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Take a glimpse into the world of applied positive psychology withThe Flourishing Centerpodcast. Each episode includes three sections giving you insights and hacks into living an authentically happy and flourishing life. What you'll learn in this podcast: Science Says—Learn about the relationship between genes and depression. LifeHack—Learn how to ruminate less and reappraise more. Practitioner’s Corner—Learn how one company uses positive psychology to take care of their employees' wellbeing. Learn more aboutThe Flourishing Center Read the interview from the Practitioner's Corner: Emiliya: Hello and welcome to the practitioner's corner. Today with us we have Jeff Thomson from Northbrook, Illinois. He is the lead performance coach for Energy for Life at Allstate Insurance Company. Fun little factoids about Jeff, he is one of 10 kids in his family. And, he has been to 69 Dave Matthews Band concerts. But who's counting, right Jeff? We're so happy to have you here with us. In our 5i Change Agent Model, you're an implementer. You're utilizing positive psychology within an organization, and we're so excited to learn more about what brought you to this work and how you are helping people bring positive psychology into their day-to-day life. Jeff: Thank, Emiliya. I'm so happy to be with you today. Emiliya: Jeff, tell us. What brought you to this work? Jeff: I think, first off, probably a lot of self-work and just life experiences that had me on a search for more happiness and fulfillment in my own life due to just life circumstances that had me in the dumps at different times. That pursuit I think, ultimately, just led me forward and learning more about the science of happiness. Emiliya: Tell us more about how you work at Allstate right now. Jeff: My job for the last six plus years at Allstate has been implementing Energy for Life. It actually comes from an organization called the Human Performance Institute, based in Orlando, Florida. That's part of Johnson and Johnson. They developed a program, a two and a half day workshop called The Corporate Athlete, that uses a four dimensional view of energy management. Looks at spiritual energy, emotional, mental, and physical energy. Allstate has been one of their chief champions of the work and has been licensing their content under the name of Energy for Life at Allstate now, in different variations for probably upwards of 10 plus years. Emiliya: It is so neat to see organizations be bringing these types of programs in for their employees and to be investing in human potential and human capital. What are some of the impacts that you've seen these programs make on the people that you work with? Jeff: There's so many amazing success stories or testimonials that we get from over the years of training, or delivering the content to our employees. We've now had ... Today over 22,000 employees have gone through the program. One of the things I always like to say about it first and foremost is it's a free opportunity. It's not a requirement for employees to go through, it's just a free gift that Allstate offers to its employees to really make an investment in them and their lives in a multidimensional kind of way. What I love is that the stories that come back are very multidimensional in in of themselves. You'll hear all sorts of success stories of people that have made some tangible changes around the physical dimension. They have started a new exercise regimen, or they've shifted their eating habits. The stories that always impact me the most, though, are the ones that are more relational in nature where, you just hear stories of a mother, a father, who reengages with their kids differently because they learned about the value and importance of full engagement, and bringing your fully energy to a singular task or person. Just a lot of success stories in that regard. People have shifted careers because they just really realized that their spiritual energy was out of alignment with something they valued and really wanted in their lives, so they make a career change. Yeah, the stories really are endless. Oftentimes, it's life transformational, what we hear from people. Emiliya: That is incredible. Even so cool to hear the word spiritual be referenced within an organizational setting. Jeff: Yeah. When we deliver the program, we even go the extra mile of really helping people because we know that that probably, for some people, could create discomfort, to your point that it's not something that would commonly be used. If it makes people feel more comfortable, we'll offer synonyms for it. This is what the ... What matters less is the word we use, and more is what's a part of this dimension of energy, which is really around your purpose and having a sense of purpose and clarity of what matters most to you in your life so that as you have that, working to align elements of your life with those things that matter most to you. What we commonly find is for many people, those things have just gotten out of order either accidentally or they haven't paused really in life to try and understand their north star, or taking participants through a series of reflective exercises to develop that. It's usually an intimidating exercise for someone to write that mission statement, but even the process of getting them to think about what do they want their legacy to be? Who are the people and what are the things that matter most to them in their lives? Are not common questions that people reflect on, particularly at work. Giving them that space to make that investment in themselves and make some deep connections in that regard and walk out of there with either a much clearer sense or a slightly clearer sense really helps people make some of the behavior changes that they made be looking to make in a more tactical, tangible level. Emiliya: So cool, Jeff. Thank. What are some of the ways that recently you've been integrating positive psychology? Jeff: I think what was really neat for me is that my story really was so much self-discovery and self-taught. I went out and I probably purchased over 100 books on happiness just because I really started it as a selfish mission for myself, of having been depression at different points in my life because of a difficult relationship breakup or something. I just was really in hot pursuit of how I could feel better. Then, from that, as I just saw my own application of that build my own muscles of resilience and how to live a happier life, it became more altruistic from there and just, "Okay. If these are skills that one can learn, how do we make that more known to others?" I became very purposeful from a career perspective to find work that would allow me to bring this to the world so I could serve as a catalyst to others, and saw a great opportunity at Allstate that was already investing in this program that seemed so deeply aligned with where I thought I could bring value. It was really from that that in my discontinued evolution of trying expand my thinking in the space and thought leadership that led me to so much of the science seems to point back to this field. At the time I knew very little about it, positive psychology, but now I feel much more connected to, largely through my experience being in the CAPP program. Emiliya: Thank you, Jeff. I'm curious, what stands out for you as some of the more poignant positive psychology concepts that you've learned? Jeff: A big one for me was around meaning. I joke, when I deliver the Energy for Life workshop, that I created a mission statement of my life probably 15 years ago that was two pages long, about eight paragraphs in length, and I was so proud of it after I had developed it. It was this mini manifesto for myself. What I came to realize in the years that followed was that I still made a lot of poor life choices or ones that didn't align fully with that, and I think it was because I wasn't so clear on it. I eventually whittled it down to a one word ultimate mission, which is happiness for me. But I think now, looking back to when I started in CAPP, my mission statement was short-sighted because I think I was really missing out on the meaning element of happiness. That's really one of the big concepts that really helped shift things for me, was learning more about meaning and meaning's role in creating a life. A flourishing life. How there's meaning available in every moment, should we choose to see it in so many small ways. I think ... I almost walked away from CAPP with that as a challenge to myself. Like, how can I seek more meaning in just day-to-day moments? A big part of that being ... Also connected to that was the storytelling component. I like to use the term storytelling because so much of our experiences based on the stories we create for ourselves about our life experiences. I try to be very intentional about both creating a story that can explain what's happened to me in a way that really serves my growth moving forward. Emiliya: Thank you, Jeff. Jeff, I'm curious, what are some of the obstacles you see for bring positive psychology into the workplace? Jeff: I think it's probably, on some level ... I think language is really important. Just how you had a reaction to the term spiritual, and you know that that's not such a commonly used word in corporate America, or corporations. I think that same could be true of using terms like positive psychology. People have a reaction to that. That's interesting now that I'm so deeply into it, like, I don't even think about it anymore, but I occasionally get that reaction where someone chuckles in response to me using those words. I think being really deliberate about the language we use to describe what it is in a way that's more accessible to people. In a way that sounds more naturally desiring and minimally causes curiosity versus judgment, hopefully. From that, I think, big thing that I try to focus on is how to hook into and talk about it in a way that will get a positive reaction from most. Talking about the demands that people face in their lives, that demands are increasing. People can relate to that. They just feel more naturally under pressure or stressed, or just needing some kind of lifeline to help make their days a little bit better. By connecting first to what the pain points are for someone, I think, is really useful to them saying, "Oh, you mean there's a toolkit? There's a toolbox of things that I could do and practice and be deliberate about? Really build some muscle around that helps make elements of my life even just a little bit easier or better than that? More fulfilling and meaningful?" I think that's a hook that's pretty attractive to many people. But if you can't first connect with them around where they're pain or disturbance is in their life, I think you could end up just missing each other. Emiliya: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that perspective. I'm curious, what are some of the self-care practices that you personally utilize that sustain your wellbeing? Jeff: For me, there's so many and I feel like that's part of what's valuable, is I try to always remind myself and then also the team that I work with. We have to start with self. If we have to apply the very things we're teaching others, we have to be in active work doing the self-work. That's hard, right? But that's also where I think we show up as way more real to the people that we bring this to. I feel like I benefit from so many different strategies. An example of one that I've experimented with based on the referral from someone else in the CAPP program is I started 2017 by downloading this five minute journal app, which allowed me to take my gratitude practice really to a whole other level, by starting my day and being deliberate about three things I'm grateful for. Three things I want to achieve or how I want to operate in the day, work that around my intentions, and then doing that same practice for a couple minutes at the end of the day to think about what were the best parts of my day, and then what would I have done different. Just those triggers to really cause me to pause and reflect and appreciate. Gratitude is a significant one for me. The physical dimension that came more naturally to me from being involved in athletics. I oftentimes underestimate it, but if I pull myself away, I realize that it's really at the core of what helps me to have physical energy throughout my days. Getting my exercise in, being conscious of what foods I eat and what I'm putting in my body and knowing that that has so many effects, positively or negatively, how I show up over the course of the day. Just, again, the practice of full engagement. That is daily work. I've got two young daughters at home, and it's easy for me to come home at the end of a difficult day, same with my wife, and just not be fully attentive to a conversation that's unfolding in front of me and end up showing up as half that husband or half the dad that I want to be in those moments. Really being deliberate, like, if I'm cooking dinner, try to stop cooking dinner. Turn the burners off if I need to, to just really engage in the conversation and be fully present. Anytime I can just practice full presence in a moment, that is one of the most valuable self-care strategies that I've ever learned. Because the beauty of it is it's both self-fulfilling ... It's so appreciated by those that you're with too. They see that you just show up. I can tell how I'm just in this moments, when I'm really there with my daughters or my wife. It's a great validation of why I need to keep practicing that. Another self-care strategy that's been really valuable for me is the importance of taking breaks throughout my day. One of the things I've learned from HBI was the recommendation around every 60 to 90 minutes that we oscillate our energy in some kind of way, whether that's mentally, emotionally, physically, to just take some kind of break. To push away from whatever it is that you're working on. I've found so much value of just one, getting up and physically moving around my office space. Walking, getting my water bottle refilled, that's a nice way of doing multiple good things for yourself at the same time. But I also love ... I follow inspiring thought leaders on Facebook and sometimes if I have two stolen minutes between conference meetings or something, I'll just stop and read an inspiring article on Facebook. It just adds great fuel to my day, to the next thing that I'm going to walk into. Just being really deliberate about taking time for yourself throughout your day I think helps you to have more energy at the end of your days. Emiliya: That is so true, and I think of the times when I'm speaking about mindfulness within an organizational setting. I'll sometimes say to a group of people, "If I'm thinking about something else or I'm not present, you guys can't tell, right?" I'll demonstrate it where I just stand there and I look like I'm smiling at them, but I demonstrate that I might be thinking many thoughts in my head that they might not know about. Most people nod their head that yeah, you can't tell if someone's mind has wandered because technically you can't read what they're thinking. You can't see what they're thinking. But then I ask them to pause and I say, "But, do you really know when someone is present with you?" Then after a moment people go, "Yeah, yeah you do." Because you can tell the energetic shift and especially with children. It's such a gift to give them to know that what they say matters to the adults that they care about, that cares about them. To give them the gift of your presence. Jeff: It reminds me of a story when both my daughters were younger. This was probably five plus years ago, but when I'd come home at the end of the day, there was a time when my younger one would run up to me and would want to tell me about her day, and because my wife works as well, I'm the first one home, I'd commonly pick her up and I'd set her on the counter while I start putting dinner together. I would say, "Annabelle, tell me about your day." All of a sudden, time would pass and I'd realize that I had heard nothing of what she just said to me. I'd be like, Okay, bad dad Jeff. Ask her again. "Annabelle, how was your day?" This would happen multiple times and I was just realizing that I wasn't really hearing her. Then, over time I saw that she stopped coming up to me when I'd come home at the end of the day. This really causes some level of heartbreak for me. Like, "Wow, my youngest daughter doesn't get excited when Dad comes home anymore. What have I done to contribute to this?" I started being deliberate about when I would come home of sitting her on the couch next to me, or taking a knee and really connecting with her eye to eye. What I saw ... These weren't long conversations. Usually they were just a couple minutes of really just practicing connection, and I remember that after doing that enough times, it change again. All of a sudden, Annabelle was running to greet me at the back door. I was like, "Thank you for getting it right and paying attention enough, Jeff, to realize that you were contributing both to the problem, and now you're contributing to a much more meaningful solution now. Where, she's excited to have dad come home at the end of the day." Emiliya: So beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that. Jeff, I'm curious, how would you define what it means to flourish? Jeff: Great question. I think, to me, it's all about being able to reflect on your days and believe that you matter to other people. That you were present enough with them to have an impact. Small, medium, large, however it may show up. But to me, that's the more my journey has continued, the more I realize that it's not so much about myself as it started with, about me finding happiness, but that that comes more naturally as a result of me really making investments in others. That, to me, is flourishing but again, there is this self piece, to your question that I love, around self-care that I have to be selfish enough to make sure that I'm taking care of my own wellbeing so that I can be the best I want to be and aspire to be to the people that come across my path and my life. When I know I'm doing that, the right balance of taking care of me so that I'm showing up to others the way I want to, that to me feels like those are my flourishing days. Emiliya: Any tips or recommendations you would make for people who are interested in positive organizational cultures, or how corporations could begin to learn from what you are all doing at Allstate to bring positive psychology into their workplaces? Jeff: I think, certainly, reaching out to organizations, like a human performance institute, or The Energy Project is another one, doing very similar work. Just understanding what they offer. You can try and build this yourself in an organization, and that's probably the cheaper way to go, but there's probably all sorts of potholes and roadblocks with that plan, versus going out and talking to organizations that already have really constructed a multidimensional framework, and have really made organizations a primary target audience that they work with. Just something I've really appreciated, knowing that they existed. From there, there's a lot to learn then from other organizations. I love opportunities to talk to peers that work in other industries that use HPI. It's a great opportunity to learn how they've done their rollout, where they have challenges, it's all the same kind of ... Any change initiative, it goes back to the common things around having senior leader sponsorship, change champions in an organization making this into different parts of the organization so it's more than just a workshop. There's all these sustainability challenges that any organization would face, even after you've trained 22,000 people, leaning on other organizations that are already trying to solve for many of the same challenges, I think has been a ... One, it's just a great support system, but two, so many valuable insights that you can go back and then try experimenting with and applying in your own organization is really helpful. Emiliya: Earlier, we said that you serve as a coach within your organization, the lead performance coach. What does that role entail? Do you do a lot of the training, or do you actually do one-on-one work with individuals to help them implement their work? Jeff: Yeah, it's almost misleading in that regard in terms of how we traditionally think of a coach, which is more of that one-on-one relationships. At Allstate, while that's the title of the role, it largely shows up in terms of the delivering workshops to, on average, probably somewhere 20, 25 participants, employees in the organization. The coaching that I think I do has less to do with that formal role, and probably a lot more to do with the role I play to the other performance coaches on my team, or just other people, stakeholders that I get to know through the organization. But yeah, that's more the informal part of the one-on-one coaching versus a formal capacity that I serve in. Emiliya: Got it. Yeah. One of the challenges I think the coaching industry faces is the use of the word coach, and how we keep coaching as coaching. Jeff, if people want to follow up to learn about you and your work, any way that they can be in contact with you? Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. I would relish the opportunity to meet more people and expand my network in any way possible. The best ways to reach me would probably be via email, jeff.thomson@allstate.com. Or, by phone. 847-840-8385. I welcome the additional connections and opportunities to share what I've learned and learn from others as well. Emiliya: Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for being with us today. Jeff: Thank you so much, Emiliya. I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of my story. Emiliya: Thanks for listening to today's episode. We hope that you'll take away a renewed energy around reappraising your thoughts, and that when stressful events happen, the mediator between being at risk for winding up feeling stuck and depressed, is not just having a genetic predisposition but it's the ability to work with our thoughts, to do less rumination and thought suppression, and to spend more time reframing our thoughts. If you're someone who finds that it's a harder thing for you to do, know that these are all skills that we can build. I hope that you've taken some inspiration from learning about Jeff and seeing that there are organizations throughout the world that are doing their best to invest in their employees' wellbeing, and that there are strategies and skills that we can take on to self-care so that everyone thrives together. Thanks for listening. We hope that you'll share this podcast with others that you think will benefit from it.

Take a glimpse into the world of applied positive psychology with The Flourishing Center podcast. Each episode includes three sections giving you insights and hacks into living an authentically happy and flourishing life. What you'll learn in this podcast: Science Says—Learn about heart rate variability and this powerful measure of the body's resilience. Life Hack—Build heart rate variability with breathing exercises. Practitioner’s Corner—Meet Jillian Guinta, she supports her community and takes a positive psychology-based approach to trauma. Learn more about The Flourishing Center Read the interview from the Practitioner's Corner: Emiliya:  Hello everyone, and join me today in welcoming Jillian Guinta. She's coming to us live from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is a trauma recovery coach and teacher of therapeutic yoga. She's also a trained positive psychology practitioner from us here at The Flourishing Center. Welcome, Jillian. It is so great to have you here. Jillian:  Emiliya, it's great to be on with you today, as well. Thanks so much. Emiliya:  So tell us, Jillian: What brought you to this work? What brought you to positive psychology? Jillian:  Positive psychology, to be perfectly honest, was not on my radar. I was actually enrolled in a doctoral program when I found out about CAPP. I found out actually on a date with a really nice guy who had gone through the program, and as he was describing the program to me, I'm like, "Oh, man! That sounds so much more interesting than what I'm doing right now in grad school. And the tides in my life shifted, and the next semester I opted not to enroll in my university work and I went ahead and registered for CAPP. So it was really serendipitous to have met this person at all and then to have gone through the same program. Emiliya:  That's awesome. I love that, I love that. I love that it must have just been a really great date conversation, as well, to be sharing insight about well-being. So tell us: What does your application of positive psychology look like? Jillian:  So, right now, I am using positive psychology in my work. I work one-on-one with clients that have gone through traumatic experiences, and then it informs my yoga as well because traumas will often get locked in the body, and so to be able to coach someone through using some of the skills that we've learned together such as habit change and things of that nature have been really instrumental in helping these people make the changes in their lives as they start to come up for them at different points in their experience. Emiliya:  That's awesome. Tell us more about your background. Before you came to positive psychology, you were heavily involved in the fitness industry, right? Jillian:  I was. I was actually a personal trainer for many years. I actually have memories of being 10 years old at the grocery store with my mother and saying, "I want to be a personal trainer when I grow up," and she goes, "What's that?" I'm like, "I don't really know, but it looks like they have fun and they're in shape." So I got that start towards the end of my college experience at Rutgers University in New Jersey. I stayed with that for quite some time. I ended up going, uh, switching careers in my early 20s and I went into a master's program for education and started to just parse through the different backgrounds that I was experiencing and kind of coming into my own, really unsure about where I wanted to be in the world. And it was about that time in my mid-twenties where, you know, God or spirit, the universe--whoever--really upped my challenges, and I had some difficult issues, some traumas of my own that I had to work with. And I eventually found my way into yoga, then into a yoga program that was specifically for therapeutics, and we covered healing trauma. So I was able to then guinea pig these ideas and these different skills on myself and monitor my own healing. And then, having gone through the CAPP Program gave me a lot more confidence to go out into the world. Prior to that, I hadn't done anything that would equip me with too many coaching skills. I had a sales background and personal training and I had learned how to do motivational interviewing in my yoga training. But there was still a big disconnect in knowing the most appropriate ways to speak to clients that have gone through really troubling events. The positive psychology work really helped me to refine those skills that I wanted to have but that I didn't have yet. Emiliya:  Beautiful, Jillian, thank you so much for sharing that. Many of our listeners may not be familiar with some of the concepts because they're more research-based in positive psychology and traditional psychology, so can you tell us more about motivational interviewing? Jillian:  So motivational interviewing is sitting with a client or someone who has yet to become a client and kind of sifting through the things that are pulling them forward and also the things that are holding them back. So for someone who is a prime candidate for motivational interviewing, they might be a little ambivalent to change. They're not quite comfortable where they are but it's familiar and they're not sure if they want to go forward--often because they don't see the pathways. So through the process of motivational interviewing and coaching them and finding out--What are the things that motivate them?, What are the things that they're seeking?, gauging their present level of commitment or willingness--you're able to then ask them different questions to help them see the pathways of how the change might be possible. Emiliya:  Thanks, Jillian. I am so happy you pointed out the word "ambivalent" because one of the things I feel like I've learned the most from using motivational interviewing for over a decade now is that when people are not making a change, oftentimes they'll blame themselves. They'll think, "Oh I'm not motivated enough" or they'll just feel stuck and they don't really know why they feel stuck, but recognizing that part of motivation is not just the fact that they want to do something or don't want to do something--it's that there might be something that is pulling them in two directions, like "on the one hand, I want to start exercising, but when I exercise my knee hurts more. And so I'm in this stuck place. Do I exercise or do I make my knee hurt?" Or, when it comes to people making changes to their body, you'll see things like, you know, hiring a personal trainer has always been on their to-do list as maybe the last possible thing that would work for them, because so many things haven't worked. And the fear that comes with trying the last thing that they haven't tried yet--and what if that doesn't work?--is part of the reason that sometimes people don't start something. Because there's this fear. So I think it's such an important thing for people to hear that motivational interviewing is this really great approach of asking questions and reflective listening that does help people get motivated--but some of the ways in which it gets people motivated is by working through that ambivalence that they may feel of being pulled in different directions. Jillian:  Absolutely. It can get really challenging when you're about to make a big scary change. There is always something that's going to be willing to pop up in your face and say, "Hey, this is going to scare the pants off of you." And then you need to see why it's there and what you need to learn from it. Because ultimately we do want to change and grow and evolve. And I'm saying that as a blanket statement because I believe that to be true. But maybe we'd rather not have so many obstacles in the way. Emiliya:  Speaking of big scary changes you've made a lot of big scary changes in your life. Tell us about some of them. Jillian:  Oh wow. Yeah, I actually just a couple of days ago had my six month anniversary of being in a brand new city and a brand new state. I was born and raised in New Jersey and I recently moved down to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in kind of a whimsical way. I was doing a lot of journaling at that point in my life. It was after a breakdown of my marriage that had gone from a very healthy relationship to a very unhealthy relationship. A lot of negative patterns had emerged in me and it was time to lay that aside and work on myself and grow something new. So about a year after the separation from my husband, I was writing in my journal just asking for guidance, saying, "Where do you want me to be? What am I supposed to be doing? Who am I supposed to be helping?" And the next morning, I woke up and a news cast was on about Baton Rouge. Then I hear my dad playing a song that mentions Baton Rouge. And we live right on the border of New York City--we're not listening to a lot of music that references Baton Rouge, Louisiana! And then I would see it different places. And so I took that as a nudge from my own intuition saying, "Go here! See what this place is like." I'd only visited Baton Rouge once and it was totally boring. I actually said at the airport, "Oh well, I'm never coming back here. See ya!" And lo and behold, one year later, I was packing up my little white Elantra and grabbing the things that I thought I would need--which really just consisted at that time of clothing and books--and drove down the east coast and cut across Georgia and eventually made it to Baton Rouge, and made myself a little home here. So it's been six months. I arrived in March 2017, and since then, it's really been very divinely guided that I've been meeting the people that I was intended to meet--the ones that would help me in my journey. I have had lots of positive interactions with people. It's quite different from where you and I are from, Emiliya. It is a progressive city in the south but it doesn't compare to the level of resources that we have in New York. They don't have many folks that are doing trauma recovery. They don't have anyone that's doing positive psychology. Even advanced teacher trainings for yoga are few and far between. A lot of yoga teachers who would need to travel out of state to get some additional information and training. So it felt very much like an affirmation that I was in a place where I'm going to be used. And that's been a really exciting shift in my life. What was really frightening for me was leaving this home town where I grew up. Although I had traveled extensively, I hadn't lived anywhere else, but I kept coming back to the thought that if you're following your intuition, you're going to probably be fine. So here I am, six months later, with a brand new life. Emiliya:  I can't tell you, I'm like, I have chills and I feel so positively choked up for you because I'm celebrating this vision I have that you listened to the call. You picked up the call and that coming from a place in the New York/New Jersey region, we have a lot of need for so many things--but we do have a lot of people who have access. You can find a yoga class. You can find someone who does trauma work. You can find positive psychology practitioners. And I almost get the sense that the hearts and souls of these people who are ready to change were calling to you, and you picked up the call--and I celebrate that so much for you because you've got so many tools to offer them, so many skills that most people are just not aware even exist. And when they get them, it's like drinking water when you're thirsty. Such an honor. Jillian:  Great, thank you so much. I'm really excited. I'll be offering a training down here to yoga teachers, and I have some social workers showing up, as well as psychologists--yoga for trauma. It's an eight hour intensive in just a couple weeks. And I'm really excited. They're really excited. I've been making sure that my science is on point so I can deliver it well, and lots of people are going to heal--I feel that deeply--as a result of just sharing the information that we have access to. Emiliya:  Can you give me an example of some of the positive psychology that you find to be most helpful? So you talked about how you share the science of habit with some of the clients that you work with. What are some of the other positive psychology concepts and skills that you find really help people? Jillian:  I actually got to run one of our positive psychology Flourishing Skills Groups down here, and one thing that I noticed for me in my relationships was covering ACR--which is active constructive responding--has been huge for me. It's something that my clients and my friends and acquaintances in my group were really excited about bringing into their personal lives--celebrating the good things that happen in life, without too much of a context for people needing praise, but just enjoying the things that happen because if we look at all these small details, there's a lot that we can celebrate. So the active constructing constructive responding has been something really wonderful that we absolutely love down here. I have enjoyed doing "best possible future self" with people, and reframing mind chatter has been really helpful for everybody. Everyone has that--several voices in their heads, and they're telling us all different information, so we need to know what's coming up. If we don't fully realize why our mind chatter is, we can't work with it. It's the process of tuning enough to become aware of the subconscious and then working with it consciously. So those are a couple of my favorites. Emiliya:  Wow. Thank you, Jillian. And those of you listening, I'll just review some of the things that Jillian just said because those are awesome positive psychology exercises and interventions. Active constructive responding was a research topic that was uncovered by Dr. Shelly Gable and she recognized that we have a choice in how we can react to people's news. People often react to people's bad news by going, "Oh my gosh, what happened? Tell me more." And we get very granular in our asking for details in our curiosity when negative things happen, when bad things happen. But when positive events happen, those of us who have people in our lives that just go, "Oh that's great, congratulations, that sounds awesome" are responding in a positive way, but we can amplify that positivity by getting really curious and go, "Wow, tell me more. What enabled that?" And she found that the number of people that an individual has in their life that would help them celebrate their positive news and savor with them and be happy with them--not just happy for them, but genuinely happy with them--is a greater predictor of their well-being, whereas being silently supportive or the ways in which sometimes the people in our life are well-meaning and they want to support us, but you tell them things like, "Guess what, mom! I'm moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana!" and they go, "Are you crazy? How are you going to leave your job? You don't know anyone down there!" and they give you all the negatives before first hearing out, "Wow. What makes you want to go there, and what is it about that that's exciting to you? What made you come to that and what possibilities are there for you?" and then being able to say, "Have you considered that you don't have a job there lined up for you and you don't actually know where you're living?" So the idea behind active constructive responding is savor and celebrate first. And it's an awesome, awesome intervention. And the other two that Jillian mentioned: best possible selves--which I would imagine, Jillian, is really powerful for people who are recovering from trauma or have recovered from trauma but just because you've recovered from trauma doesn't mean that you've built a vision of who's the person that you want to be--so the best possible future self is about giving people the space to think about how they want to be in the world and write about it and visualize themselves at their best. What would it be like if I met my goals? What would it be like if I felt the way that I want to feel? And then the last one that Jillian mentioned... I totally forgot! What did you mention as your last one? Jillian:  It was reframing mind chatter. Emiliya:  Reframing! I had to reframe my mind chatter and how I'm going, "What am I thinking? I can't remember what she just said." But I actually want to celebrate that moment for me because before I learned positive psychology, Jillian, I would have been like, "Emiliya, you're an idiot. How did you just forget what she said just a few moments ago?" But luckily, my brain didn't say that, and I had a permission-to-be-human moment. So reframing mind chatter. Jillian, when you give people some examples, what are some of the ways that they can reframe their thoughts? Or what type of thoughts should they be on the lookout for that are worth reframing? Jillian:  So, the ones that you're going to look out for the most--you can think of it almost like being at a picnic. If you have one little ant come by, not a big deal. But when a whole bunch of ants come by, that's kind of a big deal--especially in Louisiana because we have red ants and they bite! And I found that out the hard way. So when you start to notice repetitive negative thoughts that are making blanket statements about you or blanket statements about the world that are saying, "You're a bad person" or "You're so irresponsible" or whatever it happens to be. You referenced memory. I have also gone through memory issues. It's very common for folks that have gone through traumas in their life to struggle with short term memory. So something that might come up for them is like, "You're so dumb! You can't remember anything. Like, you may as well be 100 years old." Not a helpful thought--that's not going to be something that helps you improve your memory. So a reframe around having a lackingness in your short term memory might be: "I struggle to remember, but it's something that I'm working on every day" or "I forget things frequently, and so I use my calendar to remind myself." Things like that, that take something that could be a negative--maybe not always a negative, but could be a negative--and make it either neutral or a positive or something that's already being observed would be an appropriate reframe. We don't need to go from "You're so dumb" to "You're the smartest person on earth." It needs to be a believable and helpful reframe. Another one that I have struggled with is "You're so irresponsible." My "You're so irresponsible, Jillian" then becomes "You took a great risk and you are rebuilding parts of your life." That would be a neutralizing thought that counters this highly negative one of being an irresponsible person in the world. It's not true. So these couple of reframes and many, many other ones have been ones that I've used in my own personal life. They come up for my clients and for my students, as well and we'll continue to use them and will continue to reframe until we no longer need to--until we've either healed that area or have done enough of the healing that that's no longer our focus. Emiliya:  Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing those, Jillian, and it's so powerful to just remember that we can doubt our doubts and we can judge our judgments. And so many of us just walk around with our thoughts just going amuk. And so thank you for those really specific ways that we could address our mind chatter. Jillian, I'm curious if you can close us off with any words to live by that you feel are your mottos in life or your guiding philosophies. Jillian:  My guiding philosophy right now--ah, this is such a great question. One thing I've been tinkering with and trying as often as possible to implement is an intervention for my own worry. And that intervention is just to say, "Don't worry about the how." Don't worry about how it's going to come. Get clear on what you want and start playing with ideas. Worry is not going to be something that's helpful unless it's a very short term problem. But you can always look for pathways, so don't worry about the how. The how will happen if it's something that you truly desire. Emiliya:  Beautiful, Jillian. Thank you so much. And one more question. What does it mean in your heart and in your eyes for people to flourish? Jillian:  In my heart, when I see and acknowledge people that are flourishing, they are taking it one day at a time. They are staying present for what's coming up for them. They are moving forward courageously and to the best of their ability. They're perhaps not always 100 percent happy 100 percent of the time because we are humans and we get to be participants in a whole range of human emotions. But these flourishing people that I see in the world are the ones that are staying present and engaging with whatever comes up and letting it wash right past them when it's over. So that's what flourishing is to me. Emiliya:  Thank you so much, Jillian. Learn more about Jillian's work at jillianguinta.com. Here is how you, too, can create a career out of helping people thrive. Learn more about how to teach and spread positive psychology to your organizations and communities by visiting our website: www.theflourishingcenter.com. Thanks for listening, and until the next episode: may you be well, may you be happy, may you feel fulfilled.