. [00:18:09] EL: Well, you don't have to practice it. All you need to do is recognize that the things you're taking as real can be understood differently from different perspectives. The more mindful you are, the more choices you have. So if you just recognize that things themselves, as I said before, are neither good nor bad, whether or not we experience things are good or bad depends on our perspective. The more mindful, the more choices we have again. Now, if you think of anything that you think is bad and just sort of think of your friends and all the people you know and have known, is everybody responding to it the same way? Well, if not, then what are they doing differently? That it's not the thing. Events don't cause stress and unhappiness. Our views of events cause stress and unhappiness. Let me tell you about something that had happened to me many years ago. I was at a friend's house for dinner. It was late, and I came back to my house, and my house had been burned to the ground. So the next day, I called the insurance agent. He comes out and he said in the 25 years he's been doing this work, this was the very first time that the call wasn't as bad as the damage. Everybody, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” You see it, and it's not so bad. Here was the reverse because I had already lost all of that. Getting myself crazy, throwing my sanity away also I wasn't going to help. There's so much to say about this, but let me jump to the end. This was around Christmas. So I was staying in a hotel. I went out Christmas Eve, and I got back to the hotel, and my room was full of gifts. Not from the people who own the hotel, not from the management, but from the so-called little people, the chambermaids, the waiters, the waitresses, the people who park my car. It’s only recently that I'm able to tell the story without it bringing tears to my eyes. Now, I'm not saying everybody should hope that they experience a major fire. But I must say that I remember virtually nothing that I lost in the fire. Every Christmas, I think about this, and it renews my faith in people. So was it good or bad? [00:20:23] PF: That's just incredible. The perception and the perspective makes such a big difference. I think that was so amazing throughout this book the way that's emphasized over and over. There are so many stories. First of all, you're such a wonderful storyteller. [00:20:37] EL: Thank you. [00:20:37] PF: And you have so many excellent stories and examples of how our mind can really change our outcomes. I do want to ask you one thing I hear a lot of probably because of recent birthdays. I hear so much my people around me talking about how I'm too old to do this. I can't do something like this because I'm old. To put that in perspective, my partner who is older than I am is participating in a CrossFit tournament tomorrow. So don't tell me – [00:21:04] EL: Yes, yes. No, I think it's terrible. The other day – [00:21:06] PF: How does that affect our aging process if you’re – [00:21:08] EL: Well, of course. [00:21:09] PF: Constantly saying that. [00:21:11] EL: Okay. So if we associate old with becoming decrepit, losing your memory, falling apart, as soon as you see yourself old, you're going to attend to the ways you're falling apart and so on. Some of it doesn't have to be a mystery. If you're 20 years old and you hurt your wrist, you do things to make your wrist better. If you're 70 years old and you hurt your wrist, too often people say, “Well, what do you expect? I'm 70 years old. I'm starting to fall apart.” So then it becomes you don't do anything, and so it does get worse. Yes. Now, I think – well, I may be strange in this regard. I don't know. The other day, I was helping a woman with something, an old woman I thought. My spouse told me, “She's probably 10 years younger than you are.” So I've never let age influence what I do. Now, there are changes as you get older. But I see the changes. Most of them is glorious. Not to worry about some of the silly things we used to worry about when we were younger. [00:22:11] PF: I absolutely love that, and one thing that you talk about, it's an assertion that we think we are doing the best we can, that we're doing great. But you say that we aren't, that we're not even close to doing the best we can. Talk about what you mean with that. [00:22:25] EL: Well, I don't want people feeling good that they're doing well to feel bad. All I'm suggesting is whatever is, there can be more and that we need to not limit ourselves with the notion of limits. This may be a little far afield again. But years ago, I was on the Committee on Aging at the Harvard Medical School. My friend, Jack Rowe, who was the chair, I called him and I said, “Jack, how long does it take for a broken finger to heal?” He said, “I don't know, a week.” I said, “What would you say if I said I could heal it in five days?” He said, “All right.” I said, “What about four days?” He said, “All right.” I said, “What about three days?” He said, “No.” I said, “Okay. What about three days and 23 hours?” Where is the point where here we can do it and here we can’t do it? So for anything that we want to do, there's a step that's small enough between where we are and where we want to get to that we can take it. If that doesn't work, make it a little smaller. Somebody is trying. So Zeno was a Greek philosopher, and Zeno’s paradox with respect to distance was if you always go half the distance from where you are to where you want to get, you're never going to be there. I'm an inch away. I'm a half an inch away. I'm a quarter of an inch. Zeno was [inaudible 00:23:47]. Langer's reverse Zeno is that there's always a step small enough from where you are to where you want to get. So you want to not eat the box of cookies you eat. Okay. Eat half the box. You can't eat half the box. Eat a quarter of the – everybody can eat it crumbless, and that's a new starting point. Then we're able to achieve all sorts of things that we were oblivious to before. I mean, there's so much that we have wrong, even notions of fatigue. We have lots of research that [inaudible 00:24:20] the book on this, but let me give you the overall, so it's easy to understand. If I say to people, “Do 100 jumping jacks and tell me when you get tired,” most people are going to get tired around 67. If I ask you to do 200 jumping jacks, most people get tired around 140. [00:24:40] PF: Amazing. [00:24:41] EL: So that's why I'm saying that what we build into everything we do is a mistaken notion of limits. You can never, there is no experiment, no science that can prove that we can't. All we can prove with science is that what we tried on our personal science, so to speak, what we've tried didn't work. Trying new things is fun. People think they want to be perfect at things. You can either be imperfectly mindful or perfectly mindless. Once you've got it, you don't pay attention to it anymore. You want to win. Play Tic-Tac-Toe against a four-year-old. You can always win. People who play golf think they want to get a hole in one in each shot. Well, if you do that, now there's no game. [00:25:27] PF: Yes. They lose their being special. [00:25:29 EL: Exactly, right. So trying new things with your health, with your performance is actually energy-beginning. Mindfulness we found and very clearly makes us more energized, happier. When you're mindful, people see you as more charismatic. They see you as more authentic. Relationships improve. Being mindful in this act of noticing way even leaves its imprint on the things that we do, so it feels good. It's good for you. Everybody responds. Why not? Because it's fun. It's what you're doing when you're having fun. So if you came to my house, Paula, you've never been here. You don't have to practice being mindful. You assume, “Gee, it's all going to be new,” so you take it all in. What I'm trying to explain to people is that everything is new. We just make it old by holding our mindsets about it still. The underlying phenomenon is always changing, always potentially exciting. [00:26:34] PF: Our job is then to notice it and curate our thoughts, as we walk through that experience. [00:26:41] EL: Enjoy our thoughts. Yes. [00:26:42] PF: Yes. I love that. So we are going to tell our listeners how they can find you, where they can find your books. But what do they do right now, as they're listening to this and they're saying, “Yes, I want to create chronic health in my life, and I want to notice more.” What are a couple of things that you would tell them to start doing right now? [00:27:00] EL: Okay. Well, the first thing is to make a universal attribution for uncertainty. I don't know. You don't. Nobody knows. We can't know because everything is always changing. Everything looks different from a different perspective. So you don't need to pretend, and not knowing is a good thing. It makes us curious. It makes us involved in what we're doing. Every time you hear yourself, call yourself something negative, or see somebody else in some pejorative way, recognize that there's an alternative that's equally potent to that that's positive, that's going to make you feel better and also improve your relationship. I think that just by realizing that this act of noticing is good, that no matter what we know, there's always a new way to know it. I think people will begin all of this. Now, we've all been trapped in being mindless. I asked you how much is one and one. You said two without thinking. But at the least, what people can do is when they're unhappy about something is to remind themselves of all that we're saying now. How else might they look at the situation? How might that thing actually have more than a silver lining, if silver lining sounds like it's just on the bottom. It's not so important. I'm saying the whole thing is actually an advantage. Then, of course, I must say that when you forget everything that I've said, you go back to the book, and you look at it again and reread it. [00:28:35] PF: I love that. I love that. You have so much to teach us. This information is truly life-changing, and I'm so happy that it was shared with me and that we were able to talk about it. I appreciate all the research and the information that you're bringing into this world because you really are changing the way that we look at our bodies and the way that we move through this world. [00:28:57] EL: Thank you very much, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:29:03] PF: That was Dr. Ellen J. Langer, talking about the mind-body connection and how it affects our health. If you'd like to learn more about Ellen and her new book, The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health,” learn about her other books, or follow her on social media, just visit us 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 happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Happy Activist Nancy Giammarco: Brightening Lives with Art [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 431 of Live Happy Now. This week, we're going to tell you how one happy activist is brightening the lives of children and their parents, one piece of art at a time. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week I'm talking with Nancy Giammarco, a musician who rediscovered her love of art during the pandemic. As you're about to hear, she started enhancing children's simple drawings just for fun, and that led to her creating the Joanne Project, which she named after her late mother. She's here to tell us what it is, what she does, and why it's so important to celebrate the artwork of children. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PF: Nancy, thank you for being on Live Happy Now. [00:00:46] NG: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. [00:00:48] PF: This is great. This is part of our happy activist segments. We really enjoy being able to share with our audience who other people are doing to kind of bring light into the world. And I love what you're doing with the Joanne Project. So, before we talk about, I guess I should have you explain what the Joanne Project is? [00:01:07] NG: Well, it is a program where I kind of tricked into it by accident. I take children's line art, and I enhance it, and add to the drawings, and color it and then send it back to the parent or grandparent and it all happened weirdly with a Facebook post by a friend of mine, and I saw her little kid’s artwork. I said, “Can I do something with that?” She said, “Of course.” So, that little girl ended up being my two-year art friend. From there – yes, we were doing art for over two years together, and then it spread out to some other families. That's kind of what it is. It's just a project where I tried to make little kids and their parents happy, by taking their little drawings and making them happier. [00:01:54] PF: Then, from your standpoint, where did you – what made you look at that piece of art and say, “Oh, hey, I could make this kid's day by doing something with it.” [00:02:06] NG: I think because I kind of saw something in it where I thought, “Hey, if I add a little texture here or a little color there, or add some birds there, or a bunny, and I send it back to the little kid, but it's still there drawing. The essence of it is still theirs.” So, I didn't take it and twist it up where it wasn't theirs anymore. Actually, it has that effect, the intended effect I wanted. Now, on the other hand, if you get the blanket color wrong – [00:02:32] PF: You're going to hear about it? [00:02:34] NG: Yes, my little art buddy, she let me know. That blanket is way too pink. I had to redo the blanket color and send it back to her. So, it's fun. It's just so much fun, because you ended up kind of inadvertently interacting with the kids too, through their parents most of the time. It's pretty hilarious. [00:02:52] PF: Once you started, how did that then grow? Because like you said, you were just doing it for one person, one friend's child. Then, how did that become a thing? Because now you've got a website with it, and people from anywhere can send you their children's art. Tell me how that unfolded? [00:03:08] NG: I think because I use social media. I use Instagram and I use mainly Facebook. People started seeing it and I was posting, this is still my favorite thing to do, and I would post the kids line art and then me enhancing it. People are like, “Hey, that's interesting. How do I get on in that?” But a lot of it was actually me going out and seeing my friend’s kids or grandkids, and openly soliciting them to come be part of the program. I'm pretty active about, “Hey, let me do this.” The one that got yielded from social media, though, just out of the blue, I never expected was, a lady from the Netherlands contacted me and goes, “Can you enhance my grandson's art?” I said, “Well, of course.” I did that and send it back and put it on a blanket for him for Christmas. [00:03:57] PF: That's adorable. [00:03:58] NG: Yes. It organically just slowly growing. It's not huge yet by any stretch of the imagination, but I really want it to be bigger than me. [00:04:10] PF: t seems like you get a lot of joy out of it. I know you're not getting rich off of this. So, it really is something you're doing, you love to do it, and I find it so interesting that you created a pay what you can model for this. You're not saying, “Hey, this is worth X amount.” Can you tell me why that was important to set it up that way? [00:04:31] NG: I wanted people to have the ability to choose, and I also wanted the people that are struggling to be able to participate. So, there are times where I've charged absolutely nothing, because I still want the kid to be happy, I want the parent be happy, and everybody should be able to just pay, as far as I'm concerned. Interestingly enough, if you say pay what you want, a lot of times they are very generous. Let's put it that way. So, it's crazy. [00:04:57] PF: Yes. I think when you give people that option, and they know that you're doing it from a really good place, it's not something that you're trying to mark it as something that's not. I think that really makes a difference in how they respond to you. [00:05:12] NG: I agree. I'm just trying to spread a little kindness and a little bit of joy. It's so fun when the parent gets back with me or the grandparent, they loved it. I mean, it makes my whole week when they say the little child liked it. That's really great. [00:05:27] PF: So how do you enhance it? What kind of – are you doing this by hand? Are you doing a computer program? What exactly, if I were to send you a crudely drawn picture, which is the only kind of picture I can draw, and you were to return it. What would my expectation be? How do you do this? And then how does it change it? [00:05:49] NG: Typically, you would scan that into your phone, your badly drawn drawing, right? You would send it to me as a JPEG. I would scan in that thing that you sent me, and from there, a lot of times, I'll trace over that badly drawn art, and then use different layering techniques and put in the color and the textures. A lot of times, I get tempted, and I'll put in little birdies or bunnies, or little enhancements that I think might be fun for the kid for me to add. Then, I send it back to the parent or grandparent as a JPEG for the little kiddo to look over. [00:06:23] PF: Oh, that's terrific. Then, does the child get to be the editor if they're like, because I've worked with art directors for 30 years, and we know what that's like. How do kids compare as art directors? Are they pretty demanding? Are they pretty easy to work with? [00:06:38] NG: I would say they're not demanding, but they are very honest, like I told you about that example. So, if there's something they don't like, they definitely let me know. I do edits. I will go back and edit that drawing and send it back. [00:06:51] PF: That is funny. [00:06:53] NG: It's hilarious. I laugh so hard. Because my ultimate goal is to make them happy. So, of course, I'm going to do rounds if they want them. [00:07:02] PF: Yes, that's hilarious. I just think it like a seven-year-old telling you to like do it over. [00:07:08] NG: Yes, it's happened. [00:07:10] PF: That's great. Well, I want to talk about your art for a minute, because I think it's really important to know that you come from the music industry. That's how I know you. I've known you, interviewed you before, as a musician. So, when did you make the switch? Why did this happen? Because you've really embraced the world of art. I'm not saying you forsake the music industry. But that's not where you are now. [00:07:35] NG: No, I’m not. When you knew me, back in the nineties, I was playing in bands. Incidentally, I did do a couple of our album covers. [00:07:43] PF: Oh, yes, that's right. [00:07:46] NG: I did art back in junior high and high school. Then, for some odd reason, when I got to college, and then beyond, I just dropped it. So, up until COVID hit, I was a live sound engineer. Basically, when the world shut down, I didn't have anything to do. So, I was like, “Oh, let's pick up the art pen again.” Like I said, I dove into those digital apps, Procreate, and started drawing, and I have never looked back. I don't know why they’ve gone for 42 years, to tell you the truth. It was crazy. [00:08:18] PF: That's really interesting, because I've watched you online as it's really evolved. It went from, you have your doodles section, you have all these different areas of art that you've explored. I think you got to deal with Chewy, out of doing that. How did that unfold? What was that like for you, especially through the lens of the pandemic? This came about during the pandemic, and it was a time where everything was shut down, and you use this time to start creating. A lot of people had nothing to do. So, what was that like to return to art? How did that kind of help you guide you through the pandemic? What was it giving you? [00:08:58] NG: It basically saved my sanity, because I was not going to sit around this house with nothing to do. I mean, you could only walk the dogs so many times. [00:09:07] PF: I don't know. If you ask the dog, they're going to say, “Yes, we can go again.” [00:09:11] NG: So, I had always had on my bucket list that I wanted to do a children's book. So, the first, I want to say six months of the pandemic, I just started making these drawings and wrote a little story, and got one of those out, and then did another one with a friend of mine. We're self-published on amazon.com, and I just, I had to find some creative, productive way not to go insane with being locked down. It's interesting because a lot of the artists in my communities that I'm with, the same thing happened. They picked their art up again during lockdown, because they were like – [00:09:49] PF: Really? [00:09:51] NG: Oh, yes. So many of us have a common story about that. [00:09:55] PF: Talk to me about what creating art does for you, for your soul, and how it's saved you, how it's saved other people? What is it that it provides? [00:10:06] NG: I guess just peace and joy, and you got to look in and say, “I got to put this thought down. But I'm going to try not to be so self-critical, and I'm just going to go with the flow and it's almost meditative.” Kind of like when you play a guitar or something, and you're just writing for yourself or just playing for yourself, when you're drawing for yourself, and just creating for creation’s sake, it brings you peace, and joy. It's very simple. I mean, it's the reason all artists, create art, I think. [00:10:46] PF: Right. Originally, when you started doing this, you were just doing it for yourself. You didn't think you were really going to do anything with it, did you? [00:10:53] NG: No, not really. Other than wanting to do the self-published children's book, I mean, and I didn't expect great sales on that or anything. It was just something I had always wanted to do, and then I suddenly had time to do it. Yes, no great ambitions. I just did it for me. I started posting a piece of art almost every day there before I really started building out my website again. I started getting some responses from people saying, “I was really feeling pretty cruddy today, and these little drawings, I look forward to when you're going to do them, so please keep doing them.” So, I put it on that platform, then I finally built out an Instagram account with my consistent lilmonsto handle. Then I went to Pinterest and started doing some things out there. I haven't got a huge following by any stretch of the imagination, but it's slowly growing. The thing that matters to me the most is, if it's helping somebody. Because I've had people tell me, “I really, really, I’m struggling, my brother's very sick. Would you send him a little something?” So, there's one guy that was in the hospital, and I started putting cat drawings on his wall every day. [00:12:08] PF: Oh, that's great. [00:12:10] NG: Yes, and we started – we even chatted on the phone, this man, and he passed away. His sister was like, “You made a difference in my brother's life.” And I was like, “Oh, my gosh.” I so miss doing that, just going out there and flunking something on his wall, because he was a big cat fan. So, it's social media, when you use it, I think in a good way, it can be a good thing. It can be a really good thing. [00:12:36] PF: Yes, originally, it was meant to be a connector, and we've managed to turn it into a divider. But there are ways you really can use it to connect and to provide a sense of good into the world. Really, that's what I see that you're doing with it. [00:12:53] NG: I'm trying. [00:12:55] PF: It’s an uphill battle. I know that you had some other things, other avenues that you wanted to explore, to kind of give back and really help children. Can you talk about that, and some of the things that you're wanting to do next with the Joanne Project? [00:13:09] NG: I have a friend that works at Children's Hospital here in Dallas, in information technology, and I thought it would drill through her, to try to get to the right person that can maybe connect me with parents that have a child that's maybe down, not feeling well, because they're in the hospital, and that I can maybe push a little project or two or three to some patients to cheer them up. I thought exploring children's hospitals might be a really good avenue to consider. [00:13:41] PF: That's a great way to give back, because oh, my gosh, children's hospitals are so – it's so sad. There's so much pain and uncertainty from the child, from the parents. I have a young child. She's a young teenager now, that I know who has gone through like this four-year cancer battle. And watching not just what she went through, but what her parents went through with her, it just is an unbelievable, painful experience. I love the idea that you're thinking of just delivering a little bit of light in a situation that is often bleak and uncertain. Then, what would you hope the child receives? When you've got a sick child or a down child, just someone who needs lifted up in some way, what is your intention and your hope when they receive artwork? [00:14:34] NG: Oh, man, just to make them happy for a minute. I have always loved kid art. So, just to see their creations and they're just so imaginative and stuff, so it's thrilling for me to take something and add to it. They're great artists, these little ones. What if through this process, one of them decides, “Oh, I want to be an artist when I grew up.” [00:14:56] PF: Exactly. [00:14:58] NG: Wouldn't that be great? [00:14:59] PF: Yes, you could be opening doors. I know that you talked about you'd really like this to grow and be able to involve other artists, what would you really most love to see happen with Joanne Project? What is your number one goal? [00:15:16] NG: I guess to continue in the vein of making people happy, and that's what I love about what you do. Because, oh, Lord, this Live Happy, when I'm feeling down, when I'm feeling down a lot of times, I'll just whip up one of your podcasts and it really helps. So, if I could just continue to make people bring them a little bit of joy, and then maybe grow the project so that it spreads, because we need to spread a lot of kindness and a lot of joy these days. There's just – [00:15:45] PF: There’s a shortage. [00:15:46] NG: There's a shortage of it. Everybody's focusing, or there's too much focus on bad stuff. I want the focus to be on good stuff, at least, for a little while. [00:15:55] PF: Yes, I like it, and you're bringing the good stuff. I think that's fantastic. But I love what you're doing. I think it's innovative and it really, like you said, it's not on a grand scale. You're changing people one drawing at a time, and I think sometimes that's the most meaningful way to do it. It's just like that one on one, one person at a time. You are bringing some great good into the world, and I appreciate what you're doing. I just wanted to share it with our listeners, and I appreciate you sitting down with me today and talking about it. [00:16:23] NG: I appreciate the opportunity. I cannot tell you how thrilling it is for me to talk to you like this. It's fun. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:16:33] PF: That was Nancy Giammarco, founder of the Joanne Project. If you'd like to learn more about Nancy, check out her website, follow her on social media, or register to win a drawing from her, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. If you have a happy activist in your life that you'd like to tell us about, be sure to email us at editor@livehappy.com, and you might hear them on a future episode. That's editor@livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: IPPA Recap with Andrea Goeglein [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 430 of Live Happy Now. Every two years, the International Positive Psychology Association holds its World Congress. This week, we're finding out what they were talking about. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Over the next few weeks, we're going to have some conversations about some of the takeaways from this year's event which was held in July. First, I'm sitting down with Andrea Goeglein, who addresses some of the growing concerns about loneliness and the lack of social connections, as well as giving us a fresh perspective on the World Happiness Report. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Andrea, thank you for coming back and talking to me today. [00:00:42] AG: You know that it's always my pleasure. So this is like my happy place, and thank you for having me again. [00:00:48] PF: You just came back from the IPPA World Congress, which is an International Positive Psychology Association World Congress. It has been a minute since it was able to –was this the first one that was able to take place person to person? [00:01:00] AG: Well, they actually had one in ’21, but it was virtual. This is the first in-person for four years. [00:01:08] PF: Because it doesn't happen every year. It's every two years. First of all, going into it, did you have any certain sessions or certain ideas that you really wanted to explore? Or did you go there and say let’s follow what's going on? [00:01:21] AG: Historically, I never really even looked at anything other than knowing, okay, I am going, and I'm going to absorb because I always view myself as an interloper. I think I am exactly like all of our listeners. I'm the person who did not commit their life to doing the research, but I did commit my life to getting the message out. From day one, when I went to the conferences, it was like, “I'll take whatever they've got.” This time, because there had been a lull, and so much seems to have happened, ‘09 was the first conference. There's been 14 years just there of how it's evolved. So here's what I want to give you the difference of where the science has been and where the conference has been. I did actually for the first time, unlike my extroverted personality, when I got the links to what the session programs were, I mapped out who I wanted to see and why, who I wanted to hear. [00:02:32] PF: Who, that's nice. [00:02:33] AG: So to your question, yes, I didn't wing at this time. I felt it was too precious. It had been a while. Think about how many times we're all doing that now. I think we're being a bit more thoughtful when we do come together. [00:02:48] PF: That's interesting. That's something I haven't really thought about, but I do believe you're correct. We are more maybe judicious with how we use our time and how we spend that time together. [00:03:00] AG: So you have just mentioned what the overarching theme of the conference and how the science itself is clearly moving. So the theme of the conference was connect to heart. From the time I was in positive psychology and went to the authentic happiness coaching pre-map, what it was about was the individual learning their strengths and how the individual applies these strengths. Like everything was very individually. Even with one of the founders, Chris Peterson, bringing out the other people matter message. I know in my work, it was always that one-on-one. What are your strengths? How do you apply them? How do you get it better? Now, what the science has done is look at the overarching problems. Let's just start with loneliness. [00:04:03] PF: Interesting because the episode just before this that we ran last week is loneliness because it's such an epidemic, so great. Yes, yes, jumping on that place. [00:04:11] AG: Yes. I want you to know, Live Happy Now was very present in my spirit and in actual. I’ll talk a little bit about that, at it. But loneliness, what – they open the conference by basically saying loneliness is at epidemic proportions. I will paraphrase and say and we know what cures it. Okay. [00:04:38] PF: Yes. [00:04:38] AG: So, yes, the science is showing us is that epidemic proportion, and the same science is showing us how to – like I took away the word up-level. The science from me of positive psychology has been up-leveled from the strengths. It is how do I use my strengths and you use your strength so that together everything is stronger. I don't care if it's your community, the workplace, your family. It is that connect to the heart. Well, it's connecting to the heart. Loneliness is resolved. When I connect to the heart of you at a different level than me just having an agenda that, boy, I'm lonely. I want to be with you, you know, the thing. [00:05:34] PF: Right. So what did they kind of recommend as the approach for that? [00:05:39] AG: Oh, well. So, first, let me say there were 130 sessions. I probably went to 15, and I'm like every other carpenter, I pick my nails. [inaudible 00:05:51]. [00:05:52] PF: Right. [00:05:55] AG: So above all, active participation. You must self-initiate to get back out, whether it's at the virtual level, the family level, the community level, the work level. You must know that loneliness is solved and well-being enhanced when you take an action to come together and then the techniques that we were taught a zillion years ago about empathetic listening. I'll use you and I as an example. You and I met years ago at a taping for a show on happiness. We all had our own little bucket. But then you and I spent some time at the airport. [00:06:42] PF: That's right. [00:06:43] AG: Okay. We connected through the person who – Mary Agnes made us both know about that show. What they are finding is that your ability to engage empathetically and listen for the commonality is going to help with all of the various rifts and all of the various communities. So active and active in a slightly up-leveled way where I am listening, first and foremost, for the commonality. But I'm not sharing it. Put, no one needs this more than me, masking tape on your mouth and truly just listen. Don't listen to jump in, that type of thing. Doing those small steps actually helps increase what the relationship is, even if it's in a shorter time period because we're going to be meeting for shorter time periods face to face. There are certain changes that 2020 gave us that we are going to be using techniques better because we have to use them faster. [00:08:11] PF: Oh, that's interesting. Let me ask you one more thing related to that, though. In a world where most of us are on social media, people have gotten so used to sharing their message, promoting their brand. People consider themselves a brand now, not just a person, and they're so busy sharing their message that we're forgetting how to listen. So how does someone reacquire those listening skills? How do we start doing that empathetic listening and learn to step back and not interject? [00:08:44] AG: The one thing about science knowing the answer is we still have to do the activity. It’s so interesting. We actually have everything we need to have better levels of life satisfaction. What we miss or what we don't commit to as strongly is applying it, doing the steps such as coming together. One of the suggestions, this came up a lot in work, texting, emailing, not the best way to build the relationships. Go back to more phone calls. This medium works. Whatever time you're taking, so many times what you put in an email doesn't need to be an email. It's not fact points or a report. But we're using email or texting. Pick up that call. Do re-initiate. Just because social media has become more brand-oriented, we are giving up or sacrificing and forgetting we control everything. We have the choice. This science gives you the strength, no pun intended, to engage at that level. So it's an action. [00:10:20] PF: Yes, yes. I love the idea of picking up that phone once in a while and getting more accustomed to that. Because I was joking with a friend within the past week because she had texted me to say, “Can I call you?” It's like remember when we actually like had to take a chance. You picked up the phone and hope it's somebody you wanted to talk to. I think we've lost a lot by not having that ability to just pick up the phone and call someone. The fact that we do feel we're intruding if we call them out of the blue. So I do love that of making it a practice to pick up a phone and call somebody. It's amazing how much more enrichment, how much more information you get out of that. [00:11:01] AG: Yes. Well, and I'll give you two points on that. One, it's actually a sign of what I call evolved respect. Do you have the time? Because I do that with my friends because we know how crazy we allow our schedules to become and we – what you're really asking is do you have time to pay attention to me if I call. [00:11:22] PF: Oh, I love that. I love that framing. [00:11:23] AG: Okay. So as a habit to actively engage more, I use that technique because then I can say no this time or schedule. But I'll tell you a funny thing that just happened to me yesterday. I have a very diverse background. I've lived in all sorts of parts of the country and done all sorts of things. I have a media platform, yada, yada, so a lot of people in my life. One person from 40 years ago kept coming to mind, and I'm in contact with them maybe twice a year. We had a 12-year period where we were really together. I originally was going to text them but decided – when I knew I had some time, I picked up the phone. Funny thing, I couldn't leave a message because his voicemail was full, which is something that happens a lot. So I text him instead and just said, “Hey, I'm just thinking about you,” this, this, and this. Next thing I know, he calls. Well, I ragged on him about the voice message. He said, “What is it? You want to make sure that like please don't call me?” So I would urge your listeners to check that habit because I know that I encounter that a lot, full voice messages. I will also tell you, I've done a very funny thing on my own voicemail, which I like to use to make people smile. So my voicemail currently says some version of please leave your number. Then, “I'm making a lot of changes in my life. If I don't get back to you within 24 hours, you happen to be one of them.” Now, I got that from Joe Dispenza, but I love it. Then I say, “I hope I made you laugh,” because that's always been a goal for me that my ability to respond is going to increase. This goes across the board for all of us. So this is actually we will respond to people who made us feel lighter, who made us feel like more vulnerable, more receptive. So I make that statement in a way to say, okay, lighten up because don't think I won't get a text about like, “Did you not return my call because I no longer matter,” kind of thing. It's great. [00:13:39] PF: Exactly. I love that. I love that. So you talked a lot it seems like about loneliness and connection. What would you say was another thing that really made a big impression on you at that IPPA? [00:13:51] AG: Okay. So know that we started with the World Happiness Report, and one of them – [00:13:55] PF: Oh, yes, yes, which we talked about here a while back. [00:13:59] AG: Right. Okay. So one of the great things, now, if you take the theme of up-leveling the science, going from strengths of the individual to strengths of the group. Then one of the respectful things we were asked as the audience. For those like that are listening to us that are practitioners and disseminators of the information in your audience, what they said is one of the greatest problems, the theme was how do we get this message out to the mass audience in an accurate way. Because as you probably know, when the World Happiness Report comes out, what's the thing the world knows about? What's the – [00:14:39] PF: All they know is the happiest countries in the world. Some of them will know that US isn't doing that great. We cannot crack the top 10 to save our lives. They know that the Scandinavian countries are crushing it. That's what we know. [00:14:52] AG: Bingo. I know that I don't even look at the list because Norway, Finland, Sweden can be the happiest places in the world. [00:15:00] PF: Denmark. Yes. [00:15:01] AG: But they're also the coldest ones in the world. I'm not going there. That’s all there is to it. I’ll visit. But, no, no, I'm not to stay. So we – taking in information, it's an example of how the media uses us and how we have to take back control. I'd love to read the part of the World Happiness Report. True to my statement, if you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem. The World Happiness Report is free. Type in World Happiness Report. Download the sucker. Although the media talks to us about country rankings, and then we get unhappy because we aren't able to crack the code, here is an interesting finding that they have, under happiness, the very first agenda item. Once happiness is accepted as the goal of the government, this has other profound effects on institutional practices. Health, especially mental health, assumes even more priority, as does the quality of work, family, life, and community. Now, you talk in our language. Well, we have problems in those areas. So if our government would make it a focus, not make the focus mental health only. But how do we up-level the components of not happiness the emotion, which is different from me and you, but that overarching well-being, life satisfaction, all of the components that are truly governmental and community issues? What the conference did was take a report that a lot of us know the top line of but say, “Wait a minute. What action can I take?” The action is start working towards your community, looking at mental health not as a social dilemma and a social disease but as a component that needs to be solved in a connection way so that overarching our community and our policies work better. [00:17:20] PF: That's interesting because how then does an individual that's such a huge problem to solve, and that shift is not going to turn around quickly. So how does the individual who's listening say, okay, I can be a small part of this, and how do they do that? What action was it determined that they can take? [00:17:39] AG: I'm going to use an analogy that my dad used to use with me, and it had to do with I may not be able to clean up the junkyard. But I've got a broom, and I can clean my stoop. [00:17:52] PF: I like it. [00:17:52] AG: The problem media does to us and we've done to ourselves by accepting it. Don't try to solve the world happiness problem. I don't even give a flip about the world happiness scale. I do care about my square block. I do care about the policies that impact how safely I can cross the bleeping street. I do care that if I get safe crosswalks that other neighborhoods that may not be as affluent have equally safe crosswalks. That's how you do it. You look at what does my square block need and how can I do that. Then build on it from there. Don't fall into the trap of globalizing because catastrophizing and globalizing are two of the things that take away our optimism. It works at every level. [00:18:48] PF: So it really comes down to looking at your immediate tribe and saying, “All right, what are my strengths? What are theirs? How do we do make this small difference together?” I love that. [00:18:58] AG: Okay, and I'll give you another one. So meaning and mattering. The up-level station was, historically, we talked about meaning meaning. Again, that's a very individualized how do I find meaning. Well, what we found the mattering part, the new up-level is the mattering part because I find meaning when what I do at every level of work, life, family, when actually I can sense the impact on you. That went across the board. That became the nuance. That's just one of those aspects that it seems like we're talking about the same thing, meaning and mattering. But it's the difference between individual and then realizing that the satisfaction you get is from how others are impacted. [00:20:02] PF: Interesting. Boy, we could do a whole episode on that. That is really, really – [00:20:05] AG: Oh, and do I have books for you. [00:20:07] PF: Yes. [00:20:10] AG: Do I have books for you. [00:20:11] PF: Yes, you do. [00:20:13] AG: Yes, yes. I walked away – having this conversation, as I said, 130 different things about schools and well-being and the isolation, the use of psychedelic drugs. I mean, the topics were deep. If I was to leave anyone with anything, the things that I cared about the most was the shift from the meaning to the mattering and strengths, the importance of strengths at a different level. One of the many researchers that I love a lot is Ryan Niemiec. [00:20:47] PF: I love Ryan since [inaudible 00:20:48]. [00:20:48] AG: Okay. How can you not love Ryan? A man who has devoted his life to values in action, and he lives it. From his Positive Psychology Goes to the Movies books, what Ryan and his teams have been finding out is that when you add the strengths, the difference between adding strength to the mindfulness. Your particular strengths apply to the mindfulness in all the various things that you do in life is what then increases the life satisfaction aspects. Again, seems like we're saying the same exact things, but we're not. They've up-leveled it. They have found the deeper way for the things such as mindfulness and enhancing your spiritual connection because spirituality is that attribute where there is a oneness mindset. That oneness mindset builds on the same theme. That whole we're in this together. They took that theme, the wearing this together theme of 2020, and have looked deeply at what does that really mean when it's in action. [00:22:09] PF: That's what really needed to come out of the pandemic because there were a lot of lessons learned about ourselves and our relationships and both good and bad. To have that new application, I think, is really important for us to be able to take away. It's like we have to have learned something from that. We have to have changed something because of that. [00:22:33] AG: For me, that is the greatest. I think it opened up some of the greatest potential for the future, starting with the most obvious of how we valued certain jobs in our society and what it will mean for us going forward to keep valuing. The US is a service economy. We know that those jobs and satisfaction in those jobs helps build the economy because I know I'm to the point. You do too with the tipping. There's lots of articles right now on tipping and the backlash. I'm going to say I'm a very generous tipper, and I'm getting cranky. [00:23:16] PF: Yes, I know. I don't want to start at 18%. [00:23:19] AG: In ’20 and ’21, I was wanting to make sure you could pay your rent. Now, it's like, “Could you at least be accurate on the stuff when we’re interacting?” [00:23:28] PF: I know. [00:23:29] AG: It is there but they're in lies, what we are learning. We go through. There was a great line by the man who heads the Center for Good Science in Berkeley. His last name is Hanson. I think it's Rick Hanson. [00:23:46] PF: Oh, yes. [00:23:48] AG: Yes. One of the greatest challenges that we have is our brains on bad things is like Velcro. On good things, it's like Teflon. [00:23:57] PF: Exactly. [00:23:58] AG: Okay. [00:24:00] PF: I would say relative to the lessons that 2020 gave us the opportunities is we have the choice of holding on to the good stuff and continuing to up-level the stuff that was a problem because we'll be refining our economy and our ability to interact in it in a more positive way than when we were making widgets. [00:24:27] PF: I love it. Andrea, that is so insightful. I do want to ask you before I let you go. [00:24:33] AG: Okay. [00:24:34] PF: Positive psychologists, we've talked about it's a relatively new discipline, and it's maturing, and it's changing. How have you – since you've been in it a long time, you've been there. [00:24:45] AG: Long time. [00:24:46] PF: How have you seen it mature, and where do you see it being different right now? Not just the conference but positive psychology as a discipline. [00:24:55] AG: Yes. So this is really interesting. The scientific model forces an artificial. We've got to have a sample that has a known outcome that we can say this about this group. What I heard, particularly from the president of IPPA, because her background is in genetics, our ability to individualize the findings, whether it be on life satisfaction, what causes happiness, how to overcome the loneliness, our ability, what well-being is to me, I mean, they have a zillion definitions. That's a problem for science, except it's not. They're working towards not making that the hurdle. That you can continue to create work that, in fact, helps impact people and also do good science. They're now staying in what I see is a more both lane. They're not going to give up the good model of what how you study science, but they are also looking to and respecting the individualized differences along the sphere. That matters a lot. [00:26:16] PF: Yes, it does. It does. That's terrific. Andrea, you know we'll come back and talk about more of this later. [00:26:22] AG: We will. [00:26:23] PF: Later. But I appreciate this. I did. I wanted to do a follow-up. I knew you'd be a great person to talk to about it, so I appreciate you spending this time with me and telling us about it. [00:26:33] AG: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:38] PF: That was Andrea Geoglein, talking about her takeaways from the International Positive Psychology Association's World Congress. If you'd like to learn more, just visit us 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: Overcoming Loneliness With Dr. Randall Hansen [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:01] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 429 of Live Happy Now. We know that loneliness is a huge problem in today's world, and this week we're learning what we can do about it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm sitting down with Dr. Randall Hansen, an author, educator, and advocate for deep healing. His mission is to help others understand and heal from the trauma in their lives. In the wake of the pandemic, he is one of many thought leaders who are concerned about what loneliness and isolation are doing to us. He's here to talk about the dangers of loneliness, what's causing it, and most importantly, what we can do about it. Let's have a listen. [EPISODE] [0:00:41] PF: Randall, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [0:00:45] RH: Paula, I'm very excited to join you on a – to discuss a very important topic today. [0:00:50] PF: Yeah. You and I are having this conversation, because of something that you wrote about loneliness. I follow you on LinkedIn, and you wrote a post that really spoke to me, because there's so much information coming out right now about how deadly isolation and loneliness are. It's just continuing to grow. It's like, even though we know what a problem it is, it's getting worse. I guess to start, tell me why it was so important for you to write that post, because you really took a deep dive into what it's doing to us. [0:01:18] RH: I've just seen too many people affected by it. I have a good friend who's a caretaker for a disabled brother and pre-COVID. He was already self-isolating as often caregivers do, because they have to spend their whole time with the person they're taking care of, but then with the pandemic, he just became further isolated, and I could actually see, I mean, not be, but I could see his brain changing in the sense of he was just becoming more pessimistic. He's a single guy, he wants to have a family. So, he just becoming more and more isolated and his attitude is just become more and more pessimistic, because we've actually seen, and this is part of my deep dive, but we've actually seen scientific studies and show that loneliness changes the format of our brain. It actually is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy if we don't make changes, that the loneliness will actually, almost keep feeding itself and making it a downward spiral that will make it even harder for us to get out of. [0:02:29] PF: Is it similar to depression, where once you have depression, you can't just like snap yourself out of it and it keeps getting worse? As you said, a downward spiral, does loneliness make you continue to self-isolate? [0:02:42] RH: Bizarrely, it does. I mean, that's the crazy part of this thing. We have mechanisms that we think are designed to increase or decrease the loneliness, increase our connectivity like social media, but we're finding out now that social media is actually more isolating, because we have this comparison syndrome where we're looking, “Oh, look at all our friends who are doing these exciting lives who are leading and I'm stuck at home with by myself.” So that becomes this thing. Then also, or, “Oh, look at my friend has 10,000 likes and I have one like. I'm not loved. I'm not appreciated.” So social media which is supposed to bring us together is actually more isolating. So, yeah, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that way. [0:03:30] PF: I want to ask you about social media, because you can create some guidelines at some point to make it a healthy experience for you by like, limiting your time and maybe monitoring who you're following and what you're doing. What are some of the ways that you recommend that we can use social media to cure our loneliness and not make it worse? Because I'll say, I've got a relative who's, she's in her 80s, she's in a nursing home. I don't know what she would do without social media. She uses it in that right way. She stays in touch with all her nieces and nephews. Tell us how to do this the right way. [0:04:05] RH: Yeah. I think especially for, I mean, again, that's what social media is all about for the isolated people, for rural people that are disconnected from friends and family that this is a chance just like FaceTime, or Zooms, or something like that. The same thing. We can connect face to face, but – so that is definitely a positive thing, but it hit me last year. I was just having this quiet meditation and it really hit me the strong, especially about Facebook, which a friend of mine calls fake book. [0:04:37] PF: Yeah. [0:04:38] RH: I'll come back to that in a second, but it just came back to me that so much of this doesn't matter. My rule would be, as long as you're not putting all your focus, emphasis on social media, that's number one. Definitely, limit the amount of time you spend and look at what your goal is. If your goal is something like, this grandmother that's trying to just want to connect with friends and family, maybe share the memories. I have some older relatives that are now going through their photo albums and posting old black and whites and it's awesome. Yeah, that's the part that's a good part of social media, but as soon as we start comparing ourselves to others. If we're looking at social media just to look at others and keep in contact, that's great, but if we're posting, hoping to get 100 likes, or 1000 likes, or 10,000 likes and we're going to be probably setting ourselves up for disappointment. I think the key is just expectations, what's our intention with social media. I think each social media is different, like Facebook, I think is perfect for family and friends. LinkedIn's you and I have talked about is wonderful for professional connections. I love that aspect. You and I wouldn't be talking otherwise. [0:05:52] PF: Exactly, yeah. [0:05:54] RH: Then Instagram, I use Instagram just for photos. I just love photos. So, that's a different vibe in all of them. [0:06:00] PF: How important could it be then to set an intention each time you're going to use social media? Would that be a good way to start building a healthier practice with it? [0:06:10] RH: Yes. I think that's an extremely good idea. You can, you can also be honest for yourself and just try to monitor it, but of course, you can also get an app if you're doing it on your phone and watch your screen time that way. The honor system says, “Oh, I'll only be on social media for an hour.” But then you have 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. [0:06:32] PF: Right. [0:06:32] RH: All of a sudden, five hours, not one hour. So, having some device that maybe tracks you at least in the beginning might be another way to keep yourself a little more honest with it, too, if your intention is just to keep to maybe an hour a day or something like that. [0:06:46] PF: Right. Right. We know that beyond social media, there's other things attributing to our loneliness. But first, I do want to – you brought up a great point. That is the difference between loneliness and solitude. [0:06:59] RH: Yeah. [0:06:59] PF: Can you tell us about that distinction? Because I think this is a really important thing to think about. [0:07:04] RH: Yeah. I think solitude can be so life enhancing, so soul searching. So, that's not – if we seek out solitude and I'll give you an example. I've gone on a healing journey and my best modality for healing is nature. I instill the day it is. But I live, you can see behind me, I live on this, very gratefully, on a little hilltop above a lake. I walk this property almost daily. Anyway, but my healing journey in nature, I was alone for about five years in nature. Just rediscovering myself and trying to get rid of my ego and then deal with my traumas. I was alone in that process, but I was also in a community of other forest owners. We talked about how to manage our forest and best techniques and things like that. I was still in a – I was in solitude for my healing journey, but I had a community around me that supported me. The difference in loneliness is a sense of isolation, that social pain, that people don't care about you, and you're not connected, and you're alone. Where solitude is seeking that solitude for some kind of purpose, typically self-enhancing, educational learning process. That's a big difference. They can seem similar, but quite different purposes involved. [0:08:46] PF: Right. You can be lonely even when you're in a sea of people. [0:08:50] RH: Yes. [0:08:51] PF: It doesn't – [0:08:53] RH: Yeah. My other perfect example is when I was in freshman in college. I picked the wrong college. I was completely, lonely, isolated in a sea of thousands of other people around me. All these students were around me, but I wasn't connected to any of them. Yeah, that's the perfect example. We could live in a city with a million people and still be lonely. Yeah. [0:09:21] PF: Yeah. It's really important then to have community and you talk about that. Explain to us why community is so important. Especially now, it's even more so in this post pandemic world. Can you address that for me, please? [0:09:34] RH: Yeah. Well, I think let me just address the pandemic for a second too, because I think my wife and I, my partner and I, we talk about how we are the 1% in the middle. It seemed like everyone else is on the extremes. I think the pandemic – before the pandemic, we had some of that, but I think since the pandemic, we've had this splintering so much so that almost any issue seems to be political if you want to make it so. To me, it's so important to find community that aligns with your values. I think in today's world, it's a lot harder, because a subject like dogs, well, there's no political aspect of dogs, but someone's going to find something like, the dog food, you give your dog. Whatever. I mean, it's just – [0:10:24] PF: Right. There's always going to be a way to find that fault. [0:10:28] RH: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's community, because it's so blindered these days. It's so important to find people that support you, support your values. You don't have to support all your values or be 100% aligned with you. It's pretty rare to find someone like that. As long as there are maybe 75%, because you want these people to be able to agree with you, uplift you and you'd be able to uplift them at the same time, because again, communities is a back and forth street. [0:10:57] PF: It's also important to be able to realize that they can have different views. [0:11:02] RH: Yeah. [0:11:03] PF: I don't need to jettison them from my lives. I've seen people really cut off some longstanding friendships, because of political, or social beliefs. It’s to me very sad, because you're throwing out, talk about throwing out the baby with a bathwater. There's so much more than what your, say your political beliefs are. [0:11:23] RH: Yeah. Yeah, I have a friend who is completely opposite me about the pandemic and all things are about it. I could have easily written him off. He could have written me off, but there are so many other aspects of that relationship of that friendship that don't deal with that one little subject. I know the pandemic is a massive one, but it doesn't have to be. Yeah, I work around – you find to work around for those things, because we're all multifaceted. We're not – I can't imagine one person that's all about just one topic and that's it. Yeah. So, save some of those friendships. That's one of my things is if you're lonely and you're feeling like you're isolated and you want to move ahead, maybe go back and look at some of those friendships that maybe got dissolved in the last three or four years and see if there's a way to resolve them. I think we have a fear of rejection. I can tell you when I've reached out to a few people that I rationally did something wrong and I apologized or I just, depending if I did it wrong, or if I just reached out to them and said, “Hey, can we – I really miss you. Can we reconnect and see what's going on?” All those were positive. I didn't have one bad experience with that. One didn't take off back to the friendship, but that was fine. He didn't say – he didn't yell at me or anything like that, but just, “Yeah, I moved on.” But yeah. I mean, I think many people have gone through their contact list and said, “Oh, no they voted for that person. Nope.” Or, “They did that there in the pandemic. Nope. Gone.” But now where we have so many other qualities to us. [0:13:07] PF: That's it. Yeah. If you can really start looking for what you have in common with people. I moved out to an area where I will have less in common with the people than I did when I lived in downtown Nashville. That's been very key for me, is not focusing on the differences is looking at where do we find this common ground? Now, frankly, we have a swimming pool. For them, that's our common ground. They're like, “You have a pool? I like to swim.” I know, but you do need to look for things that, places where you can connect instead of being so quick to say like, “No, they're not right for me.” [0:13:41] RH: Yeah. Yeah. I just think it's so many opportunities. It's a good way to actually grow, because if you lean into some of that, just comfort like, “Oh, I don't know if I like that, their beliefs or their whatever.” But if you lean into a little bit you might even learn something. “Oh, I didn't know about that.” So, it can be a positive. Even if you don't become a friend with those people, you can still become a positive learning experience to grow your own knowledge about other things. [0:14:07] PF: Yeah. It's a good opportunity to find out why someone thinks that way. [0:14:11] RH: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. [0:14:13] PF: That will blow your mind sometimes. [0:14:15] RH: Yeah. Many times, it will. Again, The Four Agreements, great book, real short, it’s a tiny book, but one of them is don't make assumptions, but we do it all the time. [0:14:25] PF: Right. [0:14:26] RH: That person [inaudible 00:14:26]. Oh, they must be Irish or whatever. Whatever, but who knows, they just like green. Yeah, we need to get beyond our assumptions sometime. [0:14:36] PF: We do have this loneliness epidemic. What is really like the cause of the loneliness epidemic? Is it just so many different things or what's going on? [0:14:44] RH: That's really a good question. I've seen so many studies on impact of loneliness. We even have the search in general, released a report about a month or two ago about how dangerous loneliness is and more dangerous than almost a pack a day cigarette smoking issue. We know how dangerous cigarette smoking is. It leads to stress eating, further isolation, depression, self-medicating, all these things. I think it's just a tipping point. I was just having a discussion with a psychologist this morning in Ireland, of all places. She was saying that we have just gotten to this point where we are so, it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy that technology is supposed to make things easier. It's isolated us. The pandemic, illness and health, sometimes brings it together, but because, again, for whatever reasons, the reaction to the pandemic and all that became so political. Then from the pandemic, we also had the self-isolate. I have a brother who is still self-isolating, because he has just gotten into that. Again, it's almost like a – again, I don't want to label this like a, in terms of a medical diagnosis, but it's almost a little bit like OCD, where OCD is this loop that you can't get out of. So, it's a spot loop until your brain fixes it. I think lonely, we're seeing loneliness is almost something similar to that. So, for my brother, who, yes, he can travel now, he wanted to travel to Europe and he couldn't, because of the pandemic and the travel restrictions. Yet, he still hasn't left his house. I think there is a self-fulfilling aspect of it. Then the work from home is the other component to this. Maybe we all didn't have the greatest co-workers, but there's a certain human connection we have when we go into work and meet people. “Hey, how are you? How was your weekend? Catch the big game.” Whatever. There's some connection going on there. Now, I mean, we still have that with zooms and things like that, but it's just not the same or you don't have that – [0:17:10] PF: There’s nothing like face-to-face. Yeah. [0:17:11] RH: Person sitting next to you. Yeah. Yeah. It changes you. [0:17:16] PF: What can we do if we're out and we're in the world and we're feeling good about things, what can we do to help people who are suffering from loneliness? Because it's, as you said, it becomes this vicious circle for them. It's not something it seems they can pull themselves out of. How do we help people who are going through this? [0:17:35] RH: I love it. Two aspects. Number one, of course, first, I love that those who are doing better should always be trying to help others. I love that. Thank you for that, Paula. It's a beautiful message. I think the key is awareness. Look around to the people in your circle. Who haven't you talked to, who haven't you seen in a while, and who has suddenly dropped off and just reaching out is that I think a major, major first step and just saying, “Hey, I noticed – I haven't seen you in a while, I have been texting you or haven't seen you on social media.” Whatever your connection with that person is. Then maybe the next step is there are so many ways to meet new people. The next step after that would be maybe invite them along to something you're going to, a book club, or a social event, a conference, a club that you belong to. There are so many non-profits you can volunteer with. I mean, there are so many ways to get involved, but I think inviting them along rather than telling them. I mean, it's easy to say, “Hey, there's a book club over at the library.” [0:18:49] PF: Go check it out. [0:18:49] RH: Yeah. Go check it out versus, “Hey, I'm going to this book club next week. The book is fantastic. You don't have to read it all. You don't have to read any of it.” It's just a chance to talk about the book and meet other people. Then forced that we bring them along. I think those are two things. One, checking in. Then two, just recommending, “Oh, hey. Why don't you go to the gym? Why don't you just.” Say, “Hey, I'm doing this. Can you come along?” Or invite them along with you. [0:19:18] PF: I think for that, it's important to keep asking, because the chances are the first time, first three times, they're going to say no, but there's also something that happens within that person when they are being invited. Someone's extending a hand, someone wants to spend time with you. It's like that's, I think where you can really start helping them and not just giving up, not being like, “Well, they always say no.” Just continue to let them know that you're interested in their companionship. [0:19:48] RH: Yes, a 100%, because almost, especially depending on how long they've been in this loneliness cycle, their reaction is almost always going to be no, because, “Oh, I don't want to be a burden.” “No, no, you, you're an extrovert. I know you're going to have more fun than I am. I'm going to be a drag, blah, blah, blah.” But you're right. Every single time you ask them, it's a little change going on up in there. It might be the fifth time or the 10th time, but yes. I love that. Thank you. Keep asking, because it will flip that switch. It might take a little while, but it will. [0:20:23] PF: You just got to be patient and persistent. There's so many pieces to this. I appreciate you sitting down and talking about this. We can do an entire series on loneliness and, and still just be scratching the surface. I am going to tell our listeners on the landing page, they'll be able to find the column that you wrote about this. That also gives incredible tips for stepping out of loneliness. I really hope that people do listen and whether they're dealing with loneliness themselves and need some tips on how to take these baby steps. Things like adopt a pet. That was a great one. I mean, you gave just so many wonderful tips that are pretty easy to do and getting out in nature and. Then also, what we can do as people who are watching someone go through that. There's a lot of ways that we can reach out and help. I truly appreciate you sitting down with me today and talking about it. [0:21:12] RH: Well, thank you, Paula. I just so appreciate you reaching out to me and giving me this platform to talk about it, because it is a very important subject. Thank you. [OUTRO] [0:21:24] PF: That was Dr. Randall Hansen talking about loneliness. If you'd like to learn more about what he has to say about loneliness, check out his books or follow him on social media. Just visit us 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: Easing Back-to-School Anxiety With Dr. Laura Phillips [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 427 of Live Happy Now. It's time to go back to school, and for some kids, that means a whole lot of stress. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Dr. Laura Phillips, the Senior Director in the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute. Laura specializes in working with children who have learning disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety, among other things, and she's committed to improving the social, emotional well-being of children and adolescents, so she's sitting down with me today to talk about how going back to school can create anxiety for kids of all ages and how it can also affect their parents. Then, she's going to tell us what we can do about it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Well, Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show today. [0:00:50] LP: Thank you so much for having me. [0:00:52] PF: I wanted to talk to you, because back to school is on the minds of everybody, kids, parents, shopkeepers. We tend to, at this time of year, focus on the excitement of the new school year and all the great things, but there is a lot of research that shows that children are more anxious than ever about going back to school. I wanted to talk, first of all, and find out what you're seeing. [0:01:14] LP: I think, children are more anxious than ever, unfortunately, about everything. I think back to school is a transition which tends to be anxiety-provoking for children, particularly those who experience anxiety. The last three years, each transition back to school was anxiety-provoking, because kids didn't know what the year would look like in the fall of 2020. We had kids who were doing full-time remote instruction, hybrid instruction. Some kids were back in classrooms for the first time since the previous March, so that was really anxiety-provoking. Then the following fall, there was increased return to the classroom, but still some – I mean, really significant changes from what normal school looks like. Then there were really young kids who never really knew what normal school looked like, because they hadn't had a normal school year, because of where they were when COVID hit. The past couple of years, the back-to-school transition, I think, was anxiety-provoking, because kids didn't really know what that would look like. This year, we seem to be out of that pandemic phase, so it's a more normal return to school this year than I think the past couple of years had been. But that's with an atypically anxious population of kids and teenagers. As you said, general rates of anxiety are higher than ever before among our teenagers and children, and that's true for mood disorders as well. We have a group of kids and teenagers who are coming up, who are just really struggling from an emotional perspective. [0:02:42] PF: What is the biggest cause of that anxiety? Because I do hear a lot more about anxiety, and I don't think it's just because we're more aware of it. I think there's a greater amount of it. [0:02:54] LP: I think that's right. It's really not just COVID. This isn't a COVID relic, although I don't think that the pandemic helped, but we really did see these trends, rising rates of anxiety and mood disorders preceding the pandemic, and really dating back really to the mid-2000s. I think that there are a lot of things. I think that a really big contributor is social media. We have kids who are constantly connected to one another and to the world. That can take a hit on their self-esteem, because there's just this constant comparison game that's taking place and FOMO and the unkind behavior that used to end at 3:00 tends to follow kids now home at the end of the day, because there's just constant connection. There's also just constant information. The world is a scary place. I think that kids are really acutely aware of it, because there's a 24-hour news cycle and because of their constant access to information through social media and being on screens. They're hearing about school shootings. They're hearing about racialized violence. They're hearing about global warming. There's a lot of reasons for kids to feel nervous about the state of the world. There's also a lot of pressure on kids, which I think comes from very well-intended parents who also have a lot of concerns about the state of the world. They want to feel like they have some control over their children and their children's future. There's a lot of pressure put on kids to have academic success. From very early on in kids' school years, they're hearing that how important it is to do well in school and to get into a good college and to get a good job. Free time is pretty limited now, because kids are really involved in a ton of programming. Some of which is really good, but I think that downtime is really important, both from a mental health perspective, but also from a cognitive development perspective. I think that there are a lot of factors contributing to the rising rates of anxiety. [0:04:51] PF: For parents, how do they press pause on some of that? Because you want to keep up, and your child wants to keep up. They want to know what's going on with social media. Even though it's challenging and anxiety-provoking, they don't want to miss out on it. How do you take them away from that a little bit and find some mental health breaks? [0:05:15] LP: It's really, really hard. I don't envy parents of children who are old enough to have screens. I have very young children. I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, and I am not looking forward to the day when my child asks me for a cellphone, or a Facebook account. Because to your point, you don't want kids to miss out, and that is the way that kids are connecting with their friends. That is the way that kids are staying in contact when they're outside of school. That's the way that they're making plans, and so you don't want your child to be isolated, or pulled out of that. But parents need to be monitoring. They need to be aware of who their kids are talking to, what they're talking about. There is a role for restrictions on certain types of programming, or access to people through programming, so you can certainly, you can restrict who kids talk to, and they can only talk to people if you're approved. I mean, there are ways to put in place restrictions on kids' access to screens and social media. But you said mental health break. I think that a break is also really, really important. Not just for kids and teenagers, but for adults too, and I wish that I practiced what I preached. But I talk to parents all the time about, really, we talk about screen contracts, or social media contracts, so coming up with a plan for when and how and for what purposes these devices will be used before giving children the privilege of having a phone, which having a cellphone really is a privilege, which I really try to reinforce with parents a lot. It's a privilege that they have the right to remove if these devices are being abused, or if kids are not following the rules that are set out for them in order to safeguard them and also, to protect their mental health. But within those contracts, should also be designated break times. There should be times throughout the day that kids are not on phones. I think that dinner time and I mean, families have obviously different schedules and different opportunities to be together for dinner. Meal time should be a time ideally where everybody, not just children are putting away their phones and really using that time to come back and connect with one another. The bedroom, designated so to screen-free times of day, also screen-free zones within the house, or the apartment. Maybe the bedroom is a place that we at least after a certain hour of the day, because certainly during the day, kids are going to insist that they need access to their phones and their screens. But maybe after 8:30 p.m., everyone turns in their phones and then there's just designated blackout time for screen media. I think that kids and adults really do need a break, and there's a lot of really compelling research showing mental health benefit of having designated time away from screens. [0:07:55] PF: Then how can you use that time at dinner to connect and find out what's going on at school, what's going on with them, and this is a two-parter, because a child isn't necessarily going to tell you in words, “I'm being picked on. I'm being bullied. I'm not happy. I don't feel comfortable.” How do you use that time at dinner and how do you get into what is really going on? [0:08:16] LP: Well, I mean, anytime you're talking about uncomfortable things, you want to ask open-ended questions. You don't want to ask leading questions and you don't want to plant affect, or emotional experiences into kids' minds. You don't want to say, “Are you nervous about your first day of school tomorrow?” You might want to ask them, “How are you feeling about starting school tomorrow and really see what they bring to you?” Yeah. I mean, kids may not come out and tell you how they're feeling. They might not tell you that they're feeling nervous, or scared, or if they had an unpleasant experience in school. You want to watch carefully for some red flags that we know kids tend to show when they are experiencing something that makes them feel uncomfortable. Changes in affect, changes in behaviors, if you're seeing increased irritability, reduced frustration tolerance, kids are having meltdowns more frequently than, or more easily than they tend to have. If you're seeing changes in sleep patterns. You're noticing that kids are having a hard time falling asleep, they're waking up in the middle of the night, they're waking up earlier in the morning, if they're more clingy than usual, somatic symptoms, so physical complaints like headaches, stomach aches, fatigues, etc., are all really good signs that something might be going on that's making your child feel uncomfortable, which can then be a reason to prompt that conversation either during dinner, or a really good time to have conversations about things that are difficult are when you're doing other things, but also have to be – you're forced together time, like a car ride to school. You're trapped inside a car, but you're also not looking directly at one another, which can make it a little bit easier sometimes for kids to open up about what's feeling uncomfortable for them. Car rides to school. Walks to school. If you have a younger child, bath time. I get a ton of information when I'm giving my younger child a bath. [0:10:00] PF: It's better than an interrogation, right? [0:10:02] LP: Right. I mean, you're together. It's again, it's like this forced together time, but it doesn't feel like an interrogation, because you're in the middle doing something else and you just happen to bring up. My daughter. I'm sorry, I keep bringing up my child, but she's about to – [0:10:15] PF: All good. [0:10:17] LP: - her deep-water test. Rather than saying, “Are you nervous with your deep-water test?” We might say something like, “What's happened? What are you thinking about swimming tomorrow?” Something very benign, something open-ended, and just see what happens to come up. In those moments where kids might be a little bit more willing to share information, rather than if you go into their room and say, “I want to have a conversation with you right now about going back to school tomorrow.” [0:10:42] PF: That's intimidating. [0:10:43] LP: Right. Exactly. Yeah. [0:10:46] PF: If a child does show signs of anxiety about going back to school, how do you differentiate between, this is just jitters of starting a new school year and something unfamiliar? Or there's actually an underlying anxiety situation? [0:10:59] LP: Yeah. That's a really good question, because back to school jitters, I mean, there's a term for it, because it's very common thing. A lot of kids really do feel – it's very normal to feel a little anxious, nervous, jittery at the start of a new school year. Some of that is really excited anticipation also. But you would expect those nerves, if it's just back-to-school jitters to dissipate within a couple of days of that new school year beginning. When we talk about, how do I know if this is something more, I like to talk about frequency intensity, duration, and impairment. The duration piece can be really important in this particular example. Again, if those signs of nervousness, or jitteriness persist beyond those first couple of days of school, and you're seeing more frequent occurrence of either worry thoughts, or stomach aches, or difficulty sleeping than normal, more intense occurrence of those symptoms than normal, and that they're starting to have some functional impairment, like my child is expressing that he doesn't want to go to school, then that suggests that this is more than just typical back-to-school jitters. [0:12:03] PF: Then the question, of course, is what do you do about it? Because when I was growing up, they're like, “Oh, just wait it out.” They're like, “Work through it.” There are better ways, I am sure to do it than just toughen it out. What does a parent do if they realize that their child is very anxious and that it's more than just a couple of days type of thing? [0:12:28] LP: Yeah. You seek support. I mean, I would – teachers are a wealth of information about how your kids are doing during the day they're on the ground. I might reach out to it. I might start by reaching out to a teacher, or if there's the dean, the head of the middle school who might have broader view of your child, because they may have known them over the course of a couple of years. I might reach out to them and say, “Are you noticing anything different? Johnny has been complaining of stomach aches really frequently and that's not very typical for him. I'm wondering if you're seeing anything in school.” I would I would look to teachers for as a really important source of information about how kids are doing during the day. They're usually your mental health professionals on site in school. Whether that's a school counselor, or a school psychologist can be another really second point of contact, either to help check in with your child during the day, or guide you towards whether it might be time to seek support outside of the school system with a mental health professional in the community. [0:13:27] PF: In our conversation, we're talking more about younger children, because, well, teenagers are a whole different ballgame. Once we get to that, they're not talking to us anyway. How do parents start monitoring that tween and teen situation and differentiate between what's just the moodiness of a teenager and an actual problem that's going on? [0:13:51] LP: I think parents have a long view of who their children are, if they're seeing really acute changes that that's suggested it's more than typical moodiness associated with hormone change and development in teenagers. But the same things. It is normal for kids to be a little bit grouchy and hard to wake up in the morning. But if they're refusing to get out of bed, if they're showing sleepiness during the day, if they're insisting that they need to take naps during the day, or if they're indicating that they don't want to go to school, I mean, the more intense communication of these impairment, I think parents would notice. [0:14:33] PF: Okay, that's really good. I guess, the same rules apply. It's like, understand when you need to seek outside help. [0:14:40] LP: I don't think that kids want to feel uncomfortable. I think that they might not know that there's a way for them to feel differently and they might be concerned that there's something wrong with them. Admitting that they need help can be scary. But normalizing it can be a really good way to get a teen to seek out professional help. [0:15:01] PF: Okay. What about children who are either ignored, or bullied in the school environment? That's as a parent, I can't imagine watching my child go through either of those situations. There's only so much that you can do. How can a parent help a child who's dealing with either of those? Then, how do you set them up for success and start changing things for them? [0:15:26] LP: It's really hard, because you also want to, as you said, you can't imagine it. I think that that's something that's really hard for all parents to watch their children go through feelings that their child is being mistreated, or feels uncomfortable, or unsafe in school triggers a lot of anxiety in parents themselves. You want to be really mindful of putting your own anxiety and discomfort onto your children, because then they have the double whammy of not only is school hard for me, but mom is also really upset about this, too. You want to be really careful in how you broach these conversations. You again want to ask open-ended questions about how they're feeling in school, rather than putting the affect into their minds. Like, “Are you nervous about going back to school tomorrow?” Were you going to sit with all your own racing thoughts that you might have? Leave those out of this. When they do communicate to you what they're feeling, you want to validate those feelings without reinforcing those feelings, without reinforcing the fear. You can say, “I understand you're feeling really nervous about the first day of school. I bet a lot of other kids are feeling that same way.” You don't want to say, “Of course, you're feeling nervous. Who are you going to sit with?” Listens to their own concerns. At the same time, if you know that there's something challenging for them, don't start the conversation with that. If you know that they feel nervous about finding someone to sit with at lunch, when they come home from school that first day, don't say, “Who did you sit with at lunch?” You want to start with something that's going to make them feel more positive about how those first days back at school have gone. The big thing is, I think there's this real desire, there's this urge for parents to take away their children's anxiety, either by dismissing it, or telling them these social struggles don't matter. “When you get out of school, you're going to look back at these days and you won't even remember them and you're going to have so many friends.” That's not helpful. Keeping them home from school. If they express that they don't want to go to school, because they're worried about who they're going to sit with at lunch, or they're worried that they're going to be made fun of, keeping them home from school is not helpful, because that's also just reinforcing their own fear. The goal really should be helping them learn how to cope with and tolerate the discomfort, or cope with the anxiety, manage those big feelings and learn skills to manage those anxiety provoking situations, rather than removing those anxiety provoking situations. Practicing with them, or problem solving. Let's think of some people that you can try to sit with at lunch tomorrow. Let's think of some conversation starters. Practicing, coming up with a script for how they might approach a new person in their class, some questions that they can ask and then you can practice asking those questions. Really, the anticipation of the anxiety provoking situation is the hardest part. You want to prepare kids for what those situations look like, previewing, actually visualizing what it looks like to walk into a big cafeteria with a lot of kids around, some of whom you know, some of whom are unkind to you. Another group who hopefully, you can feel comfortable approaching and then actually walking them through what it looks like to go up to a friend and ask if you can sit with them and practicing using their brave words to try to break into a social group. Previewing, practicing and also expressing really positive but realistic expectations about those fear situations. You can't promise your child that first day of school is going to be great. They're going to make a ton of friends. Because that may not be the case, it might be and you should anticipate that for kids who have social anxiety, or who have historically been bullied, first days back to school can be really stressful and challenging and they might have a couple of bumps in the road. You don't want to promise them anything that you can't deliver. You don't want to promise them that those first days of school are going to be easy. You don't want to promise them that they'll have a ton of people to sit with and talk to at lunch. But you do want to imbue in them the confidence that you have that they'll be able to get through it. You can validate, “Yes, this is going to be a – this can be a scary experience and I have faith that you can get through it. This is how we're going to do it.” You're communicating your faith and your confidence in them, validating their feelings and also giving them some tools and practicing using those tools. [0:19:46] PF: Then as they're going through those first few days, if it's not going well, if they are having a very tough time, how do you give them a soft landing when they get home? What are some things that you can do? You can't take away what has happened, or hasn't happened at school, but how can you balance out the day for them and make it less miserable, less uncomfortable for them? [0:20:08] LP: I mean, exactly what you said. You want to give them a soft landing. You want to be very positive. You want to ask questions about things that you know that they enjoy and really try to shine a light on things that were positive about those first days back at school. School is highly structured and highly scheduled. I think that especially in those first couple of weeks, trying to make sure that weekends at least have a lot of unstructured, or unscheduled time, so that kids can feel like they have some control over how they're spending their time. I mean, school is very, very heavily dictated for them during the school day. Giving them some sense of control, some sense of rest and decompression and sensory relief on weekends can be really, really helpful for kids to recuperate after having highly stimulating and stressful days back at school. [0:20:59] PF: There's another sector that we haven't talked about and that's college students going back to school. Only they're going off to school maybe for the first time. I have a gentleman who I know and he had twin sons and they went to separate colleges. One of them is very outgoing and went there and thrived, and the other one is very introverted and ended up coming home during the school year, because he couldn't handle it. How do parents prepare their children for going off to college? [0:21:28] LP: It's the same thing. You want to really help them preview. You can't take away the experience, but you want to help them preview, problem solve, practice how they're going to engage in those situations. I mean, ideally, there might be a person or two that a teenager knows at the school that they're going to, that they can try to connect with and a step, just that they have one safe person. If you have one safe person to go around with and start to meet new people, that can be really, really helpful. If you can find a way to arrange for a meet up with someone, just that there's a familiar face, that can be really, really helpful. Then just talking through, really helping them understand what those first couple of weeks at school might look like, and helping them problem solve can be really, really helpful. Again, validating that this is a new experience, that this is something that could trigger a lot of discomfort in you, and this is how we're going to deal with it, and I believe that you can get through it. [0:22:24] PF: Let them know, it's okay not to be okay, I guess. [0:22:26] LP: It's okay to not be okay. [0:22:29] PF: Then parents, they're also starting to get a little stressed, back to school, because and it's not just the shopping. I know it changes parents’ routines. They've been able to take it a little bit easier without having to carpool and commute with the children and drop them off. What can parents do? As now we get more demands back on our time, what are some great ways for them to approach back to school and breathe and make it a joyous time for everybody? [0:22:56] LP: Yeah. I change in routine is usually a positive one, because there's so much structure and routine that's associated with school. Well, I mean, it might take a minute to get back into that routine, but once you're in the groove and actually, there's something very safe that the school year provides to kids and families in really, the structure and the predictability that the school schedule provides. Yeah. I mean, if you're going from not having to manage carpool and early wakeups and making lunches, etc., there's definitely a lot that parents have to remember how to do. I would say, start early. The whole family, you really want to get people back into that school routine, at least the school schedule, at least before the first day. Start thinking about getting kids to go to bed earlier, waking kids up earlier in the morning and really getting back into the routine of mom and dad are making breakfast, or caregivers, or someone's making – we want to make sure that we're setting up that structure of the school day of where we're getting dressed, we're having breakfast and we're practicing, or thinking at least about what it means to get out the door on time. You want to make sure that you're pulling together school supplies earlier. You don't want to be racing the night before to find the right size binder that your teacher wants for your math class. Just to the extent that you can really do as much in advance those couple of days right before school starts don't feel as hectic. Just to the extent that that parents can really try to prepare earlier, rather than later, or getting back into school routines, starting to, I said, pull together materials, managing parents own anxiety. Thinking about what it is that they're feeling nervous about, whether it's the social piece, the academic piece, the time management piece and managing that outside away from children. I mean, children are so unbelievably perceptive. They really pick up on parent energy. It can be hard to do. But to really try to be mindful of your own emotions and your own level of stress when you're talking to kids about going back to school, because you don't want to put your own anxiety and stress onto children. [0:25:06] PF: Right. When is it a good idea, maybe even for a parent to get some outside help, talk to somebody about it, if they're having trouble managing at all? [0:25:17] LP: This is a Herald confluence quote. “That self-care is child care.” Parents cannot be the parents that they want to be if they themselves are struggling with anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed, or depression. When parents are noticing that they're having a hard time being fully present, it's important for them to take a step back and figure out what it is that they need. Whether they need to seek professional help, or it's just about carving out more time for themselves to exercise, to get sufficient sleep, to connect with friends. That's not selfish. It actually helps make parents better parents, if they're to the extent that they're managing their own anxiety and stress, they can be more available to support their kids through stressful situations. [0:26:01] PF: That's excellent. Laura, you've given us a lot to think about, a lot to learn, and I'm going to tell our listeners how they can find you, find your work, find the Child Mind Institute, and learn more about what you all are about. Thank you for coming on today. This is enlightening, very important topic. I know it's on top of mind for a lot of people right now, so thanks for taking time to sit with us. [0:26:21] LP: Thanks so much for having me. [OUTRO] [0:26:27] PF: That was Dr. Laura Phillips, talking about alleviating back-to-school anxiety. If you'd like to learn more about her work and the Child Mind Institute, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Of course, if you're looking for some uplifting cool t-shirts for your child to wear back to school this fall, be sure and check out our selection at store.livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]