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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming Procrastination to Boost Well-being With Sherri Fisher [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 418 of Live Happy Now. If you're a procrastinator, or your life is affected by someone else who is, then this week's episode is for you. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with Sherri Fisher, director of the coaching practice, Learn & Flourish, and a bestselling author, speaker, and workshop facilitator. She's here today to talk about why we procrastinate, how it affects our wellbeing, and what we can do about it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:32] PF: Sherri, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:36] SF: I'm excited to be here. It's very nice to meet you. [00:00:39] PF: This is a conversation I wanted to have for a few months now because I get your newsletter, which we will tell people how to sign up for it, because it's a fantastic newsletter. You did a great series on procrastination. So, it's ironic that it took me so long to get you on the show after you did procrastination. But I wanted to find out, first of all, just set a baseline, how big a problem is procrastination in the world today? [00:01:05] SF: I don't have an exact number for you. But most people procrastinate about something sometimes, and people who say that they procrastinate chronically. College students, for example, 90% of them, that's the number I have for you. They say that they procrastinate chronically, and when it comes to assignments. But adults in general will make wish lists of things that they're going to do, that they just don't ever get to checking off the little boxes for. If you look at the things that those people avoid doing, it's a lot of consistent things that they don't do. Procrastination is a big problem. It costs businesses, for example, lots of money, because productivity is reduced for people. But it also eats away at our wellbeing. When you don't keep up with things, those things pile up, people feel badly about those things, and you're also not learning how to overcome them in ways that help you build habits, and to learn even small amounts of self-regulation, and to manage yourself emotionally. Underneath it all, that's really what's driving procrastination is how you feel about things. [00:02:08] PF: I thought it was interesting because I've looked at procrastination through a time management lens and things like that. I honestly had never thought about how it affects our wellbeing. You of course having your Master's in Applied Positive Psychology and coming at everything through that lens, are looking at it, and what is the psychology that drives procrastination and how bad? You said it affects our wellbeing, how badly does it affect us? [00:02:37] SF: Sometimes there are people who procrastinate, and they've kind of gotten into whatever their procrastination rhythm is. It's like cramming for a test when you're in school, and you get to the very close to the last minute, and then you stay up all night. You think, “Oh, I got it done.” That sense of accomplishment can make you feel like you're very successful. But it might have cost you sleep. It might have meant that you ate junky food. It might have meant that you didn't get to go to a social event that you really wanted to go to. It might have meant that you didn't do something with your family that you would have done if you'd planned better. What happens is it's not like a one to one correspondence. It's the spillover effect that procrastination has on all the other things that you didn't do, that you perhaps could have done when you still had choices that you could make. [00:03:26] PF: Now, will the naysayer reply that, “Well, look at all the fun stuff I got to do before then, when I wasn't doing what I was supposed to be doing.” [00:03:37] SF: Well guess what, people don't feel good about those things, really. In the moment, most people who are procrastinating are not doing happy things that they want. They are basically spinning around in place, not doing any of the things that they might. I guess, we call them time wasters. They're not being productive in other ways, either. There are people who avoid, they go out to a party or something. Those are not the chronic procrastinators, who we're really talking about. Those are people who are, socially, they're in a place their lives where they – FOMO. They don't want to miss out on something. But generally speaking, a chronic procrastinator is not having that as their motivation. They're not doing things because they find the thing distasteful in some way. Not the thing itself, maybe, because maybe it makes them feel badly about themselves. “I'm not good at this. It reminds me that I didn't go to graduate school for such and such. Therefore, I'm not ever going to be the person who my family wants me to be.” It can be a lot of things. When I coach somebody, I have to help them to peel away enough of the layers of things that might be motivating them to get them to recognize that they are emotionally stuck sometimes. It’s not that they don't know how to manage their time. [00:04:51] PF: That’s interesting. Yes, because I used to work with a time management client and he viewed procrastination purely as a time management issue. But you're saying it's more than that. [00:05:01] SF: Oh, absolutely, it's more than that. One of the first things I talk about is what I call the probably problem. Every person who I work with who procrastinates tells me, they will probably do something, 100% of the time. If I talk to them, if they can put it on a planner, they can have notifications in 15 different places, it doesn't matter how well they plan their time. It matters how aware they are of the underlying things that are making them feel like they don't want to do something. That's important. It's also important, what level of commitment they have. They're saying they'll probably do something. It's like a cue that says, probably, but maybe not. The other thing is that if you're not making a commitment to follow through, then we need to work on that part. Maybe we need to build in implementation intentions, for example. Maybe we need to figure out what are the things that you're avoiding, and what would be solutions that if you're faced with whatever the barrier thought is, if this comes up, then I will do such and such, whatever that other thing is might be. If I need to put this in my calendar, and I need to start it on time, and the barrier thought is like, “Oh, I do this.” Then, I will – I have people, they text me. I'm having a moment, and then I can talk them through things. But usually, it doesn't take very long before they don't want to tell me that they're having a moment and they just do it. The next time we meet, they say, “I didn't want to do it, but I didn't want to bug you.” A lot of times, there are different ways of putting if then in place. But the idea is that you're teaching yourself to self-regulate. You're recognizing that a barrier exists. If that barrier shows up, then you're going to do a particular thing and it automatizes the things that keep you from pushing past probably, otherwise. Push past probably. [00:06:59] PF: Let's talk for a minute about what kind of problems procrastination can create, because you see a lot of different effects that it has. Can we talk first about work, and then I want to talk about how it affects us at home. [00:07:12] SF: Okay. At work, the worst-case scenario would be that you don't get your work done, and you are let go. But it also creates for the person who is the chronic procrastinator social difficulty. So much of work requires being on a team. You are part of a greater than yourself amount of work. If you don't show up on time, somebody else might have to pick up the slack for you. Maybe a project can't go out at all on time, and the entire team gets dinged for that. That would be the biggest thing is the social impact, and the person who is a procrastinator, that chronic procrastinator doesn't have the trust of their colleagues anymore if this happens over and over again. That makes the person who is the procrastinator feel disconnected from their work, and sometimes someone will get referred to me, they blame everybody else for their lack of something. Those people don't have enough patience. They're unrealistic. They don't know how hard my life is or things like that. They're not able to empathize with what it's like to be the person who is getting the job done. Because the chronic procrastinator may have been doing this forever, until they ended up in a situation where there was no longer enough structure to help them to be able to get things done. They're on their own, then they don't have all of their good if then is in place. They may struggle a lot. That's the biggest impact at work. [00:08:32] PF: Wow. Then, when they take those habits home, what kind of effects does it have at home, when we just keep putting things off? [00:08:42] SF: Well, if you are in a couple's relationship, the things that you put off at work might make you feel like you're exhausted, maybe you've been trying to get things done, whatever that may mean, but not being successful, and you get home and you're exhausted and you have no more executive function skills left. The first three are, stop what you're doing now, switch to the thing you're supposed to be doing and start doing it. But those are so difficult. Say that you're a person, like a lot of people who I will see have learning attention or executive function challenges across the board. But when there's the right kind of structure in place, or the right self-knowledge plus structure, a lot of the difficulties are really dealt with very well. But when you don't have those things, you struggle. Home is a place that doesn't have much structure unless you can impose it yourself. If you live with someone who is really good at putting structure in place, and you as the person who needs that structure, recognize that about yourself. That's great. Very helpful. But what if you're the person who says, “I don't want that. I don't want that. But if you push back a lot, I don't need that.” That's when things start to get difficult because the person who would benefit from the help and the person who is naturally more structured start to grow apart. They don't understand what the other person needs anymore. It’s difficult to have empathy if you think the other person is just being a pain. [00:10:07] PF: Yes, at work, at least there are oftentimes systems in place to correct that behavior, give warnings, things like that. That doesn't necessarily happen at home. Basically, it's a fight, and then there isn't a resolution. How do you deal with that in a home setting? [00:10:23] SF: Well, there are a bunch of different things that happen in a home setting. Sometimes people end up going to couples counseling, or they end up getting divorced, because if they're married, they just can't figure it out. But there are things to do before you ever get there that have to do with understanding what other people's tolerance for certain things is. For instance, the messy tolerance. For a chronic procrastinator, they're also often not very well organized in lots of other ways. So, recognizing that you, the messy person, would actually benefit from having a structure in place. Putting like things together. Having labeled buckets. Yes, we did that in first and second and third grade and it was great, because you knew where to put things away, and not looking at that and say, “Well, I'm not a baby.” A lot of the defensiveness that the procrastinator has, is a really good place to start. If you're the procrastinator, you want to recognize when you're being defensive. And if you're the person who's not the procrastinator, to not say things that are going to make the person who is frustrating you so much, not going to make him want to push back. I just told you what not to do. What to do, is to recognize when things are going well. For instance, if you have something that's labeled, and the person puts it in the right place, you say, “Thanks for putting that away.” Very little things. Just notice what’s – [00:11:39] PF: I like that. [00:11:41] SF: If you're the organized person, go ahead and be organized. Then, you're going to bring the person along with you a little bit at a time. Another thing you can do, this is my favorite thing to do, no matter what it is, is to set a timer. You figure out what your optimal time is. I just pick 10 minutes, because it's a good amount and it's not so long that most people can't pay attention for that long. But even with that, I work with a high school student who never gets their work done, I might even set the timer for five minutes. Because you want the person to have the idea that they're not going to have to do the heinous thing forever. They only have to do the heinous thing for a short amount of time. But you also want them to have the lived experience of success. When they do it, you don't want to look and say, “That's all you got done?” You want to say, “That was great. Next time, 10 minutes.” You do 10 minutes for a while until you can say to the other person, “Let's do 15 minutes.” Or ask them, “How long should I set the timer for?” I usually just ask them, “How many minutes do you want?” This week I had someone say, “I want 13 minutes. I like lucky 13. Let’s do this.” [00:12:42] PF: That's specific. That's so great, because that seems, it would work with couples, it would work in parent-child relationships. It seems like there's so many ways that that can be leveraged to make that work without conflict. [00:12:57] SF: Right. Because then you're not asking someone to budget a huge amount of time that they then need to organize. The thing with time management is if you say someone is going to have to work for two hours when they get home from work, that person is going to not get much done then and they'll be angry. So, they'll have to be self-regulating their anger and maybe their tiredness, and maybe they're hungry. There could be a lot of other things that are competing for attention at that point. That's why time management doesn't work so well. But if you divide time into emotionally, micro manageable parts, then you're heading in the right direction. [00:13:34] PF: When do we know that it's a time management problem and we're overburdened versus we're just procrastinating? It's easy to say, “Well, I just have too much to do.” How do we define and determine which it really is? [00:13:48] SF: You know what’s interesting, I have a big to-do list right now sitting next to me here. It has, oh, I don't know, 15 things on it. This morning, my plan yesterday, because I took that to-do list, I stuck it right on top of the lid of my computer. My plan today was to just bang out all those things. Then, I had several interruptions that were work related interruptions and I did not get to that list. The list is still sitting here. These are things that must get done. Eventually, they will get done. But you can have the best lead time management plans, and then something will interrupt. What do you do when that happens? Is, I think, a question that people also ask. You can also use your timer for that. I can just say I will do as many things as possible that I can get done in the next 10 minutes and you just bang through them for 10 minutes. Then, I put the list aside and I'll get back to more things later when I have 10 minutes free. Because usually you will have little bursts of time, those bursts of time effective for you is much more valuable than trying to figure out how to become more efficient. [00:14:50] PF: I like that, because a lot of times, I think, when we just have a burst of time, it's like, “I've got 10 minutes. I can't really do anything.” So, we hit social media or we scroll through our phone. We waste the time almost intentionally, giving ourselves the excuse that I don't really have enough time to get things done. [00:15:08] SF: Right. But if you have 10 minutes and a list, you just get started. Another good approach is to leave the thing that is on your computer screen. The last thing before you put the lid down, to have that be the thing that is your priority, so you don't have to go looking for what to do. That's the way to go down the procrastination rabbit hole really fast. [00:15:28] PF: Oh, yes. I like that. That’s a great tip. [00:15:31] SF: Because it's right there in front of you. But the other thing, even better than that is to, especially if you're in a document where you can make comments. Go ahead and write for yourself what you're going to start with. On mine, I will write down “Start here”, and then I wrote myself what I'm going to do. Or it's just highlighted, and it says, “Start here”. If I have an idea, before I decide I'm done for the day, I might write that idea down. I'll comment on a document. I write among other things that I do besides work with people. If I lose an idea, that's not a good thing. I have loads of them. I never run out of ideas. But sometimes you have a really great one. If I plan ahead, my implementation intention is, if I have an idea, then I will record it. Finding where to record your ideas, where to record your items for your to-do list, and having it be automatized for you, so you automatically do the same thing, you're much less likely to get off track, and getting off track is the way you procrastinate. [00:16:29] PF: Is procrastination an innate behavior? Or is it something we learn along the way? Where does it even come from? [00:16:36] SF: Well, I think that I'm going to say yes and yes to that kind of a question. Is it innate? I had two kids, they were very different in some ways, and not so different from each other in other ways. Sometimes you have kids and you look at them, and you think, “Oh, how could two such different people ever have come into the world?” Plus, I've worked with thousands and thousands of people. Do I think that they came into the world as procrastinators? I'm going to say people come in to the world with varying degrees of executive function skill, and that you probably have, I don't know, a tendency to be less self-regulated or more self-regulated, and that you can learn to be more self-regulated. Another thing is, do people have a process that works for them? Lots of times they haven't learned to process without that process. They just get lost. Is that because they are innately procrastinators? Maybe not. Maybe they just didn't get taught a way to do things in a more systematic way. Another one is that the procrastination problem across all contexts, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes it only happens in one place. So, we have to look at that. Do they do everything except for like the last step of taking action? In which case we got a little, like, get them just over the edge? In which case, they probably are chronic procrastinators and that's their stuck point is right there. Those are kind of my four things. I call it the SPCA, it’s what I just told you about. Structure, process, context, actions. [00:18:08] PF: That's great. You also are very big on self-care. I think what's so interesting for me is you different from a traditional business coach, because you have that positive psychology angle coming into it. You implement so many techniques and practices that you're not going to find in a traditional business structure. Talk about self-care, and how you see that being used as part of overcoming procrastination. [00:18:34] SF: Well, I have something I call mindfulness interval training. People will say, “Do I have to know how to meditate do that?” Because some people are just like, “I can't do it. I can't sit still”. No, no, it's not about that. Mindfulness interval training is if you have interval training you're doing for exercise, you're going to take something and you're going to do it for a very short amount of time, intensively. When I say a short amount of time, I'm talking about a minute, right? When you don't want to do something, and you're like, “No, I don't want to”, and you calm yourself down. That's the first step. In a minute, there are ways to do this, so I have a list of these that you can download on my website. But you might rub your palms together, and then just put them over your eyes and just slowly inhale and exhale, inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. Another way of doing that is to do like five-finger breathing. You close your eyes, if you're comfortable doing that, you use one finger, and you trace on the other hand, opposite hand. It doesn't matter which hand you use as your tracing finger. Use your index finger and trace up your thumb as you inhale through your nose and then exhale through your mouth going down. Then, you would do the same thing up the next finger and you're going to inhale, tracing up your index finger, inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. You can do that for all five fingers. When you get done. That won't even take a minute and you will be so much calmer just from that tiny little thing that you do. That's an interval. It's something that mindful. Then, if you still want more, you can do something that’s energizing. You can take an energy break. You could run in place for a minute. Or you could do arms over the head exercise for a minute, and then just stop. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. You can do mindful eating, some small thing, no raisins, cranberries, something very small, and just mindfully chew. You can take tiny sips of cool water, no ice. Just tiny sips of cool water for a minute. Take a whole minute to drink a glass of water. Tiny little sips. You can also do some other type of mindful breathing at the end. But you could spend five minutes and you will be the most relaxed you've ever been before starting something and you'll be in a much better headspace when you do that. [00:20:51] PF: You have a lot to teach us. You have so many things that we can learn about your techniques for taking care of ourselves, learn how to build our habits better. I'm going to tell the listeners how they can find your website, sign up for your newsletter, learn more about what you're doing. But what is the one thing that you really hope everybody who's listened to our conversation today takes away from it? [00:21:12] SF: If you don't want to be a procrastinator, you don't need to be a procrastinator. There are very pleasant, doable things to help you get things done that you would like to get done, and the things that you need to get done. [00:21:25] PF: Sherri, it's been a pleasure having you on the show. I appreciate you taking time with me today. [00:21:28] SF: It was great and fun. I love talking about things that I love to do and you ask the best questions. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:37] PF: That was Sherri Fisher talking about procrastination. If you'd like to learn more about Sherri, follow her on social media, sign up for her newsletter or download some of her free resources. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure and stop by the Live Happy Store to take advantage of our spring special where you can get 25% off everything in the store, just by entering the code Spring 25. I recommend you check out our cheerful, choose happy tote bag which is the perfect springtime accessory. That is all we have time for today. Well 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: What the Circus Can Teach Us About Mental Health With Dr. Sherry Walling [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 417 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this week, we're talking about how you can improve your mental health by joining the circus. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm talking with Dr. Sherry Walling, a clinical psychologist, speaker, podcaster bestselling author, and mental health advocate. Sherry takes a unique approach to processing grief, stress and trauma, using movement as an outlet for trapped emotions. In this episode, she's going to explain the connection between movement, the circus arts, and mental health. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] PF: Sherry, thank you so much for coming on the show. [00:00:44] SW: I am delighted to be here. Thanks for having me. [00:00:46] PF: This is a wonderful time to talk to you because it's mental health awareness month, and I love the approach that you're taking because it's very unique. You've created something called the circus of grief and joy, which immediately you have to stop and say, “What's that about?” Because you don't hear those words together. Can you start by explaining what that is? [00:01:07] SW: Yes. I am a clinical psychologist in my day job, and my side hustle is as an amateur circus artist. I began, really, my journey with circus in the aftermath of losing both my dad and my brother. I had a significant amount of grief, I was really trying to work that out, and I needed a really physical practice to help me feel alive, to help me get reconnected to joy. I found my way to the circus. It's been something that I have now loved offering to others who are in a similar place. Maybe it's anxiety, depression, grief, and needing a jumpstart in their bodies and in their mental health. [00:01:50] PF: When you first recommend that to people, when you start approaching people and say, “Okay, we're going to try circus movement.” Like, “I've been therapy.” [00:01:58] SW: That’s automatically what you think of? [00:02:01] PF: What is usually the response? [00:02:04] SW: I think, people think I'm crazy, but I'll take it. It is obviously, super unusual. But the thing that I really love about circus is it is a little bit of a dance with fear. One of the things that I like to train on is the flying trapeze. [00:02:21] PF: I love that. [00:02:22] SW: Isn't it beautiful? [00:02:22] PF: Yes. [00:02:23] SW: It's absolutely beautiful. But there's no question that it is an exercise in fear. For people who are already feeling some lack of control or unsteady in their inner worlds, if we can get them in their bodies and have them have this experience of mastery, and with flying trapeze, just climbing the ladder is like automatically, you're successful. That's hard. Then, jumping off the platform. You're in safety lines, you're pretty protected, but it is a really in the moment feedback loop that says, “You're alive, you're brave, you're capable, and look at you, having a new experience doing something you never thought was possible.” [00:03:09] PF: That's amazing. Let's talk about why movement is good for our mental health. Then let's go into your journey of how you discovered circus movement. Because we know movement is good, and we could take a walk, we could dance, and you took it next level. First question, why is movement so good for mental health? [00:03:27] SW: As you're alluding to, we have some great research around the value of a simple walk a couple times a week. For people who have mild depression is relatively equivalent to having a Prozac or an SSRI prescription. Simply getting moving helps our body in a variety of ways that helps our adrenaline. It helps us with a sense of easing tension by moving our muscles. There's lots of physiological components. I also think just psychologically, spiritually, it feels good to be in our bodies and moving and not stagnant. Not feel like we're stuck, we’re growing roots into our couch, and unable to activate or to shift our surroundings or our positioning. [00:04:15] PF: Yes, because that was one thing during the pandemic, that that people, that whole an object in motion stays in motion, and the object at rest stayed on the couch and binged watch Netflix. I've seen a lot of people since then that have had trouble jumpstarting themselves out of that mode of just being sitting and not moving. What kind of movements do you introduce to people? [00:04:41] SW: At the beginning, anything. I think, one other thing I will say about movement in mental health is especially with grief, trauma, when there's some shock to our system, our body absorbs that shock. Our body is held in tension. It's almost liked our muscles are clenched, and we can download that shock into our bodies and it gets stuck there. It stays with us. In that sense, any kind of movement is helpful walking, obviously, great. Cycling. I'm a big fan of yoga. Dance is really wonderful for our brains as well as our bodies. Anything that switches position, moves our muscles, moves things through, has lots of mental health benefit. I like circus in particular, because of the combination of physical athleticism and artistic expression. In circus, you're telling a story, often an emotionally significant story. The combination of going on a jog and writing in a journal, together in one action. [00:05:48] PF: Which is usually very hard to do. [00:05:51] SW: I find it difficult. Yes. [00:05:52] PF: When you take someone in, and said, someone's ready to explore this. Can you walk me through what that experience is going to be, and how you start introducing them, and what kind of movements we're talking about? [00:06:04] SW: Yes. I run these workshops called Circus for the Brokenhearted, and we usually begin with just some getting into our bodies. We want to get our breath going, develop a sense of comfort with our bodies, and also understand the why, right? Why would we use this kind of movement to help soothe our souls? We try to get that mind-body connection on board right at the beginning of the day. We do that with discussion, with some simple practices that get us in our bodies. Then, it depends a little bit on which workshop we're doing, but it can be anything from aerial fabrics, the silks. If you've seen Cirque du Soleil and the people rolling down the fabric suspended from the ceiling. Those are beautiful and fun. I also have a workshop coming up in August, that's flying trapeze as well as circus riding on horses. Most people are thinking, “I could never do that.” But I promise you could do that. [00:07:01] PF: How? Because performers have trained for years to do those things. How do you take someone through a workshop and teach them those steps? [00:07:10] SW: Yes. I mean, there's these wonderful, amazing things called safety harnesses. On the trapeze, for example, you are wearing a harness around your body, and you got someone attached to safety lines all the time. I've worked with kids on the flying trapeze or in aerial acts that are six, seven, eight. I've also had the privilege of hosting people at age 80, who've come to trapeze. [00:07:35] PF: Really? [00:07:35] SW: It's possible, obviously, with really careful coaching and great safety equipment. [00:07:42] PF: Right. Oftentimes with grief, we hear, “Well, it just takes time.” We think that time is going to heal that. As you mentioned that grief gets lodged in us, how does not just letting time pass? How does encountering that grief and incorporating movement start dislodging it? [00:08:04] SW: I think when we're in grief, especially a grief after the death of someone, it can feel like we are also living in the shadowy land at death. I think a lot of people have struggled getting out of bed. You're just almost frozen. Big movement connects us to our aliveness. We feel the movement in our bodies. We feel our breath. That sense of after you've climbed a mountain or done something significant, you want to throw your arms in the air and say, “I'm alive.” That's what some of these practices can offer. It's a little bit of a jumpstart or a shock to the system, but in a positive way. The practice of aliveness, I think, is really important. It doesn't mean that it makes grief go faster, but I think it can give us a different relationship with our grief, because we're expressing our grief, and we can hold our grief from the place of also feeling very much alive. [00:09:04] PF: When people do this, you talked about we're telling a story. How do they go about telling their story with movement? Because every story is different. [00:09:12] SW: Yes, this is a little bit of difficult one to describe verbally, but I do have a TED talk called why a grieving psychologist joined the circus, where you can see it visually. [00:09:22] PF: We'll make sure we’ll put a link to that. We'll put a link to that on the landing page to make sure everybody can go check that out. [00:09:29] SW: Because grief is so many things, right? Elisabeth Kübler-Ross gave us the stages of grief, which of course don't work meat stages, and they don't go in a stepwise order. But she did give us this gift of understanding that grief is more than one emotion. If you think about sad, what does sad look like or feel like in your body. Maybe you're hunched over. Maybe your head is down. You're restricted. You're small. But grief is also anger or bargaining or there's a fierceness to grief. That might be a clenched fist. Maybe you're staring up at the sky, maybe wanting to yell at God, or having a different expression in your body. When we give license to ourselves to tell a story, to weave together some different emotions and say, “When I first heard this news, I was horrified. I was sad, I fell down. Then, I got up and I was angry. Then, I sought comfort and I looked for someone to hold or to hold me.” You can tell a story like that in a few simple body postures, in a few minutes, and it's pretty powerful. [00:10:38] PF: Let's talk about your story for a moment and how movement started to change your perception of grief. [00:10:47] SW: Yes. I came to this work really, as a psychologist first. I worked extensively with people who had PTSD, trauma related distress, and grief is often included in that. I found those hitting the edges of what felt like could meaningfully be accomplished just by talk therapy. That's not to disparage talk therapy. I believe in it. I practice it. I'm trained in it. I think it's really important. But there are also these places where I think it's utility maybe hits a little bit of an edge point. I trained to be a yoga teacher so that I could teach yoga in my clinic to people who have PTSD, because the breath of yoga, the movement of yoga, even the powerful warrior positions, I thought would be really helpful to my patients. That was in the back of my head. Then, my father was diagnosed with cancer, and we had 18 months from his diagnosis to when he died. Then, right alongside my father's illness, my brother who had long struggled with alcohol use and some depression, he went down this parallel trajectory of really struggling with his addiction, going to treatment, relapsing treatment, relapsing. People who've loved or experienced addiction – people who've loved some with addiction, or have experienced addiction themselves will be familiar with that story, unfortunately. But he lost his battle with addiction and depression six months to the day after my dad died. Part of my brother's story, I think, was also some complicated grief about how to live in a world without my dad. I was pretty devastated. I needed to find my way back to aliveness in the context of so much loss and feeling like I didn't have a family anymore. I found a circus troupe. [00:12:41] PF: How did that strike you? How did it come to you that that was what you needed? Because I think that's what's so interesting about you and your approach. It's like, “Huh, just wouldn't have thought of that.” [00:12:53] SW: I wish I'd had some divine word from above that was like, “You. You go to the circus.” But of course, that wasn't like that. I ended up accidentally in an aerial yoga class, which is where they use the fabric to support your yoga stretching, pretty common. I was like, “This is cool. I dig this.” Then, I saw some people doing more acrobatic, aerial. I was like, “I wonder if I could do that.” I was 40 when I encountered this practice. I have no dance background. I have no – very limited gymnastics background. It's not like I was a college gymnast, and was like, “Oh, I'll just take my gymnastics to the sky.” This is something that's really been cultivated in me as an adult, because I had one spark of loving it and was like, “I think I'll just do this more and more and more.” [00:13:46] PF: That is so incredible. Then, as you begin to offer it to people, what kind of changes did you see in your clients when they began participating in this? [00:13:55] SW: I think, the lightness. I mean, I think the overwhelming feeling is a sense of I didn't think I can do that and then I did. And, “Oh, my goodness, what else might be possible? What kind of possibility exists in the world if I, as a 40 something, could figure out how to spin upside down on a trapeze?” I think it brings a little bit of mischief. I think it brings some joy. I also think for many people, because of the way that we train in aerial arts, it's a team effort. You got a coach. You got somebody holding on to you, and so it takes a lot of trust to take a risk. I think when that happens, when people go through that, they are really encouraged by the provision of other helpful people around them. They're not alone. [00:14:49] PF: That can be something that's really missing after the loss of someone, because everyone's there when the loss first happens, and then they go on with their lives. Oftentimes, we feel abandoned in our grief. How important is that touch, that bond that they develop with others? [00:15:07] SW: I think that is extraordinarily important to not feel alone in your grief. Because it is a lonely process, right? Your grief about the one that you loved is going to be different than your sister or your brother or your mother. Even people who are living in the same story feel it differently. It weighs on them differently. But the ability to be alone in your experience, but in the presence of supportive others is something that feels pretty magical. They don't have to know what you know, or feel what you feel, but they can be there and be helpful. Circus is a lived reality of that. [00:15:45] PF: When someone decides to do this, do they just do one class? Do they – what's the process? Because like grief, it's an ongoing thing. You don't take care of it on one day, and then it goes away. What happens? What's the evolution of this? [00:16:00] SW: It can look different for different folks. I do a couple day long workshops where people fly in from all over the place. I'm based in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in Minnesota. People come and have an experience, and maybe they never do circus again. That's okay. But maybe they have a moment of that thing that I described of like, “I didn't think I could do that, and look, I did it and I'm proud of myself and I feel alive.” Other people, this becomes a practice. It becomes like a yoga practice, or like any other athletic endeavor, or hobby that is woven into your life. I'm grateful to know a lot of circus artists into their 50s, 60s, 70s who are still active in their art. [00:16:42] PF: That is absolutely amazing. It's great for grief. Can you talk about in terms of anxiety, depression, other types of mental anxiety that we have? How does movement, and particularly, circus movement change all that? [00:16:59] SW: Yes. I think, when I think about depression, broadly speaking, there's a need for that spark of awake to like, get moving, get going. Depression numbs out all of our sensation, it diminishes our capacity for pleasure. It makes food not taste good, sex be uninteresting, sleep not restful. So, when we're engaging in an activity that heightens our senses, we can return to a sense, even if it's just for a short time of like, “Maybe this is fantastic, or maybe it's horrible. I don't know, but I'm feeling something.” That's a baby step. I think that's an important experience for people trapped in depression. [00:17:48] PF: That's interesting. I do want to talk about anxiety next. But that is so interesting, because I know a lot of people who are still having trouble shaking off some of the stuff that has happened the last three years, it's just been – there's a bit of – [00:18:01] SW: There’s a lot of stuff. [00:18:02] PF: We’ve been through a lot. It's a difficult thing. They feel like – they'll say things like, “I shouldn't still feel this way. But I do. I should be able to just pick up and go back and I can't.” How does that help change their perception? [00:18:21] SW: I think the reality is, there's no going back after grief, trauma, depression, the world in crisis. There's only a going forward. When we are in movement, we are literally in movement, physically, maybe spiritually, maybe psychologically. We experience that this moment is different than the last moment is different than the next moment. The practice of movement period, I think, is a really helpful reminder that we can't go back to some static belief about how things used to be. We adapt. The thing that I love about movement is that although this is not perfectly true, it's mostly true. One of the things that we have most control over is our own bodies, right? I can choose to move my arm. I can choose to kick my leg. I'm choosing what I do with my own body and that is, of itself, I think, this very profoundly empowered thing that says, with this, with this thing, with this entity, I'm mostly in charge. The world can be spinning in chaos around me, but I can be in my own breath, and I can decide to make my breath slower or faster. I can decide to move my feet or hold still. It's very simple, but it's also, I think, pretty radical to counter a world that feels very out of control, with a body that we can choose to use in the way that we wish. [00:19:56] PF: It's such a great reminder to ourselves that we do have some control over what's going on with us. What about anxiety? Because that's the flip side of depression and feels much different, feels very different. What does movement do in those cases? [00:20:13] SW: I think, if depression is wake up, anxiety is like calm down. Come back down. Come back down to internal homeostasis, right? There, I think, is probably no better intervention for anxiety than breath. Our ability to tap into our vagus nerve, which is the nerve that runs from the back of our brain all the way down, our spinal cord has connection points in almost all of our major organs, and that is the part of us that is the calm down mechanism. It's the parasympathetic activation in our bodies, where we calm down after we've been upset. If we can have a relationship with breath, where we can use our breath to override our anxious mind, our mind that's going in circles, or spinning like a hamster wheel. Our breath can be the process that slows that down. When we're in movement, if we're in movement mindfully, we're breathing intentionally. Yoga is a classic, wonderful example of this. You inhale with a certain movement, you exhale with a certain movement. You pair movement and breath in such a way that your breath can't get out of control. It's almost – well, it's very difficult to be in deep anxiety, have your mind going haywire, and also have calm, steady, consistent breath. [00:21:30] PF: Right. It's very essential for movement to be able to have that breath. That's terrific. I love your approach to this. What else are we going to see coming from you? We're going to tell people how they can find you and how they can find more about what you've done and enjoy your TED Talk. But what are you going to work on next? Because this is a great, groundbreaking way to approach therapy. [00:21:54] SW: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that. That's great affirmation, because sometimes it's a struggle, right? People are like, “What? You do what?” As I mentioned, this summer, I'm hosting a few different Circus for the Brokenhearted workshops. People can visit my website, touchingtwo worlds.com for more information about that work, and Touching Two Worlds is the name of my book, which is where I really have explored these ideas of how to live in the world of joy and aliveness right alongside living in a world of grief, or illness, or death, or hardship. I hope in my future, I have got more books ahead of me and more circus shenanigans. I also do a keynote talk where I talk about burnout, I talk about mental health, and I bring my dear friend Lynn who's an acrobat. I speak and she does handstands, and it's pretty fun. [00:22:46] PF: Oh, lovely. I love that. Well, this is fun. I want to keep up with what you're doing, because you have some – because you have a lot to teach us and a lot to offer. As we let you go, what is the one thing that you hope people really take away from this conversation and really stick with them tonight? [00:23:02] SW: I love the word possibility. I think if we, in our grief, in our depression, in our hardship, can stay open to possibility, the possibility of change, the possibility of feeling different, then we've got an opening for healing and an opening for hope. [00:23:21] PF: I can't think of a better way to wrap this up. Sherry, thank you. It has been such a pleasure to spend time with you today. [00:23:26] PF: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:32] PF: That was Dr. Sherry Walling, talking about how the circus arts can improve our mental health. If you'd like to follow Sherry on social media, download a free chapter of her book, or learn more about her circus of grief and joy workshops, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure and stop by the Live Happy Store to take advantage of our spring special where you can get 25% off storewide just by entering the code Spring 25. Be sure to check out our selection of graphic t-shirts so you can share your positive message everywhere you go. That is all we have time for today. Well 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: Navigating the Parenting Map With Dr. Shefali [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 416 of Live Happy Now. Mother's Day is just around the corner, and whether you have one, are one, or hope to be one, you don't want to miss today's conversation. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week I'm talking with Dr. Shefali, a New York Times bestselling author who blends Western psychology with Eastern philosophy to create a groundbreaking approach that she calls conscious parenting. In this episode, she shares her insights on why most of what we think about parenting is wrong, and how we can all become more conscious, not just as parents, but in all our relationships. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Dr. Shefali, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:47] DS: I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. [00:00:48] PF: Well, I could think of no one better to have for our Mother's Day episode. Because parenting is your jam, and what I think is so interesting, you're so respected for your blend of Western psychology and Eastern philosophy. How do you think that's given you a different kind of insight into parenting? [00:01:08] DS: I think Eastern philosophy is so rich in wisdom-based technique of how to manage Western based stresses. When I say Western, I just mean a westernized way of thinking, which has been so overly emphatic about competition, and striving, and achievement, and domination, which have gotten us great advancements, but they create high cortisol in us. Eastern spirituality is such an amazing antidote to create that presence, that slowing down, coming into the inevitable impermanence of life, reminding us that that constant striving, and achievement, and competition that we're putting our children through and ourselves through, is not the pathway to wellbeing. Eastern spirituality teaches us a direct pathway to wellbeing. So, when I talk to my clients, I understand the Western obsession with power. But then I teach them how to create an antidote to that, to bring about greater wellbeing. [00:02:24] PF: Wellbeing is so important. We know that it's such a huge indicator for success, but we're not taught that. How difficult is it for parents to make that adjustment? Because you still have to live in this western world, and you're adopting a different kind of mindset than most of the people around you. [00:02:44] DS: Yes. But the predominant mentality is this competition, domination, achievement mentality, which is why most of us are medicated, and obese, and diseased, and unhappy. Obviously, that is not the way to wellbeing. How to create that balance? Or I mean, there's no utopic balance, anyway. But how to create that wisdom, where you are part of this world. Listen, I'm super successful, but there is a way to live in that successful driven world, success driven world, without being eaten alive by it, and without making our children feel eaten alive by it. That's why I'm successful is, because I teach people, yes, you can live in this world. But you got to live in this world with sanity. I think we've become a little bit insane in striving for this power, and competition, and success. [00:03:43] PF: I agree with you. I think we're seeing so many of the effects that play out with the anxiety of children and young adults now who have grown up in this environment. You have such tremendous insights. What made you decide to apply that to family and parenting? Because as I read your works, and I read more about you, it’s like, you could help us in every area of our lives. Why parenting and family? [00:04:10] DS: I am trying to help people in every area of their lives, but they're so resistant. I finally said, “Okay, at least help your children. You don't want to help yourself, and you're so messed up in your own obsessions.” Maybe, I thought to myself, that if I could show people how badly they are damaged from their childhood, and help them deal with their children, maybe the big fat ego will burst, and that's how I actually came to it, was like, “Maybe, you’ll bloody listen to me if I show you in terms of your own childhood, and in terms of children”, and that's what struck a chord. That's one reason. But the other reason really, is that because everything really starts with the early parent child dynamic. Okay, we are messed up. We got screwed by our parents. Fine. But let's not do this to our children. I really make a plea to parents. Please, yes, you are messed up. Yes, your parents weren't conscious. But I'm giving you a way to unravel your childhood in a way that doesn't pass on to your children and helps your children become who you could never be. I think, parents hear that, because they hear my begging and my pleading. They remember their own pain from childhood. Then, they finally acquiesce and go, “Okay, we don't want to pass this on to our children.” But let me tell you, it is still hard for me to do, because it's such a deep conditioning. I mean, I'm banging my head on the wall, getting parents to see their own ego, because it's so difficult for us humans. We are good at complaining about other people's ego, but it's very hard to see our own. [00:05:58] PF: Yes. We live in a world that's becoming more and more egocentric, because of things like social media. It turns it inward, those spotlights on us, instead of looking outward, so much of the time. What really burst you on the scene was your book, The Conscious Parent. I know other things we're going to talk about build on that. I guess for a baseline, let's talk about what you mean by conscious parenting. [00:06:21] DS: To understand conscious parenting, you have to first understand that the predominant way we were all raised is the traditional parenting model. That model was based on hierarchy of the parent. The parent knows best. Control, shame, fear, guilt, punishment. That's how we were raised. The parent was glorified in their authority and superiority. If you're a parent out there, a mother right now, listening, you need to understand you were raised with this attitude that you know best, that you're supposed to know best, that you're supposed to control your children, and you're supposed to raise perfect, super happy, super successful children. First, you have to own that as a parent. “Yes, dammit, I was raised like that. Yes, I think my child belongs to me. Wow. Yes, she's right.” First, we have to agree on that. Otherwise, we cannot agree on the second part, which is what is conscious parenting. Conscious parenting is for the parent to realize that they're coming to the dynamic with their children full of their own parental expectations. They believe good parenting is to control the child. Conscious parenting is for the parent to become aware of that, to realize that that is complete unconsciousness. That they need to raise themselves. They need to heal themselves. They need to stop using their children to fill their own inner longing. They need to stop asking their children to be happy, because that makes them happy, or be successful, because that makes them feel good about themselves. And begin to raise their children as the children need to be raised. Yes, maybe your child will be a gardener. Maybe your child will be a baker. Maybe your child will be a mechanic and nobody's child will be an Olympian. Yes, maybe so. That is completely okay. See, we're not okay with that. [00:08:20] PF: What's so interesting is if you ask a parent, when they have a child, it's like, “What do you want for your child?” They’re like, “I just want them to be happy.” That's what an answer we hear a lot. But then the actions would tell us otherwise, because children are being, in many times, pushed into activities or academics that they're not even interested in. [00:08:39] DS: Yes. I'm not talking about this [inaudible 00:08:41] pleasure that we all have to indulge in. But I tell parents, you cannot ask for your children to be happy, because that's coming from your idea of what happiness is. Why should they be happy? They're allowed to be sad. They're allowed to be angry. See, we were not allowed our big emotions, so it's very frustrating for us when we see our children's big emotions, even though our children are being human. This whole idea of I want anything from anybody is really our own ego talking. Right? We can say, “I want this for myself.” We can't say I want somebody else to be happy. Why? They can be whatever they want to be. We are so into this controlling mindset, that we don't even realize how far reaching and deep this mindset of control is and we have to stop. Read my books and examine our need for control in a very deep way. Not a superficial way. [00:09:42] PF: That’s so interesting, because your books have done wonderous things for people. Incredible. That has all led to your new book, The Parenting Map, and this one, you really smashed toxic patterns. You look about how to create authentic connections. Tell us how this book came about. You're just building on everything you've already created. [00:10:01] DS: Yes. I always say after every parenting book that it will be my last. But really, Paula, you can catch me on it, it's my last parenting book. Because the other books were the what and the why, because I so needed to explain the what and the why, because people didn't understand. This one is the how. So, this one is the 20-step how to become a conscious parent. If anyone out there listening, is intrigued by my philosophy, and wants to dare, it's a daring task to be a conscious parent, and dares to be conscious. They can pick up my book, The Parenting Map. It's 20 easy steps with exercises. Listen, we have to take parenting more seriously than we are, because we are not realizing how toxic our current parenting practices are. Then, we want happy children. Then, we want secure children. Then, we want leaders, when we are the most toxic influences often in our children's lives. So, if you're a parent listening, and you want to be brave to change the parenting in your home, to become an enlightened parent, then my book will help you. I give practice exercises. We have to practice. My child is 20 years old, I am still practicing every day. It's something we have to cultivate. It's not something that we are born knowing how to do. [00:11:26] PF: We think that we should. We think, I was raised. I was a child. I know how to be a child, so I know how to raise a child. Where does that mindset come from that, like, we just are all equipped to do it? [00:11:37] DS: From extreme ignorance and stupidity. Really, because – and our ego, right? Our ego is so ignorant that it thinks it's fine. It's such blasphemy that we need to learn how to take care of – if you want to become a dog groomer, we need to pass a test, a license. If we need to drive a damn car, we have to take tests and licenses. Why do we think that we need to know and should know how to raise a child that we've never met? Never taken a psychology course. Because you know why? Parents are infused on steroids with this grand ego, that these people belong to me, and because they come from me, I will own the hell out of them. It's ownership. It’s blind, absolute control. It's like saying, “I married you. I know you, and now you belong to me.” Right? But it's even more crazy, because I didn't even court this child. The child didn't even have a choice. Now, I'm owning this child. It's arrogance. It's blind stupidity and arrogance that allows us to think that we should know it, because they come from us. See, we mistake biology for psychology. Just because they biologically come from us, doesn't mean we psychologically know who they are. We need to learn. We need to become humble. No one wants to be humble. I saw in my own parenting how arrogant I was. I was brought to my knees. That's why I did this whole work. Because I was like, “Wow, you are so not good at this. Clueless.” I was humble enough to say I'm clueless. See, we're so arrogant we don't want to say we are clueless. [00:13:14] PF: Right. I think it's hard for people to acknowledge like, I don't feel I'm very good at this, and I don't feel like I'm in my element. [00:13:22] DS: But why is it so hard? Because we have a damn big ego. We should be like, off the bat. I don't know what to do. I remember when the nurse left my room, like she just left the room, and I was like, “Please come back. Don't leave me with this” – [00:13:35] PF: With this little person. I don't know what to do. [00:13:38] DS: I was happy to see I didn't know because I was not so proud. See, it's this false pride. We do not know what we're doing. Nobody knows what they're doing, including our parents who told us we should know what we're doing. They are the culprit. Let's blame them. Let's admit we don't know what we're doing. [00:13:59] PF: How does it change things when people are brought to their knees, as you say, and they start recognizing I do have these toxic patterns and what I'm doing isn't working. When they're able to acquiesce to that and accept that, how does it start changing their parenting mindset? [00:14:15] DS: Oh, my God. It's a huge floodgate of first, humility. Then, you begin to shut up. You stop blaming your child. Do you know what a huge paradigm shift that is, just you becoming aware that it's you? You won't open your mouth with that much grandiosity anymore. You'll be like, “Oh, my goodness. Let me learn. Let me stop. Let me observe.” The other day, a parent came to me and said, “Dr. Shefali, where is the fine line between mentoring my kid because I want to coach them and pushing them?” I said both of them are wrong. How about ask me where is the line between observing my child and observing them some more, and learning from them, and learning from them some more?” You see, we just refuse to believe we should be the students as much as we should be the teachers. I'm not saying don't be the teacher, but be the student too. Can you learn from your child? So, this humility opens a floodgate of wisdom, and it just takes you off the pedestal. Your children feel it, your children approach you like a human being, and now they're willing to learn. No one wants to learn from a dictator. [00:15:33] PF: Right. That's so interesting. You also talk about how our childhood wounds were playing out in our parenting role. Is that just our unresolved trauma that we end up bringing into our parenting? Then, what is that doing to our children? [00:15:51] DS: Yes, yes, and yes. So, in my book, The Parenting Map, the second colored part of the book is all about breaking your parenting paradigms and patterns by recognizing your ego faces. Once you begin to become aware of how your ego is showing up from your childhood, then you begin to realize, “Wow, I learned this from my dad. I'm doing the same thing to my child and it's so toxic. And my child is feeling unheard, and unseen, and unworthy. I'm creating low self-esteem. Do I want to keep doing this? Or do I want to break my pattern?” I teach people, step by step, how to break their childhood patterns. [00:16:34] PF: This affects your relationship with your child, obviously. But how does it change relationships between partners, between spouses, as they break down some of these walls? [00:16:44] DS: Because you become aware of your own ego, as I show you in the book, now you have awareness of your partners and your parent’s ego, and you begin to see how they have developed their ego phases. You have compassion. It doesn't mean you need to stay, but you can at least have compassion, and realize it's not personal. This just creates so much compassion in the world, so much upliftment in the world, so much radiance in the world, rather than bickering, and fighting, and domination in the world. [00:17:17] PF: Have you seen a change the children of the people that you work with? [00:17:22] DS: Well, my goodness, parents come and tell me, “My child just said to me to thank Dr. Shefali.” Or they say, “Go to Dr. Shefali. Read more about her books.” They get it. They're like, “Do you see? Do you see? Finally, do you hear? I've been telling you all this time, mom, and you haven't heard me. And now you're listening to Dr. Shefali.” I actually used to keep my own teachings away from my daughter, because she would kill me. She’ll be like, “You need to listen to you more.” But I do tell my daughter, and she'd be like, “Mom, you're such a hypocrite. You don't listen to Dr. Shefali.” She killed me. She'd be like, “See, you, yourself don't listen to yourself.” But what I'm trying to say is that children feel so heard and they feel so excited and they feel so happy and they flourish. My goodness. That's why my work has become so popular is because parents see the effect. I get feedback all the time. It makes me so happy. I know what I'm saying works, because I've seen it work over and over again. [00:18:30] PF: When we talk about parenting and talk about it on this level, we tend to think about young children. So, what about if you're a parent of a teenager or even a young adult? Or if you're a grandparent? Is this still going to apply to you? Can you still change your ways? [00:18:45] DS: Of course. You can always be a better human. You can always break your patterns. You can always show up differently. I'm telling you, my daughter's 20 and I'm doing it so much better today than I did 10 years ago. There's no end to this growth. But you have to be willing to want to show a better. Who doesn't want a better, more enlightened grandmother? I would love that. [00:19:08] PF: That’s a great point. [00:19:09] DS: I would love my grandmother to come right now and tell me, “I can see your mother is writing you for your grades, or writing you for your beauty, or writing you for your food, and this is how I want you to look at it, and give me an enlightened perspective.” Who doesn't need a more enlightened perspective? [00:19:26] PF: I love that. You've given us such a great body of work to build our lives on and to really recreate the idea of parenting. What is it with The Parenting Map that you most hope happens for people? [00:19:37] DS: It's just my plea and my offering to let's do this work to end generational patterns of unconsciousness and toxicity, and make it different for our children. [00:19:49] PF: What kind of world is that going to create? What is that going to look like as opposed to now? [00:19:53] DS: Well, it'll take a long time, but it's person to person, human to human. It will start creating less suffering. Imagine, on every block, one house does conscious parenting. That can eventually become a town, right? Then, it can become a city. Then, it can become a nation. But it starts with this one parent at a time. I've been doing this way before Instagram came, and way before podcast, horse spreading this message, one barren at a time. Now, it's become a movement. Now, conscious parenting is out there. That's what I need. I need it to become like more, so that we have more enlightened parents and children feel safe to be children. What an amazing thing that would be. [00:20:35] PF: I love it. Dr. Shefali. We have so much to learn from you. Thank you for spending your time with me today and I look forward to hearing more from you. [00:20:43] DS: Thank you so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:20:49] PF: That was Dr. Shefali, talking about conscious parenting. If you'd like to follow Dr. Shefali on social media, learn more about her books, or discover how you can get free recordings of her Parenting Summit, and the Parent Reboot Workshop, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure and stop by the Live Happy Store to take advantage of our spring special where you can get 25% off storewide just by entering the code Spring 25. That is all we have time for today. Well 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: Practicing Digital Wellness With Amy Blankson [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 415 of Live Happy Now. Our digital lifestyles often don't seem to support our wellbeing. But this week's guest is going to tell us how we can change it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I am sitting down with Amy Blankson, CEO and co-founder of the Digital Wellness Institute. Amy has made it her mission to cultivate and wellbeing in a digital era. On May 5th, Digital Wellness Day, she is unveiling the Digital Wellness University and Digitally Well School to help create healthier digital cultures at school, work, and home. This week, she's here to share some of her strategies to improve our digital wellness. [EPISODE]   [0:00:45] PF: Amy, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [0:00:48] AB: So happy to be here. Thanks for having me, Paula. [0:00:51] PF: It has been way too long since we talked and I'm very, very happy to be able to sit down with you again. [0:00:56] AB: Yes, this is always one of my favorite shows to get to join in. So thank you. [0:01:01] PF: Well, you have something fantastic going on with Digital Wellness Day, and I think, we'll start with the baseline. Tell us what digital wellness means. [0:01:10] AB: Digital wellness is a bit of a foreign term for a lot of people. We know digital, we know wellness, but you put them together, and suddenly, it's confusing. Fortunately, I think that the world has been more tuned in to really addressing some of the needs of mental health, physical health, burnout that we're seeing all across the globe. As part of that, digital wellness is becoming a more frequently talked about topic. Digital wellness is really looking at how technology is impacting our lives for the better and for the worse, and trying to optimize our behaviors to really find a better sense of balance for greater happiness. We know that if we are overusing our tech, it makes us less happy. If we're not using tech, we feel isolated sometimes from really important parts of the world. What we're trying to do is find that really sweet spot for what we call digital flourishing, that space where you feel like you're at your best self, and you're in control of your tech, not the other way around. [0:02:08] PF: That's so difficult to achieve, because I think we all have those moments where we really consider throwing our phone out the window. But then we're like, we realized we don't know anybody's phone number anymore and it would be a bad thing to do. But we just hit that breaking point with our technology. First of all, how did you start discovering how we can find this holy grail called digital wellness? [0:02:29] AB: Well, it actually started – it's been a long journey in this field of happiness, and looking at different factors, and cycles that affects human happiness. Back when we started GoodThink back in 2006, we were really responding to economic distress at that time. It was, how do I find happiness when the economy is so up in the air. Then, that morphed over time to – well, robots take my job. Then it became, how do I find happiness in the midst of the pandemic, and then post-pandemic. What I do when I'm speaking to audiences, I do a lot of listening, but before and after too the pain points that people are going through. I really heard loud and clear that there was a pain point around technology, and happiness, and an uncertainty about the future, and fear about the future, to be honest. I started doing research in this field with the assumption and the hypothesis that our tech was making us less happy. As I started writing, the research didn't confirm what I actually believed about tech at the time. That was – it wasn't the tech making us less happy, it was the way we were using tech that was making us less happy, that tech itself is not an animate character that has any sort of preferences. It is designed in certain ways that prey upon our human tendencies to need to check in or fear of missing out. But truly, it comes back to us as humans, being in control of our own behaviors and habits, which comes back to a sense of awareness. We know when we are in control, we are happier because we have more time to do the things that we really want to do and be the people we want to be. We want to be more connected. We want to be able to look people in the eyes. We want to feel productive at the end of the day and we don't want to be overwhelmed. These things are topics that I started writing on. I changed the thrust of my book to really work on human agency as a message that we can cocreate the future of happiness together if we are future-focused. Let's quit bemoaning the fact that we no longer have landlines because truly, cell phones make a lot of sense. They do and they're everywhere. I think that that will be the future. But instead, let's look ahead and say, "Okay. Knowing that this is in our path, what are we going to do to optimize the world? What do we need to put in place right now today to set ourselves up for success for future generations? I think that we have a lot of power. Sometimes we just forget how much power we have to do that. [0:05:01] PF: Does it change generationally? Is the way that technology stresses us out or makes us happy change with, say, Gen Z to Baby Boomer? [0:05:11] AB: I think our tolerance for tech changes based on generations. But I think the issues and the struggles that we're facing are relevant from literally one years old to 101. That we are using tech in different ways, different apps, different functionalities. But I have also found that the capacity to handle longer periods of tech is much more fluid for digital natives and it's less threatening. We know, and of course, in positive psychology, that anything that feels threatening, that spikes, our cortisol levels to go up. That actually decreases our ability to handle tech for long periods of time. For instance, my mother will be on tech for maybe 30 minutes, and get completely stressed out by it. That is her max limit. Whereas somebody who is younger, and as a tech help desk agent who's used to working on devices for long periods of time, and has really positive habits outside of time that they're working on tech, then they could actually handle up to 12 hours. This depends on your behaviors, your habits that you wrap it around yourself to be able to see how long we can respond to it. What point is a point of diminishing return for you? [0:06:27] PF: That's really interesting. Is that something that, say, employers or teachers should be aware of as they're dealing with people that we don't all have the same tolerance for technology. [0:06:38] AB: We should absolutely be addressing this, and I think we are just at the cusp of this conversation within HR departments and wellbeing departments. Because truthfully, we haven't been really tracking the impact of tech on wellness. There's been a huge investment in wellness throughout the pandemic, from employers, from gym memberships, meditation apps, stipends to spruce up your home environment. But I think we're missing the mark on this particular conversation, because we're not actually opening up to talk about how our boundaries have shifted dramatically as a society. Since the pandemic started, the amount of time we're spending on devices has gone up by 30%. We all anticipated that would go back down after we shifted back to hybrid work or back to in-person work. In fact, the levels have actually stayed consistent and even risen just a little bit.   [0:07:30] PF: Really?   [0:07:31] AB: That means, on average, that our dear teenagers are now spending an average of eight hours a day on devices. As adults, we're spending about five to six hours. Some of the heavy tech users are up to 17 hours on average. That's on average.   [0:07:48] PF: How is that even possible?   [0:07:49] AB: Which brings us a lot of questions. [0:07:51] PF: Yes. How is that even possible? Like how can you spend that much time on technology? [0:07:55] AB: I think that, at first, it sounds like a lot. Then all of a sudden, you think about all the times that we're carrying our devices in our back pocket, we're bringing them to the dinner table, we wake up to our alarm clock set on our phone, we're multitasking all day long. Even when we go to the movies, some people have their devices with them and are checking their devices in the movie. All of a sudden, that makes sense that every waking minute, we have devices with us. That's a big switch from a few years ago when we use them occasionally, or strategically, or when we were at work. Now, our lives are so blended that they've literally become attached at the hip. [0:08:35] PF: Yes. Yes. With us being so connected to our phones, what is that doing to us? Because you know, to your point, there are very good uses for it. Some of the time when we talk about the time spent online. Well, teenagers and younger users are also using that instead of going to a library. They're looking up, they're doing research, they're doing things like that. We have a niece who's 18, and she spends a lot of time on her phone, but she is not texting, she's not playing games. It's just that's where she does her research and that's how it is. But what does it do when we are always on our phones? What's the price that we're paying for that? [0:09:13] AB: That's such a good question. I mean, as an individual, I don't have a specific price to tell you. But as an employee, we know that the average cost and retention recruitment is about $6,700 per employee per year. That's burnout, replacement, and recruitment retention. As individuals, I think the effects of that we're feeling are back pain, eye strain, text thumb, text neck is an actual indication of overuse of technology. But we are also seeing a lot of mental health issues that are emerging, and they become intertwined with other habits that are happening in life. In many ways, the tech is exacerbating the underlying issues that are already there. Things like feeling socially isolated or feeling like you're overwhelmed in general, having a full inbox doesn't help with that, right? I's hard to tease out the exact effect and the impact. But I think that from an inherent perspective of an individual who's living in this time, the fact that this is so widespread, and something that we can all relate to that feeling like we, "Oh my gosh, I left my phone at home. What if something bad happens?" or "I can't get a hold of so on. I don't know what's going to happen. I don't remember their cell phone number." These are things that cause us stress all day long. I think that we are feeling the effects and really needing to dial down our use to really what's most important for us. That's what Digital Wellness Day is all about. This is the big holiday, we're coming up to celebrating on May 5th. It's our fourth annual digital wellness day. The whole idea is just pause for anything, any time period from five minutes, to five hours, to stop and think about how you're using tech. We call it practicing the pause. The idea is just to step back from your devices and think about when you're using them, why you're using them, where you're using them, how you're using them, and with whom you're using them. Because a lot of times, we default to certain behaviors, we find actually that we pick up our phone 150 times a day. Half of those times, nobody has texted us or called us or email us. We're just checking to see if we were needed. So 50% of the time, we don't need to be on our devices, but we feel like we do. This is a moment to step back and say, "Okay. Am I getting unnecessary notifications? Am I trying to juggle too many apps and gadgets that maybe I don't need them right now, and stepping back to really focus on what are my goals, my priorities, my values that make me the happiest version of myself, and really realigning your priorities?" I think this is a constant process for us in this digital era, coming back to what is grounding us and who do we want to be going forward. [0:12:03] PF: Yes. That takes a lot of thought, it really does. Because we've become so trained by our phones, like we respond to the bullying. It's like, you can be in the middle of a conversation. It's like, "Oh, let me get that." You would never, if you're talking with someone face-to-face, and another human just came and interrupted you, and you wouldn't immediately shift your attention to them. You'd be like, "Excuse me, I'm having this conversation." Yet, when our device does, it will just shut the other person out and see what our phone wants. [0:12:31] AB: Exactly.   [0:12:32] PF: How do we retrain ourselves? I know that's part of what Digital Wellness Day is about. How do we start retraining ourselves? To your point, maybe cut down some of these notifications that we're getting? [0:12:44] AB: Absolutely. I always say it comes back to setting your aim. Awareness, intention and momentum. Awareness starts with looking around and seeing what's happening. That very dynamic you're talking about, something that in digital wellness, we call phubbing, which means phones snubbing. If you start paying attention today to the number of people who are phubbing each other, it will blow your mind. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It's that's pervasive. Sometimes we fall into the habit, because it seems like this is just what everyone is doing these days. Of course, it's okay to check your phone when it rings in the middle of a conversation, because you don't know who it is. It could be a spam call, or it could be your mother and you need to pick it up. One of the things, building awareness and then setting your intention. My intention is, when I have coffee with a friend, I turned my phone on Do Not Disturb, I tuck it in my back pocket or in a bag so that I can give my full attention to the person in front of me. Then, momentum is actually creating the habits that make it possible for you to do this easier in the future. For instance, one of the things I have been doing is telling people what I'm doing. Whether it's my team, or my family, I say, "Hey, I really want to do this together." I've been noticing there's a lot of phubbing, so let's make this something we work on together. That helps provide accountability and keeps making my job easier because self-regulation is hard. We need a lot of people around us, and we need a culture change, which is going to require a huge movement of really aware people to make that happen. [0:14:23] PF: With a generation that's been raised on digital, can that be done? Because they are so used to – they're so attached to their phones. How do you change it if it's ingrained in them? We see little kids who are using mom and dad's phone to play a game or do something like that. How do we change that? [0:14:42] AB: Oh my goodness. You hit on such a great point. Every time I speak to audiences about digital wellness, our mind immediately jumps to younger people, especially teenagers. Oh, those teenagers on their devices, right? There is definitely something there that we need to be paying attention to. Seventy-seven percent of parents are worried that their teens are overly addicted to devices. But interestingly, and that other 40% think their parents are also addicted to their devices. I actually have a lot of hope for the younger generation because they've been raised with language, and teaching in schools, and tools to help with digital boundaries. The group that I worry about the most are the 16 to 24 range, because – I can tell you this specifically, because my daughter was born in 2007, two months before the iPhone came out. [Inaudible 0:15:32] my daughter with the iPhone. I know that all of those who were born beyond her were born before pre-iPhone, and pre-boundaries. As they've been growing up, suddenly, they had free rein with the device, and then the boundaries were taken away. They think it's their right to be able to do whatever they want on their devices. Of course, we're seeing a lot of young people who are overusing devices. Fortunately, the younger they are, I feel like schools have taught them, "Hey, there's screen time limits. Let's be mindful. Let's do other things. There's a balance." That's great. I also worry about the older working populations right now, everyone above that 24-year range gap, because I think that they also struggle with trying to integrate this digital world, trying to be part of it, trying to be relevant and responsive. What I see with that group is that they're not being irresponsible, necessarily with tech, they're being hyper responsible. They feel like they have to get back to people so quickly. They feel like they have to juggle everything. I know it's stressful, because we know that the cortisol levels are rising. In this dynamic, I think we really need to pay attention to how can we support different generational needs, and really tune into how we can teach specifically to the troubles that they are facing? [0:16:54] PF: That makes so much sense. I know you're rolling out a couple things for digital wellness day that I want to talk about. But first, there's something that you said, I heard you speak and you talked about how it's not the amount of time you spend online, it's the quality of what you do offline. Talk about that. Because we know parents – people, we want a prescription, like how much time should I spend online? How much time should I allow my children to spend online? You have such a beautiful answer for this. Would you talk about that, please? [0:17:22] AB: I would be so happy to. This is my new soapbox, because the language for us in digital wellness has been dominated by the recommendations coming out of the American Academy of Pediatrics. It used to be one hour of entertainment screen related time was recommended for five years and older. Then, it was two hours, and then the pandemic came, then suddenly we're like, "Well, just don't be on devices all the time, okay?"   [0:17:45] PF: Twenty hours is fine. [0:17:46] AB: That's fine, we're good. Well, I think that what's happening now is that we are recognizing that there's not defined entertainment time and defined school time, it is all blended. So measuring the amount of time you're on screens is actually less useful than measuring how you feel when you're on devices, and measuring what you're doing when you're outside of time with devices. I feel passionately that we need to talk as well about, "Are you sleeping well? Are you journaling, and meditating, and hanging out with friends? Are you building up all of those offline habits that help you to be your best self when you're online? I think that's equally as important as the amount of screen time you're spending. If parents get locked into focusing on, "Well, here's your two hours of screen time. Now, you're done." Then the children are still eating junk food on the couch, just languishing. Then I'm not sure that we've actually helped them to thrive in the way that we really wanted them to. Thinking about what we're doing when we're online, what we're doing when they're offline, and supporting that with really positive habits all the way around. [0:18:56] PF: That is terrific. Digital Wellness Day, you give us a couple of things that you're presenting that are going to help us with all this talk about what you're introducing. [0:19:07] AB: Absolutely. We have a Digital Wellness Day toolkit that anybody can download for free if you want to hold your own event at your school, maybe in your community, maybe just with your family. There's a lot of ideas in this toolkit that can be downloaded at digitalwellnessday.com. That is complete with ideas as well for individuals who are thinking, "Okay. What am I going to do? When I step away from technology, what do I do?" It could be, go outside and take a walk, practice meditating, journal, do some reflection time with a friend. Lots of great ideas in this toolkit. We'll also be holding two special events on digital wellness day that I think you might want to tune into. One is a panel on digitally well schools and we'll be announcing the first ever digitally well university in the entire world, and introducing those individuals on the panel. We'll also have a panel for a digitally well companies. So we'll be announcing the first digitally well company as well. If you're looking for ideas either for how to implement digital wellness within a school setting, or within a company setting, that'll be a great opportunity to get some really tactical strategies for what that looks like. Otherwise, we actually want people to not be online and to maybe go have some time and space where they can just play and joy, feel like they are thriving and flourishing for the day. My hope is that you will go share the word with other people, encourage them to join you in celebrating Digital Wellness Day. Then, we'd love to hear about the experience. So we will be circulating survey as well to hear, what did you do on digital wellness day? What did you learn? Was it worth it? So that we can continue to iterate and make this day better. [0:20:45] PF: That's so fascinating. What does the university entail? Is it like ongoing course? What exactly are the details of that? [0:20:54] AB: The first Digitally Well University, I can now officially share, is going to be Virginia Tech. We've been working with them for the past several months, and they have taken phenomenal level of leadership on campus in order to introduce digital wellness as a topic to raise student health. They have done everything from having on-campus talks about digital wellness. They have PowerPoint slides that have been given to the faculty to play as screensavers while students are walking into the classroom. The dining halls are putting informational little packets on tables in the dining hall. They have residents, real-life teachers who are going to be talking about it with students within the dorm setting. It's not just one thing, it's really the fact that they have taken this to multiple different levels of the university, and tried to infuse digital wellness, and everything that they're doing. They even created spaces on campus that are designed to be a space where you can step away from your tech and just have a refresher. We really wanted to highlight them, and some of the practices they're doing on campus because we think that they're repeatable. That would be really wonderful for other universities and schools to pick up and make their own as well. [0:22:06] PF: Oh, that's terrific. Then, for companies, we'll talk about leaders, and bosses, managers. First, how can they set an example of being digitally well, and being more mindful of not only their own use, but what their employees might be going through? [0:22:24] AB: Absolutely. The first digitally well company in the world is going to be ATB. At ATB, they've done a lot of things within the company to build up digital wellness as a topic. They train the leaders, they appointed one of their chief people officers to be certified in digital wellness, who she then went and trained another manager in the organization who then took the concept of digital wellness to 80 different teams internally, where they completed communication charters to talk about how they were dialoguing within the organization and how they were establishing digital boundaries within their teams for communication. When is it okay to talk after hours, or what's happening on the weekends? How do you take a vacation, and feel like you don't have to plug in, which would be amazing. What do you do when your boss is the one who's creating the issue, and you're trying to figure out how to hold them accountable. They've created systems, and processes, policies that we're creating a white paper to document all of these wonderful things, how they implemented it, what did it look like, and then how can it be repeated as well? [0:23:30] PF: Oh, terrific. Yes. When that is ready, I want to have you back. I want to talk about that. Because I think everyone is affected by this, everyone is concerned with it. Then, so we've talked about the schools, we've talked about businesses. How about at home? What can we do because we're all struggling with it on some level? What can we do at home? How do we implement a digital wellness program in our own family? [0:23:54] AB: Like all great personal change, I think it starts with taking one tiny micro habit and focusing on that in our family. I have three young girls, they're 10, 13, and 16. I definitely understand the challenge of trying to negotiate school, working on projects in the living room, on your computers. Someone might have a TV on the room, someone might have their phone beside them. We found on the pandemic that we really hit a fever pitch of everyone being online trying to do everything. We made one simple rule. That was, that when somebody new walks into the room, everyone looks out from their device.   [0:24:32] PF: Oh, I love that.   [0:24:34] AB: Such a low bar. I mean, really, it was just like just acknowledge the other human being in the room was the basic rule. But it was a starting place, and I think that it set our intention, that other people are important, and it's something that we can all do whether you are a toddler or you are a senior citizen. Very simple. Another practice we have is that we try to keep all phones in the kitchen. Rather than having the children charge their devices in their room, we keep them at a central tech hub in the kitchen. Little things like this that I think can be simple actions that signal. The other important thing that I do as mother, which I think is an important role too is that, when my children come to me, and they're saying, "Mommy, when are you going to be done for the day on your devices?" What I heard loud and clear was that they're not asking me, when are you going to be done with work? Because truly, the answer is never, I have so many things to do, right? We all have this long to-do list. What they were really asking was, when are you going to have time for me? Now, I have started to set my intention, like, "Hey, I have a lot of things going on today, you might see me on screens a lot. But at 2:30, this is going to be your time, let's go do something special together." That's all they needed. They could totally let me work as a – I work from home, and so they were very happy to let me get my work done and not interrupt. That's important for distraction. By me communicating something of value to them. That was a big lightbulb moment for me that I think is very repeatable for a lot of people communicating when you're available, and trying to set that time aside to really be device free, so that you can connect very personally. [0:26:15] PF: That's terrific. That's something all of us can do too. I'm glad it wasn't a complex thing, because homework.   [0:26:22] AB: Absolutely.   [0:26:22] PF: Thank you so much. There's so much that we could learn from you. I'm excited to see where this research continues to go, and what you learn, because obviously, this is an issue that's going to continue to grow and evolve as technology, and AI, and everything continues to expand. I look forward to have more conversations about this with you, and we will tell people, we'll give links on the landing page so they can go discover more about Digital Wellness Day. We'll be talking about it on our social media and sharing it. But I guess, before I let you go, can you tell us what you hope everyone gets out of Digital Wellness Day, on May 5th? [0:26:58] AB: My hope is that everybody will step away and realize how much power they do have to control the world around them, particularly around technology. Though we have a lot of fears around AI, we have fears around social media, we have fears around what's happening with the election, or with what's happening with work or the economy. That those things all are things that maybe we can't control the big topics, but we can control our own behavior around them. Digital Wellness Day is a place for you to start and own your own sense of human agency to shape the world the way that you want to shape it using your own behavior. [0:27:39] PF: I love it. Amy, thank you so much. It was a delight having you here. As I said, we will do this again soon.   [0:27:45] AB: Thank you so much, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:27:50] PF: That was Amy Blankson, talking about digital wellness. We'd like to invite you, and your school, or company to participate in Digital Wellness Day on May 5th. Visit our website to learn more about it. We'll also tell you how to follow Amy on social media, discover some of her free resources, or buy her best-selling book, The Future of Happiness. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]