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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Making Friends With Your Anxiety With Liza Kindred  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 365 of Live Happy Now. Not to sound like a broken record, but May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Here at Live Happy, we're using this time to take on some of the tough topics surrounding mental health. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and throughout the month we're focusing on tools for better mental health. This week, I'm talking with Liza Kindred, author of the fabulous new Calm Your Anxiety Journal. Liza is a licensed minister, Reiki practitioner, and meditation teacher whose work has been featured in publications around the world. She's here today to talk about why we're so anxious and how making friends with her anxiety can help change the way it affects us. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:46] PF: Liza, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:49] LK: Hi, Paula. I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for having me. [00:00:53] PF: This is a great conversation that I'm really looking forward to because what you have done with your book, Calm Your Anxiety Journal, is mind-blowing. I have read many books on anxiety. This is hands down the best book on anxiety I’ve ever picked up. [00:01:07] LK: Oh, my gosh. [00:01:09] PF: So before we dig into what it's all about and how important this is, let's talk about you. You teach meditation and you use a lot of Buddhist principles. Can you talk about what led you down the path and how you got to where you are? [00:01:22] LK: Yeah, thanks. Like so many people I think who end up in this space, I had kind of different careers before. I worked in technology, and I worked in fashion, and then I worked in fashion technology, so wearable tech for a while. I was designing and helping people build these, well, wearable tech devices. At the same time, in my personal life, I had started studying Buddhism, going to retreats, trying to live this kind of uninterrupted life. Then at work, I was really like designing devices that actually interrupt, like they're designed to be disruptive. After a while, I was like, “This isn't adding up. I'm not living my values to be like working.” I think we can all kind of see now with a lot of the downsides are to big technology. I was just starting to feel like that's not what I want to be putting out into the world anymore. So I kind of have shifted to focusing on the things that are near and dear to my heart and have given me so much benefit, which are things like meditation and mindfulness, which stems from my Buddhist path, and also doing things like helping people with anxiety, like we're going to talk about today, and just a variety of different healing modalities. It feels like a really special way to be able to live my values and put that out in the world. So hearing you say those things, it's like it makes my heart just like sore and like, “Oh, my gosh. I'm doing it, I think. I’m putting some good into the world, so thank you.” [00:02:49] PF: You're doing so much good. How did you make that transition in a career sense? A lot of us might start applying these principles and using these practices, but it doesn't mean that we can parlay that into an actual career like you've been able to do. [00:03:03] LK: Sure. Yeah. I mean, it is difficult, but I kind of took some baby steps. I initially stepped back into focusing on mindful technology, so kind of just baby stepping a little bit out of technology, trying to bring it. I was doing keynotes around the world, talking about how to bring the principles of mindfulness and the practices of mindfulness into technology and really trying to help people to be very cognizant and thoughtful about the tech that they're building. That was a good baby step into a different zone, but I still felt like I was serving our tech overlords in a way that didn't feel right. So I’ve kind of taken another step out. But at the same time, I have not ever been a monk on the side of a mountain. I very much live in this world, in the world of tech, in the world of stressed out deadlines, anxiety. Just recently, I'm not a New Yorker anymore. So my first book about meditation called Eff This! Meditation and this book about anxiety is really meant to meet people who are like, “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” But I'm a caregiver. I have a job. I have to do all this stuff. So how do we actually fit this stuff in in like the real world? [00:04:13] PF: Yeah. I think that's what's so amazing about it because you do show us that it can be done with this balance because I feel like sometimes books on anxiety are too academic. It's like, “Okay, that's great. But if I'm not a researcher, who's spending my life hold up studying this, how am I going to actually live this way?” [00:04:31] LK: Right. If you have to like look up what the words even mean. It’s nice to have like an academic foundation. But, yeah, how do I apply this? It's like, “Okay, I wrote all those big words, but like now I'm feeling more anxious.” Something else I found out there was like I also just – I looked at like everything out there, and there are some great books about anxiety. No offense to anyone but I haven't found any other good journals about anxiety. In fact, one of them I found, one of the practices, was like, “List all the things that make you anxious.” I'm feeling more anxious just thinking about listing. What? [00:05:04] PF: Yeah. Because like what you focus on is what is going to grow. [00:05:08] LK: Right. Right. Like this need isn't big enough. I'm already anxious. 00:05:14PF: I'm going to need another journal. So how did anxiety become such a central focus for your messaging? [00:05:20] LK: Yeah. Well, I mean, we all have it. Increasingly, a lot of the time that I'm spending with my meditation students, it's like when we're sitting down on the cushion, and we're trying to meet ourselves where we are, so often where we are is like super anxious, and it's for really good reason. Like that's something else that I really want to be able to get across to people is just how much like anxiety makes sense, looking at what's going on around us. One of my favorite quotes was – It’s almost 100 years ago. Indian philosopher and poet named Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “It’s no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society.” [00:06:04] PF: That needs to be on my coffee mug. [00:06:06] LK: Yes, yes. [00:06:07] PF: That's really good. [00:06:08] LK: Isn't it? 100 years ago he said that. So I'm like, “Well, of course, we're feeling anxious and all kinds of disease and struggling with mental health. Look around us.” But yet when it comes to like my anxiety and my problems, it's like we kind of blame ourselves for not coping. But it's like, “Oh, my gosh. We're coping great compared to what's happening.” [00:06:32] PF: All things considered. Yes. Did you start this book pre-pandemic, during the pandemic, or kind of what was the – [00:06:40] LK: Totally during. Yeah. It was totally during, and I had the opportunity, I mean, during quarantine to go really, really deep into it and really try to create something. Take like the most helpful pieces, the most solid pieces of things like cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, and ABT, and mindfulness, and really like go deep into what is actually the most helpful for anxiety in the long run. So I'm really grateful that I actually had the opportunity to do that, like spend some real time and do a real deep dive, because I feel like then the journal and all the practices in the journal and even the order that the practices go in, are very intentionally designed to make a difference in the long term. Like not just in the short term. I think there's awesome vagal system, nervous system practices we can use to help calm ourselves down in a short term, but like we got to kind of get out of the anxiety cycle for it to make last long term. [00:07:34] PF: Well, and this is so comprehensive. Like it addresses so many different aspects of how anxiety affects us and how we deal with it. How did you make sure that you were covering so many bases? Because I think that’s what was mind-blowing too. Yeah. I was like, “Man, she just really left no stone unturned here.” [00:07:52] LK: Thanks for saying that. I mean, I read all. I got very, very academic. Like I really got in there and reading these like six 800-page academic books about stuff and trying to really understand that. It does cover a lot. But I also feel like to really make changes to our anxiety, we have to kind of understand all those different things. Like we were talking just before we started recording. We were talking about how anxiety is actually biological. It's physical, and that's not like a metaphor to say it like lives in the body. But it's actually like physically resides in there. It resides in our tissues, in our nervous system and the way that our synapses are firing. So I think that's really important. [00:08:34] PF: Yeah. I think it's important to there's been a lot of studies coming out very recently that talks about intergenerational trauma. So my family has a huge history of anxiety, and there was up until this point. I think a lot of people just felt like, “Well, it's just because your mom was anxious, so you learned anxiety. So you grew up anxious.” But now, you see, it is truly like an intergenerational thing that happens as well. [00:09:00] LK: When we're born to someone who was anxious when we were gestating. We're in the womb. That affects us. That kind of stuff really does pass down. As far as what genes are turned on or turned off, and yet I still feel like so many of us still, yeah, blame ourselves or like maybe blame another person like, “It's on me,” or, “It’s on my mom,” or whatever. But it is so much more complicated than that, like you're saying. [00:09:21] PF: Would you see less shame around it? Because I know, say 20 years ago, you wouldn't walk around and say, “I'm having issues with my anxiety.” You just didn’t. You could not. [00:09:30] LK: That’s so true. That’s so true. Yeah. Yeah. [00:09:34] PF: Now, I see people being a little bit more willing to talk about it. I think that has to help with the healing of it too. [00:09:42] LK: Oh, my gosh. Yes. Like to be able to – If we're experiencing something in our body, like we're in a room or a conversation, and we're feeling anxious, to be able to say, “I feel anxious,” is the first step of in dissipating the anxiety. To stop fighting it and when we just like let it be, then we are actually do start calming ourselves down. So being able to do that in the moment or even, yeah, in the broader picture. Someone's like, “How are you?” It's like, “Oh, man. I've been anxious lately.” The response is like, “Oh, man. Me too.” [00:10:13] PF: Yeah. I don't think anyone's like, “Really? I've just been chill.” [00:10:16] LK: Yeah. Why? What's wrong? Is something wrong? Is something stressful? [00:10:21] PF: With the Calm Your Anxiety, I guess, I really want you to explain kind of the format a little bit because it's unlike most books. It's kind of like a workbook. It's kind of like a journal. It's kind of like a study guide. It takes all these different elements. It's also like having a really good friend walk you through it because the tone of it is not academic, even though it's very instructional and helpful. But you just kind of walk us through this. [00:10:47] LK: Thank you so much for saying that. I'm cherishing what you're saying. I’m so glad that that comes across. I kind of alluded to this, but anxiety is for sure something I've struggled with too. In fact, I feel like there's quite a few meditation teachers who struggle with anxiety. Not all of them feel comfortable talking about it I think because maybe that seems a little bit – It's like, “Oh, your meditation isn't working." But you can see from the book, it’s like there's eight sections. Mindfulness is one of them. So it’s like we have more to do there. But it really is about like, first and foremost, understanding what anxiety is. I feel like it's so important that people understand that, also, anxiety is something that like we're anxious about something because something went wrong in the past. We're not making it up. It might not be happening now, but anxiety always stems from a truth. So it kind of hurts my feelings sometimes to see – Not my feelings but I get a little like sad when I see people posting things like your anxiety is lying to you because it's not. Our anxiety is telling us a truth. It's just like maybe exaggerating or bringing it up at the wrong time. But understanding that I think is key. [00:12:00] PF: Yeah. Because it's kind of like a warning system that your body created to tip you off because of past trauma. [00:12:06] LK: And to keep us alive too. [00:12:08] PF: Yeah. That too. [00:12:10] LK: There’s like a lion coming. You should run. It’s like the same system. So it is giving us helpful messages, and that's part of why you can't just like shut it down because your body's like, “I need you to hear what I'm saying, or I can't go away.” So during these practices of like sitting with it and making friends with it, which is kind of where the journal goes next, is like how do we actually listen to our anxiety without like being mad at it. Or maybe we're mad at it, whatever. But if we're listening because that can actually start the physical process of our parasympathetic nervous system kicking in and us being able to actually calm down because we all know that we can't just be like, “Okay, Liza. Just relax. Just relax.” [00:12:48] PF: Stop it. [00:12:49] LK: Yeah. Calm down. It's like that doesn’t work. So we have to actually do things that will work, which is working with our bodies and working with our nervous system, which are all things that the journal covers as well. It’s like how do we make friends with that? How do we understand it? Then how do we step out of the cycle? [00:13:06] PF: What does it do when we befriend it? Because I love that, the way that that whole chapter walks you through it. It’s like then I started seeing in my head this whole little play of like your anxiety sitting down. You hate it at first, and then you're like, “Oh, it's not so bad.” That’s really what that chapter made me do. So tell us what that does when you make peace or make friends with your anxiety. [00:13:27] LK: Yeah. Or even just the beginning stages of that, like just like paying attention to what it's saying, like acknowledging, “Oh, did you have something to say?” It's like a really does – We can't actually get rid of anxiety totally. Like there's not like a cure, and that's because it is the same biologically wired system that's keeping us alive. It's like danger. It's our danger schema. It's like, “Hey, there's like something going on here. You might want to pay attention.” If it's bad, then we're like – We go into the different responses like fight, flight, freeze, fawn, collapse. But before that, we're just like, “Hey, pay attention. Hey, pay attention.” There's something going on here. So if we're able to just like, “Hey, pay attention,” if we could just like sit with it and be like, “Okay, hang on. What's going on?” By listening to it, it gives us the opportunity to then say like, “Okay, I've given my signal. I've been heard.” When we're pushing stuff away, it’s like, “Stop being anxious. Stop being anxious.” Like we're giving all this power to it. So it's kind of like, “You know what? Fine. You can sit down. Sit on the couch. What do you need? Okay, got it. I can hear you. I heard you. Got it. Thank you.” It’s like someone that loves us, like overbearing like parents that like, “Hey, be careful. Be careful.” [00:14:42] PF: I’m just trying to keep you safe. [00:14:43] LK: Yeah, yeah. Totally. It’s like that's our anxiety right there. I'm just trying to keep you safe. [00:14:51] PF: That's so good. I love what it does in your brain when you start thinking about it differently. Because then instead of when you start feeling your individual triggers kicking in and instead of being like, “Oh, crap. Here we go,” you can react differently to it. [00:15:05] LK: Yes. For me, I'm always like, “Oh, here we go again. What's wrong with me? Why is this making me anxious? No one else is anxious,” da, da, da. If we could just like stop that. In Buddhism, we call that the second arrow. So it's this idea of like we've been like hit with an arrow, and that hurts. But then when we like beat ourselves up for being hit by an arrow, that's kind of like sending a second arrow. So if we can avoid that and just not be like, “What's wrong with me? Why do I have anxiety?” If we could just be like, “What up anxiety? Okay, what do you need to say,” that creates a sense of ease, where before that it was maybe like all tension. That’s the beginning of it. That feels good. It can feel good. [00:15:44] PF: Yeah, yeah. It takes a minute I think when we’re good. [00:15:46] LK: Right, right. No guarantees. It takes a while. [00:15:51] PF: One of the things that I really liked it, anxiety isn't one size fits all because we all have our thing, but there are familiar patterns within it. So what really struck me with Calm Your Anxiety is how it personalizes each person's individual struggle with anxiety and give so many different ways to manage it. So was that designed to let each person find what works for them? Or is it do you want them to use all the things that were – How does this work? [00:16:19] LK: Yeah. In both of my books, I’m like, “Just take what works and like leave the rest, always.” It's like everything is so personal. Especially in wellness, there are so many people that are like, “I have the answer. It worked for me, so it will work for everyone.” It's like we're all so different, and we all need different things. The way we experience it is different. Where it came from is different. One of the things I was really fascinated to learn through the research of this book was the different ways that different cultures talk about anxiety. The language that they use is really different. Some cultures, and I'm sorry, I'm not remembering where right now, but in some places, the focus on anxiety is having a hot face is how it's described. In some other cultures, it's talked about like a rising wind, which I think must be like a tornado kind of. Even the way we talk about it, how we experience it, how we talk about it is all really personal. So what's going to work is personal. So I would just love for people to just try something. If it doesn't work, it's like, “Thank you, next.” There’s plenty to do. [00:17:24] PF: Yeah. That is – It’s like this little toolbox where you can just choose which one is most appealing to you and seems like most reasonable fit into your life. [00:17:35] LK: Exactly. Yeah. Because people are busy, and we have ups and downs, and highs and lows, and busy times and slow times. If people can just like work through the book as quickly or as slowly as it feels right, there is real change by the end. [00:17:51] PF: I love how you end it with a graduation certificate. [00:17:54] LK: A certificate of completion. Thanks for saying that. My publisher was like, “Well, how are they going to know if they've earned it?” I’m like, “Even if they just slipped through the book and just see it, they've already earned it. So I'm signing it already.” [00:18:08] PF: Yeah. It just gives you that – It made me smile because it's like, “What a great reminder.” If you're having an off day, if you're having a struggle with anxiety, where you can look at that and be like, “I got this because –” [00:18:19] LK: Right. I've practiced. I've got the tools. [00:18:21] PF: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things I wanted you to explain to us is about morning meditation. Can you talk about how starting your day with a morning meditation can help us change our anxiety? [00:18:34] LK: Yeah. I mean, we all have anxiety at different times. But a lot of people do have it in the morning, waking up and just like the day starts, and we start – [00:18:44] PF: Well, and then we have to go to work. That doesn't help. [00:18:46] LK: Yes. I rush. A lot of times, I have to rush, right, which is like the worst for anxiety, rushing. So being able to take some time to like check in and see. Not try to change where we're at, but just see where we're at and just be where we're at. That's all we're really trying to do is like, “Hey, Liza.” I talk to myself a lot like, “Hey, self. Hey, me. How are you doing,” and being able to just start the day, checked in, and it was a mindful breathing and a little bit of mindfulness practice in the meditation. We're really setting the day up for success. If we can even bring an intention into it before, during, or after the practice where we can kind of come back to that throughout the day like, “Okay, I have this intention,” or, “I had this experience that I know that even if I'm not feeling calm right now, I know that calm exists, and it exists in me, and I can get back there.” It helps us to build confidence in getting back to that place. [00:19:45] PF: Yeah, definitely. How does it work to set an intention for the day? Because I know on days when I do that, there's a huge difference, and I don't know why I don't do it every day because I see the results. [00:19:56] LK: Because we're busy. [00:19:58] PF: Yeah. Talk about that. When you can set an intention, how do you do that? [00:20:03] LK: It’s almost like dropping an anchor. It's like I've seen some people, when they set intention, it’s set like pretty long sentence or a couple sentences about like, “Today, I'm going to be calm and open.” We always want to state what we want, not what we don't want. So we don't want to say like, “I won't get angry.” We're not trying to put our energy or use our words there but saying like, “I will be calm.” So really like giving it some positivity. I mean, we don't – We’re not going into like overly, “Everything is great. Everything is great.” But we’re just setting a positive intention, leaving room with a reality of what is, which is all the highs and lows. But like, “I'll meet things with calmness as best I can.” Or we can list a few things. Or for me, a lot of times, it's just a word that comes to me when I'm meditating. Sometimes, it's like the same word peace for a week or – Recently, it was clarity. I was just getting the word clarity again and again. Throughout the day, I would know if I'm starting to feel stressed out or struggle or just have a quiet moment, just coming back to that intention, whether it's clarity or it's a longer thing. It's like coming back home to yourself. [00:21:14] PF: I love how you say that. That's a beautiful thought. [00:21:16] LK: We dropped that anchor and the weather could get choppy. The boat could go around. But it's like but we can always kind of pull on that anchor and know that like, “All right, I put this here for myself.” Like, “Okay.” [00:21:28] PF: That's great. Yeah. Because we know that we can pull back to it and get there and make it through that day or just through that moment if we have to. [00:21:35] LK: Yeah. I have a lot of people tell me that they do it in the bathroom. It's like, especially at work, if we're in a busy office, just like kind of go into a stall or something and just like have a minute of like, “Okay, I'm coming back to myself, where I am.” [00:21:47] PF: Yeah. Yeah. That's so important to do, and we've been seeing a lot of material about how high our anxiety levels are, the increase in mental health problems. There was one stat that I saw a couple of weeks ago that talked about if all of the therapists practicing in the US today saw 3,000 patients a year, they would not be able to get through everyone that needs mental health assistance right now. So we look at it, and that's just overwhelming to look at that kind of a need. As we think about that, and I know that we get a lot of feedback, and people are dealing with so many different things, so what are the things that you would recommend right now to the people who are listening to where they start to reclaim better mental health? [00:22:34] LK: Yeah. Thanks for that lead in too because one of the things that that I feel like that really kind of like shocking statistics speaks to is how much more systemic help we could really use. I want every person who wants a therapist to have a therapist. Everyone should have that, and we don't. So what we're left with a lot of times are these tools, like personal tools for us to try. Tools like this journal, tools like some practices. So we kind of have to rely on ourselves in a way that we really should be able to be relying on the mental health system. [00:23:12] PF: That's a great point. Yeah. That is a really great point because not everyone has the resources to see a therapist. Even if they do, they may not be able to get in. It's – [00:23:22] LK: Yeah. It takes a while to find a good fit. Yeah. I mean, I have a therapist I love and I'm so grateful for that because that's hard to get. We all deserve good help. But I appreciate that lead into the question because I want to share some tools and some practices that people can do. I feel like it's really important that we all know that like we shouldn't have to be doing this on our own. To the extent that we can get help and support from other people, I wish that for you. Please fight for it if you can. But there are things we can also do for ourselves, and so that's where this book comes in and things like – My absolute favorite, this is the most simple thing that we can do, which is that when our exhale is longer than our inhale in our breathing, so if we’re breathing out longer than we're breathing in, that triggers the parasympathetic nervous system response and starts to calm our heart rate. It's a physical message that we send to ourselves. Calm down. It’s okay. It doesn't work to say it in our heads, but we can actually talk to our nervous system. Especially doing deep belly breathing, where if we put like one hand over our belly and when we inhale, we really try to fill our bellies up with air, and make them like big and beautiful. Then exhale slow, long and slow. A few cycles of that is one of the most powerful ways to shift the response and to start to be able to calm ourselves down in the moment. Some of the other practices that I like are like self-soothing, like just taking our fingers and gently rubbing our other arm. It's self-soothing. It feels a little bit. It can feel a little childish kind of. It's like the thing we do to soothe a child. But we're doing a bilateral movement, so we're engaged in both sides of our brain. We're coming back into our body. We'll go as fast or as slow as we feel that feels good. So we're always kind of doing it right for ourselves. It is actually self-soothing. If you're in a meeting, it's something you can do like under the table. Or like whatever. It just looks like you're kind of mindlessly using your thumb to stroke your arm or something. But these kinds of things where we can actually just really start to just break that like, “I'm freaking out,” cycle coming back to ourselves, coming back to our body, coming back to the present moment. Because anxiety, we spiral out of our body. We spiral out of the here and now. So these really simple practices can help just bring us back to the here and now. [00:25:50] PF: You have several great free resources on your site. You've got some meditations. You've got some other little goodies on. [00:25:55] LK: Heck, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We’re building a whole resource library. We're feeling like really good about it. Most of it's free. Yeah. We have all kinds of meditations, meditation scripts, different journal prompts, things like that. One of the ones that I especially recommend for people who are interested in working with our anxiety is the body scan meditation, which we have on there for free, where we can do a shorter or a longer body scan. That can really help us to take that brief moment of coming back into our bodies and extend it out for even longer, and it can be very relaxing. [00:26:28] PF: Terrific. You have given us so much to work with, so much to help us manage our anxiety better. I'm really excited for our listeners to discover your site, all those great resources. [00:26:40] LK: Thank you. [00:26:40] PF: I hope they check out the journal. As we let you go, what's the one thing you hope everybody takes away from this talk we've had today? [00:26:49] LK: Yeah. This is it. You are complete. You're just not finished. [00:26:54] PF: Love it. [00:26:55] LK: You are whole. You have everything that you need. You are unbroken. Everything that you need already lives in. You're just kind of refining it still. You are complete, just not finished. [00:27:07] PF: I love that. Liza, thank you so much. Promise me you'll come back and talk to me again. [00:27:10] LK: I would love that. Thank you, Paula. Thank you to everyone for listening. I'm sending you the very, very best. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:20] PF: That was meditation guru, Liza Kindred, talking about how to make friends with our anxiety. If you'd like to learn more about Liza, follow her on social media or learn more about her new Calm Your Anxiety Journal. Visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're on our site, remember you can get 20% off anything and everything in the Live Happy Store this month when you use the code SELF-LOVE 20. That's SELF-LOVE 20. 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: Mental Health Awareness with the Live Happy Crew  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 363 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Here at Live Happy, we realize that happiness and good mental health go hand in hand. So we've brought the whole crew together to talk about it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and throughout the month of May, we're going to focus on tools for better mental health. But to kick it off, our team sat down for a conversation about how the past couple of years have affected each of us and some of the ways that we've coped. Joining me for this special episode, our Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder Deborah Heisz, E-commerce Marketing Manager, Casey Johnson, Web Editor, Chris Libby, Senior Marketing Manager, Britney Chan, and Senior Marketing Specialist, Shane Lee. I hope you enjoy this candid conversation, and be sure to stay tuned until the end of this podcast when we'll tell you about a special deal in a Live Happy store exclusively for listeners. [EPISODE] [00:01:01] PF: You guys, thank you everyone for coming and joining us for this special episode of Live Happy Now. [00:01:08] BC: Thank you for having us. [00:01:10] PF: It's always fun to talk with everybody, the whole gang. We don't get to get together in person, but sometimes we can Zoom it. I know you guys see each other a lot more than I get to see you. But this was a really special talk that we wanted to have because Deb felt really strongly about Mental Health Awareness Month and us doing something on it. So that's how I'd love to start. Deb, why was it so important for you to make sure that we covered this because we're doing – Our entire month is dedicated to mental health awareness. [00:01:38] DH: Well, I mean, obviously, mental health ties into happiness. I mean, if you're not healthy, either physically or mentally, it's really going to impede and impact your happiness. As you know, for us, happiness isn't really about the emotion happiness. It's about, living a positive life, having a positive assessment of how you're doing in life. Really, it is different than the podcast name. Live Happy doesn't just mean, “Hey, let's go out and  have ice cream and ride roller coasters and  run free through fields of green and meadows.” It's not really what we're about. We really are about that positive emotion part of positive well-being. It really is – Happiness is a high perceived sense of wellbeing. What we know is the pandemic has impacted people's perception of their well-being in significant ways. In fact, Jason Dorsey, who does a lot of research on the difference between generations – I forget what the name of this company is, but he’s a phenomenal speaker. He does just a great job of identifying how boomers are different from Gen Xers and Xers are different from millennials. The millennials are different from Generation Z, but they did some research projects on Generation Z that shows that that group that is at most 25.6, 27, and at least 10, 11, or 12, that group has more mental health issues than any other group, any other generation has. A lot of it has to do with what they've missed out because of the pandemic. They've missed graduation. They've missed prom. They've missed going to college. They've missed being in class with their peers. They've missed all of those social things that we depend on. We talked so much on this podcast about how relationships are essential to your mental health and to your happiness. All of that got taken away from a lot of people over the last two years. So I think it's really important that we spend a little time talking about it at Live Happy and on the podcast. [00:03:32] PF: Yeah, for children too below. Let’s think younger than those teenagers and young adults. I had read something about how the level of anxiety in children and also the fact that they've been wearing masks. They didn't get a lot of that interaction. We gain so much interaction from our smiles and our emotions that we convey in our face, and those have been hidden. So there was something I just read yesterday that was talking about the need for that for us to really address it with our children and start looking for the good in the world because the last two years have been really traumatizing for them. [00:04:06] DH: Well, I mean, there's a lot of social anxiety. I mean, I read an article. There's a lot of social anxiety in the under-five set. Typically, my three children, it was always play dates, getting together with kids, going to daycare, whatever you could do to get them entertained. But, no, kidding. But a lot of it was also learning how to socialize with other children and other adults, and a lot of kids just haven't even been exposed to that. I mean, they've truly been with their own families on a daily basis. Or even you get into first, second, and third grade. Can you imagine going into kindergarten on Zoom and having that be your first experience? Or not getting to graduate? The other extent of that, not getting to graduate or start college in person. I mean, there's so much social development that goes on, and it's really impacted mental health from Generation Z. I'm sure Jason hasn't studied the generation after that, whatever they're going to be called. But I'm positive it's had just as much impact there, and that's not even talking about those of us who are used to getting our socialization from our workplace or getting our away time by going to the movies or going out to eat at restaurants. Just how much it's substantially changed who we are and how we live. Even though many of us, particularly in Texas, were back to relative normal, but the relative normal is key. But that still doesn't mean those two years didn't impact our mental health in ways that we may not quite know or know yet. It certainly impacted the health of our children. One of the interesting facts that Jason was saying was Generation Xers – I’m a Gen X. I'm old, yeah. Our big social defining impact is like the challenger explosion, right? Millennials, for the most part, it's 9/11. Those things are ancient history to Gen Z. Their definition, their defining point of their childhood, bring them together as a generation, is COVID. [00:05:58] PF: Wow. Yeah. To your point, we're still dealing with the fallout from it. It’s not completely gone, and it gets frightening for people when the media starts talking about, “Better expect another surge. We better –” They’re kind of like preparing us for that, and I hear those conversations. I hear people already being anxious for what's to come, instead of being able to just be like, “Okay, let's kind of take a breath and be in this moment.” It's like we're not being given that chance. [00:06:25] DH: The media is certainly very good at understanding that what scares us is something we'll watch or pay to read, so they invest a lot of time and energy in that. We've talked about this before, but a big part of mental health is what you allow to have mind space. What do you put in your brain? So if you're reading those negative news reports, I'm not saying we don't need to know about what's going on in Ukraine. I'm not saying we don't need to be informed about what's going on in the pandemic. But it can be overwhelming with a 24-hour news cycle, and you get 18 different emails with different headline news's. Or you click on the app on your phone, or you turn on the television, or you turn on the radio. If you allow that to be the only thing that's entering your brain, it's going to be very hard to keep a positive mental outlook on the world. [00:07:14] PF: Absolutely. That brings me to a question. I'd love to hear what everyone on the team kind of what has been their go to to manage the stress that we've all felt in the last couple of years and how you keep your mental health balanced. I guess the easiest way to do it is alphabetically because that way we're not showing favorites. So I'm going to ask Britney, Britney Chan. What was your kind of go-to solution? [00:07:37] BC: My go-to solution during the pandemic was, obviously, to just try my best to stay as connected as possible, even being at home. So I practice a lot of video chatting, FaceTiming, Zooming with my friends and family. It really almost became like a daily activity for me and something I really look forward to. I know there's always this talk about tech and digital, and it's all over the place, and it's taking over our lives. But in this instance, it really did the opposite. It made me feel more connected, and I was able to see my sister and watch my niece and nephew play. I mean, there would be times where we would just stay on the phone. We wouldn't even talk to each other. We would just be there and be able to see what's going on. So, yeah, video chatting had a really positive effect on my mood during that time. Also, Deb, you just touched on it just a second ago about choosing to put what's in your mind. Like for me, I really made a conscious decision to not overwhelm myself with information about the pandemic or just the news in general because there's not a lot of good news out there. It seems to be very negative lately. So I read enough to stay informed. I read enough to make sure I'm following protocol and doing the right things and all that stuff. But other than that, I stayed away from the information overload when it came to the news or even social media about the pandemic. I would kind of just like scroll past it. So those are the things I really did to help my mental health during that time. [00:09:20] PF: That's really smart, and it's difficult for a lot of people because we know social media is designed to be addictive. So you end up doing that zombie scroll, and it's like, “Oh, my god.” First of all, you're having a panic attack by the time that you're done. It just – You feel horrible. That's a terrific way to do it to kind of curate what you're going to let – [00:09:39] BC: Yeah. That's a good word for it. I was self-curating what I was putting into my mind. [00:09:44] PF: That's very cool. Casey, how about you? Because I feel like of anyone, you and I probably talked the most about all of this and what was going on. We talk about podcast episodes, things like that. So what were some of the things that you were doing? Because you always maintained such a great upbeat attitude throughout the whole whatever we were dealing with. [00:10:07] CJ: Well, thank you for saying that. I certainly didn't feel that way on the inside, sometimes. But, yeah, I mean, just to kind of echo Britney, I'm kind of in the same situation as she is. My sister has two kids. They're young. So I was very grateful that we were able to video chat, and I was able to see them that way. I did find myself being glued to the news and zombie scrolling, like we were talking about. So I kind of had to check myself. I would limit my screen time. I stopped checking my phone first thing in the morning. I even started sleeping with it in the other room, which helped me sleep better. I brought my screen time down, which helped with my anxiety. I even started – I found this like YouTube video. It was like a 10-minute like yoga meditation and it's really hard for me to like sit still for long periods of time. So meditation has always been kind of a challenge for me. But just starting my day off like that, me not looking at my phone. Getting in touch with like my mind and body really just helped me maintain my sanity throughout that whole thing we experienced – [00:11:03] PF: Whatever it was. We don't even know what to call it. [00:11:06] CS: Yeah. I’m like blocking out but yeah. [00:11:08] PF: Thing. That’s really good, and it worked. Because, again, you were always like you've always been very positive and able to like see the good in whatever we had going on. So that's been super cool and super fun to work with on you. I'm really interested to hear Chris and then Deb because they have a slightly different perspective because not only were they dealing with their own situation, but they're both parents. That just adds another layer of complexity. So, Chris, what about you? You've got two little girls. How were you working this in your house? [00:11:39] CL: Yes, I do. That easily takes up a lot of time to where you don't have a lot of time to really think about it. But I will say, continuing what Deb was saying earlier, that the pandemic came out, and it changed all of our social behaviors. It created – There were some unintended consequences, although we were able to still keep things moving, working at home, and stuff like that. The unintended consequence was loneliness just skyrocketed. Even if you have a family, you can still find yourself in those times of loneliness. When the kids and everybody else went back, and I was still at home, then everything got quiet. Then you're just working all day. Then that's when it really sets in. You're not talking to anybody. You're not talking to your friends as much, just because of what we've been through the past couple of years. So, of course, pets always are a great option. If you're a pet owner, that's going to reduce your stress. It takes your mind off of things. It keeps you physically active. There's a new report that came out from Penn State actually on this loneliness kind of epidemic that we're in and what you can do to combat that, even if you are at home alone. That is choosing activities that get you into a flow state. Now, we at Live Happy are familiar with what the flow state is. One of the pioneers of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I think I said that right, he kind of introduced that theory. But it's basically when you're engaged in these tasks that kind of where time just kind of goes away, they're meaningful, challenging activities during your free time that it can reduce your loneliness and increase just momentary moments of happiness, but at least it's still happiness. Those are just any activity that you have a reasonably good skill, and it's not too complicated because then you'll lose interest. You just kind of submerge yourself in these activities like playing music, listening to music, even playing video games, different types of sports, writing, reading, painting. Just those kinds of leisurely activities that really take your mind out of it. I live next to a park. I'm fortunate enough to I'm able to go outside and kind of take walks in the park and kind of lose myself in that way or shoot baskets, which is a really enjoyable activity for me. Because you kind of immerse yourself and just play scenarios in your head and think that you are the greatest basketball player ever. [00:14:03] PF: Are you saying you're not? [00:14:04] CL: No, not really. Far from it. But when I'm out there, I am. So that's the good thing. Those are the kinds of things that can alleviate those feelings of loneliness and those feelings of anxiety and even depression. [00:14:18] PF: Yeah. Reframing that's really important. We have a podcast episode coming up, I believe, in June with Eric Barker. He had done some research found that loneliness – Like people who are lonely actually spent the same amount of time with other people, as people who are not lonely. But it's really your mental state. So that's really interesting. The things that you're talking about are great, like being able to employ some of those techniques, so you do feel less lonely. I think that's a great way to handle it. Deb, you were running a company remotely, a couple of companies. You also then have three active children. So how are you keeping all that balanced? Because, obviously, your kids were at home. You were at home. Everything changed for you. How did you keep that going? [00:15:05] DH: Well, first of all, I have to talk about the fact that there were some positive aspects of the pandemic for me, which sounds horrible and people – The pandemic wasn't positive. But because I couldn't travel, and I've been traveling a tremendous amount for the past, I don't know, 25 years of my life, to suddenly be in the same time zone for a long period of time, I got rest for the first time in what I think is forever. So for me, I think it's not just what changed that was difficult. It's also what changed that’s positive. I don't ever want to go back to living the way I lived before, where I was basically  in four time zones, and I'm talking about hours away time zones in a month, and it makes it a bit crazy. You don't realize what you're missing out on. It's like I'd spend time with the kids. I've always been very engaged when I'm with them. But hitting that, I feel more awake than I felt for 20 years before that. I didn't realize it. So there was a positive aspect for me. Of course, there also is that tiny aspect which changed for me. It used to be because I made specific time to be with my children, being engaged with them while they were there was something that was easy to do. Well, suddenly, they're there all the time. I'm there all the time. I have other things I need to do. Setting boundaries became an exercise. I don't want to say in futility, but it was certainly an exercise that took some time to get established. When I truly am on the phone, I truly am working. I cannot open up your Gatorade for you right now. Things that just changed. For the kids, it was far more difficult than it was for me. Initially, those first couple months, we did a lot of puzzles. We took a lot of walks. We have dogs. Our golf course never completely shut down, so we go hit a few balls. I mean, they were closed, but they let you play. It was a weird situation. So we always had things to do, but it was very different for the kids. The kids, when school started in the fall, it certainly was very frustrating for them. We had in-person school starting in the fall of 2021, so our kids have never been not allowed to go to school. But to suddenly have masks, that social distancing, and all of that stuff, it was remarkable to me how quickly they adapted. [00:17:17] PF: Can I ask you, how did you talk with your children about this too? Because you, of all people then in the positive psychology space, doing what you do, you're aware of what fear does, what mental impact this would have on them. So how did you talk with your children about what was going on to keep them from – I mean, I know kids that are just terrified. They're terrified of breathing other people's air. They've been very indoctrinated with fear. So how did you explain this to your kids? [00:17:45] DH: Well, first of all, I think it helps that we're not by nature a fearful family. We are well traveled and somewhat adventurous from whitewater rafting, to hiking off the grid. We're not – My children have a certain element of self-sufficiency and self-reliance already built in, just from who we are as people to begin with. So I think that helped. But the second thing was you can't overemphasize enough that the likelihood of something bad happening is very small, and you can't dwell on something that might happen. We did talk a little bit about driving a car. You have likelihoods of car wrecks. There's fuel. You fly in a plane. But these things don't happen commonly. So we all get sick. We've all been sick. We've all had the flu. We've all had corona virus. We've all had – It’s possible we may get this. But for the most part, we need to make sure that we're doing the hygiene things we need to do and try not to get it because nobody wants to be sick. Or if somebody does get sick, no, it's going to happen. It's okay. You have to tell people it’s okay. We don't know if it's going to be okay. But they’re kids, right? You don’t want to say, “Be careful not hug grandma. She's going to die.” I mean, don’t you think that’s too much? We have to be really careful and put things in perspective. [00:19:01] PF: I'd like to learn what Shane did when he was during – Shane is our quiet one, always. So I'm really interested to hear from him and find out what were you doing with the pandemic? [00:19:12] SL: Yeah. It was an interesting time. I will say all of the things that y'all spoke of I employed in my life. Like Deb was mentioning, just a feeling of being alone like the first year of this. I was essentially living in a one-bedroom apartment by myself. My family, they don't live in Dallas. They live at least four hours away. So really, I just had myself and just people I had I could connect with to my phone. But still, I was pretty lonely. Even though my living situation has shifted since then, it's still a lot of notes of loneliness. But it's okay because through that I've strengthened that feeling of being able to do things for myself. Chris mentioned this earlier but going through these first days. There’s a hobby I started doing, skateboarding, and I've been doing that for about a year now. It's like a big part of my identity, but there's always a new goal with that. I've learned with perseverance and patience. So that's a fun activity I love to do, and I’m excited to do it right after this call. In addition to that, I also just love just going on walks outside, just feeling the warmth to sunlight on your skin. Photosynthesis is really hype. Plants, they really get it. But I would say another thing is just I've really adopted this mindset of just living more in the present, less worrying about the past, or not anticipating the future, but really just valuing the time I spend with the people I talk with in this moment. So for example, time spent with y'all today is always time well spent. So I'm happy to just be talking with you all. On top of all of that, I try to unplug as much as possible. If I didn't have to use it for work, I probably wouldn't be on social media. But I don't feel a need to like post my life on social media because I’m a firm believer in the right people know what I'm doing. Like Casey said too, I've also employed some time limits on my social apps. So really, I don't spend that much time on social media or my phone in general. Yeah. [00:21:23] PF: That's excellent. Yeah. I think we all – [00:21:25] BC: We’re comparing our screen times last week. [00:21:29] PF: How did that go? [00:21:31] SL: I did poorly. I lost. [00:21:34] BC: I worked really hard to get my screen time down to where it is. [00:21:37] SL: Yeah. Not all weeks are winners, but at least I'm mindful of it, at least. [00:21:42] BC: Yeah. [00:21:44] PF: I think we all had such a great advantage because of what we do and where we're working because we have all these tools. Like every week, we're talking to someone who is giving us a new tool, and we have this whole background. We've all been at the company for a while, so we have this pretty good backlog of mental resources of how we can handle some of these things. Like we didn't know we were preparing for what we've had, but I think it was really helpful. One thing that I did was when the pandemic hit, I was living in an apartment downtown Nashville. I loved it, going to concerts all the time. Then it was like, “Wow, I'm stuck in a box,” and I moved out into the country, a huge difference in a lot of ways. But being in nature every day has just been absolutely life-changing. Again, that's something we really learned from Live Happy and the stories that we've written about how much it affects us. I see it. I see it with my animals. I see it with myself. So I do feel like Live Happy has been such a gift for us. I hope other people have gotten as much from it as we have because I think it really helped us have the tools to get through the pandemic more easily. It's been so great to talk to you guys. I love when we get together and do this. We'll do it again soon. One of the things that we know is really good for your mental health is laughter. So that's why I'm sure Chris Libby has a fantastic dad joke locked and loaded. [00:23:03] CJ: I’ve been waiting for this moment. [00:23:04] PF: Ready to roll. [00:23:05] BC: I know. I’m ready. [00:23:08] CL: I don’t know. Did you guys happen to hear that in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month that the United Kingdom is going to officially change their name? [00:23:17] PF: To? [00:23:17] BC: To what? [00:23:19] SL: It’s no longer going to be referred to as the UK. Now, it will be referred to as You Okay. [00:23:26] DH: All right. [00:23:27] PF: That’s why we asked you to join us. [00:23:29] BC: Round of applause. Way to go. [00:23:32] SL: Listeners, the scenario was, that was a solid joke. I just want you all to know. My eyes rolled so hard. [00:23:40] PF: Perfect. Well, thank you all. I appreciate you guys giving me your time today and sharing with our listeners everything that – Not everything you've learned but so much that you've learned and how we can get through this together. [00:23:52] DH: Thanks, Paula. It was awesome as you were. [00:23:53] BC: Thank you for having us. [00:23:55] CJ: Thank you. [00:23:55] CL: Thank you. [END OF EPISODE] [00:24:02] PF: That was the Live Happy crew, talking about mental health. If you'd like to learn more, visit our website at livehappy.com. Click on the podcast tab for some great stories and resources. While you're on our site, you can get 20% off anything and everything in the Live Happy store just by using the code SELF-LOVE 20. That's SELF-LOVE 20. 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: Bridging Our Divides With Rev. Jennifer Bailey  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 357 of Live Happy Now. Right now, it's time to get out your toolkit because we're about to teach you how to build a bridge. I'm your host, Paul Felps, and throughout the month of March, we've been taking on the issue of unity. Today, I am so happy to be joined by Reverend Jennifer Bailey, who in addition to being named one of the 15 Faith Leaders to Watch by the Center for American Progress, is Founder of Faith Matters Network. She's also the Co-founder of The People’s Supper, which brings people together to engage constructively on issues that affect their communities. This project has brought together thousands of people to create a space of healing, all while enjoying a nourishing meal and civil conversation. She's here today to share some of the tools she uses for bridging our differences. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Reverend Jennifer, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:57] JB: Hi. Thank you so much for having me, Paula. [00:01:00] PF: This is such an important conversation that we need to have. As you know, you and I have talked about this, how during this month of happiness, and as we celebrate the International Day of Happiness, Live Happy Now has been talking about the theme of unity. That's why I wanted you to come on the show because that's something that you really specialize in. Right now, there's so much division in our communities and in our world and sometimes in our own homes. So what we want to talk to you today is how we begin to bridge that divide. I guess that's my first question. Where does this healing need to start, and how do we do that? [00:01:40] JB: Thank you for that question. I know it's one that so many people are carrying in this season of our country's life, as it almost seems like you turn on the television or scroll on social media, and that polarization and divides are incentivized, rather than deincentivized in this world. [00:01:56] PF: Yeah, that's so true. [00:01:58] JB: So as I think about the work that I've been proximate to over the past several years through a project that I have a really wonderful opportunity to co-found called The People’s Supper, one of the lessons that I learned in that project, which was founded right after the 2016 presidential election, it’s a space for folks to come together over a shared meal and talk about both bridging across lines of difference and creating spaces of deep healing within community where there had been a breach in the interpersonal relationships in that community. One of the things that really surfaced for me is when we think about where to start, it really starts proximate to us. So thinking about those places and spaces in our own lives where we've experienced a deep divide or rupture, whether that be in an interpersonal relationship, as part of a faith community or a civic group that you might be a part of, each of us has a deep experience of what it is like to be in relationship. Then find ourselves in a moment of conflict or division. So I always say for folks that it is important to start close to home when we think about what it means to bridge divides, rather than attempting to solve big universal problems. One of the greatest skills that we have and invitations that we have is to do deep work proximate and close to us. [00:03:27] PF: How do we do that when we are extremely divided? We'll say it in a political sense. If you've got people in the same house even who have very different views, and we don't really want to hear that other person's opinion, what their perspective is, or why they come from that perspective. It tends to be a talking over one another and just trying to throw out these talking points to show them they're wrong. So obviously, that doesn't work at all. What are the very simple steps that we start taking? [00:04:02] JB: I think step one is to take a deep breath. It sounds silly, but I've been reminded lately, particularly in the midst of a pandemic, that literally it’s seeking to steal our breath, just how precious the gift of taking a deep breath really is in this season. I think we have been so programmed to get into fight or flight mode when it comes to our politics or ideologies. But I would argue that in this moment, one of the things that is called for is a deep re-humanization of one another. What moments of conflict or division do is have us buy into the false belief that the person sitting across from you is an other and shouldn't be otherized. It’s easy when we otherize people to make them into a stereotype or a statistic. We all know that each of us comes into and approaches relationships from the particularity of our own experiences, our own stories, our own narratives. More often than not, we've come to our set of beliefs through a set of experiences or core beliefs that have helped shaped us and our own story. So I would say first step is to get curious. I’m reminded of the work of the Center for Courage and Renewal when it says in one of their touchstones, “When the going gets tough, turn to wonder.” So rather – [00:05:31] PF: Oh, I love that. [00:05:33] JB: Yeah. I love that work from Parker Palmer's work because I think there is something really profound about rather than immediately jumping into judgment, asking yourself the question, “I wonder why they think that way,” and it opens up a space for potential empathy and enough of a pause, enough of a breath to remind ourselves that the person sitting across from us is indeed a person and not just a meme on social media, right? [00:06:03] PF: Well, that's – I love that approach. What are some ways that we can start training ourselves to react that way? We've got a lot of undoing to take care of before we can get to that process of not being triggered when someone makes a statement. But instead saying, “Huh, let's unpack that and find out why you think that way.” So how do we start teaching ourselves to think that way? [00:06:28] JB: It starts at home with ourselves and making the commitment, right? I think we've had conversations, Paula, that I don't know that everybody is called to bridge. Actually, the work of bridge building is indeed a calling. In some cases, it can be unethical to ask people to bridge across lines of difference, particularly if they're being asked to bridge across lines of difference, where someone might be questioning the variability of their personhood, right? I think a lot about dear friends and siblings who identify as LGBTQ, who sometimes get asked to bridge with people who have a very particular view around gender neutrality. That can be inherently violent to question. I use that as an example to say I think not everybody is called to bridge. It can sometimes be unethical to ask people to bridge. So it begins with really a personal assessment about what you're bringing to the conversation and an interrogation about your why, a curiosity about your why as you enter into bridging work. There are really a set of questions that I asked everyone who feels compelled to do this bridge building work. The first question I often asked in my work around bridge building is what are you bridging to? That is what is the goal. What's the ideal state on the other side? Is it about restoring a personal relationship in your family? Is it working with crossed political lines to advance a particular policy area that you're looking to move forward or find some common ground on? Being clear about your motivations and the why and the vision you're building towards can be really important because they're different size bridges. It's a very big difference to bridge over a creek than bridge over a large river, right? [00:08:17] PF: Right, right. We don't need to span the aerie right now. [00:08:20] JB: Yeah. Or maybe you're called to do the big river, but just know that that takes time, and give yourself grace and patience, depending on the length of the bridge you're trying to bridge. The second question that I asked folks is what are you bridging over? So often, we do bridging work. It feels shallow when we don't tend to these unspoken wounds or traumas and histories that are operative in our relationships, right? So it's hard to have a conversation bridging across lines of, for example, racial difference without tending to and talking about the harm that systemic racism has done to people of color in this country, right? Even more specifically, if you're in a local community, lifting up examples of how that might have shown up in the experience of lives of people. There's something about the power of the recognition of that truth, whatever that truth is that you're trying to bridge over, and acknowledging it. That can lead to more deep and authentic conversations. Then the third thing, and I think this speaks to what we were just talking about, which is what is your bridge made of. I like to think about these as like the tools in our toolkits, the resources, the skills that we are continuing to build and cultivate over time to make sure that our bridge is strong. Because I don't know about you, but if I'm going to like work on climate change issues and some of these generation, a pandemic, public health access, those are really big issues. If we're going to bridge divides to tend to them, I don't want a bridge made of sticks. I want one made of steel, one that's going to – [00:09:51] PF: Right. [00:09:53] JB: So I think that what’s your bridge made of is both about how we cultivate personal practices to renew ourselves so that we're able to show up more deeply and authentically within ourselves. So creating that system of care and practice that grounds us, that allows us to show up, and is the muscle in exercise of continuing to show up time and time again, even when things get difficult, right? Learning how to move through and navigate conflict. So those are my three questions. What are you bridging? Two, what are you bridging over, and what is your bridge made of? [00:10:32] PF: Just the act of sitting down and contemplating those questions, does that cause a shift in a person's thinking? [00:10:41] JB: I can only speak for myself, but I've found that it has become almost like a spiritual practice for me to return to those questions because it really helps me get in touch with my motivations and making sure that the motivations that I'm carrying into bridging space is authentic and genuine and grounded and a real desire for building community versus sort of my own selfish aims. So I invite people to answer those questions as part of your own practice. Since we're talking about thinking about happiness, I've felt much freer being in touch and in tune with those core motivations and that which moves me and grounds me by answering those questions and having sort of a reflective practice in my own life. [00:11:28] PF: That makes so much sense because I think so many of us feel a sense of frustration, or we don't want this divide, all these divides to continue existing in our lives and in the world around us. But we're not necessarily sure what we can do about it. So I love being able to sit down with those questions and really start thinking and identifying with it. I can see that being even as like a great journaling practice to dive into it. I don't think it's something where the answer just pops into your head immediately. It takes a lot of thought and introspection, I would think. [00:12:04] JB: Yeah, I think so. The great news is for folks who are listening, you don't have to do this alone. There are so many amazing organizations out there who have tools and resources for just this type of work. I think a lot about my friends at living room conversations, which is a methodology that brings people together to have conversations in living rooms across lines of difference. There's a group out there called Braver Angels that really does focus on the blue, red partisan divide. So there is a set of really amazing organizations out there, if this really does feel like work you're called to, that you can lean on and who have a set of free and downloadable resources for you to try out, to test, and figure out which one might feel right for you. [00:12:47] PF: I love that. As we're coming out of the pandemic, and we start interacting more face to face, do you think some of this healing will kind of take place on its own? Because it seems like when we've been in our little digital towers, it got very impersonal. I'm just curious how you think being face to face will change the way that we interact and react. [00:13:10] JB: Oh, gosh. Paula, I sure hope so. I sure hope that when we see each other face to face, it becomes less likely that we will be a jerk to somebody in person, right? We're just not programmed in that way. But I say I hope because I don't know. I do think that there is something to be said about living the past two years in a state of isolation from a broader community. For many of us, that has allowed for some folks – Their ideologies is sort of fossilized deeper. So I'm hopeful that the experience of deep human connection one on one, being able to look one another in the eyes and speak to one another might help break open some of those pathways to empathy. The fearful part of me notes that I saw how people acted in grocery stores once the pandemic started, right? [inaudible 00:14:09]. [00:14:12] PF: It wasn't really a, “No, you go ahead,” type of environment, was it? [00:14:15] JB: Exactly, exactly. So I think we have to get into, again, the practice of empathy, that practice of seeing one another as human, the turning to curiosity and wonder, as a way of opening up pathways for us to see one another again. I mean, the jury's still out. I belong to a faith tradition that is really grounded in radical hope, and so I'm going to hold on to that hope. [00:14:43] PF: Well, let's talk about that because that is something I wanted to explore is the concept of radical hope. I think that is what we need. Regular hope is not going to cut it right now. We do need radical hope. So tell us what you mean by radical hope, and then how we create it in our own lives. [00:15:01] JB: Absolutely. So the concept of radical hope, as I understand it and talk about it and write about it, I first learned my background is that I am clergy in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is the oldest historically black church denomination in the United States. I grew up in a small church where there were just these powerful women, many of whom who had escaped the horrors of Jim Crow, who had seen some of the worst of what humanity has to offer in terms of violence, and yet were the same people who saw in me a spark and creativity, who were able to name – When I was six years old, it was Sister Catherine Weldon, who told me I was going to preach someday, something that – [00:15:47] PF: I love that. [00:15:51] JB: So we're able to recognize and see in the young people who are under their care in a variety of ways their potential, who – As I think about the miracle of the loaves and fishes, I'm often saying I know that to be true because I saw what those church women could do with two boxes of spaghetti, right? They could feed. One of the great lessons I learned, they were not perfect women. Let me say that. They also had their after-church conversations in the parking lot that were not kind all the time. [00:16:23] PF: It's okay to be human, I guess. [00:16:24] JB: Exactly, exactly. That's why they were such great teachers is because they showed me both how to live and what some things I might want to let go of from my tradition. But one of the things that was consistent is that for these women, again, many born in the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, who had seen and experienced the direct staying of racism and sexism in their life, they still had this unfailing belief that they had the power to change the material conditions of the world, that they could change things, and that that power resides within each of us. So they were never pessimistic because they saw what progress look like. They weren't afraid to roll up their sleeves and do the work to create a better future for me and for the generations that have followed me. So when I think about radical hope, I'm thinking about a hope that is rooted. So the origin of the word radical is actually rooted. That's what the etymology of that word is. That's rooted in a deep sense of history that is grounded, that is not sort of a far off, far flown distant type of hope. That is just sort of spoken out into the ether sphere. But that takes agency over creating that new world that each of us wants to build or we envision. If part of our orientation towards radical hope is unity, then it's one thing to say that you want unity. It's another thing to do what we've been talking about today, which is to roll up our sleeves and cultivate the skills to do the type of deep bridging work that will be required to help net back together and weave back together the breaches and the ruptures in our interpersonal and communal relationships. [00:18:12] PF: So where do we find that hope within us? There's – I know a lot of people feel right now absolutely hopeless about the state of the world, the state of our relationships, all the division that's going on. Where do you start to find that spark of hope? [00:18:31] JB: Well, I advise folks, if you have the ability to, in your life, spend some time with what I call my tradition senior seats and playground prophets, so older people and young folks, right? [00:18:43] PF: I love that. [00:18:44] JB: There's such a great gift. One of the great gifts of being a part of a religious community is that it remains one of the few intergenerational spaces in our society. Every Monday at 12 o'clock, I get the opportunity to be on my church prayer line with elders, who are in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Being able to talk in particular to, in my context, older black folks who've seen some things and who can tell you that the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice, that it can tell you when you're feeling down and out. One of the favorite refrains of Sister Weldon and the church mothers in my life growing up was whenever I would feel distraught, they would just say, “Just keep living, baby. Just keep living.” It wasn’t meant to be dismissive. They always acknowledge the pain that I was in or whatever conflict that might have been operative for me. But I think the message that I didn't realize until much later was so profound is that there's something about the act of living. That every day, moment by moment, day by day, is an opportunity to recreate the world, is an opportunity to live differently, is an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and experiences, that those words of the elders remain close to me when I seek hope. I remember to just keep living, and that that is a powerful thing. I also say spending time with young people will keep you fresh and keep you young. I have an 18-month-old son, and every day is just grounded by sparks of fresh joy. You'll appreciate [inaudible 00:20:22]. He's over the past two weeks had an explosion of language, and so is like starting to say words and not just mama and daddy, but like puppy and rice. The joy and delight he gets in being able to speak these words that he's like heard for a long time for the first time. So I encourage folks, if you're looking for hope, young people are there, and they will both humble you, and they have a spark within them, a spark of possibility that it's just such a great gift for me to be reminded of the part of the work that we do is not just for ourselves but for the seven generations from now. So senior saints and playground prophets is how I find radical hope. But I encourage folks that are listening in to think about the sources of joy in your life. I know joy and hope are not the same thing. But I've found in revisiting those things that gave me joy, revisiting those conversations with elders, spending time with my son, that the seeds of hope are actually grounded in those spaces of joy in my life and reminding myself that there are places of joy in my life, joy that I want to flourish and I want other people to experience. So maybe it's not a conversation with an elder or spending time with a young person. Maybe it's reading one of your favorite books. Maybe it's doing something collectively with friends that you haven't done in a while. But I think those sparks of joy are the good soil that help us see hope anew. [00:22:01] PF: That's fantastic. Thank you so much. You've given us a lot to think about. You've given us hope and, again, kind of a roadmap for starting out on this journey for greater unity. So thank you. I know we're going to tell our listeners how they can find you, learn more about you, order your upcoming book. I really do. I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and walk through this with me. [00:22:24] JB: Yeah. Thank you so much, Paul. I really appreciate you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:22:32] PF: That was Reverend Jennifer Bailey, talking about how to bridge our divides. To learn more about Jennifer, follow her online or learn about her upcoming book titled To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss, and Radical Hope. Visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast app. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]