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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Tuning Into Sound Therapy With Laura Widney [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What's up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note. Science is increasingly giving us more information about how sound frequencies can not only change our mental state but change how we feel physically too. As you're about to hear, after seeing how sound frequencies were helping her wellness clients reduce things like stress and anxiety, Laura Whitney set out to find a way to make sound therapy more accessible. She has done that by creating an app called Soaak that provides sound therapy on the go. She's here with me to talk about how sound affects us and how we can use it as a daily wellness practice. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:44] PF: Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show with me. [00:00:47] LW: Yes. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here and talk with you. [00:00:50] PF: I love what you're talking about today because it's sound and all the ways that it affects us. To kick it off, I want to know your story. How did you get so interested in this topic? [00:01:01] LW: I was a hair stylist for the first part of my life. For the first 16 years of my life, I did it professionally, and I own different salons. So through a series of events, I had a really good friend of mine that was a naturopathic doctor. Me and her talked for years about natural wellness. What I did in the kind of beauty industry was I’m basically like an honorary therapist, where I listened to my clients all day. I just really had such a heart for helping people. I felt like I was helping people in what I was doing because when you look good, you feel good. So there was a component to that in what I did. But after years of really kind of wanting to make a change in my life, I went towards the holistic wellness profession. I sold my salons, and I kind of dove off a cliff, so to speak, and went into this holistic health. That's when I really started studying everything I could get my hands on, as far as energy medicine and holistic modalities, everything from IV therapy, to body work, to chiropractic, just everything. Everything that helps heal the body I really dug in. So I opened a wellness clinic, and I had that for about five years. That was really where Soaak was born because we did frequency therapy in clinic. So that was one of my favorite modalities was that sound vibration therapy because it's non-invasive. It works really good. With our Soaak app, it's now inexpensive versus the clinic. Anytime you go into any holistic wellness, you're going to spend some money. It's expensive, and it's not covered by insurance. So that was why I just loved frequency therapy. I loved sound therapy. It changed my life in so many ways, which I can get into some stories later. But that's really kind of how I got into what I'm doing now and creating my company called Soaak is from my experience with my wellness clinic. Having frequency therapy and sound therapy is one of the modalities in the clinic. [00:03:01] PF: Break that down for the listeners a little bit because when we talk about sound and frequencies, we know what music is, but we might not necessarily associate sound and sound frequencies. Can you really explain what it is we're talking about? [00:03:13] LW: Yes, okay. So the frequency specifically are specific megahertz. It's a sound, and so there's a lot of different frequency generators that generate the actual sound of the frequency. So there are trillions and trillions of frequencies in the world and in the universe, and we are all made up of a frequency. So your individual human being has its own blueprint, its own signature blueprint frequency. It's different from everybody else's. Not one person has the same frequency. We are made up of a composition of frequencies, basically, but everything has a unique frequency. So a healthy heart has its unique frequency. Skin has a unique frequency, hair. Even a cancer cell has a specific frequency. Royal Rife years ago actually was able to identify all of the different frequencies in which actual megahertz paired with what thing in our body and what physical thing. So when you play a frequency, you can play a specific megahertz, and it resonates that thing on your body. So what we did in our clinic was we actually made frequency compositions. So you can go online and Google 432 hertz, for example, or 528 hertz. Well, that is one specific frequency that's a megahertz. So it's 432 hertz. We would take those frequencies, and we would layer them with other frequencies. We did a lot of clinical trials, research stuff in our clinic that helped us identify, let's say, if you're having issues with your digestive system. It could be from a lot of things, and so one specific megahertz isn't necessarily going to fix everything. So we would identify, okay, what is wrong with the digestive system. Could it be something you ate? Could it be an allergic reaction? Could it be lack of sleep? Could it be stress? Could it be the vagal nerve, all of these things? So then we created these frequency compositions that are layered with all these specific megahertz to address that one area of the body. Everything in the universe is a frequency. My voice is a frequency. Our thoughts are omitting a frequency. We are all just reverberating these frequencies from the inside out. So it's very similar to music, where you hear a country song, for example. It puts you in a certain mood. Like it just changes what you're thinking about. It changes the way you feel inside, your emotions. You can just start crying. Then you put on your favorite gym workout playlist, and that's a completely different emotion that it stirs up in you right at the moment. Music is like a perfect example of kind of how frequencies affect you, but nobody really thinks of it like that because it's just music. Music is like a universal language. When you think about actual Soaak frequencies or megahertz, they're kind of doing the same thing. They are tuning your body to a certain frequency. So they're helping your cells, talking to your cells, and helping them oscillate at a certain frequency for optimal health. [00:06:12] PF: Are those frequencies paired with a certain type of music? Or how is it – I've seen it done different ways. How exactly do you do that? [00:06:20] LW: So we actually do all of the above. On our app, we have different listening options. So you can do the raw frequency, which is just that raw. You'll hear it when you go on the app. It's a raw frequency. Some of them are really pleasant, really relaxing. Some frequencies are pretty high-pitched, a little less palatable. So because of that, we paired them with music, which is guitar. Then we also have another option, which is nature sounds. So even our nature sounds like rain or thunder, stuff like that, and the guitar, we tune those sounds also to a certain frequency that kind of matches the frequency, that underlying frequency that it's with. We have lots of different options because everybody's different, and I get tired of listening to just the raw frequencies. Sometimes, I just want to listen to some music. Sometimes, I want to hear the rain with the nature sounds. So we have lots of options. [00:07:10] PF: Yes. I think it's really important to point out that there is just a ton of science that supports what this does. A few years ago, when I started doing some stories on this, people were like, “You're crazy,” because there was not as much research out there. Now, people really come to understand like frequencies, how they affect us, and also things like our digital world. How does that affect us? Okay, it's going to be like a two-part question because I want to talk about how this is affecting us and then how we can kind of counter that through using sound frequency. [00:07:43] LW: Yes. Again, I'll go back to the statement that everything is frequency. It is so much more popular now. You're hearing about 5G and standing close to a microwave and all of these things that were kind of they've always been a thing. But now, they're becoming a lot more popular for people to talk about. People understand it and realize, okay, yes, this invisible force that is going on around us all the time is actually affecting our emotional health, our physical health, our mental health. We get bombarded on a daily basis with frequencies of all kinds. You're driving and you hear a horn honk. That frequency alone can stress you out and make your cortisol rush through the body and really kind of negatively affect you. It's the same with standing close to the microwave when you're microwaving your food or anything like that. Everything affects us. So with sound frequencies and also with positive thoughts, because you'll know later when we talk about the Soaak app, we have positive affirmations. So we truly believe that mindset is everything. When you get your mindset into this positive state to where you're not ruminating on these negative thoughts, that is creating basically a frequency around you that is solid and peaceful. It actually – I believe it's like a shield where when you are in a good state of mind, all of this negativity, whether it's 5G or your kids screaming at you, whenever it is, it kind of bounces off you because you are in a good state, and you are holding your peace. You are holding that frequency tight and strong. [00:09:23] PF: In some cases now, I think people are so attuned to having that digital impact in their life to being surrounded by these frequencies that they either don't realize that they feel bad because of it. Or they don't associate the way they feel with the frequencies they're around. [00:09:40] LW: Yes. I think that's probably the second one is probably most of our issues. We just don't realize what's happening. We just don't realize what's going on. We get very used to things. The technology that happens around us is kind of a gradual thing. When I was 16, I had a flip phone. We didn't have a smartphone. We played outside a lot as most kids did back then. Then gradually, now years later, it's like, man, I am literally either with my computer or my phone or my iPad or at my TV. Or I am sitting next to devices all day long. It's kind of a gradual thing. Now, it's just that's life. So it's something to be aware of but also not to be scared of. [00:10:25] PF: But I see using frequencies sort of like house cleaning because it's like you collect all this garbage in your body through all the digital interactions, through all the electric frequencies that we're collecting. How does that kind of cleanse the palate as it works? [00:10:40] LW: So I always like to explain it like we're Velcro, and all the frequencies that are happening during the day, we're just like walking through them constantly, and they're sticking on us. The less protected you are and the less your guard is down, the more that things can kind of latch onto you and kind of get into your system. So we are energy, and our energy just piles on different things, different energies from other people. It can really Velcro to us. Unless you really take the time to peel off those layers, whether it's through therapy or going outside and grounding or taking a run, whatever it is that helps you clear your head and clear your emotions, if you don't do those things, then it's just layers upon layers every day. After a decade, you're going to be feeling really sick. You're going to be really depressed or whatever it is that your ailment is. With the frequencies, I always say when you listen to the frequencies, and you can equate this to like music too, your favorite song. When you listen to it within a couple minutes, you can feel. You can literally feel almost the chemical response that happens inside your body to make your dopamine or whatever go up and make you happy. You feel the difference. So that's how the frequencies work. They actually are talking to your cells, and they're telling yourselves, “Hey.” Your cells are kind of going crazy and a little chaotic because your energy is a little out of balance. The frequencies are like a tuning fork to your cell. So they're telling your cell, “Okay, oscillate properly. Oscillate properly.” So your cells listen and then attune to whatever the frequency is that they're hearing. That's how the frequencies help balance the energy system and balance the body. When that happens, it's basically like dissipates or makes that negative chaotic energy disappear. It just dissipates, and it's like you can take a big deep breath. You feel like you've just taken a big deep breath, and you feel lighter afterwards. It's really crazy, but it really helps with any emotional kind of heaviness. It just makes you feel like you just drank a big glass of water and have been out in the sunshine for a couple minutes. That's kind of what it feels like after you do it. [00:12:45] PF: Yes. You had so much experience of treating clients in your wellness center. What would you see in terms of how long it takes for that to take effect, and then how long does that last? Because that's what people want to know too. It's like is this something I am going to walk out and then it's like, “Oh, I'm right back to my old self.”? [00:13:04] LW: Yes. Energy is subtle. Any kind of modality that works with energy, energy medicine, really even massage, even physical things, it's working with the subtle energy body. So specifically, frequency therapy, you want to continue to retrain your energy to oscillate properly. So you want to do it every day if you can, and that that was one reason why. That was the main reason why we digitized the frequency therapy in clinic. That's where Soaak was really born is because people needed to come. We recommended two to three times a week because that was the practical amount of time I could get people in the clinic. It was $50 a session in clinic. That’s two to three times a week, 600; 800 dollars a month. I mean, that's a lot. But that's what was necessary. Me personally and all my staff, we did every day because we had the equipment there, and we were able to. That was what really made a difference. That's why we created Soaak because I think everybody should do it every day, if possible, and because that's what really makes it stick. But as far as how long it takes to help, within minutes of listening to some of the frequencies, you can feel it. There are some things that I have heard people say, “I have listened to this weeks and weeks and not really felt anything. But after listening to it a month, everything changed.” I really feel like we are like an onion. You peel back layers of an onion, and you don't really even feel or know you're doing anything. But you're doing a lot. Then by the time you've finally get to that one piece that's like, “Oh, man. That is what shifted it all,” it shifts at all, and then you feel better. I always tell people do it as much as you can and be as consistent as you can with it. But also have good daily habits around the frequencies. So when you're listening to the frequency, drink a big glass of water. Make sure you are super hydrated. Make sure you are either saying your mindful intentions. Or if you have time and can close your eyes and sit down, meditate while you're doing it. Make it a habitual thing every single day, where you're also layering other really good habits with it because when you do that, man, I guarantee that you're going to feel so much better every day. Over time, you're going to change big things in your life. [00:15:26] PF: Yes. It's kind of like exercise where you can start out and just do something really, really gradual. Then before it, it's become such a part of your daily routines that you can't really keep going without it. [00:15:38] LW: That's exactly right. [00:15:40] PF: Let's talk about some of the things that you've seen it do for anxiety and depression because those are two of the biggest things that we hear about across the board but then also at Live Happy. We get a lot of requests for information on that. That's always the biggest demand. What can sound frequencies do to help with anxiety and depression? Not only in adults but let's talk about children too. [00:16:00 ] LW: Yes. So that's such a huge thing that we see testimonials from people using the frequencies is really dissipating that feeling, that heaviness feeling that you get from anxiety and depression. Anxiety can come from a lot of different things. This is where my background in my wellness clinic really comes in handy because I've not only studied how energy works and what's happening to your energy when you're anxious or depressed but also the physical body. So a lot of times, anxiety can come from a food allergy. It can come from lack of sleep. It can come from a hormonal imbalance. Same with depression, it can come from pathogens in the gut or in the brain. So there's a lot of physical reasons why you have these things. It can also come from real trauma, emotional turmoil at home, and stuff like that as well. So it's not just one thing that causes it. So that's why our frequency compositions are so powerful because we took all of that into consideration when we made the anti-anxiety frequency or when we made the depression frequency because it's addressing a lot. There's a lot going on. There's places in you that get stuck and that get pent up that need to be released. So that's what sound frequencies do, again, is they help release kind of that stagnant stuck energy in that spot, and it helps your cells to oscillate properly. That's when you feel kind of that flood of relief. Or I keep saying it just dissipates, but that feeling of anxious, anxious. You're clinching your fist, and you listen to the frequencies, and you kind of just let it go, where it just kind of goes away for a second. Then that's when it's so important to get that mindset in there as well to really help yourself make it stick. You're saying, “Okay, I'm going to have a great day. No obstacle is going to stress me out today.” Really get your mind right to where you just are in a completely different thought process after that. [00:17:59] PF: Yes. Can you address how a parent could use this? Because a child – we see so much anxiety with children. The stories I've heard are just absolutely heartbreak, especially post-pandemic, and parents don't know how to help their children with anxiety. Now, a child's not necessarily going to slap some headphones on and listen to some sound frequencies. How can they do this? How can parents integrate that into their children's getting ready for school, driving to school routine? [00:18:25] LW: Love it. The cool thing about kids and even pets is they are so much more susceptible to the good energy. They just kind of receive it. They don't have any like mental blocks of like, “Oh, what is this? This isn't going to work.” [00:18:39] PF: “I'm not sure this is working.” [00:18:41] LW: Yes. They don't have that mind barrier that adults do once we get older and get our own opinion. So it seems to really work well. We've seen it with pets too. Again, you can play it through your cell phone. You don't even have to have headphones. You can just play it right through the speaker on your phone. [00:18:58] PF: I think what you're doing is just incredible, and you've referenced the app. Can you talk about how you took all this learning, all this knowledge that you had for it and then turned it into something that was so accessible through an app? [00:19:10] LW: Really the biggest barrier that I kept seeing was time and money. That's kind of the case with everything. So I kept saying, okay, how can I make this more accessible to people and more affordable? Because the essence of the treatment was really inexpensive. So I kept telling my team. I'm like, “We need to digitize this. We need to get this in an app where people can do it 24/7.” The other issue was if we have somebody with severe depression or chronic anxiety, they could come in for a treatment and do great. But what happens at midnight when something triggers them, and they're having an anxiety attack or a panic attack or deep depression? That was when they needed the frequency the most is right in that moment or if they couldn't sleep. We have a sleep frequency. So I kept telling my team, “We have to digitize this.” We got with some developers, and we were able to create an app and put all of our frequencies online. So we took the top 30 frequencies that worked the best in clinic and that we got the best reviews and testimonies. We put those on our Soaak app. So that's how the Soaak app came to be and why it's available now. [00:20:17] PF: That's incredible. I know that we're going to give our listeners a free trial to it. I know it's a company for you, but it's so much more. For you, it's a mission. I'm just impressed with how you've just kept elevating what you're doing and making it more accessible to more people. So what is it ultimately that you hope to see? As you look down the road, what do you hope that everyone starts learning about sound frequencies and how it will change the world? [00:20:42] LW: Yes. I love that. Thank you for that question. I love answering this question. The sound frequencies are amazing, and I hope everybody tries them, and I hope it gives everyone relief in the moment they need it. Because I feel like when you have an accumulation of things that happen to you that set you back, after weeks or months or years of that happening, you're just in a funk. It’s really hard to get out of that. So with Soaak, I'm hoping that people don't get in that funk. I'm hoping that they can hold their peace and hold their joy and hold on to the positive things in their life through daily mindful intentions and through daily uplifting sounds and frequencies. [00:21:23] PF: Laura, you're doing wonderful things. I'm so excited that you had time to sit down and talk with me. I thank you for everything that you're putting out. I'm really excited to share this with our listeners and let them experience it for themselves. [00:21:35] LW: Thank you for having me. This has been awesome. You've been so fun to talk to. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:42] PF: That was Laura Widney of Soaak Technologies, talking about how we can use sound to improve our mental and physical well-being. If you'd like to learn more about Laura, get a free trial of her app, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. 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 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 10 Years of Happiness With Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 437 of Live Happy Now. Ten years ago, the Happiness Movement was just beginning to gain a global presence, and that paved the way for a birth of a company called Live Happy. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Deborah Heisz, CEO and co-founder of Live Happy LLC, as we look back on 10 years of sharing happiness. Deborah’s going to explain how her work in personal development led to discovering positive psychology and how that opened the door to launching a company that remains committed to sharing the many ways we can discover greater well-being. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:41] PF: Deb, we're 10. [0:00:43] DH: I know. Isn't that crazy? [0:00:45] PF: Oh, my – [0:00:46] DH: I don’t know what happened. [0:00:47] PF: I know. See, now, here you have an advantage, because you're a parent, so you're used to raising 10-year-olds. [0:00:53] DH: I can't believe my kids are over 10 either at this point. When they say, time flies, they mean it. That’s unbelievable that we're 10. [0:01:02] PF: I know. It was so important. I mean, 10 years is a huge accomplishment for us to have reached there. This just seemed like a great time to talk with you. I wasn't there in the very beginning. I was about three months late to the party, but I'm glad I got invited and I'm glad you've let me stay. Can you take us back to the mindset behind Live Happy, because there was such a compelling argument for creating this movement and creating this platform and it was unlike anything that people were doing. Take me back there of what was going on and what made this ball get rolling. [0:01:37] DH: Well, the initial – my experience up to that point had been in personal development, which was great. I was founding editor-in-chief of the current version of Success Magazine. We were putting out content for people to improve their lives. Really, micro business owners, small business owners, and with tips on how they can have a better outlook on life, or a better attitude from the experts. Since you guys can't see me, I'm doing air quotes when I say “the experts.” Because there's a lot of people that put out content on personal development. Some of it's great, like my co-founder, Jeff Olson and his book, The Slight Edge, and others of it, we're not going to name any names, just not so great. [0:02:18] PF: Really questionable in the science. [0:02:21] DH: Yeah. Well, lacking in science. What happened was, as I'm working on that project, on that publication and really diving into personal development, which I really believe in, I believe we should all be working on ourselves, that there's ability for us to enhance our lives, we can all get better, we can all become better humans, this thing called positive psychology came on my radar. There is an organization called the International Positive Psychology Association and they put on something called the World Congress. At the time, I believe it was their second world congress, and some people that I was working with on Success, the owner and some other went to this and came back and said, “You know what? This positive psychology stuff, it's personal development, but with real science.” I started digging into it and looked at it and it's like, you know what? There is a lot here. There's a lot of stuff they're studying and a lot of things they've learned about human behavior that where people – how people can enhance their lives, that is scientifically based. Because positive psychology is the study, and it was really started by Dr. Martin Seligman, who has been all over our publication for the decade, the decade, right from the beginning. It really started with him standing up in front of the American Psychological Association and saying, “Look, psychology isn't just about helping sick people get well. It could also be about helping well people thrive.” That was the foundation of positive psychology. A lot of people started studying it. He's professor at UPenn. A lot of the positive psychology program at UPenn, a lot of people we've talked to come out of that program. But really, for me, it was, this isn't just somebody talking about experience. There's real data that this works, that if we can take these simple principles, these simple activities and incorporate them into our everyday lives, we can be happier. People need to know this. For me, Live Happy became the ultimate personal development project. It was getting better, becoming a better human, building better families, building better communities based in science. Scientists are really good at studying stuff, and then they publish and share papers with other scientists, so the general public never hears about it. [0:04:45] PF: Exactly. [0:04:46] DH: Never. I mean, they're really good at talking to each other about everything, and the rest of the world isn't even aware of the conversations occurring. We looked at it as this is an opportunity for us to take this fantastic content to a broader audience, to the rest of the world, and that's what really founded Live Happy. Jeff was a big believer in personal development. I’m a big believer in personal development, worked in that space for the previous decade, and now I guess, two decades. Well, but it really was about bringing that out and helping others understand they can make choices that will make them happier. When we talk about happiness, I think it's really important. I know, everybody who listens to the podcast regularly has heard us talk about what we mean by happiness. We don't mean I'm running around with glee with my hand thrown in the air, because I just scored a touchdown, or did a homerun kind of happiness. We mean, the kind of happiness where your personal well-being is higher. Things that you measure to determine how your life is going, how you're feeling about life in general, about how congruent your life is with your dreams and where you want to be, that's what we mean by happiness. [0:06:00] PF: You bring up such a good point, because that has been really instrumental in my development and growth during this last decade, because it let me recognize that I ended up doing a presentation at IPA called when happiness has a bad day. It allowed me to accept that bad day like say, “Hey, this is actually cool. It's fine if I'm sad for a week. That is okay. I still have great levels of well-being.” A bad day does not mean I'm not happy. I think it really has – I'm among those people that's been able to really broaden that and stop judging day by day what happens and look at it over time. Look at the overall satisfaction of my life, instead of the dopamine hits. [0:06:45] DH: It's huge. It makes a huge difference in your life when you start looking at it from that perspective, from the long-term, from the whole, its entirety. I think we've all been exposed online to various toxic positivity discussions. Happiness is not this toxic positivity, where you're positive about everything in life. You always say yes. You always are going, “Oh.” That's almost a disease in itself, right? [0:07:16] PF: It can be dangerous, if you're not acknowledging, if you're not allowing yourself to feel the negative emotions. One, you're not going to enjoy the positive ones as much. Also, you're glossing over some pretty important feelings that need to be dealt with. [0:07:34] DH: That's not what we're talking about when we talk about live happy anyway. You see that outside view in that, hey, this is everything that's toxic about positivity, that there are real problems in the world, that there are real challenges that people need to overcome. Not everyone can just live happy. One of my favorite things that we've done is we don't run away from that. I mean, our top downloaded article is post-traumatic growth. Just basically, how do you grow out of bad things that happen to you? How does that impact your life? It's a remarkable article and it's a really good article and it's on our website. We don't shy away from the fact that you can't be happy in that arms in the air, running around, circling the bases, I hit a homerun every day of your life, because it's life. We're talking about living happy, which is not that, right? [0:08:38] PF: Exactly. Let me ask you, as you were coming up with the concept of the magazine and mapping out what it was going to cover and how it would be involved, how did you determine all that? [0:08:52] DH: We didn't want it to be fluff. We wanted it to have a scientific backing, which wasn't to say that every article was about science, but we wanted it to be scientifically based. We also wanted it to have practical information in it, as well as inspirational stories. Really, we just started dissecting what we felt was good content, versus what we felt was too light, because a lot of stuff that people want to put in is just, that's nice, but that's fluff. We didn't want to be fluffy. That's the best way I know how to put it. [0:09:26] PF: Exactly. [0:09:27] DH: We also didn't want to be so overly technical that your average broad audience couldn't pick it up and read it and get something out of it. A lot of these papers that we read that create ideas for articles, as you know Paula, really go so deep into the science, you almost need a master's degree to start reading the paper. [0:09:47] PF: I had to Google a lot of stuff, when I was – I would be reading a paper and it's like, I don't even have the slightest idea of what they mean by that, or what other study they're referencing. It's like, it was such an educational experience for me, just to be dropped into all that. [0:10:05] DH: It can be a rabbit hole. [0:10:06] PF: It was. [0:10:08] DH: We also, really, particularly the early years, I think less now. Now that we've got a very, very established guardrails on what we will and won't do, we got a lot of stuff that was just fluff. We had a lot of stuff that was just like, pop people's ideas. I want to say, diet of the week, but it was happy idea of the week. This might make you happy. We really shied away from that. Another important piece was we wanted to integrate family. We wanted to integrate home. We didn't want it to be a workplace-only magazine, but we also wanted to include work. Success was really a workplace-only that had some personal development when we're working on it. We wanted to take that and make it a whole life concept. We wanted that to put that positive experience on a whole life perspective. That was really important for the magazine, particularly for me coming out of success, where I felt like, when you talk about business and you talk about personal development, everything ended up being tied to money and monetary success. As we know, money and monetary success and happiness are not – they don't necessarily exist together. [0:11:20] PF: Right. Right. [0:11:21] DH: For some people, it's an neither or. For others, it can exist together. For others, they've got nothing to do with each other. [0:11:26] PF: What I loved about Live Happy, what I loved about it from the beginning is that each issue, you would have a different approach. It doesn't mean the one that was the last month didn't work. It's just that different people have different things that work for them. I think that was always, for me, it's been a delight, because I got to explore things that I wouldn't have known about. I wouldn't have known to research them, had it not been for Live Happy. [0:11:52] DH: One of my favorite things we did was the book, Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, which has my name on it, but the whole editorial staff participated in. It says my name and the editors of. I have to tell you, and the editors of. It should have been the editors of and Deborah for the amount of time you guys spent putting that together. One of the things I love about it is Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, for those of you who haven't read the book, it's available on Audible. It may, or may not be out of print on Amazon, but I recommend you get your hands on it, because what we did was we did Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, and for each practice, whether it was attitude, health, spirituality, mindfulness, creativity, these are all things that there was science behind practicing these things. Can bring you joy, live happy type joy. Each chapter has the science behind what the studies say. Some people put it into practice and then some things you can do to put that practice into your life. We say in the book, and I've said over and over and over again, just because there are 10 practice of choosing joy, you don't do all 10. Pick one, or two, integrate that into your life before you even look at number three, right? [0:13:10] PF: Exactly. Find the one that works for you. It's like a catalog, basically. [0:13:14] DH: It is. Pick the ones that you think. If it's resilience that you need to focus on, focus on that. Don't focus on resilience. It's a recipe for failure trying to do too much. When you talk about the magazine, and by the way, we started as a print magazine, folks. We’re not that anymore. We should probably talk about that in a second. When we look at every issue, we had a slightly different look. Same thing with the book, we had a slightly different focus. It all contributes to your happiness, to your joy, to your meaningfulness in life, to finding your purpose. But you don't do it all. Is just, you pick up the practices that speak to you and make it work. [0:13:54] PF: Yeah. You find what's good for you. It's just like a diet and exercise plan, or a spouse. You find the one that works for you. [0:14:00] DH: If you can't stick to it, it won't. [0:14:03] PF: That's so true. Another thing that is turning 10 this year are our Happy Acts. I think, again, your timing on creating Live Happy was so phenomenal, because the world day of – International Day of Happiness had pretty much just been declared. We were there when that was all picking up steam, and we were able to be part of that. Do you want to talk about, especially that first International Day of Happiness, you were on the floor of the United Nations. [0:14:35] DH: Yeah. I was there. Jeff, Co-Founder, he got to speak to the United Nations. I spoke the following year. We really were right there at the beginning of the International Day of Happiness. It was coincidental. We were doing the magazine and that happened. It wasn't that that happened and then we started doing the magazine. [0:14:54] PF: That's what I mean of the timing was just perfect. [0:14:57] DH: It was. But it was really important and we've continued to see the World Happiness Report every year, we put out. What was happening is governments around the world and the UN was a forum to discuss this and to start talking about it and analyzing it a little better, really had started looking at the well-being of their populations as being a measure of successful country. Happiness, their countries had started with happiness officers, which is something that never happened before. Ministers of happiness. Sounds like we're in a Harry Potter movie. It's the Minister of happiness. Ministers of happiness. Governments were starting to pay attention to this. It truly is, and we're a part of it. I think we're a leader in bringing that information to the general public to a general audience, but there really still is a movement that was started about 10 years ago towards improving the well-being of humans through practices that they themselves can take on and paying attention to that as a measurable outcome. That World Happiness Report every year, there's a list of happiness countries, happiest countries and why. It's been very interesting. But the privilege of speaking at the United Nations is one I'll never forget. It's such an honor, and for Jeff to have that honor that first year and for me to be able to follow it up the second year, it truly was, for me, the indicator of how important what we're doing is. [0:16:29] PF: Yeah. Then, what made you decide, “Okay, we need to do our own thing that's going to be our own celebration and observation of this and create happy acts”? Because that's been so enduring and really to me, something that just is, it’s so unique to live happy and it's something I really love that we do. [0:16:50] DH: Well, I think it goes back to what I was talking about earlier, where scientists study stuff, but they don't share it, right? For me, it really was the, we need some way to get the word out, something simple to get the word out, that there are things you can do to make the world a happier place, to make your world a happier place. We conceived of Happy Acts, which I've described it like this from the beginning, is a social intervention campaign. Meaning, we get people to stop for a few minutes and do something with intent, to make the world a happier place. Even if it's just smiling more. Even if it's just talking to a stranger. Even if it's just dropping a thank you note to someone. Something simple to show gratitude, show grace, show thankfulness, help someone else, buying that cup of coffee for a stranger, we've all seen that go viral. But to make sure that it's done with intent. That's why the cards, that's why people, I will make the happy – the world a happier place by. We're not asking you to make the world a happier place by starting a global charity. Oh, you want to put that in a card and follow up with it? We’re all in. We're asking you to just think about something you can do and realize, which is why it's social intervention, realize that there is something you can personally do to make the world a happier place right now. That's why we did it. I think it's been a great success. I think the world has changed a little bit since we did it, obviously trying to do Happy Acts during a pandemic was a little bit – [0:18:29] PF: That wasn't so good. [0:18:31] DH: Yeah, people don't go to walls, or walls. We did. We did. But we had a great online experience those years. I'm looking forward to making a few tweaks. I'm looking forward to getting back to everybody early next year and talking about how that changed. [0:18:43] PF: I know. It also spun off the Halloween Happy Acts, which we're doing in, I guess it's, yeah, later this month. [0:18:50] DH: No, and I love that. [0:18:53] PF: Yeah, I think there's so much potential for us to be able to do different things with it for different times a year. I'm excited to see what we continue to do with that. [0:19:01] DH: Note, podcast listeners, Halloween Happy Acts, that's later this month, but not later this month. You can check it out right now online. [0:19:10] PF: Yes, you can. You just mentioned podcast listeners. That was another element that you brought in and brought in very early on, even before a lot of people really understood what was going on with the podcasting space. [0:19:26] DH: I'm so thankful we did. [0:19:28] PF: I know. I'm glad you got in there at the time that you did. Really, that was a way you saw that as a way to amplify the content that we had in Live Happy Magazine. Can you talk about that? It was so interesting the way it started and then how it's evolved. [0:19:43] DH: At the time, I did. We were doing these great interviews with these thought leaders, these very eloquent, passionate people. You sit in the interview and you're doing the interview, and you know this, Paula. You're doing the interview, and you're like, “I wish everybody could hear this,” right? This is right near the beginning of when podcasting was starting to take off. It's like, well, everybody can hear this. We started doing some of our key interviews for the magazine is for the podcast. That was why. I thought it was so important, not just for us to take the information and drill it down into an article and pull a few quotes, but for people to hear how passionate these people are about this, how important it is, how detailed the information was. We started there and then we – when we quit doing the print magazine, we still have the website, which puts out original content on a regular basis, and we still have a newsletter, which puts out independent original content. If you guys are not signed up for the newsletter, you need to. Go to livehappy.com and sign up. Free to everybody. Please, take the opportunity to do that. As we started to move from the print format into a more digital format, the podcast also evolved into being the key content, where we used to do a feature article. Now, we do a feature podcast, is the best way to know how to describe it. We're still have all the same great content we had, but in a way that's more accessible. Frankly, I think in a way that broadened our audience. Because I think, when we were doing the print magazine, people didn't really understand it was for everybody necessarily, that it was a little bit more of a science-heavy, because reading can sometimes be science heavy. It was a little less accessible to everybody. I think the podcast with most of them being 25 minutes or less, really, people can listen to that as they walk their dog, as they drive to work. It's two people talking, or more, but usually, two people talking and they get so much more out of it. Then, of course, we had the follow up materials on the website if people want to delve more into that topic. I just think it's made the content so much more accessible, and that evolution took place over time, but I'm really happy where we are right now and where we've ended up. It's been a phenomenal, I think eight years of podcasting? [0:22:10] PF: It is. Yeah. [0:22:12] DH: Eight years of podcasting. [0:22:12] PF: Hard to believe. [0:22:13] DH: Ten years of Live Happy. I'm getting old. What am I going to do next? [0:22:19] PF: We'll have virtual something. We'll have our avatars doing this for us, I guess. One thing that I've noticed with the podcast is sometimes, people will reach out because someone had sent them a podcast, because just as with our practices, not every episode is going to resonate with every person. Some things like, that's not really my thing. But then, especially like the pet loss episode is one that I know has been shared quite a bit and that's something – that's a great thing to have in your back pocket. Hey, your friend loses their pet, you just send them a link. I know firsthand of that having happened. There's other situations, like other episodes that we've had that people can just share and say, “Look, this spoke to me, because I know you're going through it and I thought you'd want to hear it.” I think, to me, that is really the power of podcasting. That's the power of the reach is to be able to just have that, to give to anybody at any time when they need it the most. [0:23:14] DH: I agree. I think, be able to share that. I think accessibility is key. [0:23:21] PF: We've had 10 years. We don't want to quit anytime soon. What do you think? What do you see for the next 10 years? How do you think we're going to grow and change? [0:23:30] DH: I think that as the world has changed, more people need this content. I think, our number one goal has always been reach. It's always been building a happiness movement. It's been building a group of people who really understand the power of things like gratitude, who really want to make a difference in their local communities and their families. For me, over the next 10 years, we're going to continue to try and reach people where they are, where they have the most access. Whatever is after podcasting, I'm sure we'll go into. Whatever is after the Internet, I'm sure we'll figure that out, too. One of the things we've discussed recently is in expanding our presence on social media, to reach people who aren't necessarily looking for podcasts, or looking online to go read an article and figuring out how to do that in a way that isn't just flippant, that isn't just, “Oh, that made me laugh,” but something that actually adds value to someone's life. We did something before called The Happiness Minute, it was in the wrong format. Maybe we bring that back and maybe that's a TikTok. Where my head spins is, how do we continue to get the message out? How do we continue to get this message to more people? How do we evolve Happy Acts to get the message to more people? How do we evolve, get more involvement? Because this is something anybody, whether they're two, or a hundred can participate in and can make a difference in the world. Our mission hasn't changed. Sometimes the medium changes, but we're going to continue to try and expand to reach more people in any way that we can. That's where I see us going in the next 10 years, and continuing to produce the fabulous content that we produce, that you help us produce, Paula. It's been a great ride so far, but we're just getting started. [0:25:14] PF: Yeah. Saddle up. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:21] PF: That was Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, talking about how we got here. If you'd like to read some of our great content, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, or follow us on social media, just visit us at 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: 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: Why More Money Doesn’t Equal More Happiness With Tal Ben-Shahar [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 432 of Live Happy Now. We've heard that money can't buy happiness. But how does our perception of money affect our well-being? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with author and lecturer, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, Co-Founder of the Happiness Studies Academy and creator of the Master's Degree in Happiness Studies. Tal is here to talk about recent findings that show our perception of money has changed dramatically, and it's damaging our happiness. He's going to break down what this survey tells us and why it's so important to change our view of money for the sake of our well-being. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PF: Tal, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] TBS: Thank you, Paula, for having me back. [00:00:47] PF: This is a really interesting conversation to have because as you know, Bloomberg just released a survey, and it had some really surprising results on people's perception about money. It really showed how things have changed dramatically. I wondered, to start it off, if you wanted to talk a little bit about what some of those findings were. [00:01:07] TBS: Sure. So the Bloomberg study very much aligns with what we've been studying in the field of happiness studies over the past few decades, which is that people's perceptions matter a great deal more than their objective circumstances. So what they identified were people who were making a lot of money. They were in the top 10th of the population in terms of income above $175,000. Yet a large minority were feeling poor, and the majority were not feeling comfortable about how much they were making. Now, most people, probably around 90% of the population would say, “What are they about? They're spoiled, and they have so much money. They should be, first of all, grateful. Second, happy. But they're not. They're neither.” Question is why. In the article, the research tries to give the reason. They say, well, things have changed. Many people living in New York, for them, 175,000 or 200,000 doesn't go far. At the same time, many of them have homes that are paid off, so they don't have that mortgage payment. Yet they feel the way they feel. I think what's interesting to do, Paula, is for us to explore why. Even more importantly, what can we do about it if we experience dissatisfaction? [00:02:29] PF: Absolutely. Yes, yes. Because that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you. I wonder too if what has caused that mindset to change because a few years ago, it was saying, okay, if you have an income over $75,000 that that was what it took to kind of get you into a good state of well-being. Then 2021, a study came out and said, “No, we need more than that.” So now, we're looking at really dramatically different numbers. What has changed in the way that we're thinking? [00:02:59] TBS: It's a few things. The first thing is COVID. It's easy to blame COVID for everything, but it really did change the world in so many ways and mostly not good ways. So what did COVID do? It essentially took away people's sense of confidence in the status quo because suddenly this came completely unannounced, and millions and millions of people lost their jobs. Even more extreme, many people lost their lives. The sense of security was understandably affected. If before COVID the question was am I making enough money to live well, the question post-COVID for many people is do I have enough money stashed away to survive a year without a job because that happened to many people. Even if it didn't happen to you, you read about people for whom it did happen. This was real. This changes the numbers because while those who were making $200,000 a year certainly have enough to live off, most of them would not be able to survive, certainly not with the lifestyle that they're leading if they lost their job and did not have that income for a year. That became a reality. [00:04:24] PF: Is there also a sense of fear of, in addition to having that money to live on, feeling like we're no longer being taken care of? I think there was a sense that we would always be okay. Like no matter what happened, someone will take care of us. Something's going to go well for us. Did we kind of lose that mindset? [00:04:45] TBS: I think so. So in the sense that when things are predictable. Well, if we're taken care of in the past, we'll be taken care of in the future. You just induce the future from the past. But suddenly, everyone was lost. I mean, governments were lost. I mean, we're still not sure today. Did we do the right thing? Should have we been quarantined or not? There are different models. The jury is still out, and maybe we'll always be out on it. Yes. Again, people lost their sense of confidence in the authorities, so to speak. Also in their workplaces because even in the most reliable of workplaces, well, they had to lay off people. They didn't have a choice. They did that. [00:05:26] PF: So is it healthy to have that I've got to take care of myself mindset? Or is it unhealthy because we are supposed to be connected? [00:05:33] TBS: So it can go either way. COVID was a trauma, a global trauma, societal-wide trauma. The question is do we grow from that trauma, or do we break down from a trauma? In psychological language, do we experience PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder? Or do we experience PTG, post-traumatic growth? Again, the jury's out on that. Not only is the jury out on that. It's very much dependent on individual perceptions and individual choices. Let's take two examples. One example is of a person who – again, let's use the numbers in the research. They're making 180,000; 200,000 dollars a year. They're saying, “I want to live the same way, and I'm staying in New York City. I'm going to spend as much as I did before and see where that takes me.” They're going to, obviously, be concerned because they know that if COVID happens again or something like that happens again, they are in trouble. Another approach would be the world has changed, and let me live more humbly. Let me maybe not buy a new car or a car at all if I'm in the city, a smaller home. Or maybe I'll move. This is something that they mentioned in the Bloomberg study. Many people are choosing to leave the city. Part of the reason they're moving to Texas, A, because taxes are lower. B, because your dollar goes a lot further there in terms of the home you can afford and even the restaurants that you can go to. So they have, in a sense, learned a lesson and said, “We're not making two million dollars. We're making $200,000.” A lot of money can go a lot further elsewhere. Maybe we can even put more money aside. Even if disaster strikes again, financial disaster strikes again, we don't need to worry for a year or two because we have enough stashed away. So these are two very different approaches. By the way, which one we take also depends on our personality. Are we more risk-averse? Are we more thrill seekers? So it depends on so many – is it possible for me to move to Texas or somewhere in Florida or somewhere in New York, where I may not be in the city, but life is cheaper. [00:07:57] PF: And it's accessible. You can get to the city. I think that's something too. You can find an area where you can access the things that you like about where you live but aren't paying the kind of rents or mortgages that you would pay in a city. [00:08:11] TBS: Yes. You know, I'm speaking here from personal experience. So we moved. Actually, just before COVID, we lived in Brooklyn, and we moved out of the city into New Jersey. We did it because we wanted quieter lifestyle, of course, but also for financial reasons. Not that taxes are not high in New Jersey. They're extremely high. But certainly, when it comes to accommodation, your dollar goes much, much farther when you're in the suburb. Of course, it is important to look at the big picture, to look at it wholistically, W-H, and to understand that there are individual differences. There are people who need the hustle and bustle and the speed of the city. There are people who would feel a lot more comfortable living by a quiet lake, where you hear the water and the birds when you wake up in the morning. Different personalities, it has to do with introversion and extroversion. It also has to do with how you've been raised and what you're used to or where you've spent the past 10 years. Because in a way, for good and ill, we become addicted to whatever it is that we're exposed to. Again, addiction can obviously be a bad thing. But if I'm addicted to the quiet and suns, or I'm addicted to going to the gym three, four times a week, that's not a bad thing. All it means is that we have neural pathways that have been reinforced over time. But there is something else that I want to say here. It's not just what I desire to do or want to do at the moment. We can also bring about change, specifically .We have become as a society addicted to noise, to novelty, to excitement, to the sensational. That is why we keep on checking our messages online because we're looking for something new and sensational. It's also why we get bored very quickly when we're sitting in our room and doing nothing or ostensibly doing nothing. You find more and more kids today saying to their parents, “I'm bored.” [00:10:21] PF: Ow. [00:10:23] TBS: You're right. More and more adults maybe not saying it but feeling it and then immediately filling up that void that is responsible for their boredom with something. Blaise Pascal once said that, “All of our troubles will be solved if we can find peace in solitude, in the solitude of our own room.” There is some truth to that, and the thing is that we can train ourselves to be less of sensation seekers and more at peace, quite literally at peace with ourselves, at peace with the absence of noise, with the absence of distractions. That would be very healthy, and one way to do that is, of course, through practicing meditation or by practicing being bored, by practicing doing nothing. We can actually get used to it. There are many upsides to silence, to solitude, to slowing down. [00:11:24] PF: Yes. It does. It absolutely changes your state. As you talked about, we're a very distracted society. There's a lot of noise, a lot of things going on. How is that playing into the way people perceive their finances and the economic environment around them? What role is that playing, and how then do they step away from that? [00:11:46] TBS: Yes. So in 1954, a leading psychologist by the name of Leon Festinger coined the term social comparison. Again, in hindsight, it seems obvious. Maybe it was also obvious in the 1950s. But we compare ourselves, and we constantly do it. It's part of our nature to do that. It’s not good or bad. It's like the law of gravity. It's a fact of nature. The question, though, is what do we do with social comparison, and how do we direct this need to compare ourselves? Do we, for example, compare ourselves to others, and that may drive us to do better and to improve and to learn from what other people are doing? Or do we become obsessed with what others have and can never be satisfied or happy because we don't have what they have? Right now, because of over stimulation, too much comparison, we, and I say we generalized, of course, not everyone. But in general, we have become, again, addicted and dependent on being better than, having more than. This plays out in terms of the statistics that we're seeing now. Yes, 180,000 is not a lot really when you compare it to someone who's making 1.8 million dollars. It’s nothing, and there are many people who make that. There are also many people who have billions of dollars, and we're exposed to all of them day in and day out through the media, through social media, or through the newspapers that writes about the very wealthy celebrities. Suddenly, what I do, oh, wow, or what I make is so little. Whereas in the past, let's say when you lived in your village, first of all, there was less discrepancy about what people made. But even the wealthy ones, first of all, they were not in my face all the time. The news isn’t in my face. [00:13:39] PF: They weren't on TikTok showing their latest acquisition, right? [00:13:42] TBS: Exactly, exactly. Also, there were many others that I compared myself to. Again, this is something natural. Who had as much or less than I did, so I felt okay when it came to social comparison. Also, you think about advertising. Advertising has one goal, to sell. Now, how does it get you to sell? It takes this tendency towards social comparison and exploits it. Oh, you don't have this new car yet. That means you can't be really happy because look at how happy those beautiful people driving that car are. Then you get that car, but there are always new ads coming on and luring. The sirens are calling you to get the next thing. Then we experience what Nathaniel Branden, the psychologist, called the nothing is enough syndrome. Nothing is enough materially. Because mind and body are connected, nothing is enough psychologically. [00:14:43] PF: Now, what does that do to our happiness when we are focused on what – our lack, the fact that we don't have enough money, even if that's just a perception? How is that undermining our well-being? [00:14:56] TBS: In the exact same way that objectively not having enough for our livelihood would influence our happiness. Because people who don't have the basic needs, of course, that's going to affect their impact. Poverty influences people's happiness. If I know that or if I don't know rather how I will get food on my table, for myself, for my family tomorrow, that I'm going to be concerned. I'm not going to sleep. Well, I'm going to be unhappy, obviously. In the same way, people who actually have enough objectively, even if they have enough for the next year to live off, but their perception is the perception of lack. Their happiness is going to be influenced just the same. Why? Because happiness depends much more on our state of mind than the state of our bank account. Again, with a caveat here, I'm not talking about extremes. Extreme actual poverty will lead to unhappiness. For those who are experiencing it or for us, we have a responsibility to alleviate that condition. That goes without saying. [00:16:03] PF: So what do people focus on? Here's where the professor really comes out. So what are the steps that people can take? How do they change their relationship with their perception of what is enough, and what do they focus on instead to start making a shift? [00:16:21] TBS: Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, who's really the father of cognitive psychology, says that one of the things that we can do is imagine ourselves without the things that we have. We're so focused on what we don't have. Let's think about what we have and imagine ourselves without it. So I have food on my table. Imagine if I didn't have that food. Well, that will make me more appreciative of the food that I do have. Or I do drive a car. Yes, I don't drive the latest model and fastest one. But it takes me from point A to point B, how convenient, how wonderful. Not to mention to become more appreciative of the things that don't cost money such – whether it's friends or family or health or nature, the gift that we received from evolution, God. Take your pick. [00:17:16] PF: So what are ways that people can start creating some sort of practice? Because we're not going to just inherently say, “Okay, those were great tips. I'm going to start doing that,” and everything changes. It gets tough because we are going to slide back in, and we are going to see that friend on TikTok who has a Lamborghini, and we're going to be like, “Come on.” So what are some practices that we can use every day to make this part of our insight? [00:17:43] TBS: I'm going to talk about some of the usual suspects here because I don't think it's rocket science. The challenge is not understanding or knowing what we should do. The challenge is to do it and to do it consistently. I will say a few words about that in a minute. But first of all, what are the things? First of all, regularly express gratitude. The key with expressing gratitude is not just, okay, so I'm sitting down now the end of the day and counting my blessings, writing down what I'm grateful for. We need to do it with what Barbara Frederickson, the psychologist, calls heartfelt positivity. So this is a practice that I've been doing since the 19th of September, 1999. I do day in and day out. The key, especially when you've done it often, is to really feel experience and savor what it is that you're grateful for. So if I write down my daughter. It’s not just writing down my daughter or her name. It's writing it down, and then I shut my eyes, and I imagine her. I see her in my mind's eye and feel the love. [00:18:48] PF: I love that. [00:18:50] TBS: There are so many reasons why this works so much better than just going through the motion. Or let's say if I write a meal that I had with a colleague, which was lovely. I actually closed my eyes and transport myself back to that experience, re-experience it. It's when we experience this heartfelt positivity as opposed to just cognitive positivity that makes a big difference in terms of the impact that it has on us. So this is one practice. The second practice, going back to sensationalism. I'm taking it from the work of Osho, who was a spiritual teacher, but also from the latest research on meditation. We can shift away from the need for sensationalism if we become more mindful of sensations. So if I sit down and focus on the air coming in through my nose and leaving through my nose and this tingling, whether it's in my nostrils or my fingertips, if I focus on that, there's so much happening there. If I learn to focus on it, I become more sensitive. When I become more sensitive, I'm more aware of sensations and therefore less dependent on sensationalism, which is sensations taken to the extreme. Again, this is not just then etymological word play. This actually works, but we need to put time aside for that by living any city. I'm outside, being constantly bombarded by these distractions which is noise, colors. Plus, I have my smartphone with me all the time that is providing me notifications or messages. I become addicted to those. Just like the antidote for taking things for granted is gratitude, the antidote to sensationalism is learning to focus on and become aware of, mindful of sensations. [00:21:03] PF: That's incredible. I love that. I know that we do have to let you go, but I really want you to put in perspective for us how imperative is it that we get our mindset about money in line for our overall well-being? Like where does that fall in importance? [00:21:21] TBS: We have within us, again, whether it's the creator put it in us or evolution put it in us, the need to accumulate. It's understandable because in the past, humans really didn't know whether they would survive the next winter. Or they only survived it if they accumulated. Unfortunately, for many people, this is still the reality. So this is, again, part of our nature; good, bad, both, neither. The question is what do we do with that. Do we take it to the extreme? Then that means even people who are making, objectively speaking, a lot of money still feel that nothing is enough. Or do we write about it, think about it, talk about it, find a more rational evaluation of what we have? So that's the first thing. The second thing, how about living a little bit more humbly? Because really, as we know from a lot of research and, Paula, you've talked about this multiple times before, yes, when we get this new thing, bigger, better, brighter thing, we'll be happy for a week or a month. That's not the path to lasting happiness. So let's be more humble about our acquisitions. Let's be more humble about what we really need. Spend more of our money and more importantly our time on cultivating those things that are free and yet so important, so fundamental for our happiness. Because spending time with my daughter or spending time going for a walk, playing with my pet, or reading a book, these are wonderful sources of what I've come to call life's ultimate currency, which is not dollars and cents. It's happiness. [00:23:18] PF: I love that. Thank you so much for your insight today. This is an important topic because it affects all of us. We all have our own mindsets about it. So I really appreciate you breaking it down for us and telling us how we can shift the direction we're going. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find you online and learn more about you. [00:23:37] TBS: Thank you very much, Paula. Again, thank you so much for all that you and your team are doing. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:47] PF: That was Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, talking about money and happiness. If you'd like to learn more about Tal and the Happiness Studies Academy 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: 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: Living With Intention With Dr. Greg Hammer [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 423 of Live Happy Now. By now we're all aware that the mind and body are connected. But how do we use that knowledge to create our best life? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Dr. Greg Hammer, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, physician, and a mindfulness expert, who developed the four-step gain method of mindfulness. As he explains in his book, Gain Without Pain, this is an acronym for gratitude, acceptance, intention, and non-judgment. He teaches this method to reduce stress and increase wellbeing. Today, he's going to talk about how you can create a more intentional and happier life. Let's welcome Dr. Greg Hammer. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:50] PF: I'm so excited to talk to you. You have a lot to tell us about the power of intention. But before we get to that, I want you to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, because you've been so instrumental in showing us how our mental state affects our physical wellbeing. Explain to us how you became so attuned with that and why it's so important to you? [00:01:12] GH: I have been a lifelong fitness enthusiast in every sense of the word, mental, spiritual, physical. About 10 years ago, I joined a directive at Stanford called Well MD, that was convened in order to address the growing prevalence of burnout among physicians, which has only probably gotten worse since then. But in any case, I joined Well MD, and then I was asked to give a talk on burnout and wellness at a national meeting, and then another talk, another other talk, and then I had some sabbatical time, and I decided to write the book. The first book that I wrote. In the meantime, I've been – went to medical school because of my interest in in the human body and the miracle of how all the parts are interrelated, I found that I really had an affinity for people that work with children. They don't seem to take themselves quite as seriously as some of the people in adult medicine and that comported with my personality. So, I did a residency in pediatrics and loved Intensive Care Medicine. So, I did a residency in anesthesiology, and then fellowships in pediatric anesthesia and critical care. I've been working in both arenas, the pediatric intensive care unit and cardiac anesthesia for over 30 years. I have a research lab at Stanford where we study developmental pharmacology from babies up to adults. Again, my interest in in wellness has further intensified, I would say. I've been a student rather of Advaita, or non-duality for 12 years or so. That has certainly influenced my ways of thinking. So, everything I talk about with you, probably for the rest of this session is going to have something to do with all of that. [00:03:05] PF: Are you seeing more of that in the medical community where they're not just treating the body, but they are looking at things like mindfulness. You're huge on mindfulness and you're a trailblazer in that way, because I know in my own life, just having a physician that sees things that way, has been a challenge. Do you see that changing? [00:03:24] GH: I do. I think that just like our medical system as a whole has really focused on disease more than preventing disease. That ship is kind of slow to turn, as we put more resources into preventive medicine now, which is absolutely requisite if we want to be a well society. Similarly, I think that physicians and others in medicine have focused on disease and finding, taking sort of a reductionist approach to health, I would say, trying to break things down into their component parts and figure out how to cure things. I think, that colors the profession as a whole, and what we need to do is really move much toward prevention in our own wellness, because unless we are, well, it's going to be difficult to take care of others. It's sort of the put your oxygen mask on first. Your own oxygen mask before you take care of the child or someone who's acting like a child sitting next to you on the aircraft. Yes, I think things are changing. But the culture is very well entrenched, and it is a big ship and slow to turn. But I do think things are changing in medicine for the better. [00:04:43] PF: That's good to hear. And you are so pivotal in this and you teach us so much about what it does to have the right mindset, and what I want to talk to you about today is intentional living. Let's start by making sure we're all on the same page. Tell us what you mean when you say intentional living. [00:05:03] GH: We can start by just acknowledging that our brains have become hardwired over tens of thousands of years of evolution, in ways that are no longer adaptive, or we might say they're maladaptive. For example, we all have a negativity bias. We tend to focus on the negative and forget about the positive. We get out of bed in the morning, and maybe we have an ache or a pain. Our back is stiff. So, we focus on that and we just initiate the day with a cascade of thoughts about woe is me, this and that, instead of focusing on the miracle of the human body, that we even woke up and could get out of bed at all, and all the good things about our physical state. So, we have a negativity bias. The other thing is, the way our brains have become wired is we're very distracted with the past and the future. So, we have a hard time being present, which is where happiness lives. It's adaptive to some extent to dwell in the past. We want to learn from our mistakes. We want to savor our good memories. But beyond that, we overthink the past and with our negativity bias, we end up with a lot of shame and regret, low self-esteem and depression. Likewise, we overthink the future, in ways that are maladaptive and we catastrophize with our negativity bias and think of the worst thing that could happen. We generate a lot of fear and anxiety. So, if we're not intentional, if we don't have a plan, then we're going to simply lapse into our default modes of thinking, and that is negative and other than present. If we want to be more positive, and really focus on all the miraculous things that are happening around us all the time, including inside us, and we want to be more present, and therefore happy. We need to have a plan. We need to be purposeful. That's really where intention is a requisite component of happiness. [00:07:03] PF: So, when you set an intention, what do you mean, how do you go about doing that? [00:07:10] GH: Sure. Well, I can just briefly tell you about the gain method, the gain meditation. So, we get up in the morning, we open the blinds, we do our morning hygiene. We find a comfortable place to sit. We close our eyes, hopefully in a quiet place, and we focus on our breath. We slow it down. So, our first intention, actually, with regard to this gain process begins the night before, because we acknowledge we're going to do this gain meditation in the morning. It may take as little as three minutes, we're going to set our alarm three minutes earlier than we otherwise would. So, who's going to miss that three minutes? Or we can go to bed three minutes earlier. Instead of getting up at seven o'clock, we're going to get up at 6:57. We're setting our intention for this whole process the night before. Then, we were sitting quietly, we focus on the breath, we slow down the inhalation, pause and take a nice slow exhalation without any effort. By slowing our breathing down, we activate our parasympathetic nervous system. We slow our heart rate, lower our blood pressure, our blood sugar, and then we begin contemplation of that for which we're grateful. We all have much for which should be grateful, so we spent 45 seconds or so just focusing on our friends, our family, our loved ones, our relative health, even if it's not perfect. It's miraculous that we're as healthy as we are, and all the other things for which we're grateful. Then, we transition to acceptance, we need to acknowledge that there is pain in life, and pain, and joy are kind of hand in hand. So, we may take something uncomfortable or painful, and actually, imagine bringing it into our bodies, opening our chest, opening our heart, bringing this experience into our heart, and nurturing it, enveloping it with our heart. We find that it's not so bad and we can live with it. Then, we transition to intention, which is where your question originated and we start by having the intention of noticing what's happening in this moment. So, we may just, for example, have the intention of noticing the pressure of the chair against our body, noticing the tingling on the soles of our feet, noticing the sounds that we're hearing as we breathe deeply and slowly. So, for me, I have a meditation room in my home on Stanford campus. I'm sort of halfway between San Francisco and San Jose airports. I often hear a plane going by in the distance – [00:09:40] PF: It becomes part of the meditation, right? [00:09:44] GH: It does. It's the part of the intention portion of the gain meditation because I'm setting my intention as you put it with what's happening right now. So, I'm just spending 10 or 15 seconds noticing my bodily sensations, noticing my perceptions, what I feel, what I hear, what I may smell, just the slight sweetness of the air, I'm breathing. So, we spend 10 or 15 seconds being present in this way, really noticing what's happening in this moment. Then, we go to our intention of generally looking at the positive side of things, rather than the negative. So, what we're doing is we're actually rewiring our brains, because as we focus on our gratitude, acceptance, intention, and then non-judgment in life, we're actually rewiring our brains toward a more positive and present way of thinking and experiencing, and therefore being more happy. [00:10:48] PF: How long does that rewiring take? Because I know that over time, it does completely start changing the way you look at the world when you get up. The ache and pain that you have, you see it differently. But how long does that take for us to start doing? When do we start seeing results? [00:11:06] GH: As in life, life is a journey. Really, there's no destination. So, I think we can notice a change in our thought processes very soon, like after days, or a couple of weeks. What happens is, when we, for example, do this gain, practice, we set our intention the night before. We sit, we breathe, we go through our gratitude, acceptance, intention, non-judgement. We return to the breath. We slowly open our eyes. We go out in the world. What happens is, even after a short period of time, in days, maybe a couple of weeks, we noticed that when we're being ungrateful, or resisting, or unintentional, lapsing into our negativity bias, or we're judging. What happens is a light bulb goes off. We just did our gain practice and we notice when we're being ungrateful, we're sort of whining and complaining. Then, we remind ourselves, “Oh, these are first world problems”, as my daughter would say. These are not deal breakers. These are really pretty much small stuff, things. That light bulb moment actually brings us a bit of a smile, and then we simply redirect our thoughts back to gratitude, acceptance, intention and non-judgment. We do our gain meditation. We go to work, maybe we drive to work, and there's a driver that is in the lane to the right of us, and he or she changes lanes into our lane, without using the turn signal ahead of us. We start to make all these judgments about the driver, and then a light bulb goes off, and we realize, I just did my gain meditation. I dropped the judgment. I realized that things don't have to be good or bad. So, I have some imagery associated with this. A light bulb goes off, and I smile, and I drop the judgment of that driver, and it actually feels good. I get a little dopamine hit. Instead of getting negative about it, and getting angry, I actually have a smile and a little positive reaction. That light bulb moment where we notice our thoughts and experiences, and we can redirect them. That happens actually just really after a short period of time. [00:13:24] PF: Yes, and I've noticed, when you start living that way, when you start thinking that way, you do offer people more grace, in situations that come up, some of the things that all have popped into my head unexpectedly and automatically, it's like, “Well, you know what, I've done the same thing.” I start seeing less judgment toward them and more like, “Okay, how many times have I done that?” That's just karma saying, “Hey, remember that time you cut someone off in traffic.” It does, it just starts changing the way you receive the experiences. [00:13:54] GH: Absolutely. So, just drill a little bit deeper into that judgment process, in the gain meditation, when we do our non-judgement contemplation, I often personally, I do this, and I recommend that others do it. Just picture an image of the Earth, one of these beautiful NASA images where the earth is apparently suspended in space. It's a beautiful planet. It's neither good nor bad. It's just a planet. So, we kind of pronounced to ourselves as we breathe slowly and deeply, and we picture this image of the earth. The earth is just a planet. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the planet that it is. Therefore, it's only rational for me to look at myself the same way. I'm just a human being. I'm neither good nor bad. I simply am the human being that I am. Then, we may repeat I am and link that with our breath. Then, we slowly open our eyes. Again, what happens is, when we find ourselves judging, like that driver, we just discussed, or ourselves, when we find that we're judging ourselves, since we're our own harshest critic, we may notice that what we're doing is judging, and we also notice the fact that we're judging ourselves with this negativity bias. So, we can have that light bulb moment and just drop the judgment and go back to, “I'm just the human being that I am, I'm neither good nor bad.” We learn that we don't have to cast a hue over the world and see things through this veil of negativity. We can look at things just exactly as they are, without judging them to be good or bad. They just are what they are. I think that's such an important change in our thought process. [00:15:43] PF: It's huge. I want to dig into that a little bit more, because as we've talked about, we do judge ourselves so harshly. Some people – I see people who just beat themselves up over and over. How do we – before we start judging ourselves, how do we start setting our brain up to not do that? How do we get very specific and break that judgment, self-judgment habit? [00:16:08] GH: I think, when you talk about intention, we need to have a plan, and that really translate into having a practice, right? We need to have a practice that preferably is daily, because our brains are very hard wired. Again, they became this way over tens of thousands of years, and we're not going to change them overnight. So, we have to have a baby step process, preferably a daily plan, where we begin to rewire our brains. That happens only through intention. If we're not purposeful, we just lapse into this negativity, and this very judgmental way of being. Again, when we have this practice, and we find that we're judging ourselves, we're down on ourselves, we're getting depressed, we can have that light bulb moment and recognize that this is just the way our brains work. This is not something unique to us that we think this way, in this negative way. This is the way we all think. I think that's the first lesson is that this isn't our dirty little secret. We're not the only one that has these thoughts. We all have these thoughts. I was listening to a wonderful show on NPR called The Hidden Brain, and the host had somebody on who's an expert in the imposter syndrome. The message was that we all feel this way. We all feel like imposters no matter how accomplished we are. This is again that negative voice speaking to us. So, we need to have a plan to change the way we think. When we're having these very negative thoughts about ourselves, I like the cognitive behavioral approach of we're criticizing ourselves for a particular thing or things. Imagine we're talking to a good friend, who's got the same voice, who's criticizing themselves for these things, something they did or said or didn't do, would we be judging them harshly? No, we would probably be reassuring them, and not judging them. Just reassuring them that they're just a human being. We're all mortal, we're all fallible, we're not perfect. Don't be so hard on yourself. So, use that same voice with yourself when you're getting into this very negative way of thinking and judging. [00:18:24] PF: Over time, it becomes easier to do that. You start recognizing it faster. You correct the behavior sooner, and you just don't go as deep into that judgment. Is that correct? [00:18:34] GH: Oh, absolutely. One of my heroes in life is Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn who's really been a leader in mindfulness. He defines mindfulness as awareness of the present moment, on purpose, non-judgmentally. So, there are some of the gain elements. On purpose, we talked about intention. You need to have that purposefulness to have a plan to rewire our brain, because we have this wonderful quality called neuroplasticity. But we have to have a plan. So, awareness of the present moment, which is where happiness lives, on purpose, with intention, non-judgmentally, and we touched on the importance of being nonjudgmental, especially toward ourselves. [00:19:24] PF: That gives us greater happiness. It gives us greater mental and emotional wellbeing. Talk about what it's doing for us physically. Because you've, you've been so great at bringing those two things together. [00:19:36] GH: Sure. Well, we're all feeling kind of burnt out. I think that COVID amplified the stress that we all experience, which is just part of life. Burnout is simply the mental and physical exhaustion that we experience related to chronic stress. Chronic stress is a condition where we have an increase in the adrenaline or epinephrine in our bodies, increases our heart rate, our blood pressure. We have an increase in cortisol, which is a hormone that also increases our blood pressure, increases our blood sugar, predisposes to diabetes and other adverse health conditions. Stress has a number of effect physical effects on our body. It actually shortens these little protective caps we have at the tips of our chromosomes, which I likened to the little plastic protective tips at the end of our shoelaces that keep the ends of our shoelaces from becoming frayed. As we age, we have a shortening of these telomeres and that's been associated with a degradation in the function of our cells, and the aging process. That is accelerated when we're stressed. So, chronic stress actually induces changes akin to aging. There are so many physiologic effects of stress on our bodies, just about on every organ, and tissue, and cell in our body. Really, stress, ages us. So, the question is, how do we change that? That's really what we're talking about with this gain method, with a practice of non-judgment, with a practice of mindfulness meditation. These are ways of increasing our personal resilience and decreasing the amount of stress that we experience. Lowering our heart rate, our blood pressure, our cortisol, our blood sugar, reversing this process of our telomere shortening, our cells degrading, our genetics, our epigenetics degrading. So, it's so important that we recognize that we have this chronic stress, and what the effects are, and that we really make priority number one in our lives actually addressing this. [00:21:58] PF: Yes, because I've seen people being a lot less healthy since the pandemic, and of all ages. We have some fairly young friends, they’re in their early 30s, who are talking about these health problems they've started having since the pandemic. Is that an effect of the stress? Or is it because we got so unhealthy sitting around during the pandemic? What has created this? Because I'm seeing it everywhere from, like I said, early 30s, up into their 60s and 70s. [00:22:29] GH: I would say all of the above. What happens is, the three legs that form the tripod supporting our physical wellbeing, which then supports our mental and spiritual wellbeing, our sleep, exercise, and nutrition. What are the effects of stress on our sleep, exercise, and nutrition? Well, briefly, stress causes a degradation in the quality and quantity of our sleep. So, when we're stressed, we don't sleep as well. Of course, we all have experienced this. We wake up early in the morning and our minds are racing with all kinds of lists of things we have to do and anxieties and stresses. So, stress degrades our sleep, makes us fatigued. When we're fatigued, we tend to be too tired to exercise. Our exercise regimen goes downhill and we saw this in COVID, where gyms were closed, and people spent a lot more time indoors, not only depriving themselves of the magic of nature, but also not exercising very much. They're fatigued. We're not exercising. Our diet actually degrades as well. We're tired, so we reach for these sugary and fatty, so-called comfort foods, to give us a boost of energy. Of course, then we crash, and these foods are not healthy. So, our sleep, exercise and nutrition are very interrelated. When we're stressed, they all are degraded. Of course, the sleep exercise and nutrition habits and practice that we have are so integral to our health overall, when we're not sleeping well, we're not exercising, we're not eating well. Of course, we're more predisposed to hypertension, diabetes. Again, the effects of stress are magnified when we're fatigued, not exercising, and not eating well. This is all like a self-propagating loop that is causing us to spiral in a downward direction. [00:24:28] PF: It's difficult to tell someone who's going through that, that doing some meditation, or setting intentions is going to actually turn that around. [00:24:39] GH: You might advise your listeners, well, if you're tired and feel out of shape, and you're depressed, focus on the basics of sleep, exercise, and nutrition. Just for example, address your sleep hygiene. There's several things, we all know what to do, but we don't do them, typically. But we really want to improve our sleep. So, instead of perhaps recommending something abstract, like setting intentions, you can say something specific, like, let's address our sleep. Focus on your sleep hygiene and start to sleep better. What you're really advising when you ask someone to really focus on their sleep and sleep hygiene, is you're asking them to set their intention, right? That is an intention. It's improving your health by improving your sleep. That's a very tangible, easy to understand concrete bit of advice that does involve intentions. [00:25:41] PF: Well, Greg, thank you so much for taking this time with me. You're so insightful. A lot we can learn from you. As I said, we're going to tell them how they can learn more about you and your books. I just appreciate you taking time with me today. [00:25:54] GH: Well, likewise, it's been really a pleasure having a conversation with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:03] PF: That was Dr. Greg Hammer, talking about how to live with intention. If you'd like to learn more about Greg and his book, Gain Without Pain, 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: Fostering Pets for Greater Well-Being With Brittany Derrenbacher [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 421 of Live Happy Now. This month is filled with holidays that celebrate our pets, so that's what we're going to do. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and June happens to be National Adopt a Cat Month, National Microchip Month, and National Foster a Pet Month. We also have National Dog Dad Day on June 17th, National Dog Party Day on June 21st, and National Take Your Dog to Work Day on June 23rd. That is a lot of partying with your pet. Today, we want to focus on fostering and how it can help improve your well-being while changing the life of an animal forever. I'm bringing in Live Happy's resident pet expert, Brittany Derrenbacher, Founder of Luna Bell's Moonbows Special Needs Fostering in Louisville, Kentucky, to talk about how we can make the world a better place one foster pet at a time. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:56] PF: Brittany, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [0:01:00] BD: I'm so excited to be back. [0:01:01] PF: This is such a natural topic for us to discuss, because it's National Foster a Pet Month. You and I actually met, because of you foster animals, I needed an animal, we connected, it's been a great thing. During the pandemic, a lot of people were adopting and fostering pets. It was shelters were empty. There were waiting lists. Where are we at now? What's the current situation and the need for fostering? [0:01:29] BD: I think despite COVID and how that drastically changed things, there is always a need. There will always, always, always be a need until we have legislation that changes, or some type of very serious systemic change politically to change the environment that is resulting, right, in these animals most of the time from overbreeding. COVID was so interesting, because it's like, it was such a positive boom. It was such a positive shift. All of these people wanted animals. They wanted to give love and they were going to shelters. They were going to rescues. People were stepping up to foster, because they had so much time. I think, even though we don't really have enough adequate data, I think eventually, we will see how this has changed and affected. I think it's only natural to assume that everyone went back to work, everyone went back to chaotic schedules and life. Because of that, I think that there has been a shift, especially in rescue. There's not a single volunteer in shelter and in rescue right now that I don't know that it's just inundated. I mean, at capacity, full of animals. I mean, it's tough. I think we're seeing it all play out in real time right now. [0:02:50] PF: I wondered if it was just me, or my area that I live in, because I've seen so many posts lately about like, “Our shelter is full. We cannot take anymore. Please, if you can foster, if you can adopt.” I've seen this so much in the last few weeks. Is that a product of us pendulum swinging from having done the fostering, having adopted and now people are going back and saying like, “I'm not cut out for this”? [0:03:16] BD:  I think that is definitely a piece. I think, also, we're seeing the result of breeding picked up. We needed to make money. I also think there was a need for it. It picked up in all areas, right? We're just seeing a result of that. I just think that shelters literally all over the country, shelters that normally would have, or rescues that normally would have been more open for being the ones that would have been reached out to, to say like, “Hey, we're full. Can you help?” They're full. So, that I think is telling. [0:03:52] PF: Fostering, you have so much, of course, it gives a lot to the animal. It gives so much to the person who does that. We're going to get into that. First, tell us about your story and how you became involved in fostering, why you wanted to do that, because it really does take a special mindset and a special person to want to do it at the level that you do it. [0:04:10] BD: Yeah. This is a topic that is just so heart centered for me, because it really comes from my relationship with my soul dogs, Sunshine and Zoe. They just taught me so much about myself. They brought so much joy into my life. My relationship with them is what led me into fostering, because I just had a lot of love to give. I was in my early twenties. I loved doing volunteer work. I loved giving back. Since I was a child, I think I've always had a really unique bond with animals. I've always played into that advocacy role for animals. I felt very passionately about caring for them. I just started doing research on my end and looking into breed specific rescues, because Zoe and Sunshine were beautiful Boston Terriers. Like, perfect. Yeah, so I started doing research. That's how I found the rescue that brought us together. Boston Terrier rescue of East Tennessee, the Kentucky division. I started following them on Facebook. That is, I mean, that was all it took. I loved following the dog stories. I loved seeing them end up in forever homes. I put in an application. There's a process that I had to go through, some interviewing and having someone come to my home and make sure that it was going to be a safe and supportive environment for an animal. I mean before I knew it, I had my first foster dog. His name was Louis Pierre. It started it all. [0:05:40] PF: Fostering is such an interesting relationship. I used to tell people it was like dating, because it's like, I know I'm not going to have a permanent relationship with them. I am just getting them ready for their next perfect relationship. It can be hard for people to understand how you can take a dog and give it your all, give it your entire heart, all your love, and then send it to another family. Talk about the mindset. I know that you've coached people on this and helped them get through it, because it can be tough the first couple of times. What kind of mindset and what does it take to go in and have that pet foster parent attitude? [0:06:13] BD: Yeah, I'm glad that you asked this question, because I think mindset in this role and in this job is key. Intentionality is key. My advice is to go into this relationship and roll with curiosity with patients, an eagerness to learn and a genuine heart-centered approach for meeting the animal where they're at. What I mean by that is like, we have to be able to meet this animal at this very traumatic stage in their life and be willing to allow them to grow. They're not going to come to us perfect. That is rare. It does happen. It's like the unicorn and rescue work, where you just get this dog that it's like, okay, this dog's ready for its home. Nothing that we need to work on here. Many times when we get a dog into rescue and work to find a foster home for them, folks will ask, “Are they potty-trained? Do they like kids? Are they leash chained?” In a perfect world, those would be really easy questions, right? Every single animal has their own story. There's no way that any of us can predict, or know. Most of the time, they will not come with a story, right? They were found on the side of the road. I think their own past and experiences of how they ended up needing rescue, it's a variable, right? Oftentimes, we just don't know any of those things. All we know is that they need rescuing ASAP. I think the biggest thing that people don't see behind the scenes is the immediacy and the urgency that often happens in needing to get that animal into care quickly. We just don't have the ability to stop and see, is this dog potty trained? Is this dog going to be okay with your kid? We just have to be willing to meet them where they're at and give them time, give them the opportunity to be nurtured under care and safety of a loving foster home. Typically, this is the case. They will be nurtured. They will be loving, amazing animals. All of that will be super reciprocal, too. They nurture us and we also grow. If we're willing to lean into that and have patience with that, I think that's the mindset. [0:08:31] PF: When pets come in, and to your point, they often are not perfect. I think I've had one dog in 20 years that he came in, he was potty-trained, he was good to go. They have a lot of damage to them. Let's talk first about what the pet receives when we become foster parents. [0:08:49] BD: For the pet, I just think that the field of animal sheltering has come a long way. I definitely want to say that. I don't want it to come off like, this is in any way, shaming shelters. I just think that even in the best circumstances, animal shelters are a stressful place, right? It's a stressful place for animals, especially if they've been traumatized to come into an environment that's loud, uncertain, with a lot of moving pieces. That's what I mean by saying that it's stressful. Loud, overwhelming to the senses. A lot of shelters will work on those sensory things. That is part of volunteers’ jobs is to literally go around and give a treat, to make a sound, whether it be chimes, just sensory things to keep the dog and engaged. But the environment is still so overwhelming for animals and it causes them to shut down emotionally. It enacts that freeze response in the animal. Sometimes they display reactive behaviors due to the stress, that then labels them as the bad dog, right? [0:09:57] PF: Doesn't that keep them from getting adopted? [0:09:59] BD: Oh, yeah. They quite literally will be moved to a different part of that shelter in quarantine, away, and you can't go past that area, right? It completely denies them the ability of being seen. Foster homes uniquely allow that animal to be seen, right? To decompress from the stress of living in the shelter. They just work wonders for an animal's nervous system. It gives them the chance to live in a home, where they have the grace and the ease to safely express their personality. It's amazing to see that. It is amazing to see that animal come in that doesn't even play with a toy. That won't even come near you. It gives them such an opportunity and a chance to overcome fears and many times, recover and decompress from that trauma, right? [0:10:53] PF: Yeah, it does. One thing that I've had people – I wouldn't say it's their argument, but they say that, well, isn't it hard on the animal because now you've taken them out of an unknown situation, which we don't know before they dumped, where they lost, whatever it was, and you're giving them a home. Then you pull them out of that home again. I know you've gone through this process many, many times. Can you address that? [0:11:17] BD: That is probably one of the most frequent questions that I'm asked, is how do you just continue to pass the dog along? That's how it's perceived to others. [0:11:25] PF: Right. [0:11:26] BD: To me, it's like, this is the safe landing pad. I'm going to empower you. I'm going to give you all the skills that you need to succeed. I'm going to find you your perfect match. That family is out there that can meet every single one of those needs. When you move into that space, when the animal moves into that space, it's going to flourish. Animals are the most resilient creature. I think a lot of the times, we project our human emotions onto these animals. Really, they are a shining example of post-traumatic growth. [0:12:03] PF: Yeah, because I've seen dogs who have been through an amazing amount of trauma and abuse, and the way that they're able to love and heal and become kind and tender. Beans has always amazed me. That was one thing that attracted me to fostering was because I was dealing with some trauma in my own life that I was trying to work through and being able to work with animals during that time and see them come from abusive situations and become whole was really, they were teaching me. I was learning a lot from them about that. I think it's just been an incredible journey for me to watch how animals do heal and how they teach us to heal our hearts. [0:12:43] BD: Right. Because, essentially, we're giving a voice to the voiceless. You will see that a lot of people that are in some type of animal care work will have had trauma at some point in their life. Because I think this work just so deeply is connected to that need to help and to give a voice and to advocate. That comes from a place. [0:13:09] PF: Talk to me about the mental health benefits that we receive as foster parents. Because I've discovered so many benefits from it. It's just an incredible experience. [0:13:19] BD: Yeah. Shout out to one of our past episodes together, right? We love to talk about animals and mental health. If you haven't listened to the episode already, it's called celebrating our pets, and we really go super deep on all the benefits of that. Literally, animals improve everything, everything. They improve our mental health period. Mentally, physically, spiritually. Another thing that we've explored together is that they improve our lives cognitively. I think the unique thing that fostering does that can be really important for people that have busy lives, or don't really have the ability to have an animal in their home full-time is that it gives them companionship and joy with an animal without that lifelong commitment. It can be like, “Let me do this for a couple of weeks. Take a little break. A couple of weeks, a little break.” It's like being the cool aunt, or cool uncle, right? You get to send them home. You get to send them to their forever home. I think that's really cool. Most importantly, in regards to mental health, is that it gives us purpose. That's huge. [0:14:31] PF: That can be big for someone who say, is suffering from depression and has trouble. Doesn't have a reason to get off the couch. Doesn't have a reason to do something. If all you have to do, like let me get up and feed this cat. Let me take this dog outside for a walk. You start making these small things, because you have to. It starts snowballing into an upward mental health improvement. [0:14:56] BD: Yeah, you're needed. You're giving back. You're enacting change in someone's life. That's rewarding. That gives a person hope. That gives a person confidence. I think that animals do such a good job of relieving stress in our life and helping us cope easier with life changes. They more than anyone know that, too. They can teach us all of those things. They know the best ways to relieve stress. They know how to cope with changes and transition. This foster will know all of those things. [0:15:32] PF: They're living it. [0:15:34] BD: Absolutely. I just think that it's such a very special reciprocal relationship in regards to mental health and to those benefits. [0:15:45] PF: One thing that you brought up, you mentioned that if you don't have the time, you don't have to have this as a full-time foster. I think that's something that's really important to bring up, because there are several programs where you can do something for a day. When I was in Nashville, there was a guy who, his dog had died and he didn't really have the time to take on a new full-time dog. He would go on his lunch hour and he would walk dogs at the shelter. I've got friends who take their kids every weekend and they meet dogs. Part of their job is to learn how these dogs do with children. There are other things besides having this dog full-time. Can you talk about that, how you can find some of these opportunities? [0:16:23] BD: Yeah. Every single volunteer position matters. I cannot stress that enough. It is rescue work. Shelter work is a well-oiled machine that requires a lot of people in different pieces, right? It is not just one person fostering. It's not just one person adopting. There is so much happening behind the scenes that require sometimes very minimal effort that's still super rewarding. Like you said, you can go and stop at the shelter and walk the dog, or stop by the shelter and pet the cats. You can pick an animal up and you can take them out for the day and socialize them, right? You can give them that one-on-one attention. You can be the transport driver that picks the animal up from wherever it is, takes it to the vet, or takes it to the foster home. Every single piece matters. As a volunteer, you really are in a valuable part of this life-saving team. It's teamwork. [0:17:18] PF: You feel that reward, because it has that same – it doesn't really matter what role you're playing. You still have that same team mentality. It's like, we place this dog, we found her this home. Now we get to watch her flourish on social media. Yeah, it really does become this great team effort. Let's talk about children and what children can learn. The last dog that I adopted had been fostered by a woman who had two young children. I thought that's so great, because I saw how her children were with Rocco. I thought, man, that's really incredible for them to be raised in that environment of fostering and knowing like, “I'm going to care for this dog and then I'm going to give them to this forever home.” Tell me what that can do for children and how that's going to affect both the children and future animals down the road. [0:18:07] BD: Fostering is a very unique and empowering way to teach your children responsibility, right? Responsibility and pet ownership, but also just responsibility and things around them, compassion, helping others. I think that parents worry a lot about their kids getting too attached. But in my experience, the kids are the most resilient. Again, it's like these adult humans projecting a lot of their – a lot of their stuff on these animals and the kids and really, the kids are the understanding ones. They're so, so helpful and essential in these transitions. What's most helpful, again, is the intentionality you take before stepping into this role as a foster. Taking the time to really be diligent about talking to your kids about this important job that they have. You are going to be doing such an important job in this animal's life and preparing this animal to go to their forever home. How cool is that that this is your job? By letting them go to the families who will love them, we're doing the best thing for them. In turn, we're getting to help more animals. That's the message that you want to give the kids. Also, give it to yourself. Personal advice, give it to yourself. [0:19:22] PF: Listen to yourself while you’re talking. [0:19:24] BD: Yeah. I think that kids in general raised around animals have better self-esteem, better confidence, connections to love and compassion, empathy. The coolest thing is non-verbal communications. Animals uniquely teach us that. Kids are able to learn that. I think, something also worth mentioning here in regards to kids is most high schools across the US require service hours from their students. Animal care services count for that. I want to give a plug for that, because that's something that I really loved anytime that someone reached out to the rescue and talking about their kid needing service hours like, “Hey, can we foster a dog?” “Yes, you can.” [0:20:08] PF: Yes, as a matter of fact. [0:20:09] BD: It's a win-win. Yeah. [0:20:10] PF: Right. Oh, that's terrific. I hadn't even thought about that. I do love seeing when kids are involved in it and how that changes it. That's super, super cool. I know that you've seen so many different situations and you went next level with your special needs foster group. Tell us a little bit about that and how it started. [0:20:30] BD: My favorite story to share, our rescue is named Luna Bell's Moonbows Special Needs Rescue, and it's named after our first special needs dog. Her name was Luna Bell. She came to us at three-days-old and had a cleft palate. It taught me so much about myself. It taught my husband so much about himself. We really thrived in that environment and advocating for her and learning about her. When she ultimately – she had a lot of other complications that typically happens when you have an animal that has a congenital issue. We had her for little close to two months. We just wanted to honor her life. Once she passed, we just felt so strongly that we wanted to continue to give back in that way and learn as much as we could. I feel it universally opened this door, where people started reaching out to us. It really grew over time, because how we started to conceptualize what this work meant really started to broaden, where we were taking in elderly animals, needed some medical care, or needed to be permanent fosters. We took in animals that maybe had behavioral challenges due to trauma and we worked with them for long periods of time and found them very special foster homes. [0:21:54] PF: I wanted you to tell that story, because I really do want to bring this up. I've heard people talk about like, “I can't take in an elderly dog. I can't take in a special needs, because it's too heartbreaking.” You and I, one thing that we share is when I was doing fostering, I always went with the elderly dogs. There was just something to me about being able to care for a dog, knowing that they were going to spend the last days of their lives being loved, that I knew they would not die alone. That took the difficulty out of helping them pass somehow. Talk about that. When you foster special needs, or elderly pets, what keeps you fostering, despite the fact that you know you're going to lose them? [0:22:37] BD: It is such a gift to be able to give love in that way and create space for that animal, who often would have been overlooked, who often would have maybe been euthanized. Giving them the opportunity to find peace and love and wholeness in a home. To me, there is no greater gift. It has been the most rewarding years of my life to be able to give back in that way to these animals. I have gained so much from that. Like, confidence, empowerment, advocacy tools, empathy. It really drove me to become a therapist, right? It drove me to continue to broaden this idea of what our relationships are with people and with animals and to lean in to providing pet loss care and grief support for people. I just think that our relationships with these specific animals, especially uniquely abled animals and elderly animals who show up with so much gratitude to us. Just gratitude for the opportunity to just be. [0:23:53] PF: What's hard to explain to people, it's obvious what the pet is getting. It's obvious that the animals getting a lot of love. They're getting a lot of care. It might be more difficult from the outside to see what we as the carer and the care provider is receiving, but the gifts are incredible. It's such a huge award that you get from just being able to have the honor of being that person in that pet's life that that gives them that soft landing place and takes them through to the end of their life. If someone's interested in fostering, where do they start? [0:24:28] BD: Say, you want to foster breed specific. What's your favorite animal, right? Say, your favorite animal is a Boston Terrier and you live in Maine. Start googling those rescues and just start following them. Just be a curious observer and ask questions. Keep asking the questions. Keep being involved in the process. [0:24:51] PF: That's great. That's great. We're going to give them some information about your site and where they can find more about the work that you're doing and maybe some links on where they can start looking into how they can foster. As we let you go, knowing that this is National Foster, or Pet Month, what is the one thing that you want everybody to take away from this? [0:25:13] BD: Fostering saves lives, and it is the most reciprocal relationship that you will have. Just do it. [0:25:22] PF: Love it. Brittany, thank you so much. You always have so much to tell us about living our lives better with animals and I appreciate you doing that. [0:25:29] BD: Thank you so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:35] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher, talking about the many benefits of fostering a pet. There's such an enormous need for foster homes right now and we'd like to encourage you to consider fostering a pet from your local shelter, or rescue group. If you'd like to learn more about Brittany and Luna Bell's Moonbows Special Needs Fostering, 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 a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Using Travel to Boost Well-Being With Dr. Andrew Stevenson [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 419 of Live Happy Now. With Memorial Day behind us, our thoughts are turning to summer vacations. We know they're fun. But do you know how good they are for us? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Andrew Stevenson, a social anthropologist, filmmaker, and senior lecturer in psychology at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Andrew’ s new book, The Psychology of Travel, looks at what travel can do for us, and he's here today to talk about how we can approach it differently to get the most out of it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Andrew, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:41] AS: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, and hopefully we can have a good conversation about travel and health. [00:00:48] PF: Yes. Oh, it's such a wonderful – first of all, it's timely, because audience doesn't know until right now, that on the day we're talking, it's the day your book is being published. It's a very great day for you. [00:01:02] AS: It's a good day. This is a project which really came out of the pandemic, I supposed, when we had the lockdown imposed upon us and there was no opportunity to travel. I was thinking about travel a lot over about a year or 18 months and decided to put some of my interests in psychology alongside my interest in travel. I was quite surprised how many different directions – [00:01:25] PF: I do want to dive into that answer just a little bit. What made you decide to look at it through the lens of psychology? Can you tell us a little bit about your background and why that was the natural path for you to go down? [00:01:35] AS: Yes. Well, I, in my day job, I'm the professor in psychology or lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, here in Manchester. My specialist subject in psychology is culture and space and place and I'm really interested in the way that places affect the way that we feel and think and act. Of course, that's never more relevant than when we're actually experiencing new places. Travel is – I mean, somebody said that travel is the best bits of our lives, isn't it? It's the bits that we tend to remember. Of course, not being able to do it for a couple of years, you brought this into sharp focus. I was missing it. I wanted to think about it and use some of the psychological concepts that I had worked with every day. [00:02:25] PF: Yes. You've delved into it so well, in your book. I was curious how you go about studying this. We have a lot of travel books. We have a lot of different ways to look at travel. How do you actually study the psychology of travel and how that affects us? [00:02:42] AS: That’s interesting. I think, it was combination of bringing together some of the areas that I personally have researched. Some things I’m interested in include things like, migration and movement, and the way that movement across borders affects our perceptions of people, that kind of thing. I’m also interested in social psychology and the way in which people behave differently in groups. Of course, when we travel, we're thrust into all sorts of groups, people we don't know, surrounded by people. As well as some of my own personal interests. I also was aware that quite a lot of people have written about things like fear of travel, wellbeing and travel, mindfulness, and travel memory, and those types of things. I decided, I also was aware that there isn't really a book about the psychology of travel, even though there are lots of academic interests and academic articles, which are quite inaccessible for most people. So, I thought, well, my job here is to just take some of the most interesting articles and topics that I've looked at travel from a psychological point of view, and put them into a coherent collection that we can all enjoy. I tend to write in a slightly more accessible way than some of the articles I've been reading. That's not a criticism. It's just the way that things are, I think. [00:04:04] PF: Yes. I think that is important to know, because when you hear about the psychology of travel, it sounds heavy. But it's really not. As you said, it's a very accessible read, and very engaging. [00:04:16] AS: I think, travel is something that we all enjoy doing. Psychology is really just about people and how they behave and think differently. Bring those two things together, you're bound to get some interesting things. [00:04:28] PF: Yes, and one of the things that you talk about, you say it's virtually impossible to travel alone. Can you explain that and then talk about how other people affect our travel experiences in the way that we see travel? [00:04:41] AS: Yes. It's something that dawned on me really, is people often say, I'm going traveling alone.” But of course, I defy anyone, really, to genuinely travel alone. Because whenever we move from one place to another, whether it's on foot or across the city or by air, we're surrounded by people, and we're surrounded by people, most of which we don't know. We may travel without our own family. But our decisions, even if it's down to things like which restaurant shall I go to? Which beach shall I go to? Whose are these footprints? We can even be influenced by people who aren't even there anymore. But the idea of a crowd will affect our destructive decisions. We may visit, for example, a monument or a gallery, because other people are doing it. We may be tempted to stay in that hotel because TripAdvisor says, “You've got lots of good reviews, and those people are affecting us.” If on the other hand, you'll be anti-social like me, you might be more likely to go to a place where it’s practically empty because you quite like to get away from the crowds. But these are both – whatever direction you're interested in, whether you want to do things that are conforming, or whether you want to be a rebel, you're doing it in relation to what other people have either done or not. [00:06:07] PF: Then, I know from my experience, you can make incredible friends and strike lasting friendships with people that you meet while traveling. I've got people that I met 20 years ago, and we've stayed in touch and it was one encounter. We haven't seen each other since then. But we have stayed in touch. How does that shape our lives too? We're getting all these experience with people from other cultures and other walks of life? [00:06:32] AS: Yes, it's fascinating. There are so many different ways to answer that question. I mean, first of all, there's the social aspect of traveling with somebody we already know, and having been on a journey with somebody who you may have known a bit before you went traveling together, that can really draw you together. Because what you're doing there is you're experiencing, not everyday life. You're experiencing a particularly intense part of your life, but the best bits of your life. You're traveling with somebody and two weeks with somebody who was a friend before or an acquaintance before, then you really become a lot more friendly with within those two weeks. You get to know about all their characteristics and so on. That can really propel a friendship forward into the future. There's that aspect. How it affects the friendships we already have with the acquaintances. But the other thing is as well, how does traveling to a different country, for example, affect your attitude towards the people who already live there. There's that whole thing about hosts and visitors, isn’t it? It's a bit – it could go either way, and a lot of researchers found that when you interact with cultures who you may not have met before, the most meaningful way of doing that, and the way that produces the best relationships is the way you interact with people on an equal footing, that can often mean meeting people socially. So, if you go to Mexico, for example, and you meet people who are from Mexico, and you meet them as colleagues, or you meet them as equals, then your attitudes towards that entire group of people is likely to be a lot more positive than if you only ever meet people who are for example, serving you coffee, or cleaning up after you. To me, so there's that status issue. But there's also, there's no doubt. But just being around people from different cultural groups, means that you've got much more firsthand experience of people that you may otherwise only read about in the press. We all know that that can lead to some kind of prejudice. [00:08:48] PF: It also, for myself, it has created such a deep appreciation for the life that I lead, and where I have so much gratitude. We'd spent some time in Canada up with the indigenous people a by the polar bears. We were there to see polar bears, and it's an indigenous culture up there, and seeing how they live and how challenging their lives are, what they have to go through to get food, to get water, things like that. It just instilled in me such an incredible appreciation for the simple things of being able to walk to a tap and turn it on and get a glass of water. [00:09:23] AS: In the whole – I identify without a lot because the whole idea of appreciating cultural diversity and realizing that the way that we live in our bubbles in our day to day existence is just one way of living, isn't it? In a way, the ideal of travel is to highlight the commonalities that we have with other people that we may not have met, before but also to appreciate distinct challenges that they may also face. I do a research project in Central America and we have collaborators in Guatemala City and we do a lot of work with young people there. One of the things that we're looking at is the concept of resilience and how people overcome challenges that they face in their everyday lives. It's never anything other than surprised and impressed by the way that people cope with things that often we don't cope that well here. The traffic in Guatemala City, is to me who live in Manchester, in England is incredible. But I would say the level of stress that the traffic causes is much lower. People just accept it as part of the everyday life. Here in Manchester, where I live, often the level of what we call road rage is quite a lot higher. The differences, the way that we cope with – the way that people cope with everyday challenges, we can understand that a lot better through travel, I think, and learning about different cultural groups. [00:10:56] PF: That is so true. Obviously, not everybody loves to travel. Some people, you mentioned it, they have fear of travel. There's travel anxiety. Where does that come from? How does leaving our comfort zone help us manage that? [00:11:10] AS: Yes, that's interesting. I mean, we talk about travel anxiety. Psychologists talked about travel fever, travel, fear, travel, anxiety, worry about travel. Think about that, they're all challenges, but some of those challenges are actually quite useful. If we take something like travel worry, it's actually quite a good idea to be slightly worried about traveling because that can heighten your defenses, and it can help plan the journey a little bit more thoroughly. It's not a bad thing to be a little bit concerned and worried so that I can help you plan. The challenge that's a bit more difficult to explain is what you might call travel phobia, where sometimes people have a – they might have an irrational fear of something like flying. In fact, statistics suggest that the chances of coming to harm in an airplane are a lot less than they would be just crossing the road or riding on a bus, for example. But some psychologists have pointed out that when you take a flight to another country, you're not just participating and potentially worrying for transport. You're actually leaving all your familiar objects and people and land. And it's that almost that fear of losing contact with things that you're attached to. So, it's almost like an attachment anxiety. Sometimes that can be one of the reasons for something like fear of flying, because the statistics don't bear out the amount of irrational fear that sometimes people have with flying. But the other thing, of course, is about anxiety and travel, is that there's this concept that we call eco anxiety. Now, I know that many people think about global warming, and the climate crisis a lot. During the pandemic, one of the perhaps, one good thing that came out of that is that – I don't know what it was like where you were living, but where we were living, we were able to take an hour of exercise every day, and we were able to go for our walks in the local community. Through that, many of us discovered green spaces and little treasure troves of green spaces that we didn't know about before. Those types of things could really help us with our mental health a little bit. It also helps us to understand that we can experience some very precious travel moments without flying across the globe. I think people are – well, figures suggest that eco anxiety is this genuine, understandable anxiety about the state of the planet. People are starting to modify their travel a little bit more now and maybe take fewer long-haul flights. Or maybe when you do take a long flight, stay in the place you're going for a little bit longer, rather than making four or five shorter journeys. I don't know about you. But the pandemic opened my eyes a little bit to the beauties in my own country. [00:14:29] PF: Absolutely. [00:14:31] AS: I'm not going to give up flying, but I'm maybe starting to think a little bit more that there were some great things to see that are on my doorstep as well. [00:14:39] PF: Yes. We had that shift in mindset of where before we take another big international trip, let's really start looking around the US because there's amazing things here that we haven't discovered yet and we've constantly said, “Oh, we want to go there, we want to go to Big Ben. We want to check out Red Rocks.” We want to do these things and we haven't so it's like, when we start getting that travel it, instead of saying, “Hey, let's jump on a plane and hop across a pond.” Let's discover what's in our backyard, because it's a big backyard. [00:15:10] AS: That's true. Quite often, quite often that the most wow moments or the great travel moments often called through some of the more mundane things that we see in our everyday lives and mindful to everyday experiences. Mindfulness is something we are encouraged to practice in our everyday lives, isn't it? The idea is that you try to appreciate the world in a constant childlike state of wonder and you can enjoy the simplest pleasures like a cup of coffee, or a walk, or stroking a stray cat and those types of things can be appreciated, not necessarily only on the other side of the world. It's about recognizing that travel, enjoyment, and pleasure, aren't exclusively on a set list of destinations that we’re told to do. [00:16:07] PF: Right. Yes, I think it can probably open your eyes to your everyday world a little bit more, and the things that, as you're talking, just the things that you can appreciate that are around you every day. [00:16:19] AS: Yes. That's right. I mean, one of the key things about mindfulness is being able to appreciate your surroundings but without making too quick of judgment about whether it's good or bad. Sometimes when we suspend judgment, we give ourselves the time to enjoy whatever it is we're doing a little bit more with taking a breath or savoring the moment a little bit. In the era of five-star reviews, and TripAdvisor, there's often a quickness to try to say yes, this is five stars, this is two stars. It might be a better idea just to be with that travel moment a little bit more, and not be in such a quick rush to keep it a certain number of stars. Because sometimes we don't realize how satisfying an experience is until we've spent a little bit more time doing it. [00:17:11] PF: Another thing that I've noticed with myself, you mentioned savoring, and I've noticed that oftentimes, when I get home, I enjoy that trip experience more than I did in the moment. I wanted to know what that's about, because there's been so many times like, especially on a long trip, by the end of it, you're like, “Okay, this is great, but I'm ready to go home.” When you do get home and you really have time to sit with it, I don't know, I just feel like I appreciate it so much more after the fact even than I do when it's happening. [00:17:41] AS: Yes, that's interesting. It relates to the idea of wellbeing and travel. I suppose one of the reasons we're talking today is just to think about whether travel makes us happy or not and it's something I've discussed in the book is the relationship between happiness and travel. Psychologists have come up with this idea of different types of happiness. One of them sometimes known as hedonistic enjoyment, hedonistic travel, which is all about pure, physical joy in the moment. We often get this experience through, I don't know, skiing down the mountain, or windsurfing, or something like that. Then the other type of enjoyment is sometimes are viewed eudaimonic happiness or wellbeing. That's the kind of wellbeing that accrues through something like developing a skill, learning a language, understanding a culture, and it's a little bit more of a marathon rather than a sprint of your life. I think that what you're referring to there is the way that the skill, let's just say, of learning a language when you visit a place or learning a little bit about a local artist that can visit Mexico City and learn about Frida Kahlo, a fascinating historical figure. Those types of eudaimonic enjoyment, are often the ones which research suggests stay with you longer after the visit. Whereas if you visit a place and you purely want to live in, maybe just live in the fast lane and purely want to have hedonistic enjoyment, that's great while it's happening. But there may be a bit of a holiday hangover when you get back and the enjoyment may not be such so long lasting and memorable. To be honest, I think, the secret really to a good visit is to try to do a little bit of both of those, so that you can have, let's just say there's a cliché, travel can broaden the mind. That would be the longer lasting enjoyment, but you might want to party a little bit as well, but I think it's being able to combine those. [00:19:54] PF: I was having a conversation with a friend a few days ago and she was talking about how her in laws always go back to the same place. They do not want to travel to other places. They find things that they like, and then they just go to that over and over. She, of course, wants to try something new every time. Does that affect us differently? Or is it just a personality type? What makes us tick that way? [00:20:18] AS: Well, that is interesting, and again, you're going to have those people who are quite habitual, and who get a lot of enjoyment through developing routines. I think there are other people who struggle with sameness, and struggle with repetition. I think, there are good and bad aspects to both of those in terms of the experience of travel, because I think there's a lot of value personally in immersing yourself a little bit in the place, and trying to find a little bit about how it ticks. If I visit a city, for example, let's just take, I don't know, Los Angeles, or Mexico City or something. If I'm there for a week or so, there's an awful lot going on there a place like that and I would be reluctant to spend a day there and then jet off to New York to see what that's like for a day, and they jet off to Washington to see what that's like for a day. Because the richness of experience that is available in any city or town or county or whatever it is or region is really inexhaustible, I think. So, it's not so much about having routines. It's about having the commitment to explore in a little bit more depth and have that mindful approach. I mean, I think the reason for this, we always talk about bucket lists, don't we? People talk about a list of things I'd like to do before we go away. I often think – or while we're away, as you say. I often think that the itineraries that we make for ourselves or develop for ourselves when we travel, sometimes there are things that are coming from our own interests. But sometimes we follow an itinerary, which is almost been presented to us, and I think we often fall victim to this travel guide. We become slaves to the travel guide. [00:22:22] PF: Absolutely, yes. [00:22:23] AS: We can often have the experience of taking the same photograph that everybody else is taking, and that kind of thing. I think there are people who are quite happy to just take the commodified view of travel and take the photograph. There might be a queue of people taking the same photograph. Well, the people are more likely to try to be a bit more immersive and find out a bit more about what's going on in an everyday sense about a place that they visit. [00:22:52] PF: Yes. We're running this as summer is kicking off, and people are starting to think about travel. Well, it is based on the book, everything that you’re studying, what's your recommendation for travelers to keep in mind this season? [00:23:07] AS: Well, I think, first of all, we need to think about who you're going to travel with, and think about what social situation you want to put yourself in. But I think my number one piece of thing to think about, really, is when you travel, are you thinking of yourself as a traveler, or as a tourist? I've got a nice little quote here from the novelist Paul Bowles, who wrote The Sheltering Sky. It’s all about difference between travel and tourism. And he says, “The difference between a traveler and a tourist is, whereas the tourists generally always back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belongs no more to one place than the other, moves slowly over a period of years from one part of the earth to another.” For me, the traveler is somebody who's following their own dream about discovering something about themselves, trying to be mindful, and developing their own relationship with cultural diversity and finding something interesting about themselves. The tourists may be experiencing hedonistic travel. Maybe they're having the same holiday that everybody else is having as well. I think you've got to decide which of those you want to be really. It's not that one's better than the other, but they aren't quite distinct. [00:24:27] PF: That is so interesting. Andrew, you've given us so much to think about. I love this conversation. We're going to tell people how to discover your book because it's such an important and accessible read and thank you for writing. [00:24:38] AS: But also, to say, it’s not a big book, either. [00:24:40] PF: I know. It goes quick. It's a very slim volume. You can read it on a plane. [00:24:46] AS: Exactly. [00:24:47] PF: Andrew, thank you again. I appreciate your time today. [00:24:50] AS: Thanks for having me on Paula. Have a great summer. [00:24:53] PF: You too. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:58] PF: That was Andrew Stephenson talking about why travel is so good for us. If you'd like to learn more about Andrew, follow him on social media or check out his new book. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, remember there's still time to swing by the Live Happy Store and take advantage of our spring special where you can get 25% off storewide just by entering the code Spring 25. That is all we have time for today. We will 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]