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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Tap Out Anxiety With Brad Yates [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 438 of Live Happy Now. Do you ever wish you had a secret weapon to help calm your mind and body during stressful times? Well, this week's guest says you do. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I am talking with Brad Yates, an expert in emotional freedom tapping or EFT. Tapping, as it's commonly called, combines the principles of acupuncture and positive psychology to help people overcome fears, relieve stress, and just enjoy greater well-being. Today, Brad author of the best-selling children's book The Wizard's Wish and co-author of the book Freedom at Your Fingertips is going to explain how tapping works, why it works, and how we can all get started. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:49] PF: Brad, thanks for being with me here today. [00:00:51] BY: Oh, my pleasure, Paula. I'm very happy to be here. [00:00:53] PF: This is a great topic. I was excited when I was approached about having you on the show because tapping is something that I've studied, I've used in my own practice for many, many years. I think before we dive into why it's so awesome, I'm going to have you explain what it is. [00:01:11] BY: So tapping, other than the tap dancing and all these other ways that we can use tapping to be happy, this is a process based on acupuncture. So for thousands of years in Chinese medicine, they've said there's a flow of energy through the body along pathways that are called meridians. When the energy is flowing naturally, we experience our natural state of health and well-being physically and emotionally. When that energy gets stuck, we don't feel so good. When we don't feel good, we don't think as clearly. We don't make the best choices. There's all kinds of unfortunate consequences for that. So in traditional Chinese medicine, the doctor would stick needles in these key points around the body to stimulate that healthy flow of energy. What we're doing is just using our fingertips to tap those same points. It downregulates stress in a very profound way. It's the simplest, quickest way that I know to reduce stress. [00:02:07] PF: Yes. It was the nineties when someone introduced me to it, and he was telling me about it. He was a musician, so I thought, “Well, you're just high because there is absolutely no way that this works.” So then he's like, “I swear, Paula. Just try this. Try this.” I was really amazed at how it could calm me in stressful situations. It's not woo-woo. There is science and research behind it. Can you talk about that for a little bit? [00:02:34] BY: Yes, absolutely. It's wonderful that we have this growing body of research validating this process. Some of my friends who were doing this, Dr. Dawson Church and Dr. Peta Stapleton, are two of the leading researchers. Dawson did a study with cortisol levels. So when we are experiencing stress, this part of our brain called the amygdala that looks for threats and puts us into fight or flight, and we start pumping cortisol through our body. So they did a test where they measured people's cortisol levels. It was a double-blind study. They had a control group. They had somebody just deep breathing or something like that and then the third group doing tapping. When the researchers were testing the cortisol levels before and after, it said that the cortisol levels had dropped by an average of 24%. They said that's not possible, threw it out, and recalibrated the machines, ran it again. It's like, “Oh, no. That's actually what's happened,” and different tests have replicated that showing. Because it's one thing for us to tap and say, “Yes, I think I feel better.” Sometimes, we profoundly feel better. Sometimes, we may not notice it. It may be very subtle, but there are biological markers that we can measure like our cortisol levels. My friend, Dr. Peta Stapleton, has done FMRI studies where we can see the parts of the brain that light up and the different activity in different situations. Then after tapping, how that brain activity is calmed down. So, yes, there's hundreds of studies now in peer-reviewed journals. They've mashed it up against CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, which is sort of the gold standard of therapy. It has performed showing results quicker, longer lasting. One study that was done, the people running the study who were CBT people said, “Well, you can say that the tapping was not inferior to CBT.” [00:04:40] PF: Spoken like a true researcher, right? So we know what it's doing. We can see the results. Have they been able to explain why it's so effective? [00:04:52] BY: Yes. There are a number of theories as to why it is. Obviously, the original theory that was when tapping was first discovered. Well, it had been discovered many, many years ago. But the way that we do it now by a psychologist named Dr. Roger Callahan back around 1980 or so was just based on acupuncture. So saying, okay, well, this – it's the meridian system. Either it's stuck or it's flowing, and the tapping stimulates that healthy flow. We can look at it in terms of there's a phenomenon when we're tapping on these key points. It's called piezoelectricity. It sends a bioelectrical signal to the brain that calms down that part of our brain, the amygdala and the limbic system, that is reacting to circumstances or what we believe the circumstances might be. That's the great thing is it doesn't tap away justified fear or stress. It's not like if we're being chased by a bear. It's like, “Well, this is really uncomfortable feeling. I'm going to tap, and I'm going to calm myself down.” [00:05:59] PF: Much better. Yes. [00:06:00] BY: “And I'm going to be so relaxed as I get eaten.” That's one of the things is when we hang on to fear and anxiety, it's because part of our brain says we need this. If I don't feel this fear, I'll be stupid. I'll make bad choices. The funny thing is it's just not true. [00:06:21] PF: We sometimes make a habit out of feeling fearful or feeling anxious, and it's not something we do consciously. But I know that has happened in my own life, where just certain situations will trigger it. Then you just never seem to be untriggered. So how can tapping help get out of a chronic situation like that? [00:06:42] BY: Yes. We've learned to behave in that way, and we do what works. So if we see a dog, as a child, dogs scared us. We avoided dogs because we felt that fear. At a young age, we say, “Well, that worked. I didn't get attacked by that dog because I ran away. So, obviously, having this response when I see a dog works for me.” It's obviously not the only way to respond to a dog or keep yourself safe, but it's what I found happened. So now, I may be triggered with that fear anytime I see that. So the mind is always identifying, associating, responding. We see something, and we go, “What does this remind me of? Is this something I've experienced before? Or does it look similar to something I've experienced before? How did I respond to that in the past such that I survived?” We go through this pattern without even being consciously aware of it. Ninety to 95 percent of our behavior is unconscious. We're doing things before, which is necessary as human beings because we have to learn how to do certain things and make it unconscious. Otherwise, everything would take forever. As we're growing up, we don't sit there and go, “Okay. Well, this is really helpful. Well, this is less helpful, so I'm not going to remember this.” We don't know to do that. When we're learning how to walk, how to talk, how to think, we're just taking it all in, and we're not able to be critical about some of that. So we just take that all in. So we're constantly just behaving on autopilot. When we become aware of that, and we start tapping, and I totally recommend tapping on a daily basis. To me, it should be as much a daily practice as brushing your teeth because we experience stress and anxiety on a daily basis, especially because we're walking. Most of us are walking around with a small device that is constantly telling us what to be upset about. [00:08:49] PF: Yes. It's reminding us not to relax, basically. [00:08:51] BY: Yes. “Hey, were you relaxed?” “Oh, wait till I tell you what's going on in Washington,” or whatever or a text from a friend saying, “Hey, here's something to be upset about.” So we're constantly being triggered by things, and it's like being – falling in the mud on a daily basis but never taking a shower. [00:09:14] PF: That's a great analogy. I love that. [00:09:16] BY: We practice physical hygiene on a daily basis; brushing our teeth, taking showers, whether we need it or not. Very few of us wait for a week and then notice that people around us are holding their nose and going, “Oh, that's right. I haven't taken a shower in a while. I should probably do that.” But with stress, most of us don't have a daily hygiene practice. So that's what tapping is. As we do that, we are less likely to be triggered. If we are triggered, it is going to be less profound. [00:09:47] PF: Yes. I want to dive into that. If you don't have a practice, and then you get stressed out, and you start tapping, is it going to take longer? Is it going to be more difficult for you to relieve yourself in that situation? Or how does that work? [00:10:02] BY: It's hard to say because we never really know how much is in there. There are times where we can start tapping, and the shift is profound. It's in a matter of moments. We may be experiencing stress or anxiety at an 8 out of 10. Just a few moments of tapping can bring us down to a one or even a zero, sometimes. Now, we see this happen. It doesn't happen all the time, and sometimes we bring it from an 8 down to a 7.75 after several minutes of tapping. It's like, okay, it's a little bit better. To me, hey, any relief we get is great. But what takes it down to a zero, it's hard to say why sometimes it's faster than other times. So it's not necessarily going to take much longer, but we increase the odds of it being quicker. We also increase the odds of not getting to an eight if we have a regular level because stress also has compound interest. It builds up. The thing that we're getting freaked out about may not be the thing that's happening right now but just all the other things that have been building up for a while. [00:11:16] PF: That whole cascade effect is kicking in. So what does a tapping practice look like? Is it people want things that are quick? Can you do it in a quick amount of time? Can you tell us like what is the recommendation? If you're the doctor and this is a prescription, like what are we doing? [00:11:32] BY: Yes. It's like with washing our hands during the pandemic. They said 20 seconds. Sing happy birthday. That's how long it takes to wash your hands. Now, obviously, if we've been – if you're into auto mechanics, you've been working on the engine of your car, 20 seconds is not going to clean your hands after working on your car. So there are times where we want to do it longer. But if you can only do 20 seconds, that's great. So with tapping and with brushing your teeth, they say two minutes. These are set amounts that this is helpful as a regular practice. So with tapping, if you can only tap for a couple of minutes. Hey, when you get up first thing in the morning and you're on the can, you can multitask. [00:12:19] PF: That's an easy one to do. If you're tapping, you can't be scrolling on your phone. [00:12:24] BY: Yes. [00:12:24] PF: Another bonus. [00:12:25] BY: Yes. It's certainly going to be much healthier for you to be tapping rather than scrolling. [00:12:33] PF: So what do you recommend? Okay, that's one way you can do it is every morning when you first get up and sit down. [00:12:39] BY: Yes. Tap while saying affirmations. Now, this is why I've created the YouTube videos. So I have like 1,200 videos on YouTube on a multitude of subjects. So whatever might be coming up for you, whether it's feeling anxiety, whether it's feeling stress, feeling anger, feeling fear, there's a tap for that. If it's something more positive, it's like, “Well, I don't want to – maybe I'm not aware of something bother me right now, but I do want to improve my relationships. I want to improve my finances.” There are tapping rounds for that. So if you're not sure what to tap on or what to say, I'm there for you. You can just go on YouTube and follow along. I've got videos. They're ranging from 3 minutes to 15 minutes depending on how much time you – [00:13:24] PF: That’s excellent. [00:13:26] BY: I have people who say, “I spend an hour going through different videos.” Some people, it's just one quick video. I have one called Amazing Day Quickie. I had done a video called Have an Amazing Day, which was like eight minutes. Then I did a four-minute version for people. It's like if you can't take eight minutes to have a better day, here's four minutes. Even just that little bit is going to make a positive difference. Over time, we improve the status of our nervous system. [00:13:59] PF: What if you're going into a day that you know is going to be particularly challenging? Maybe it's having to deal with an ex or something going on with your children or your in-laws, right? Something where it's there's a lot of potential for triggers and stress. Is there something special that you can do to kind of like rev up your system? [00:14:18] BY: Yes. Certainly, when you know you're going into something like that, I would say to someone check on how you feel right now. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and just thinking about that event. How much anxiety are you feeling right now? Notice where in your body you feel it. What are you most afraid of? Start tapping right then because you can clear a lot of that fear even ahead of time. Then when you get to that event, when you get to that meeting with your ex or whoever it is, it's like, “Hmm, I'm not feeling as bad as I expected to.” Then there's subtle tapping that we can do where they might not even notice. I – [00:14:57] PF: I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to ask how we can do that. [00:14:59] BY: I'm looking forward to the day where everybody knows about tapping. It's just an accepted practice for downregulating stress. You could start tapping in front of someone, and they'd say, “Oh, that's a good idea. I could probably do that too.” When world leaders at Camp David are tapping to clear their egos and all the stuff, and it's like, “Oh. Now, we can find some common ground here without being all uptight,” because that all comes from fear. Ultimately, there's love and there's fear. If it's not feeling like love, it's coming from a place of fear. When we do the tapping, we calm that down. So we can do it ahead of time. We clear that anticipatory anxiety and then in the moment finding subtle ways. So we can tap in subtle ways. Like there are fingertip points that you can tap, and you can do that under the table. No one will even know that you're doing it. You can also hold your fingers on certain points and just breathe and stimulate the points in that way or maybe gently rubbing. People probably won't even notice you're doing it. [00:16:11] PF: That's such a great tool to have in your arsenal because when anxiety hits and you're in a public situation, then you’d really start feeling the overwhelm because it's like, “Okay, I have to get out of this gracefully, and I'm surrounded.” So it's a great little secret weapon to have. We've talked a lot about it in terms of anxiety. I wanted to kind of dive into that a little bit deeper because that's become such a – it was already an issue. But post-pandemic, it's become such a huge challenge for people. Can you kind of address how we can use tapping in an anxious world? [00:16:48] BY: Yes. That was a huge thing. During the pandemic, I was doing a number of Facebook lives and YouTube lives, just recognizing. I mean, it’s – tapping’s moment has really come. There's always been a lot of anxiety. [00:17:00] PF: Thanks, COVID. [00:17:01] BY: But it really amped up. We were so afraid of so many things, and it just drove all kinds of different issues. So I really at that time and my colleagues were really trying to get it out there and letting people know, “Hey, guys. There's a simple way that you can help your body calm down.” Again, like I was saying earlier, it doesn't make you stupid. It's not like, “Oh, I can just go out and put myself in dangerous situations and not care about it.” But we can reduce that anxiety. I can have common sense. I can make good choices without being driven by fear. So just allowing ourselves to tap if it's even just a few minutes a day but also anytime that you're aware of it. It's like, “Hey, you know what? I'm feeling a little uncomfortable right now. Can I do some tapping right now?” I'm at the point. I'll tap in front of people. I don't care. I'm all over the – [00:17:56] PF: It’s like, “This is what I do.” [00:17:58] BY: Yes. I’m all over the Internet tapping anyway. I've shot some tapping videos in public places; sitting outside Starbucks, at the zoo. You can see people walking by. It's like I want to normalize this so that people can tap in that moment and not feel because I know what it is to have anxiety and to feel that pain. What do I do? What do I do? There's nothing I can do. Oh, wait. Yes, there is a way. This is – my body is having this response, trying to tell me there's something to be afraid of. Fear and anxiety, like all of the uncomfortable emotions, anger and things like that, it's a fire alarm telling us there's something to pay attention to. When we're not – with the fire, it’s like the fire alarm goes off. “Oh, I should grab my fire extinguisher and put out that fire.” Or find out, “Oh, there's no fire, and the batteries need to be changed in my smoke detector.” But with anxiety, very often there's nothing we can do. So we're in this fight or flight, and we don't know what to do. But tapping is something that we can do and look at what is there that I can do in this moment. I might look and see there's no real danger here. It's allowing our self to recognize what I'm telling myself that's causing the anxiety is not true. I'm able to calm that down as I'm doing the tapping. There may be a part of me that resists that. We resist change. We're afraid of making changes. We want to keep things the same. So even if our lives are crap, part of us says, “Yes, but it's my crap. I know how to deal with it.” [00:19:36] PF: I’m comfortable with it. Yes. [00:19:38] BY: Exactly. I dealt with it yesterday, so I know I can deal with it today. Doing it differently feels uncomfortable, so I don't want to change that. So when I try to make changes, I have this anxious response. As I tap myself down and I recognize, oh, I can relax while I think about this change. You know what? I could actually handle this. I could make my life better in so many ways. I could allow myself to be happier, and that's cool. [00:20:05] PF: That's awesome. So it helps with anxiety. What are some other areas that you've seen people implement it to really make some big changes in their life? [00:20:15] BY: Paula, how much time do you have? [00:20:17] PF: How about 16 days? [00:20:22] BY: There's an expression with EFT. So EFT stands for emotional freedom techniques, which was one of the – what most of the tapping techniques are based on. The expression is try it on everything. Any place in your life that is not as ideal as you'd like it to be, there's probably something you can tap on there where you're holding yourself back. If I'm not making as much money as I like, if I'm not having the kind of relationships that I want, if I'm not as healthy as I want to be, what stops me? If there's some belief, some fear, some stress that's causing me to stop myself from taking the positive actions that would create this better version of myself, this healthier, wealthier version of myself, this happy version of myself. What limits happiness? Like we were talking just before about Michelangelo's David, I always use that as this metaphor. Michelangelo said the statue was already there, perfect inside the marble, and he just had to remove what didn't belong to reveal the masterpiece inside. That, to me, is a perfect metaphor for what we're doing with tapping work that our healthiest happiest version of ourselves, our most successful version of ourselves is here inside, covered under all this excess marble, which is anxiety and fear and doubt and feelings of unworthiness. These are tappable issues. As we clear those, we naturally think more highly of ourselves. We naturally behave in those more productive, healthier, more successful ways. [00:21:51] PF: That's excellent. You are doing so much good work to get this message out in the world. I know you have so many videos we can watch. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find you. We're going to send them to your YouTube page, where they can find all kinds of important resources. But as we wrap this up, what is it that you hope everyone who's listening to you takes away from it? [00:22:12] BY: Well, I would love for you to take away that you really are this magnificent child of the universe, worthy and deserving an awesome life, and that there is this simple tool that can help you clear that. That's why I have a program on my website, so free five-day program called Tap Into Your Best Self that helps you clear away the misunderstandings about yourself. I like to call myself a gift unwrapper. [00:22:39] PF: I like that. [00:22:40] BY: You are a gift to the world, and you'll unwrap that and share yourself more freely. [00:22:45] PF: I love it. Thank you, Brad. I appreciate your time with us today. [00:22:48] BY: Well, thank you, Paula. Happy to be here. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:22:54] PF: That was Brad Yates, talking about tapping. If you'd like to learn more about Brad, check out his YouTube videos on tapping, learn more about his books, or take his free five-day tapping course, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Unwinding Anxiety With Dr. Jud Brewer [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 436 of Live Happy Now. Anxiety is so pervasive today that more than 40 million adults in the US are living with it. But this week's guest is trying to change that. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I am talking with Dr. Jud Brewer, a New York Times best-selling author and Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center. In his 2021 book, Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Jud shared his scientific insights into how to break the cycle of worry. Now, those steps are also available through an app, and he's here today to tell us how we all can learn to break free from anxiety. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:45] PF: Dr. Jud, thank you so much for joining me today. [00:00:48] JB: Thanks for having me. [00:00:50] PF: You have written, researched, done so much work in the area of anxiety. This is such a huge, huge problem for people. To start it off, this has been problematic for generations. I wondered why we're not getting better at managing it, given the amount of time we've had to learn about it. [00:01:07] JB: This is way before neuroscience was even a field . Neuroscience is a very young field of study. It wasn't even coined until like the 1970s. But if you think about this approach to changing human behavior and working with ourselves, it's about I think, therefore, I am. I think, therefore, I could think. I can think my way out of anxiety. So that's been a dominant paradigm for a long time. Even I love – one of my favorite comedy skits is from the 1970s. This guy, I don't know if you remember Bob Newhart. [00:01:41] PF: Oh, I loved him. I loved Bob Newhart. [00:01:44] JB: So he had a skit called Stop It, basically, where this person, this woman comes into his – he's playing a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Woman comes into his office and says, “I have this fear,” talks about this fear. I won't give away the skit. Then he basically just says, “Stop it.” But he's highlighting what has been this dominant paradigm back in the sixties, seventies with cognitive behavioral therapy. Still present to today as the dominant thing is just control yourself, to stop it. If only that worked, if we could find that switch in our brain that we could just flip off that anxiety switch or that worry switch or that overeating switch or that whatever switch. It just doesn't work that way. [00:02:28] PF: Right. It's like growing up, my mom would be like, “Well, just calm down.” It's like that is what I'm trying to do. Literally, I'm trying to calm down and I can't. [00:02:37] JB: Yes. The more somebody tells us to calm down, the more anxious we get. [00:02:41] PF: Yes, exactly, exactly. Then we feel like we're doing something wrong. Like, “Why can't I get this under control?” Is that part of it too? We felt like we have to do it ourselves. [00:02:50] JB: I think that's a lot of it, where it's just like, well, what's wrong with you if you can't control your anxiety. So we also get into loops of self-judgment and unworthiness and guilt and shame and all that stuff. [00:03:04] PF: So is it more prevalent? Or are we just hearing more about it? Are we more willing to talk about it? Because it seems it's everywhere I turn, I hear conversations about it. I see reading materials about it. So I don't know if we're just more comfortable with talking about it or it really is a bigger problem. [00:03:22] JB: It's hard to know whether something's increasing, decreasing, or staying the same if you haven't measured it. So I don't think it's been measured historically as much as it's been measured today. So what I can say is we do know some of the factors that contribute to anxiety more, and we can certainly say those factors are pretty prevalent. So for example, our brains don't like uncertainty, and that's actually a built-in mechanism to help us survive. If we hear some rustling in the bushes, think of our ancient ancestors. You can't just ignore that and be like, “Yes, whatever. I'm going back to sleep.” [00:03:55] PF: It’s probably just a tiger. I’m fine. [00:03:57] JB: Yes, yes. It – pet tiger, pet tiger, not the dangerous non-pet tiger, right? So, yes, just a tiger. No big deal. So our brains are set up for survival in that way. In modern day, we've never had so much access to information, right? So it's like our brains are like, “Oh, more information, good.” But you can't drink from the fire hose. On top of that, there's a lot of unintentional misinformation and then intentional disinformation. So back in the day of our ancient ancestors, there was no such thing as the deep fake tiger or the whatever, the intentionally misleading tiger. It was like tiger or no tiger. So now, we have to become the expert on everything. When we hear something, we're like, “Well, is that true or not,” and then – so our brains start to go into overload because not only is there a ton of information, but we don't know what to trust, what not to trust, and we're not the experts. So I would say that certainly wasn't available back, before the Internet, for example. The Internet's really made information much more available and also mis and disinformation as well. So that's one piece in modern day that historically hasn't been there that is certainly contributing. [00:05:14] PF: And we don't get that time away from it. We used to have like you walked away from your life a little bit. Your work life, whatever it was. You had your evening. You could kind of decompress. That doesn't happen now. So what's that doing to give us this heightened always-on circuit in our brain? [00:05:31] JB: Yes. Well, there's a – it's now coined the FOMO, fear of missing out. That fear of missing out is not just social. So that can start in someone's teenage years or even probably earlier. But also in adulthood, it’s not only the social FOMO but also the work FOMO. So it's like, well, I could be checking my email to see if I'm missing an email. I could be doing this or that. Or somebody can always get a hold of us via text and say, “Hey, call me immediately,” when there used to be work-life boundaries. [00:06:02] PF: Yes. I read an article in the New York Times this past week, and it said that texting from work is starting to invade our personal space. I'm like, “That's just starting.” Like – [00:06:12] JB: Starting. I was going to say what. [00:06:14] PF: That’s been going on for a little while there, NYT. So it is. It's absolutely overloading. What is it doing to the brains of kids who are growing up in this kind of always-on environment? [00:06:28] JB: Yes. That's a good question. We now have a generation of digital natives, which means children that were born and don't know what it's like not to have smartphones, not to have social media, not to have the Internet. It is an uncontrolled experiment. [00:06:46] PF: On your children. [00:06:48] JB: Yes. That you didn't sign a consent form for. [00:06:53] PF: And you’re probably not going to like the outcome. But, yes, it is. It's going to be – it will be interesting to see. Will the way that anxiety is addressed with that generation be different than, say, someone like myself, who actually saw the screens go off like at 2am when they're babysitting, and there's no more TV for hours? [00:07:13] JB: It's a good question. Happy to be wrong here, but my hypothesis is that, regardless of whether we're a digital native or not, you treat it the same way. Part of that is that our brains are so adaptable that we can certainly remember what it was like to not have a cell phone or not have email or not have the Internet. But it just feels like ancient history because that's not what's happening right now. So whether we were born before or after, it doesn't really matter because what we're dealing with is the present moment, like what's happening right now. [00:07:52] PF: That makes perfect sense. You have done so much research in a lot of areas, but we want to talk about specifically what you've done with anxiety. I'm interested in learning what made you start researching anxiety. [00:08:04] JB: Basically, I was really anxious at the end of college, and I didn't know it to the point where my body had to give me some very clear signals through I developed irritable bowel syndrome. One of the big drivers for some people of irritable bowel syndrome is anxiety and stress. So my guts were letting me know, “Hey, pay attention. This is not good.” Also, fast-forward eight years later, when after I had finished my MD-PhD program, I started getting panic attacks during residency. So those were kind of precursors for my personal experience with this. Then interestingly, I – my lab – so I had started studying mindfulness training when I started my career as an assistant professor because I was really interested in how people can change addictive behaviors and habits. As a psychiatrist, I was really seeing the limitations in current treatments for addictions. So I really wanted to put – contribute there. I felt like people with addictions were my people, and so I really wanted to help there. So I started developing these programs. I developed a program for smoking. We actually got five times the quit rates of gold standard treatment, so that's – [00:09:16] PF: Oh, that’s amazing. [00:09:17] JB: Yes. I was thinking, wow, this works pretty well. Then we even developed an app for eating called Eat Right Now. A study led by Ashley Mason at UCSF found a 40% reduction in craving-related eating. That’s even gone, so we're like, “Wow, that's pretty good.” That program is now actually CDC-recognized as a diabetes prevention program, the first one that's based solely on mindfulness as a way to change it. I would say mindfulness. We can talk about this in a bit, but mindfulness really targets some of these neural mechanisms which other programs don't. But somebody in our eating program said to me, “Hey, anxiety is actually triggering me to stress-eat. Can you create a program for anxiety?” I was thinking, well, I'm a psychiatrist. I prescribe medications. But I was realizing, if you look at the data, there's this scientific term called the number needed to treat, which basically gives you a rough and dirty of how many people actually benefit from a treatment. That number is 5.2, which means one in five people benefit from the best medications we have out there. So I was basically playing the medication lottery when treating my patients with anxiety. One in five, I didn't know which one of the next five was going to benefit, and I didn't know what to do with the other four. So I was getting anxious about how to treat my patients with anxiety .So that question that somebody had asked me from our Eat Right Now program, can you create a program for anxiety, was kind of burning a hole in my ear, and I started – so I went back as a scientist and looked at the literature. Somebody back in the 1980s, ironically back when Prozac was introduced as the first SSR that's supposed to help anxiety, they had largely ignored the psychological research, where this guy Thomas Borkovec, had suggested that anxiety could be driven like a habit. When I read that, I was like, “Anxiety, habit. I research habits. I never thought of anxiety as a habit.” I was like mind-blown. So I developed this Unwinding Anxiety program and as a researcher wanted to study to see how well it worked. Get this. We started as like who's – what's the hardest population for us to work with? Oh, yes, physicians. Like we’re a pain in the ass. We don't take care of ourselves. We learn to armor up. We learn to be martyrs because if we're focusing on ourselves – we could be saving patients’ lives, and so don't waste our time on ourselves. Of course, that's why we get burnt out. So we did our first study with anxious physicians, and we got this whopping 57% reduction in anxiety. We also got burnout. But I was like, “Wow. Okay, this might have some legs to it.” So we got some funding from the NIH and did a randomized controlled trial in people with generalized anxiety disorder, like the worst of the worst. They wake up anxious. They feel anxious all day. Then they have trouble sleeping because they're anxious. Rinse and repeat. Really, really challenging condition. Here, we got a, ready for this, 67% reduction in anxiety, yes. The number needed to treat there, remember with medications, it's 5.2. The number needed to treat here is 1.6, the smaller number. [00:12:15] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:12:16] JB: Yes. So we're like, “Wow, this is pretty good.” We went on to work out the mechanism. We did more studies showing that you could even improve sleep by treating anxiety, all this stuff. So all of that is to say work effects conjecture his hypothesis that you could treat anxiety as a habit was just so important. Here we are able to test that hypothesis in a way that's accessible for anybody with a smartphone. Here we're getting gangbuster results. It's really exciting to see that the theory lines up with the practice and also that the practice can be very pragmatic. We set these programs up to be 10 minutes a day for people to incorporate them into their busy lives. Importantly, what we're seeing from the data is that it's really helpful for people to reduce their anxiety. [00:13:02] PF: There's so many aspects to anxiety, and one thing is being able to access that help when you need it. So what are some of the tools that you teach people? We'll get to your app in just a moment. But what are some of the tools that you teach people to use so that when anxiety hits, they can start managing it then? [00:13:22] JB: Yes. I go into all the details in the Unwinding Anxiety book, but people don't need to read my book to get this. I think of it as a three-step process, where the first step is to map out our anxiety habit loops. Now, I didn't even know. As I mentioned, I didn't know that meant anxiety could be triggered like a habit. So the first thing for anybody to know is that anxiety can be a habit. The way that works is you need three elements to form a habit. You needed a trigger or a cue. Behavior is the second step. Then a result or a reward from a neuroscience standpoint is the third. The way that works is that the feeling of anxiety can trigger the mental behavior of worrying. Yes. Mental behaviors count just as much as physical behaviors, right? Then that mental behavior of worrying makes us feel like we're in control or at least doing something, right? Because it's better to worry than not to worry. [00:14:12] PF: Oh, interesting. I think most of us don't even think of worrying as a form of control. Again, it's just a habit. It's just – it's what I do. [00:14:21] JB: Yes. Well, I think that's accurate because worrying doesn't actually give us control. But the research has shown that for enough people, it makes them feel like they're in control, or it distracts them from the feeling of anxiety that it's rewarding enough, at least initially, for it to feed back so that the next time somebody feels anxious, they worry. Then like you point out, it quickly becomes a habit. [00:14:43] PF: Interesting. So you've got these three steps. Then how do they – how does that equate into being able to handle them? [00:14:51] JB: Yes, yes. So that first step. We've talked about the first step is just mapping out these habit loops. So being able to identify what's the trigger, what's the behavior, what's the result. We can actually even simplify that to just puts the behavior, and it tends to be worrying, like you're highlighting. But sometimes, it can be distracting ourselves with social media, stress-eating, emotional eating, drinking alcohol, things like that. Second step is where we really lean into the neuroscience. The way that works is our brains are going to keep doing a behavior if it's rewarding, and they're going to stop doing that behavior if it's not rewarding. If we're not paying attention, and we don't see how rewarding or unrewarding a behavior is, we're going to just keep doing it. We actually did a study with our Eat Right Now program to have people where we had people specifically pay attention to what it feels like when they overeat. It only takes 10 or 15 times for somebody to overeat and pay attention to see that that reward value is not rewarding. That reward value drops below zero in their brain, and they start to shift that behavior. So it doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take any effort. Notice how none of this requires willpower. This is really all about awareness, paying attention in the present moment. So feeling of anxiety triggers the mental behavior of worrying. If we don't pay attention to how rewarding or unrewarding worrying is, we're going to keep doing it because we're going to think, “Oh, this is just what I do,” like you pointed out. If we start to ask the question, what am I getting from worrying, and we really feel into our direct experience, we start to see something pretty clearly. Worrying makes me more anxious, right? It doesn't solve my problems. It doesn't help me predict the future. All it does is make me feel more anxious. That gives us a negative prediction error, where our brain says, “Hey, is this worrying thing really working for you?” No, no. It's not. It's not. Pay attention. Then we start to become disenchanted with the worrying. That's step two. That step applies to any habit. When my patients come in and want to quit smoking, what do I have them do? Pay attention as they smoke. They come back. I had a guy. He’d been smoking 40 years, right? We calculated the number of times he had reinforced this process. Ready for this? It was like 293,000 times. [00:17:04] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:17:06] JB: And he hadn't been paying attention. So I said just set up a follow-up appointment and told him to go home and smoke and pay attention. He comes back and he's like how, "How did I not notice that before,” right? Cigarettes taste like crap. So it's much easier to quit smoking when you really see, feel, taste, smell what cigarettes are like. [00:17:25] PF: That's amazing. Yes, because you can’t – I can see how that works with any habit. That's absolutely amazing. [00:17:30] JB: Yes. Smoking, overeating, anxiety, all these things. Self-judgment, big one in western society. We're really good at beating ourselves up. We can start to ask, “What do I get from this,” right? So that's the second step. Third step is actually leveraging that same process. So if our brain is going to only do things that are rewarding, and they start to become disenchanted with these other behaviors, our brains are going to look for something better. Spoiler alert, it's not social media. [00:18:00] PF: Yes. Dang it, I got my answer wrong. [00:18:05] JB: Yes. Just scrolling on our social media feeds or checking our email, it might scratch that itch, but it just makes it itchier. It's like poison ivy. So we need to find things that are intrinsically rewarding that help us step out of these old habit loops. The good news is they're already there. We already have them. We just need to dust them off and use them a little bit more. Two main flavors here. One is curiosity. The other is kindness. Let's see how we can apply both of them. So if we have anxiety and we start worrying, we can worry, which tends to come into the mental flavor of, “Oh, no. This is happening,” or, “Will this happen,” or, “What's going to happen?” We can flip that to, “Oh.” That oh awakens our curiosity, and we go, “Oh, what does this anxiety feel like in my body?” We can even ask questions like is it more on the right side or the left side, front or back? It doesn't really matter what the answer is, but that awakens our curiosity like, “Huh, where is this? What does it feel like?” When we go looking for the anxiety, it starts running away because what we start to notice is that these physical sensations are constantly changing. If we're not feeding them by worrying, they tend to go away on their own. They might not go away instantly, but we can start to see, “Oh, these are physical sensations. They might be unpleasant, but I can tolerate this.” That curiosity helps us work with them. There's this saying attributed to Marcus Aurelius who is a Roman emperor and a stoic. He says, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” I love that because we can think of anxiety as a problem, or we can think of it as an opportunity to learn. Oh, this is what unpleasant sensations feel like. That curiosity helps us develop that distress tolerance. Instead of running to our phone to distract ourselves, we can turn toward this experience. By turning toward it, it's like the rats that scatter when you turn on the lights, right? It’s not as powerful as we thought it was. So that's how curiosity can help. I think if it has flipping that, “Oh, no,” whether it's a craving or worrying or whatever to, “Oh,” awakening that curiosity. The other flavor that I talked about was kindness, and that can be very helpful when we're judging ourselves. So we can compare judging ourselves, what do we get from this, to kindness. What do we get from this? No-brainer, right? Which one feels better in the body, being kind to ourselves. Yes, right? So here, this third step helps us step out of the old habit loop of judging ourselves by stepping into the new behavior of being kind to ourselves. Then because that is more rewarding, it becomes the new habit. Same for curiosity, it helps a step out of the old worrying habit loop and into the new habit of being curious. [00:20:56] PF: Those are such incredible techniques. Obviously, they take practice. It takes one remembering to do them when it strikes, which might be the hardest part of it. Once anxiety kicks in, it kind of feels like just grab your hat and hold the hell on. You don't really have the chance to do anything. But if you have a plan and you know, “Next time I feel anxious, this is what I'm going to do,” then you can start changing it. [00:21:20] JB: Yes. It's kind of like if you're flying in an airplane, lots of people have fear of flying in an airplane. Talk about lack of control. So the pilot comes on, and she says, “Attention, there's going to be some turbulence. Buckle up.” We can go, “Oh, no. Turbulence.” Or we can go, “Woo-hoo. Oh, no. Here we go.” [00:21:38] PF: Am I going to be YouTube famous? Hey. [00:21:42] JB: Yes. We have no control over that turbulence, but we certainly have control over how we respond to it. [00:21:47] PF: That's terrific. With your book, Unwinding Anxiety, it was widely acclaimed. It has helped so many people get through it, and that led to creating an app of the same name, which we're going to let our listeners try out for a month for free. But talk about how the app allows them to implement these principles and kind of how that works for them. [00:22:10] JB: So the app is set up as a – we have these core trainings where it's 10 minutes a day for 30 days to help people get the core understanding of how their mind works and how to work with their minds. So it's about 10 minutes a day, videos, animations that kind of teach a concept and then importantly have people start to put it into practice that day. Okay. So that's the psychoeducational component. The other components are we've got in-the-moment exercises. So when somebody feels anxious, they can buckle up, and we've got some great practices to help people ground, help people get back into the moment. So we can get their brains back online and working. The other piece is through those 30 core modules, it walks them through this three-step process. We use the analogy of gears, like driving a car. You shift into first gear, second gear, third gear. On top of that, there are a bunch of theme weeks that help solidify the core concepts. Then also, and this is actually one of the favorite parts of my week, every week, I run a live group through Zoom at noon Eastern Time on Wednesdays for anybody to join and ask a question. So we can actually go through what they might be struggling with live. So there, we can reiterate the concepts of three gears. Then we can see where somebody might be struggling to shift into one of the gears. Then, usually, in 5 to 10 minutes, kind of identify that and have them through an exploration process together. Have them see where they might already have it, and they just don't think they do or give them a couple of things to play with, and then let us know how it goes. So those are the key elements. We also have a very active online community where we now, over the years, have developed this very large crowdsourced knowledge base, where people ask questions. I answer the questions. Then over the years, people – there's basically a very rich library of answered questions because 80 or 90 percent of the questions that people have are the same, and they've already been answered. [00:24:06] PF: That's terrific too because just knowing you're not alone in your anxiety journey can be absolutely huge. Having someone else say, “I felt the exact same way, and here's what I did,” instead of going like, “Dude, that sucks. I'm really sorry.” [00:24:21] JB: “It sucks to be you.” [00:24:23] PF: Exactly. “Ah, so glad I didn't get that.” But, yes, I think that's so helpful. That community approach is really incredible. [00:24:31] JB: It is. Community is everything. [00:24:33] PF: So all the work that you've done in this space, and you're continuing to do more. What is it that you really want everyone to know about anxiety and, two, like really hope this accomplishes in the long run? [00:24:44] JB: Well, I would say the most important thing is for people to know it's not their fault, right? They think there's something wrong with them. They're broken. They can't be fixed. Well, there's nothing wrong with them. This is just their survival brains that have gone a little off track, and they can actually get them back on track in a relatively simple way, right? It's not magic. It's not to say one and done. But it's also not to say, well, you've been anxious for 30 years. It's going to take another 30 years to help you become unanxious. That's the good news. I've had plenty of patients, et cetera, success stories, where people come in 30 years of generalized anxiety disorder, full-blown panic attacks. Within six months, they're like, “Wow, I don't know what to do with all this extra time now that I'm not worrying.” [00:25:34] PF: I love that. How freeing is that? [00:25:36] JB: I'm like, okay, great opportunity to go help the world. [00:25:40] PF: Yes. There you go. This is such an important conversation to have. The work that you're doing is so incredible. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me today and talk about it. I'm really eager to share your work with our listeners because I don't want to say I think they will. I know that people will get so much out of this. So I appreciate you coming on today. [00:26:01] JB: Well, I really appreciate you having me. This has been a great conversation. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:06] PF: That was Dr. Jud Brewer, talking about Unwinding Anxiety. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Jud or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're on this episode's landing page, be sure to check our anxiety links and resources, including a one-month free trial of the Unwinding Anxiety app. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Happy Activist Becca Finley: Taking the Arts to Rural Communities [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 435 of Live Happy Now. Creative arts such as painting, dancing, acting, and singing can play a powerful role in self-care and mental health. But they're often overlooked, particularly in rural communities. This week's guest is determined to change that. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with our Happy Activist, Becca Finley, founder of the non-profit This Is Noteworthy. This Is Noteworthy supports the creative community and now is working to develop new spaces in underserved areas. Becca is here today to talk about why she feels it's so important to emphasize the arts, how it can improve our mental health, and why she is focusing on rural areas. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:48] PF: Becca, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:50] BF: Thank you, Paula. I'm so happy to be here. [00:00:53] PF: You have a lot going on. I think before we get into the how and why of what you're doing, I want to hear about the what. Can you explain to our listeners what This Is Noteworthy is all about? [00:01:05] BF: This Is Noteworthy is an organization that was founded in late 2010. The purpose of the organization was to give creatives a space to grow and to experiment. So whether that be as a graphic designer or as a writer or as an artist, a visual artist, we sat through the process of people don't have access to try and fail. So really, what This Is Noteworthy started as is a place where creatives could come together to build something as a unit, and then try and have this space and ability to fail but still put it out and utilize the creative process. [00:01:48] PF: You say that it started in late 2010. You started it, correct? [00:01:52] BF: I did. [00:01:52] PF: It’s something you started. Can you talk about what was going on that made you realize this needed to start? Then how did you go about saying this is the steps that we take to create that? [00:02:04] BF: So, I mean, I am a creative and have been my whole life. I never had enough resources to be able to try and do all the different things I wanted to do. So I took on lots of jobs and internships and led what is deemed as a starving artist lifestyle and fully embraced it, dug into addiction and all the things that come along with that. In 2010, I was in Texas, and I had a really burnout phase in my life. I was traveling fast and hard, and I needed to reset. So I moved, packed up all my belongings, shut everything down, and moved to the beach in South Carolina, and took three years to get really quiet and tap into the divine. I thought what I wanted in my own journey was I wanted to create, and I wanted support, and I wanted all these things. But I was mad at everyone for not opening doors freely and easily for people to grow. I was also mad that our creative community was always in competition with each other versus being collaborative with each other. I watched industry, meaning the business part of the restaurant industry and the entertainment industry and the arts industry, start just take, take, take, take, take, take, take from the creatives, and creatives had nothing left. You have nothing left. You have no resources. Your work half the time doesn't belong to you anymore. I wanted to change that. So after sitting on the beach for a few years, I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to something that was of a noble service. I couldn't think of anything that was a more noble service than taking care and providing space and all the different ways you provide space for the people who create and inspire everyone else. [00:04:10] PF: So that's a huge mission, though. How do you go from sitting on a beach and saying, “This is what I want to do,” to making that happen? Like it's a big machine. [00:04:21] BF: Well, I think it seems like it is. It is and it's not. I think that's the thing that all of us who want to do big things we struggle with is like how do I. How do I go about? Then we're like, “I got to form a business. I got to do this. I got to do that.” The truth is you don't. What you have to do is go, “Oh, yes. I want to do this.” You go and you talk to one other person. You find one person who says, “Yes, let's –” In this case, I had two interns that were working at the film production company that I was working with. They have been talking about wanting to have a music magazine, and they asked me. They were like, “Can we have a music magazine?” I was like, “Can the music magazine have a ripple effect that impacts a bunch of different communities?” They were like, “I don't know what that means.” I said, “Great. Let's do it.” So it literally started as that, and we put an ad on Craigslist. All these different people who were graphic designers, writers, videographers, musicians, artists, everyone came together and said, “I want to be a part of this. I want community. I want to grow.” So that's how we started. [00:05:30] PF: So basically, when you provide a space for creative people, they'll find it. Kind of like if you build it, they will come. That's how it's all come together for you. [00:05:39] BF: Yes, 100%. It’s that but then also recognizing where opportunity is and where there are holes that beauty and empathy and curiosity are needed. So it's an awareness too of what is around you. Just like people take from creative, creatives have to give back. But everybody has to work together on what does it look like that it's beneficial to both. So it's having the awareness yourself of recognizing where there are holes that you actually can help and elevate society. [00:06:15] PF: So you've done a lot of different things to provide that space for creative people. You've just developed a lot of programs, things like that. Can you tell us some of your favorite projects that you've done through This Is Noteworthy to give artists a voice? [00:06:27] BF: There are probably three that I love the most. The first is there was a documentary project. We did this high school program in Charleston that connected four different high schools, the different socioeconomic groups and different areas of the city. Kids who had artistic interests came together to build a television show. So in the process of building this television show with all these different creatives who came in, so they could do interviews and all the thing, it was right around the time of the 2016 election and the Emanuel shooting at the church. Then our kids had a program outside, and one of them got held up at gunpoint. [00:07:09] PF: Oh, wow. [00:07:11] BF: It was a very, very scary thing. We had to shift like quickly because they're no longer prepared to just make a television show about art. What they did was they chose to use the mediums they were learning, film and writing and design and art and television, to instead make a documentary called See Me that was all about what it means to have gun violence or people not seeing each other and having empathy for each other in schools. We had a songwriter come in, and they all wrote a song together. It was the most beautiful collaboration that organically came out of what happens with life. But for me, that shows ultimately the creative process and the life process of how in every day, every moment, you have to be aware, and you have to pivot, and you have to be willing to pivot to accommodate what society is handing us. [00:08:08] PF: Let me ask you this. How did it change the people who are participating to have that voice instead of trying to deal with it in their own heads or just saying like, “That was an awful thing, and I've got to move on,” to actually have the space to sit down and work through it and create a song, create something about it that really expressed how they felt? What outcome do you think that had as opposed to not having that outlet? [00:08:32] BF: For one of our professional songwriters who came in and worked on it, he took six weeks out of his very busy schedule in life to come in and work on this. He begrudgingly kind of did it at first. I mean, he's happy to, but it was like, “Man, this is a beast of a project.” It was scary, and it was something he hadn't done before and all the things. Then at the end, the inspiration and the cause and the ability to give back, it just fueled him on to do more and more within society in that area. [00:09:06] PF: That's terrific and that's the whole purpose, and what you're looking at is how the launching pad that you give and the space that you create will then help them explore their talents, and they keep moving that forward. They're going to pay it forward. They're going to do other things, and that's going to affect other people. I believe that's what was behind you, taking it to a whole next level in 2021, and you created a cultural arts center in Water Valley Mississippi. That's had just this amazing effect on the community. Can you talk about how you changed that in 2021, and what you're doing, and how that's changed the program going forward? [00:09:43] BF: So in 2021, we as a group decided that, hey, it was time to have a brick and mortar because all the things we were doing, we were bouncing from place to place to place to place to place. But I think what we realized was there's a modeling of behavior, I think, of creatives or entrepreneurs for that matter of this gig economy of like, “I’m in. I’m out. I’m in. I’m out. I’m in. I’m out.” There's no real holding on to what you create because you're always putting it in the hands of another venue, another place, another something else that doesn't belong to you. We as an organization, we're doing that as well. So we had nothing to hold on to at the end of the day. [00:10:26] PF: Had no home. You had no home. [00:10:28] BF: We had no home and no way to protect our people that they then always had a safe space to come to. So when we decided to plant in Water Valley, Mississippi, we decided we wanted to start impacting underserved and rural communities, and utilizing our cityness that we have as well, and putting it back into rural communities because those communities, the school systems are in the arts, and entrepreneur-type activities are lacking. So we were like, “If we can create a hub that is primarily free for people to be able to utilize, we can cultivate many entrepreneurs, creative entrepreneurs. We can give that. We can give that back and have access and resources.” Which rural and underserved communities do not have access and resources that are not just only that they're free to them, but they are free to them to learn how to make money for themselves, and they use this space to make money for themselves. [00:11:41] PF: So talk about some of the things that has gone on with the center because you've done a lot in a very short amount of time. Tell us some of the things you've done, and then we're going to talk about what kind of effect it's had on the community. [00:11:55] BF: So we've been in the space for almost a year now, and we've produced about 150 different events. We've given over 200 micro-grants to students and provided 80-plus opportunities for creatives to build working gigs for themselves. So that in a just a nutshell. But then in the space, there's a listening room. There's an art gallery. There's a commercial kitchen. There's a ceramic studio. We do healing arts work with yoga, and we're starting breath work. There have been exhibits that have ranged from the first art exhibit that came from Parchman Prison and the inmates was in our space. So we do music events with Wu Fei, this beautiful classical music in a tiny listening room in Water Valley, Mississippi with an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. [00:12:55] PF: Talk about Water Valley. That's less than 4,000 population. [00:12:59] BF: The Water Valley, the total population is, I think, right around 3,600 people. [00:13:05] PF: Yes. What you're doing is like unheard of in a community that small. First of all, when you first started saying, “Here, we're going to do this,” was the community like, “You're insane. That doesn't happen here.”? Or were they just standing there with their mouths open or what? How did they receive this? [00:13:20] BF: It’s a hard question because I think it's both, and it is – some people were like, “This is amazing.” Other people were like, “What do you want?” Other people were like, “We already do this.” So there was a wide gamut of just I think when you are in a small community, and there are different people that are working on different things to whatever their capacity is, it’s tricky that no one comes in and dishonors or dismantles what is happening. So we have to walk in and walk through really a lot of landmines. I mean honestly. I think over time, it's like you have to walk the walk and talk the talk. I think that's what we've done. We have been over the top, like we just have been doing the things. Hopefully, people come. Hopefully, we will continue to be out there and grow. But it's just – it is that ripple effect. There's no greater gift for us than for the people we are serving within that building, that space that they go out, and they're like, “I had this comeback with me,” or, “I can't go. You should try this over there.” Then they show up, and we're like, “We’re thrilled to have you,” or, “We're thrilled to explore this idea with you of something you want to make or produce that you haven't been able to do yet and let us think about who our resources are that we can help you.” [00:15:00] PF: So what you've done is give them a space to express themselves. You've also brought people together that might not have been together otherwise. You've brought people from outside of the community who have come into your events. I think that's what's stunning too is Water Valley is not a place where a lot of people are going to say, “Hey, let's go there for the Friday night show.” So what has that been like for you and for the community to have that kind of an impact? [00:15:29] BF: I think for the community, it's beautiful. It's resources. Again, it's an opportunity to experience beauty, to experience questioning, to experience community without having to drive too far, without having to worry about anything that it's there, that you two are deserving of beauty. [00:15:48] PF: That's the pride too. It gives pride to a community to have these things that people are coming to see. [00:15:53] BF: Yes. I think so. Well, and it's that, and it shows. Or at least for me, it shows that any of us can advocate for anything we want anywhere at any time. We just have to be willing to do the work. We have to be accountable. We have to keep pushing forward when it's hard. [00:16:18] PF: Yes. Well, and now because this is done well, and thanks to a lot of hard work from you and some other people, now you're looking at replicating that model. Can you talk about this vision that you have going forward to help other communities? Because I think that's what's so amazing is you've touched so many lives in this one little community. Now, you're saying, “Hey, let's do that same thing for –” I think it's a dozen other places. [00:16:44] BF: Yes. What we want to do is we want to impact the southeast. You know I'm from Louisiana, so the southeast is my hub. Because we don't have a ton of major cities in the south, again, there's a lot of rural communities. So what we want to do is have one of these in each state, whether it ranges from a brick and mortar. Or it's a land, and it's artist housing an amphitheater. But we want them to connect. So you have different communities who have different flavors, but they all are filtering together in artists or creatives or chefs or whatever. Have the ability to create a routing system as well between – from community, community, community. So they can earn a living and earn it in a way that is really supportive and that they get to try new things without worrying like, “Hey, if I open this half-a-million-dollar restaurant, and these 12 recipes don't work, I've drained everything – [00:17:47] PF: Yeah, you’re done. [00:17:48] BF: Right. None of them have to do that and because they don't have to. Other than when they finish, they donate back to us, there's not a payment and [inaudible 00:17:58]. So the access for all creatives and people to get in the door, it's there. [00:18:07] PF: That's amazing. [00:18:08] BF: So why wouldn't we want to create this real curiosity and empathy across the entire south, which is filled with literature and storytelling and food and community and music and history and reconciliation and all these things? Why would we not provide the space to be able to do that in a way that is good for the people that are making? [00:18:35] PF: As you amplify the creatives in a certain community and that, of course, attracts more creative people into that spot because creative people want to be where the creativity is. So as you do that, how is that going to change the flavor and the feeling of these small communities? [00:18:55] BF: Our intention is never to change the flavor of a community. It's to enhance it. It's enhance it. It's use the resources that are there, and then bring an extra to think about, to be like, “Huh, let me noodle on that.” I don't want to change anything. What I want to do is allow the community to see what its own natural resources are in the term of creative capital. Because if you don't know what your creative capital is, you can't utilize it to beautify your city. You can't utilize it for someone who maybe has a great business brain who you need on your city council, who is really creative with numbers. But you didn't know that because now this person's volunteered over at This Is Noteworthy. We know and we're like, “Oh, wow. You're really good with budgets, and they need help.” So it's this connectivity in these really gentle ways of small batch events. [00:20:03] PF: I love that. I love that. So we're going to tell people how they can learn more about you and more about This Is Noteworthy. But as you look down the road, like look at this five years from now, what do you want to be able to say all this work has accomplished? [00:20:17] BF: I want more people to be more open to the possibility and the probability of goodness, that people are actually good. People actually do care. People actually can make something and provide something, and they don't have to take all the money from it. It still works. There's not one way to do things. I think that's the biggest thing is have people learn there are many ways to do stuff, and you cannot do anything if you don't take that step. [00:20:58] PF: I like it. I like it. You're doing wonderful work. You're putting so much good out in the world. I appreciate what you're working on, and I appreciate you coming on the show and talking to us about it. [00:21:08] BF: I loved it so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, and I appreciate what you're putting out into the world. This is a beautiful podcast. [00:21:15] PF: Thank you. [00:21:16] BF: You're welcome. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:22] PF: That was Happy Activist Becca Finley, talking about the power of taking arts into rural communities. If you'd like to learn more about Becca and This Is Noteworthy or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. If you know someone who is putting good out into the world, we want to hear about it. Each month, we celebrate a different Happy Activist who is changing the world one happy act at a time. Just email us at editor@livehappy.com and tell us all about them. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]