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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Commit to a Summer of Fun with Mike Rucker, PhD [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:01] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 473 of Live Happy Now. Summer officially begins on June 20th and that’s the perfect time to launch Live Happy’s Summer of Fun. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I’m joined by Mike Rucker, an organizational psychologist, charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association, and author of The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. We’ve teamed up with Mike to offer a free, eight-week email course that will set you on track to have a fun-filled summer, and today, he explains why fun is so important, how to make more room for it in your life, and what to expect when you commit to having a summer of fun. Let’s have a listen.   [INTERVIEW] [0:00:49.3] PF: Mike, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [0:00:51.5] MR: Oh, my goodness, I love being here, so thanks for having me. [0:00:54.5] PF: Well, you’re so great to talk to you because you’re one of the few people that I know who studies fun, and what a great career pursuit that is, you know? It’s like, I’m going to study fun. So, I wanted to find out, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question, like, what made you realize the importance of prioritizing fun? [0:01:16.1] MR: Yeah. So, my story really is being an early part of the International Positive Psychology Association, when that started in 2000, right? Cheek sent me, “Hi, I’m Martin Seligman.” You know, brought all these folks together, was lucky enough to be, you know, one of those early folks, and rightfully, we’re all looking at happiness, right? Because that – at the start, I think, as an ideal, trying to figure out how we can make the world, you know, happier, was a good goal. We ultimately called it thriving because we added elements of subjective well-being, right? You know like academics, we have to make everything [crosstalk 0:01:53.7]. I’m working on this on the academics now with regards to fun and I feel like in the book, The Fun Habit, I made fun fairly easy. You know, we’ll just get real quick to my definition, it’s essentially anything you find pleasurable and then I’ll circle back to your question. But now, because we can bring it down to levels, right? We’re now talking about fun in different context and I find that fascinating because again, you know, academics picking up where I left off now, you know, fun has 30 different subcategories and I think that’s great but you know, because fun in the broad context can, you know, you can start to make it too ambiguous where people are like, “You know, what does that mean for me?” And the good news is, you get to define it and we’ll get into that as we talk but what happened with happiness is that unfortunately, and we kind of have a term for it now. So, and I’m sure you’ve had podcasts about it, the term being toxic positivity, we turn happiness into an ideal. So, instead of valuing happiness, where there’s no problem with that, right? Wanting people to be happy, wanting your family to be happy, wanting to be happy, that’s not problematic. But it’s when we turn folks into being concerned about, “How can I optimize for happiness?” paradoxically, what we did was created some of the most unhappy people and I happen to be one of them, I talk about that a little bit because I was literally looking for correlations and always ruminating on you know, how I could become happier. When that happens, what we now know is you create a gap between where happiness lives because it’s always out there in the future and where your feet are. And so, the short answer to your question is, fun as a construct, is really rooted in mindfully being attentive to the pleasurable things that you do but then, also, understanding that you have the agency and the autonomy to bias your life towards those. [0:03:45.8] PF: So, why is it more helpful to pursue fun that to pursue happiness? You kind of touched on that. [0:03:52.2] MR: Yeah. So, happiness is really this lagging indicator, right? When we are asked, “Are you happy?” It is an act of retrospection, right? We have to think in the rear-view mirror, like, “Am I happy? Hmm, that’s interesting” right? So, we start comparing ourselves to our neighbors, we think about our life circumstance, which can oftentimes be ephemeral, right? We might have won the lottery, so in that moment, we’re really happy, right? But then, we ask you six months from now because some of that money has gone and you’ve kind of fallen off a cliff, right? Where fun is just something we have access to in any moment and so sometimes, it’s referred to as contentment but when you focus away from happiness, right? So that there’s something to be built further, it’s this end goal or there’s something to be achieved and then all of a sudden, happiness will occur. The fun, which can really happen in any moment, so you know, it’s this product of enjoyment and the things that we do. Once we sort of focus on that, then we do pay attention to where our feet are, like, “Wow, I’m not enjoying what I’m doing, let me change, maybe the environment or the people that I’m with or the activity that I’m doing.” We can do that in the moment and the beauty of it is once we start to index these micro-joys in our life that corpus of micro joy starts to remind us that we’re happy. So, happiness is this beautiful byproduct, and we start to become less concerned with being happy because we know that joy is right in front of us by deliberate design that we don’t have to wait around for it to happen. [0:05:30.1] PF: You know, and as kids, we pursue fun, like, that’s just our natural state. We’re looking for fun things to do and we find them and somewhere along the way, we get serious and that wears off. Is it hard for people to learn to seek out fun again? [0:05:48.2] MR: It’s not hard, that’s the beauty. I think once you kind of wake up to it, it’s clear that when you just do a couple of exercises, like the ones that we’re going to do this summer, and you become mindful that, “Wow if I enjoy myself.” I colorfully call this building my fun cup, right? “That the rest of my life is better.” And so, if there are any science nerds listening, I’ll only give a couple quick science lessons. The principle here is the hedonic flexibility principle and as I was creating the book, it was the big lightbulb, right? And so, similar to what we learned about sleep in the 90s, you know, in the 90s, we’re all wearing sleep depravation as a badge of honor, right? Because it’s how you hustle, that’s how you became more productive, right? Like, you know, winners became winners, you know, after the kids went to bed. We now know that’s an asinine assertion, folks that are in a sleep deficit are some of the least productive folks, and we’re now learning the same about leisure. Folks that don’t live a balanced life, that aren’t finding joy or at least, simple pleasures in the things that they do are also falling victim to burnout, and so under that guise, right? Fixing that becomes important and so, once you kind of understand that, once you sprinkle in some of these fun things. And just like sleep, it’s not about, you know, finding whimsy in a hundred and six to eight hours, right? Like, I’m not prescribing 12 hours of sleep. It’s that most of us aren’t having any fun at all and so, we need to figure out how to create that balance by deliberate design, and as I alluded to, it’s really easy. What I found is folks that do it well are the ones that are going to do the exercises we’re going to get into this summer. Just being deliberate, you know? What is it that I, you know, find enjoyable? Reframing what fun means to you. You know, for some folks, they’ll say, “I’m just not a fun person.” And then when I dig deeper, it’s because they believe that what’s marketed to us, right? This high arousal, “I must be at a rock concert with all my friends drinking because that’s you know, what fun is.” Or at least, that’s what Instagram tells me. No, it could be a low arousal activity where the most amazing summer for you is some alone time at the pool, engrossed in a good book that if I ask you in a couple of weeks, you know, “What was it about?” You could tell me in rich detail because that’s how meaningful it was for you and so, figuring out what those things are, and if they’re not in your schedule, being deliberate about scheduling them in, we’re almost halfway there already. [0:08:22.0] PF: Oh, that’s terrific and you know, you and I have been talking about doing this for over a year, we wanted to do a summer of fun. We talked about that and summer is marketed as being so much fun but the reality is, it’s not as lighthearted as we want to think. It’s like, crazy busy, there’s so much pressure, so many things that we have to get done, and it’s compacted into like this three-month period. Why is that a great time to start doing these exercises and make them habits? [0:08:49.5] MR: Yeah, so, I think it’s access would be the biggest one, right? I mean, there is a lot of different reasons but I have this tool called “SAVOR” and it’s essentially just an acronym and so, the “O” in SAVOR stands for “Options.” When we have better options, we tend to have more fun, and the summer just provides so many options, right? I mean, even for small communities like my own, there are things that are available to us for free that we can engage in and discover which you know, and we’re learning how to do that and that becomes a proxy for actually getting it done. You know, we’re kind of in the winter months, and no one’s leaving their homes, it’s so easy to just essentially be in the groove that we’re habituated life and let that time pass us by but the extended daylight that summer provides, the fact that folks tend to have a little bit more autonomy and agency and then again, just access to activities, quite frankly, sometimes, for us, it can be a nostalgia because as you mentioned, as kids, a lot of fun in the summer, and so wanting to get back there, using that as a lure to be like, “You know what? Summers are meant for fun.” All of these can encompass, you know, good tailwinds for getting us started. [0:10:05.8] PF: And you’ve created for us, we’ve partnered with you to do – provide this eight-week email course for free and I absolutely love it. I’m so excited to share it with everybody. Can you kind of talk us through just really, briefly touch on these eight steps and what they’re going to learn along the way? [SPONSOR MESSAGE] [0:10:22.6] PF: We’ll be right back with Mike, but part of having fun this summer, includes, getting better sleep. I’ve become such a big fan of cozier sheets for a lot of reasons, but as the temperatures rise, I found one more reason to make them the only sheet I want to sleep on. Thanks to their cutting-edge temperature-regulating technology, Cozy Earth bedding lets me stay cool and comfortable, even on the hottest nights. That means, I can wake up refreshed and ready for the day, and here’s the best part, our exclusive offer for listeners like you, gets you a 30% discount and a free item, using code “Cozy Happy” at cozyearth.com/livehappynow. I bet you’ll love the unbeatable combination of softness and durability as much as I do. So, invest in your sleep health this summer and stay cool, backed by Cozy Earth’s 109-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. Visit cozyearth.com/livehappynow today to unlock this special offer and optimize your sleep for better health, and after placing your order, be sure to select, “Podcast” in the survey, and then select, “Live Happy Now” in the drop-down menu that follows, and now, let’s find out Mike Rucker’s eight steps to having a summer of fun. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [0:11:37.3] MR: Yeah, so, the first thing is really just being aware of what you find fun, right? For adults, oftentimes, we do need to reconnect to, “What is it that I want to integrate?” And the issue there is, especially folks that find themselves in that sort of inverse euchre of happiness that so many of us talk about, right? And for folks that aren’t, you know, familiar with that, essentially what we know is that because between, you know, let’s say, 25 and 65, let’s cast a wide net, with some of the [inaudible 0:12:04.5] time for us, right? And we’re not in school anymore so we kind of lost some of the agency and autonomy we had there and so, we need to deliberately integrate some fun into our schedule, and so that’s the first step. Like, “What is it that I want to do?” Because if we allow, you know, FOMO and kind of the rhythms of our family to dictate everything, then oftentimes, we can feel very passive in that. We want to feel active, and then it’s pre-committing to those things. So, really early on in this course, we’re going to pick a few things that we want to do and make sure they happen and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to pay for them in advance. We’re going to learn, you know, some simple tactics to just make sure that we’re actually doing the stuff that we want to do this summer, and then the rest of the course is just an ode to things that can kind of amplify our fun. So, are there opportunities in your schedule to at least get out in nature to some degree? Are you connecting with the people that you love? Because, even if you’re an introvert, right? At least, having some prosocial interaction is what we know great and set, latency, enjoyable experiences, and then it’s, how do you invite yourself to the local culture because like I said, summertime is really great because there are all these opportunities to enjoy your township or the county that you live in. And yet oftentimes, if we don’t go looking for it, we don’t know it’s there and then one of the last modules is about kindness because I think kindness really does pair with fun. We’ll get in, for the folks that want it, I’ll send links to the studies but really doing that in a joyful way, like, “How can we play with kindness in a sort of fun way to end this strong?” And then the last module would be, how can we use all of these tools that we learned over the duration of the course to kind of move into fall and continue to benefit from what we’ve learned over the summer? [0:13:58.0] PF: It’s such a great set of action steps and I was curious how you developed this process because it’s very thoughtful, very measured. You know, it’s so easy to do and I’m like, how did you come up with all of this? [0:14:12.9] MR: Well, an ode to one of my collaborators, Haley, who is a diehard introvert and so we would go back and forth because as she was helping me put together – she’s been my blog editor too for like, 10 years and so the kernel of the idea really started with her because she was like, “Okay, you know, you’ve over-emphasized” on sort of higher all activities in certain content that I put out and you know, I am doing this with my friend. And I am doing this with my friend and so I started to pick up on that. I was like, “Wait a sec, are you guys doing this in a systematic way?” And she’s like, “Yeah, we kind of, I’ve pre-commended to this and we made sure you know, that we do X, Y, and Z.” And you know, for folks that are listening, you might know that movie Tag about adults that have kind of committed, you know, enjoying each other’s company every year. And so, as we were putting this together, we realized that folks that either had some sort of program were a lot more successful than folks that did it in an ambiguous way. So, the short answer is this is really just a reboot of the year of fun, which was a program, you know, to stretch it out an entire 12 months but because the summer you know, is so ripe with opportunity for fun and then as you know serendipitously, right? As we were putting this together, the New York Times reached out, you know, because they were like, “Let’s invite our readers to fun.” It was all, I think, the universe saying like, let’s – with November coming up, no matter what your slant is I think we’re all kind of bracing for you know, fall, maybe not being as enjoyable as we would like and so, having this opportunity to you know, make sure that we maximize our enjoyment with both what we want to do but then also sharing that with our loved ones became important. [0:16:02.2] PF: Yeah, I love the way that all came together. [0:16:05.0] MR: Another thing that I think we’re really awakening to is that fun is one of the most useful aspects for engaging in all of these lifestyle changes that we’d talked about for what? The last 50 years? [0:16:16.2] PF: Get up, move around, healthy behavior, yep. [0:16:19.3] MR: But instead, we’ve been talking about want for the last quarter of a century, right? Like, you know we get fixated on the World Health Organization and I am guilty of this too, like I have to get that 115 minutes of exercise and yet, we never stop to ask, “Are the things I’m doing for exercise enjoyable? Am I drawn to them? Do I find them pleasurable?” Now, studies are finding that if we ask that question first, that is actually the most successful moderator with regards to anything that we can do with health interventions. And so, that one is just serendipitous for me, you know, the fact that I have looked at enjoyment for so long and oh, it just happens to be the most useful tool when it comes to you getting people to engage in healthy behaviors. That’s been such a pleasant surprise for me. [0:17:04.2] PF: That’s awesome and so what do you hope that people will get out of doing the summer fun eight-week email course? [0:17:11.2] MR: Well, obviously, I hope they have a lot more fun. [0:17:13.2] PF: Yeah. [0:17:13.9] MR: And like I said, you know, these tactics aren’t going to be earth-shattering and luckily, we’ve made them very bite-sized, right? So, this isn’t going to take much time for people to get through but the nice thing is these simple and not just really can right that ship. If you feel you know, life has gotten a little bit mundane, you know, you feel a little bit stuck, all the you know, adult life is about habituated behavior. You know, we’re going to kind of unroot that and hopefully, sprinkle on some of those micro joys during your summer. So, a few more smiles and a few more hugs, and a few more belly laughs. [0:17:47.4] PF: Something we can all benefit from. [0:17:49.8] MR: Exactly. [0:17:50.7] PF: So, fun is one of those things that doesn’t seem like, A, that anybody would be opposed to it or that there should really be any stumbling blocks to having fun but I am sure there are things that keep people from having fun. What are they, what keeps people from practicing fun? [0:18:06.6] MR: You know, there is so many that it’s going to be different for each person but certainly, we’re time [importer 0:18:14.2] right? So, it really does require a little bit of deliberate design and so we’ll get into that. For some, it is a sense of guilt. A lot of folks and there’s gender slang to this, you know, it is certainly excuse the female but they feel like they find joy in serving, right? It’s called the sandwich generation, right? So, they want to take care of their kids in a very loving way, they have aging parents that they want to make sure they’re okay and they feel like if they take time off the table, and when I say that, I am not just talking about females. Again, it’s just we know that there is a bias towards that data that they tend to be the family caregiver, right? That if they are engaging in some sort of self-care that they can’t fully be in it because they feel guilty because it is taking time away. And what we’ll learn in the course is that that’s anything but, that to be the best version of yourself so that you can be the most productive and have the vigor and vitality to be that good person when you are doing these things, those require just a little bit of time for you to enjoy life because when you don’t, what happens is you ultimately end up getting depleted and even the best of us, right? So, the last chapter in the book, I look at folks that have essentially dedicated their whole lives to serving others with regards to nonprofit and when they’re completely selfless, eventually, they won’t have anything left in the tank to get and so, when you think about it as being the long game, then fun in that sense really does become important and so once you learned that, I think it’s easy to then recalibrate. Like, “Wait a second, this isn’t a guilty pleasure, right?” Which is such a horrible word anyways, this is really something that is going to impact me in a positive way where I can bring that to the folks that I love, and then if you want to get even geekier about it, that’s actually contagious. When you are happy about what you are doing, you tend to set ripples, you know, both at work and at home that will then catch on with the folks around you. And oftentimes, you can create positive upward momentum in really easy ways, you know, just by doing a few things that you have to look forward to and like to go one level deeper, the reason is, is that we know that folks that don’t have something to look forward to even if it is just an hour out of the 168 that you have in a week, if you have like a really tough three or four days and we all have them and there’s nothing in your schedule that you’re like, well, at least, you know, something as simple as, “I might go have ice cream with my best friend.” If you don’t have that to look forward to, then you really lack one of the significant tools of resilience because like you just – then what your brain starts to feel is, “This crappy day is just going to be on repeat” right? But again, just some small form of simple pleasure to kind of root yourself like, “Okay, I’m in it right now but I know that something down the pipe is going to be fun and I’ll get there soon enough” is all it takes. [0:21:21.8] PF: We’re big on that on our house, making sure we have at least one fun thing going on. Like there’s got to be something on that calendar that we’re going to do that we’re really looking forward to and it does make a difference. [0:21:34.7] MR: Yeah. I mean, you already know because you’ve been living it for a while but I think you know, for a lot of busy adults we just forget, right? That we have some of that control. A study that I bring up all the time and I think you had him on the podcast because she has an amazing book herself called the Happier Hour. So, you know, her vacation mindset study, she didn’t do anything but just remind folks that they have agency and autonomy as they go in. And just remind yourself that this is meant to be a reprieve and you know, all of the positive benefits. Essentially, what they found was they saw some of these benefits you would get from an actual vacation just having a vacation mindset going into your weekend and so it’s this small sort of reframes, you know, what I call story editing, that can be really powerful but yet, so accessible to almost all of us. [0:22:24.8] PF: One thing has struck me as I was going through the emails and what you have planned for this course is this would be a great thing to do with an accountability partner because it’s like, you sign up for it and it’s like, this is going to be fun but as you said, we have to commit to that time and it can be easy to let it slip away. So, how do we do that, how will that help if we get somebody to do this course with us? [0:22:48.0] MR: Well, it will help on multiple levels, right? So, one, especially if you want to do some fun things with you know, a good friend, then that social contract is precommitment and so you’re going to get those things done, right? I mean, you started talking about it, it’s much more likely that happen. I would say that that’s the biggest benefit but then also, you can share ideas, right? Oftentimes, brainstorming is really enriched when you can say, you know, and I’ve actually seen this, which to me, it’s a little bit foreign. So, like I love when it works but I don’t quite understand why some people need to do this. A good friend of mine who I don’t think, I’ll just say his first name so I don’t out him but I literally had a conversation with a good friend a week ago who wanted to read, go through the play model because he felt that his life had gotten habituated. And he asked his wife, “Where do you see me light up? Like, where do I have fun? Because I’ve kind of lost that scent, you know?” Life is so busy because they have two small kids, like, “When can you just tell like, I’m in my moment.” And she gave him those clues because he couldn’t find themselves and she was spot on, and so sure enough, he implemented that in and I just checked in with them and yeah, you know, they were working. And so, for some folks, you know, that type of communication with a good friend that can kind of gut check you and go, “Really?” You know? Like – because sometimes too, you know, I think we talked about this last time, you can trick yourself. I mean, at the lowest level, it’s social media use, right? Often times, we’re just escaping frustration and boredom so we can trick ourselves into thinking like, what we’re doing is enjoyable when it’s not really. It’s just something that we’re doing to pass by the time and get away from the garbage. So, being a little bit more proactive, what, in geeky behavioral science we call, active leisure can be helpful too and so, having an accountability partner like, “Is that really fun or should we go do this because it’s a little bit more challenging?” And I think, will lead to kind of a richer experience, it can be helpful. [0:24:52.8] PF: That’s awesome. So, I’m really looking forward to seeing what people say about this, what kind of experiences they have. What I’d like to do is have you back at the end of the summer and we’ll talk about this. We’ll get feedback you heard, what we’ve gotten back from it, and really, you know, I’m going to walk through this experience too and really talk about how it changed and then how we can take that into the fall and winter months because, as you noted, it might be one to buckle up for. [0:25:19.7] MR: Well, and we call it the fun habit for a reason, right? Might as well turn it into a habit so that you know, this is again, the long game, right? Not just something that is episodically done and then moved on from – we’re not meant to just have fun this summer. [0:25:33.0] PF: All right, well, we’ll do it all year long. Mike, thank you so much for sitting down, I’m so excited to share this email course with our listeners and I will see you back here in a couple of months and we’ll talk about it again. [0:25:43.5] MR: Yeah, I can’t wait. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:49.2] PF: To sign up for the Live Happy Summer Fun with Mike Rucker, just visit us at LiveHappy.com and click on this podcast episode. We’ll also tell you how to find Mike’s book, The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life, or follow him on social media, and while you're there, you can also sign up for our weekly Live Happy Newsletter. Every week, we drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info and even a happy song of the week. That’s all we have time for today, we’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode, and until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make everyday a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming Loneliness With Dr. Jeremy Nobel [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 472 of Live Happy Now. Loneliness is one of the major challenges facing our society today. Since this is Loneliness Awareness Week, it's a great time to look at what's behind this loneliness epidemic. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm sitting down with physician, teacher, innovator, and author, Dr. Jeremy Nobel. founder of The Foundation for Art & Healing, and the Project UnLonely initiative. Jeremy, who is also on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has published the book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. He's here to talk about what loneliness is doing to us and what we should be doing about it. Let's have a listen. [NTERVIEW]   [0:00:50] PF: Dr Nobel, thank you so much for joining us on Live Happy Now. [0:00:54] JN: My pleasure to be with you. [0:00:56] PF: It's so important to talk to you any time of the year, but right now, we really are excited to talk to you, because we have Loneliness Awareness Week. Boy, loneliness is such a huge, huge issue for so many people today. I was curious, first of all, where did your interest in not just studying loneliness, but resolving the crisis begin? [0:01:16] JN: Well, actually, it really began in an interesting way after 9/11, but I didn't know that I was really focused on loneliness. I was actually very interested in the trauma of 9/11, as an experience for many people, particularly children. That's what got me started, and I started The Foundation for Art & Healing, 501(c)3 nonprofit. The idea was to promote creative expression as a path to health and wellbeing. Really focusing on the power of the arts to really help us make sense of the world in positive, healthy, stress-reducing, trauma recovery-oriented ways. As we started doing this work with the arts, we quickly found that many people with trauma and dealing with that stress were also quite lonely. They told us that the work we were doing with the arts to engage, and activate, and have kind of exciting conversations, storytelling, and so on, made them feel less lonely and more connected. That really got our attention, and that's what launched Project UnLonely. [0:02:19] PF: What is the connection between trauma and loneliness? [0:02:22] JN: When you're traumatized, so what is trauma? It's a painful, hurtful injury or experience. As you can imagine, when you have something painful, and even if it's something just like touching a hot stove, if you remember all those stories. You learn not to touch hot stoves, you back away from the threat of a hot stove. Many times, trauma is associated with engagement with other people. So, this could be everything from military trauma, to domestic violence, to the repeated marginalization of racism. This is all painful, and so, we withdraw. Almost anything that leads to trauma, in a way, does set you up for a kind of isolation, a kind of loneliness. That relationship is pretty clear. The real challenge, we'll talk more about it, is how do you move from that loneliness towards a sense of connection. [0:03:15] PF: Now, your organization started in 2016 and there was no clue at that point that the loneliness crisis was going to get so bad. In fact, as you mentioned in your book, 2020 was going to be a bang-up year for your organization. You had so much research that you were going to present, and so many speaking engagements, and then that all disappeared. Thank you, COVID. So, has your approach to loneliness changed at all since 2020, and how have you seen loneliness change in society? [0:03:47] JN: All great questions. First, just for clarity, Project UnLonely isn't its own organization. It actually is a project, it's the signature initiative of The Foundation for Art & Healing, which is the organization. Although we formally launched Project on lonely in 2016, we actually started doing the work to understand loneliness and how the arts connect well before that, around 2011 or 2012. Then, the question is, how did the pandemic change the approach to loneliness? I think what it did, in general, was shine a spotlight on it. As you mentioned, we had loneliness well before the pandemic, but somehow, it became part of all of our consciousness in a very different way. As you mentioned, I start my book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. Very first page with how dramatically my world got upended in March 2020. Plans, relationships, teaching, travel, all of this just went on hold as we all tried to navigate this new reality, which forced us to have a kind of isolation to protect us and our neighbors from the virus. While isolation is different than loneliness, it's highly associated with it. So, many people experience loneliness in a way they had not before. [0:05:09] PF: I want to touch on that, what you just said, because we do equate isolation with loneliness. We have had an aunt who spent a lot of time alone, and she told me she's like, "I have never been lonely." Even though she was isolated, she didn't feel lonely. What is the difference between isolation and loneliness? Because you can be in a crowd of people and still feel lonely. [0:05:30] JN: Exactly. One of the real goals of my book is to demystify loneliness and humanize it. The first really important lesson, if you will, is that being alone is not the same thing as being lonely. Being alone is objective. It's the absence of social connection. This can be, if you're in a rural setting, or even isolated in an apartment in an urban setting, where, let's say, you've got a disability, you can't leave easily, or you're fearful about going outside. So then, you are alone. But being alone can be such a positive experience of thoughtful reflection, consideration, the bigger world picture, contemplation. We have a high-class word for it. We sometimes call it solitude, and we do need solitude, but that's different than being lonely. Here's what loneliness is. It's subjective, it's a feeling, it's a mood state. It's the difference between the social connections with other people that we would like to have and what we feel we do have. That gap is what we experience as loneliness. As you pointed out, you actually can be lonely in a crowd. It has nothing to do with whether there are other people around you. It's whether you have the social connections you want. If you're with other people, but don't feel connected to them, you feel lonely. That introduces what I found, a really important observation, and I think, maybe your community will also, is that they're different types of loneliness. [0:07:10] PF: I'm so glad you brought that up, because you talk about three types of loneliness. I was like, I thought there was just loneliness. Can you dig into that and tell us about that? [0:07:17] JN: Right. Well, I thought so too, until we actually started going out and talking about it. So, very simply, there's psychological loneliness, which is, "Do I have a friend? Is there someone I can tell my troubles to?" That's what many people think of when they think of loneliness. But then, there's also the loneliness of systematic exclusion. We call that societal loneliness, because of race, or gender, or disability. Do people evaluate you in that very superficial characteristic and treat you differently, and, in a sense, withdraw from you in a systematic way? That's very different than not having a friend. You could have plenty of friends, but if you feel, for instance, are in a racist workplace and it's not safe to be in certain conversations, you're going to experience loneliness in even though you might have friends. The third type of loneliness, which I am very interested in, and it's been around thousands of years, is where do I relate to the bigger world, the narrative of human experience. People with a religious orientation often call kind of the religious world, God, the universe. But you don't have to be religious to have a sense of curiosity about how your life fits into the bigger story. What was here on the planet before I arrived? What will be here after I depart? Does my life have meaning, consequence? If you don't have solid grounding and answers to those questions, you can feel quite lonely. I think that's the loneliness that's affecting a lot of what we know is the loneliest demographic, 18 to 28 years old. They have plenty of friends, they're connected on social media, but they're wondering, "What am I doing? What's my future? Does my life have meaning? Do I matter?" That could be quite distressing, and it's its own form of loneliness. [0:09:13] PF: Is the way that you address those different forms of loneliness, does that differ? [0:09:20] JN: Absolutely. As someone who in the public health world, and through Project UnLonely, we're trying to design interventions that are powerful for people, as you might imagine. If the loneliness is the loneliness of uncertainty about your meaning in the world, that's very different than the loneliness of not having someone to talk to. So, if you think, "Okay. What do I need to feel less lonely?" One of the first important questions to ask yourself is, what type of loneliness am I experiencing? In my book, I provide different questions we can ask, but they're kind of what you might think. Do I enjoy relationships with others where I can have a chance to have authentic conversations? Or, are those missing from my life? If they're missing from my life, how might I pursue having more of them? So, we lay out some of the strategies for that also. If your feeling of loneliness is uncertainty about your own positioning in the universe, of meaning, and is there purpose. Then, you might want to ask yourself more about how you want to relate to that, how you feel you can be more meaningful, and part of the bigger story. There's some strategies I talked about in the book for that too. [0:10:33] PF: How did you come up with these different strategies? Obviously, you're a fabulous researcher. How did you come to understand those different types of loneliness, and this is what would resolve them? [0:10:45] JN: It's a really great question. The way, again, research works, science works, it's driven by one thing. By the way, it's the same thing that drives the arts, and that's curiosity. As we started going out, and doing programs, and having conversations with hundreds of people about their loneliness and what their experience was, we began to see patterns and trends. It's also important to know that of these three types of loneliness, you could have one type, two types, or three types altogether. That was the first thing, was the observation, awareness. In terms of what works to impact it, some of that is based on psychology research in laboratory settings. We can study what seems to activate people, to embolden them, to be able to connect with others, and tolerate what I sometimes call discomfort of disclosure. Because if you reveal something authentic about yourself, and then someone says, "Sorry, you're too boring. I don't want to have a conversation with you."   [0:11:48] PF: Or, "That's just too much for me."   [0:11:50] JN: Exactly. Or, "I can't handle that." Then, you might feel rejected, abandoned, critiqued, and that hurts. So then, you're reluctant to do that. People, in a way, they connect with others, have to learn to tolerate the fact that you're not always 100% successful, and to keep going just like – you have to explore, and try different things, and see what works for you personally. [0:12:16] PF: That makes so much sense. There was a report that caught everyone's attention. I think it was within the last year, and it's really quoted quite a bit, and that is that loneliness is more dangerous than smoking. We hear that a lot, but we don't hear the reasoning behind that. Could you explain to us why it's so harmful, and also, physically, what loneliness does to us? [0:12:41] JN: Absolutely. That work, that sound bite about being smoking. It can be as dangerous as smoking – loneliness can be as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Why is that? Because at its chronic extreme stages, loneliness actually changes how the brain functions, and it also increases inflammation, a real driver for illness, and it impairs immune system function. So, many of these excess deaths that lead to a 30% increase risk of a shorter lifespan are not because of suicides or overdose, drug overdoses. You could imagine loneliness could cause those, and it does. Those are factored out of these scientific analyzes. Most of the deaths are cardiovascular, it's heart attack, it's stroke, sometimes it's cancer death, or metabolic death. Disease and illness related to diabetes. It's important to know that loneliness unchecked, unattended to, when it spirals out of control can be very, very hard on our physical systems too, not just our mental attitudes. [BREAK] [0:13:50] PF: We'll be right back with Dr. Jeremy Nobel, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about how you can beat the heat and get better sleep this summer. I've become such a big fan of Cozy Earth sheets for a lot of reasons. But as the temperatures rise, I've found one more reason to make them the only sheets I want to sleep on. Thanks to their cutting-edge temperature regulating technology, Cozy Earth's bedding lets me stay cool and comfortable, even on the hottest days and nights. That means, I can wake up refreshed and ready for the day. Here's the best part, our exclusive offer for listeners like you gets you a 30% discount and a free item when you use COZY HAPPY at cozyearth.com/livehappynow. These sheets also offer the unbeatable combination of softness and durability, giving you an incredible, comfortable sleep experience. So, invest in your sleep health this summer and stay cool backed by Cozy Earth's 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. Visit cozyearth.com/livehappynow, and use the code COZY HAPPY to unlock this special offer and optimize your sleep for better health. After placing your order, be sure to select podcast in the survey, and then select Live Happy Now in the drop-down menu that follows. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Jeremy Nobel. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES]   [0:15:10] PF: I recall, even, probably about 20 years ago, having a friend who was going through a divorce and she said, "I'm lonely." It struck me, because I think, that was the first time it actually had somebody say that to me, like it was almost a shameful thing to say, "I'm lonely." What was that mindset and does any of that still remain? [0:15:32] JN: We started Project UnLonely with three goals, Paula. One was to increase awareness of loneliness, and how toxic it can be for your health. The second, which is what we're going to talk about, is to reduce the stigma that surrounds it. The third is to put these powerful imagination, creativity-fueled programs out in the community, so people can be better engaged. But let's talk more about stigma. Many people feel that if they're lonely, it's their fault, that there's something about them, that they're broken, they're flawed, they're incomplete, they're inadequate. This is all just a social personal construction. That's what they believe. The only good news about that is that, anything that's socially and culturally constructed can be culturally reconstructed. So, I think we have an enormous opportunity. I first heard this idea from John Cacioppo, University of Chicago, who died, unfortunately. Shortly before the pandemic, it's a real pioneer in understanding loneliness, and how it impacts not just our brains, but our behaviors. He said, "Why don't we think about loneliness as a signal that there's something we need, a biologic signal? Just like thirst is a signal, we need hydration. Loneliness is a signal that every one of us needs some degree of human connection." Obviously, most people don't feel embarrassed or guilty about thirsty. Why do we feel embarrassed about being lonely? It goes back to this cultural assumption, in our cultural kind of matrix of, kind of how we put things together. People, as I said, feel that they're flawed. What if we can shift that to just say, "Hey, it's just a signal. What do I need now?" Human connection. "How do I find it? What type of loneliness do I have?" Then, you follow the reasonable paths to get better connected, either psychologically, or societally. or spiritually. [0:17:30] PF: As people become more willing to explore that, how is that going to open up the world a little bit better? You reference Gen Z and how they are incredibly lonely despite being connected. How, as we change this conversation, do you see the world is going to open up? [0:17:48] JN: All right. Here's an experiment I do when I do public speaking now. I ask people, raise your hand if you know someone who is seriously and significantly lonely. Not if you're lonely, but if you know someone. Hundred percent of the hands go up. Then, I say, "How many people have you heard say out loud, 'I'm lonely.'"? Only 50% of the hands go up. If this were even five years ago, only 10% of the hands will go up. So, we're making progress. We have a long way to go, but we're making progress. So, that's encouraging. I think a lot of it is the younger demographic that I mentioned, the loneliest demographic, 18 to 28 do seem willing to talk about their mental health and so on, and take the risk of being judged, criticized, excluded. I admire that courage. What we're trying to do with project and lonely is to actually also give them workshops. and programs that they can participate in, that are delivered not by us. We develop our programs and then they're delivered by colleges, by libraries, by faith-based groups, by community centers. Because as our surgeon general calls for in the report, you mentioned, we need to create a culture of connection, where it's not viewed as an illness or a flaw, loneliness. The connection is valued as something we celebrate at a personal level. We do it with friends, with family. We actively look for opportunities to get together and have the, sometimes just very simple conversations that can still be quite meaningful. They don't have to be deep, heart-to-heart disclosure conversation every time. It can be, "Hey, what's lighting you up these days?" "Let me tell you." "Oh." It's so important, these casual networks of human exchange, and not just social media, memes, and likes, and follows around short videos, but actual conversations in real life. [0:19:54] PF: Can just the acknowledgement, even to ourselves that we're lonely. Does that start changing things for us? [0:20:01] JN: I think it does if it isn't also associated with guilt and self-blame. So, to say, "I'm lonely because I'm a loser, and I've always been a loser", is not a very helpful step forward. But to say, "I'm lonely." But loneliness, and I truly believe this is the world's most human feeling, the need for other people. It's a signal that there's something I need. How do I follow that signal and lead myself forward to a path of personal discovery? Because I think if we're not comfortable knowing who we are, it's hard to have authentic conversations, and friendships with others. But then, how do I feel part of a bigger world where, "Yes, I exist as a person, but I'm part of a much bigger story." That often makes people feel better and feel connected. [0:20:48] PF: We all feel lonely time to time. But how does someone know if it's a problem, if it's chronic loneliness, versus just something we're going through right now? [0:20:58] JN: That's a really great question. I think part of that is really to pay a lot of attention to how you're doing, feeling in kind of navigating the world. In the book, I call this the pyramid of vulnerability. Imagine a pyramid with three layers. The bottom layer is where we all are all the time. Every human being, as I said, can feel lonely from time to time, so that's us. At that bottom layer, we should be trying to do things to build our social resilience, our social connection levels. But yet, no matter who you are in your life and all of our lives, we will be faced with challenges that really do increase our risk of loneliness. That moves us to the middle tier. So, that could be loss of a loved one, the breakup of relationship, a new serious illness, whatever it is, loss of a job, concern about some future event like the national elections. That starts a kind of risk for a spiral, where you start to withdraw. That's when it's most critical to say, "Okay. Am I starting to feel more anxious? Am I having trouble sleeping? Am I having trouble concentrating? Maybe it's because I'm lonely." Ask yourself that. Then, if you are, to go through this exploration, well, what type of loneliness is it. Then, follow the strategies to get connected. Because if you can interact at that middle tier of vulnerability, and then reduce the risk to spiral down into a good direction towards the base, you avoid spiraling up into the highest tier of loneliness. That's where loneliness becomes a serious medical issue, where it is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day, where you have a 30% increased risk of heart attack. or stroke. or death from either. But we don't have to get to that level if we can engage earlier and kind of reestablish balance, and a sense of comfort and connection, calm it down, so we're back down to the bottom tier. Does that make sense? [0:23:04] PF: It does. I wondered as you were talking, because once you reach that top level, it seems like it's going to be most difficult to pull yourself out. What then should those around you – because if I'm your friend and I see this, it's probably going to take some sort of intervention or outreach from me. Because once you hit that top, you're a goner, but you're in deep. [0:23:27] JN: You are in deep, and that's when you're really most in need. As you point out, it's often where you are least able to navigate your way out of it completely on your own. That's where one of the things we can do in building a culture of connection, is to kind of keep an eye out on our friends, family, even neighbors, and not be their therapist, not be their parent, but be their friend. Bear in mind how even a simple kind word, when you're passing by somebody on the street can totally change their day, can totally change their sense of optimism, of positive possibility, curiosity for that day. Stabilize them from what otherwise could be very difficult thoughts, sometimes thoughts of self-harm, and just kind of remind them that, "Hey, there's some positive things going on in the world. I'm out here too, and you're not alone, you're not broken, and you're not defective." It doesn't require a therapist to have these daily reminders that we're all human, we're all connected. We all feel lonely from time to time, but we can be part of a larger and connected story. I think the arts and imagination, obviously, can give us kind of fun ways to tell that story of being connected, and then share those stories with others. [0:24:42] PF: Yes. I love that your solution goes to the arts. Can you talk about the role that creative and artistic expression plays in combating loneliness? Then, give us some ideas for how people can use that in their own lives? [0:24:56] JN: Absolutely. I think, first of all, it's now really clear that arts and creative expression change the brain. When we change the brain, we change our minds. We change our minds, we change behaviors. Here's how arts change the brain. One major way the arts and all the arts, by the way work. So not just the traditional arts like music, visual art, language arts like poetry, movement arts like dance, but culinary arts, cooking. The creative assembly of food ingredients, the taste, the smell, the sensation in your mouth as you eat fun food. So, that's a creative form. Textile arts, these have been around for centuries. Knitting, crocheting, quilting, these are wonderful creative activities. Then, gardening. Just bringing four things from nature, what a friend of mine calls the world's slowest performance art form.   [0:25:54] PF: I love that.   [0:25:56] JN: These are how the arts can change us. They reduce cortisol levels, the stress hormone that puts us on edge, drives fight or flight, which means we're always hyper vigilant. That does increase inflammation. It's what alters the immune system. But the arts also increase levels of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, the so-called feel-good hormones. Then, very importantly, the arts also change how we make sense of the social world. What otherwise we might see as threats, like somebody walking towards us through the arts, particularly the ones that increase our sense of compassion, empathy, that person can look like an opportunity, someone I can have a conversation with. That's kind of the cascade of how changes in the brain from the arts, then literally change our levels of optimism, possibility. Sometimes, this is all in the positive psychology realm, as you know. But then, most importantly, it changes how we behave. We're willing to smile at a stranger, we're willing to take the risk of even a little piece of casual conversation in the grocery store. Then, if you take that risk and people respond, it starts moving your brain and mind in a more positive way, and the positive spiral happens. This is why the arts, I think, can be such a catalyst for connection. [0:27:17] PF: I absolutely love that. Big question is, where do people start? [0:27:22] JN: I think, if it's around the arts, I think it comes back to curiosity. Explore the world in some creative form that you enjoy. If you don't know what you enjoy, yet, try different things. Try drawing, try just kind of move with colored markers on white paper, and just say, "How am I feeling today? We have prompts and activities for this on our website. Imagine a time in your life that was meaningful to you. Then. don't draw the experience. Let yourself feel the feelings associated with that time, and then try to draw the feelings using color and shade. There's no wrong answer to these exercises. So. you get it all out on the page. Then, in many of our workshops, what we do is, we do this as a group. We make the art on our own, but then we pair up and we tell our personal stories. That's the second really powerful things the arts do. They invite and allow us to share our stories. Because almost every creative form, whether it's a casserole, a chocolate chip cookie, or a Picasso painting is a form of a story. It's a narrative, we're trying to express something. So, the arts enable that. Then, the last thing the arts do, and I particularly feel this with certain kinds of music, is they kind of transform us to a kind of awe and wonder about the world. I feel this in poetry also. I'm a poet, and reading a poem by who might no longer even be alive with us can still make me feel like I'm a small but important part of a very big and very wonderful story. [0:29:03] PF: That's fantastic. Now, we're going to tell the listeners how they can find your website, how they can find your book. As you said, you have resources on the website so they can start doing some of these exercises. Your book has prompts and walks us through this. What is it that you want everyone listening to know and understand about loneliness? [0:29:23] JN: Let me go back to some of the things we talked about. By the way, thank you for helping get the word out. The other thing we have that's a lot of fun for people who aren't immediately willing to, "Oh, I'm going to make some art." Is, we use the power of the arts in the form of short films. We're now working with Steve Buscemi, the celebrated actor and filmmaker. He's an ambassador for what we call Project UnLonely Films. You come to our website and there's a whole portfolio of short films that look at loneliness and some of the major social territories in which they exist. So, trauma, aging, illness, difference, the modern world. You get to explore loneliness through the lens, literally, of someone who's making a film on it. Then, if you watch it with a few other people, you can just say, "Hey, what did we just watch?" and have a conversation. Don't overlook the opportunity. Come to our site, watch some of our films, sign up for our newsletter, so we'll send you a little link every week or two with a film and some conversation starters. So, there are lots of ways we can move from being a little bit cautious in a defensive crouch, which we're all in post-pandemic, to something a little bit more open-hearted, a little bit more open-minded. [0:30:40] PF: That is fantastic. The work you're doing is amazing. It's very necessary, and I truly believe it's going to help move that needle on loneliness in our society. So, I thank you for the work you're doing, first of all. Then, secondly, I really appreciate your time. It was an honor to sit down with you and talk about this. I know our listeners have gotten a lot out of this conversation. [0:31:00] JN: Thank you. It's my absolute pleasure, and even this conversation makes me feel more connected. So, thank you for that, too, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:31:08] PF: That was Dr. Jeremy Nobel, talking about loneliness. If you'd like to learn more about Jeremy, check out his book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. Visit his website for resources or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every week, we'll drop a little bit of joy into your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.   [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Supporting Mental Health Through Music With Brandon Staglin [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What’s up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note. We've talked about how music can boost our mood and even help our bodies heal. Today, we're looking at what it can do for our mental health. For this episode, I'm talking with Brandon Staglin, co-founder and president of One Mind, a mental health nonprofit organization committed to improving brain health by supporting research and providing resources. Central to their mission is music, which Brandon explains has been an incredible healing tool in his own struggle with mental illness. He's here to talk about the One Mind music festival for brain health, and how that has helped build awareness for their mental health mission, and how he uses it for healing and connection in his own life. Let's have a listen. [EPISODE]   [0:00:51] PF: Brandon, thank you for joining me on On a Positive Note. [0:00:54] BS: Thank you, Paula. So much happy to be On a Positive Note, and it's a great day to talk about music and mental health. [0:01:00] PF: And you're a fantastic person to talk to about this subject. I've been following One Mind for a while. The work that you do is absolutely amazing. For those who haven't been following you, let's start by talking about what one mind is and what it does. [0:01:15] BS: One Mind is an organization that started 30 years ago, and it was founded by my family. My family founded One Mind, thanks to our shared experience with my schizophrenia diagnosis and recovery. I was diagnosed when I was 18 years old, back in 1990. It was an incredibly scary and dark time in my life, and in that of my whole family. There was a stretch of about a year when we didn't really know whether there would be any positive future for me at all. I was terrified that at any moment, I might go straight to hell, like I had this delusion in my mind that demons were after my soul, and that if I made any slight moral mistake, they pounce on me, and drive me off to hell for all eternity. It's just a terrifying thing to think every moment of every day, if you can imagine that. That drove me to exhaustion, and despair. Even though I was getting treatment for my mental illness, it wasn't working very well for the first six months. There were moments when I was so depressed that I felt suicidal, and moments where I seriously considering ending my life. Fortunately, I'm very grateful to be alive today. What saw me through those really dark times were three main factors in the beginning. One of them was the unconditional love of my family. They made sure I knew how deeply they loved me by telling me so in ways that reached me. There was a moment when I was shuffling around the house, just so dark, just so down, and depressed. My dad saw me there in the kitchen. He said, "There's a lot of love coming from here, Brandon." Even though I had not, I couldn't feel the love back at that moment. I wanted to feel that love again. That drove me to want to recover again, to be able to feel that love again for my family back with them again. That was a major factor in driving me to continue to work for getting well again. Then, other factors included a sense of purpose through staying involved with community activities, and volunteering, and education while I was recovering. As well as, early science-based medical care. From those experiences, I've learned principles that love is an important factor for life. That curiosity is also an important driver of motivation for people, and can lead to discoveries that can help people out there in the community. And that having a sense of purpose is essential to drive people forward toward recovery and toward a good life. Based on all we've learned through my experience in schizophrenia, my parents decided to found One Mind in 1995. They started out with the realization, learning from me, and from other families around us who had experienced similar challenges with our young ones. That the science was not up to par in terms of its ability to enable people to access treatments that were helpful for them in a way that would help them to get all the way to recovery. I was taking medications at the time that were somewhat helpful. But as I mentioned, they had not the full effect that I wanted, had terrible side effects. My parents realized, and now it's an important part of One Mind that precision medicine be a part of mental health care. Meaning that, science must develop ways to develop treatments that can help people right from their diagnosis, right in the very beginning of their illness. And not have to go through months and years of trial and error, and agony for finding something that could help them recover again. That was how we started One Mind. The very first event we had ever in 1995 called the Music Festival for Brain Health, and that's how music comes into play here in the conversation. [0:05:00] PF: I'm really curious to know why they built it around music, because you and I know now that that's such a natural tool for healing and for bringing people together. Wat was their thinking behind using music as the central focus of that event? [0:05:15] BS: The music festival was launched in 1995, with the intent that music could bring people together, as you say, in a way that transcends inhibitions, that transcends fears, and then brings people to have a deeper pour for each other, and love for each other in the moment, celebrating together. We call the music festival a celebration of life. Ever since the beginning, it's been like that. I remember in 2001, when September 11th happened in the United States. There was a lot of trepidation about whether we could put on the music festival. It was just days after that took place. But we did, we were able to get conductor to come, and orchestra to come. They played Ode to Joy during the music concert of that event, people were in tears. The conductor was just so overwhelmed by the response that he just – we have a photograph that he gave my mom this enthusiastic hug, and just the embrace was just great to see. But that's an example of how music can bring people together, and transcend fears, and overcome barriers to connection. Then, we make that a hallmark at the festival today. Basically, I make sure that everyone understands when they come to the festival, that it's a safe place to open up to each other about the challenges that they're facing with their mental health, and their families, and open place to talk about and share those experiences with each other. [0:06:45] PF: What else goes on? You have a concert, but you have events leading up to the concert as well throughout the day. Can you talk about the other things that happen before the music? [0:06:54] BS: Absolutely. It's a really special event, the music festival for brain health. It starts today with a science and innovation symposium, where we have the scientists who we fund, and support give talks about the amazing discoveries they're making. Every year, they come out with something new that blows me away, and really thrills the audience to know that these nutrients are coming down the line to help them and their families. We added on a component in the last year, in 2023 of innovation as well. We have a program called the One Line Rising Star Awards, which enables young, promising mental health scientists to make these discoveries toward better treatments, by giving them funding, and by giving them leadership training, so that they can grow their careers as influencers for better mental health research. And improve the field in ways that reflect the interests of people like me, like people, so many people out community who live with mental illness, and work to improve their lives. The other program that we offer through a science and innovation division at One Mind is called The One Mind Accelerator. Through this program, we help entrepreneurs who are taking some of the discoveries, like those our scientists have made, and turning them into products, and services, that can then be commercialized and scale to reach people all throughout our society. This is a kind of an outgrowth, our focus on science toward innovation. So, it's been a very successful 30 years of doing these programs now together. We've made some great breakthroughs, including ways to treat mental illness with electricity that are safe and actually remedy the symptoms using brain stimulation, including microbiome-based treatments for mental illness. Like what happens in your gut, the bacteria in your gut to treat depression, for example, and including peer support models for young people facing suicidality. Happy to expand more if you're interested later on. The gist of it is that, the scientists and innovators speak during the symposium of the music festival. That gives the audience so much hope to know that these innovations are coming down the line to help them and their families. [0:09:13] PF: Who's likely to attend the festival? [0:09:15] BS: Well, because the festival includes not only the science innovation symposium, but also, the most amazing wine tasting anywhere. [0:09:24] PF: Yes, you got three different – I feel like you have three different audiences for this. [0:09:28] BS: Yes. The festival goes like this. It includes the science innovation symposium, the wine tasting reception, following symposium. Then, there's the concert, which is kind of the highlight of the day. Then, there's the exclusive dinner up at my parent's home, at the top of our vineyard property in Napa Valley, which is where it takes place. That combination of events is something that really revs people up to be excited about the future for mental health and their families. Because it's a fundraiser, it helps them want to donate to support cause. Those are the four parts of the event. The kind of people coming would mainly include people with lived experience in their families of mental illness. So, families that have got young people, or brothers, or sisters who live with schizophrenia, who live with bipolar disorder, who live with major depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder. We aim to help them have that sense of community at the festival, so they have that common bond, and reveling each other's company as well as in the events taking place. [0:10:35] PF: Let's talk about the music component of it and how that's really grown. When you first started, what kind of artists were you bringing in? Because you've got some – you have some very impressive lineups in the last few years. Talk about, when it first started, what was that like? [0:10:48] BS: Yes. We started out with orchestras playing, and we had celebrity conductors, conducting the orchestras. First year, we had Richard Williams, and another year, we had Ben Zander of the Boston Philharmonic, very charismatic conductor, who wrote a book called, The Art of Possibility. He's the one who conducted during the post September 11th festival that we had. Then, we evolved into jazz. We had Ramsay Lewis and his trio play. Then, we evolved into pop, and country, and R&B. Had artists like Gladys Knight, Brian Wilson performed, who was amazing. He totally brought it, he did it for no cost for us, because he believed in what we're doing. Then, we found artists like Jennifer Hudson, we had Tim McGraw, Sheryl Crow, and Lyle Lovett, and Jewel more recently. There's some really great stories about these artists and how they've been part of the festival. [0:11:42] PF: I know Jewel. I saw a lot of posts and things that she said about this, wrote about this. I would love to hear their experiences, because it's touching to me that there are so many artists are being so open about mental health, and how music has helped them. [0:11:57] BS: Yes. It's great to know that artists are being open about that, because it lets people know it's safe for them to talk about it too. These are role models for so many people, or at least people that feel close to through the music that they produce, and that they hear. So, yes, Jewel is actually a One Mind champion. She's an official ambassador for One Mind. We've worked with her for a few years now. She performed in 2022, as well as in 2014, so twice for us over the years.   [0:12:24] PF: Wow.   [0:12:24] BS: Yes. Had her back. She's just so great. She's been very open about her experiences, mental illness, and that's inspired a lot of people to know that recovery is possible for them to other artists who stood out, include Lyle Lovett, who lent me his guitar to play a song that I wrote about recovery from schizophrenia. That's a cause that is very dear to my heart to help people recovery is possible even from serious mental illness. There's still amazing things you can do left in life after recovery, during recovery. That song is called Horizons Left to Chase, and it's available on YouTube. When he lent me his guitar, like he was handing it to me like it's a baby or something. It was very gently, and making sure that I held it carefully. And I had it, and I say, "Okay. Well, here we go." I played it, and played my song. He listened very intently to the song like he was very interested. But people loved hearing the song too, which really gratified me. [0:13:19] PF: You have artists who perform who have talked openly about their struggles with mental health. Then, you have others who are just supportive of the mission. Is that correct? [0:13:28] BS: Yes. Yes, that's right. When Jennifer Hudson performed, she spoke a lot about her family's experiences with mental health. When Tim McGraw performed, he also supports brain injury, causes, and One Mind was involved in Brain Injury Research at that time. He was deeply involved in that. So many of the artists that I featured on brainwaves, that webcasts that I hosted for about 11 years were very open about their experiences with mental health, and mental illness. Artists deal with a lot of challenges with their mental health, and music is a way to kind of process those. I've personally discovered those experiences with music. [0:14:04] PF: That's what I'd really like to talk about, is how does music help people who are struggling with mental health. And if you have your own experiences that you can give us examples, that'd be fantastic. [0:14:14] BS: Yes, I'd love to do that. When I was about 35, it was about 17 years after I was initially diagnosed. I was into my recovery, but not fully well yet. I wasn't very socially adept, and so I didn't have a lot of friends or social connections that I could turn to for support, or just have fun with. So, I realized that if I learned to play guitar, I'd have a hobby that would be something that connect me to other people, as well as be something that I could really enjoy on my own. I took up guitar lessons that year, that was about quite a while ago, almost 20 years ago. I began to practice, and I found that playing guitar offers me amazing benefits. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it also helps me to focus, and to understand that I can feel real emotions. When people live with schizophrenia, we take medication so often, dampen our emotions due to the dopamine effects in the brain. The illness can have that effect to for people. Feeling the genuine emotions that the music brings out in me, is something that reconnects me to more parts of myself and makes me feel more whole as a human being, and a more spiritually full. Then, also the mastery aspect, like getting better at a practice is something that I love to engage in. It gives me a sense of humility to see how I'm not that adept yet at playing guitar, but I want to be better. So, it's a driving force for motivation in my life. [0:15:52] PF: Then, physically, it has so many great benefits too, because when you're playing and you sync with a rhythm, and you start, it has so many different physiological effects that you can benefit from as well. [0:16:05] BS: Yes. Just hearing the strings ring out when I'm tuning the guitar, focuses my mind, my attention, and it calms me down. I'm reading a book now called Your Brain on Art by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross. It was published last year, it's a New York Times bestseller, and it features my story in it, and how I've used music for my recovery. Susan Magsamen, who's the head of the International Arts and Minds Labs at Johns Hopkins University interviewed me year before and put my story in the book. But she talks about how music does affect the brain in the body, and how it can lower cortisol release, which is a stress hormone. It can put your body into a parasympathetic nervous system framework, so that you calm down and it aids your sleep. I experienced that too. I sleep so much better if I play guitar recently. It also brings in together so many different aspects of brain activity in sync with each other. That can kind of account for the experience I have of feeling more like a whole person after I play music, I think. [0:17:10] PF: Now, what about if you're just listening to music. Because I am a big proponent of playlists. I have a playlist for every mood, everything that can possibly happen in my life, I've got a playlist. I go to a playlist for it. How about that? Do you use recorded music as a way to manage emotions and regulate yourself? [0:17:28] BS: Yes, I do. I do. I really do. Like every morning when I'm driving to work or driving home from work, I put out some music to start the day well with things that are meaningful to me. Like songs that I really love, and bring me a sense of peace or inspiration. Many years ago, when I was first ill with schizophrenia, it was immensely beneficial to listen to my favorite songs that helped me to refocus on the moment and stopped associating into the psychosis that would be creeping up on me from time to time. Listening to music has been really something part of my life for like my entire life. It's a touchstone for me that helps me to cope and feel good. [0:18:08] PF: What are some of the things that musicians that you've talked with that perform at your festival? What are some of the ways that they say that it's helped their mental health? [0:18:17] BS: The musicians who perform the festivals, I haven't talked to them directly about how music benefits mental health, except for Jewel. She and I, during the dinner portion of the Music Festival event, in 2022, sat together at the dinner. So, I had a long conversation with her. For her, music has been a double-edged sword, it helps her to work through the challenges and experiences in her life, by articulating them, and kind of processing them through that lens of seeing them out there as a creation. But the thing that has come with her music is something that she wants to not have too much of, because fame can change people's perceptions of themselves, of the world around them, of reality. It can also impact your private life in so many ways. She has changed her genres many times throughout her career, and I really respect that she does this as a means to [inaudible 0:19:13] to be creative and create the kind of music that she wants to, and that's innovative for her, and brings her a sense of fulfillment, but keeps her fans guessing and on their toes at the same time. I have followed her throughout her career ever since the early 2000s, and all of her albums, even though she's been very multifaceted and eclectic in the genres that she's used. [0:19:33] PF: Yes. I had read an interview with her, where she said that she had intentionally stepped away right after she hit big, and she knew that this could be – it would be phenomenal for her career, but it can be very damaging for her mental health. So, she took a step back. I thought that was so wise and insightful for her to recognize what that could do to her. An artist, you're there to get famous, you're there to have a living you, and to have that right in front of you, and to be able to say, "But my mental health is more important," it's just absolutely incredible. [0:20:05] BS: Yes. It's incredibly wise to do it, like you say, and she has a song called Goodbye Alice in Wonderland on her album of the same name. She talks about in the song, in the lyrics that there's a difference between dreaming and pretending. She's found in her life through the fame that she's found that she doesn't want to pretend anymore. She wants to live a genuine life, and that's why she's leaving Wonderland, so to speak in the song. [0:20:32] PF: That's fantastic. There's so much good that comes out of music. One mind is doing so much good to help bridge music and mental health. For the people who are listening to this, if they have a family member who has recently been diagnosed, and things are becoming clearer, or if they have been living with this for a while, what is the thing that you want them to know about the journey that they're on? [0:20:57] BS: Yes. They should know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that recovery is possible, even from the most serious of mental illnesses. That if you love somebody who's living with mental illness, you should also know that they're still them, even though they may not seem like them. Medication can change people's personalities, so can the illness. But deep inside, they're still who they who you've always known. And they can live a full and meaningful life again, if you continue to love and support them and access treatment that can help them. [0:21:29] PF: That's terrific, Brandon, we're going to tell everybody where they can find out more about the One Mind Music Festival. [0:21:35] BS: It's the One Mind Music Festival for Brain Health. This year, it's our 30th anniversary event. It's on September 7th 2024. We invite people to check out our website at music-festival.org to learn more about that wonderful event. [0:21:49] PF: All right, that is terrific. I appreciate you sitting down and talking with me today. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Like I said, I've been following you for a while. It really is an honor to be able to chat with you about it. [0:21:59] BS: Thanks, Paula. It's great to talk to you too. I love your podcast and it's been great to be on. Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:22:07] PF: That was Brandon Staglin of One Mind, talking about music and mental health. If you'd like to learn more about One Mind, or the one Mind Music Festival for Brain Health, explore some of their resources, or follow them on social media, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Reclaim Your Personal Power With Dr. Emma Seppälä [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 465 of Live Happy Now. We live in a world that is increasingly chaotic, and this week's guest has a better roadmap for navigating this uncertain territory. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today I'm sitting down with Dr. Emma Seppälä, a Yale professor, bestselling author, and research scientist, whose new book is, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos. Emma is here to talk about how embracing both our positive and negative experiences and becoming more compassionate with ourselves, can improve our relationships, cultivate greater personal freedom, and even improve our physical health. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Emma, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:49] ES: Thank you, I'm so happy to be here. [0:00:51] PF: It's such an honor to have you on the show. You've done some amazing work already and you have a brand-new book coming out that we're going to talk about, but I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk to us today. [0:01:02] ES: Absolutely. Yes. I'm delighted. [0:01:06] PF: So, your new book is called Sovereign and that's a word we don't hear a lot. It kind of stops you for a moment. So, it takes a little bit of an introduction to understand what is sovereignty and especially for you, you talk about personal sovereignty. Can you explain that to us? [0:01:23] ES: Absolutely. So, my first book was about science of happiness, and there's a lot to share there, as you know, from your podcast. But after – I used all those practices, and I use them still daily. But I realized there was another element that you can be doing all the self-care practices you want. But if you don't have sovereignty, and I'll explain what that is, then you can't get all the way there. What do I mean by that, you can meditate all day, but if you are highly self-critical, and buy into fears and beliefs about yourself, that are not serving you, and engage in behaviors and addictive habits that are destructive, then you're not going to be able to attain the level of fulfillment that you wish, nor are you going to be able to show up as your best self. So, I think it's helpful if I give an example. [0:02:12] PF: Please. Yes. [0:02:13] ES: Yes, I teach audiences. So, I teach executives at the Yale School of Management and I see these highly talented people coming through. When I ask audiences, “How many of you are self-critical”, 90% to 95% of people raise their hand. As you probably know, from psychology, self-criticism is a form of self-loathing. When you think about that for a second, you're like, “Wait a second, 90% to 95% of people are walking around with self-loathing. That's pretty intense.” When you look at the research, self-criticism, as you’re beating yourself up whenever you make mistakes, which most people do, is linked to anxiety, is linked to depression, it's linked to fear of failure, it's linked to less willingness to try again. All of the things that are the opposite of resilience are the opposite of wellbeing. And you've got to wonder, like, I mean, you can wonder where this all comes from. But that that actually doesn't really matter. I mean, it's social conditioning, programming, whatever you want to call it. But the idea is, once we can acknowledge that this is happening, that's when you can have that awareness and step out of it and reprogram yourself, and question the way you've been doing things because research shows when we have a more life supportive relationship with ourselves, that's when we're really going to thrive. So, I often ask people, what do you say to yourself when you make a big mistake? People usually say, “You're such an idiot. Blanc.” Those kinds of words. But then if you ask people, what would you say to your best friend who've made the same mistake? They'll say, “You're okay. Everyone makes mistakes. You're doing great. Don't worry.” Right? [0:03:40] PF: Right. [0:03:41] ES: So, the question is, what's the difference between you and your best friend, there's no difference other than that you live inside different bodies. You got to wonder, so that's where I question some of these beliefs and I call that the bound state, because that binds us. It's like we have like an inner terrorist living inside of us and that is not allowing us to show up at our full potential. The majority of people on their deathbeds regret not living the life they wanted. Let's not be one of those people. [0:04:09] PF: Yes. I love this because I know people who don't understand why the practices aren't working for them. It's like, but I practice gratitude, and I practice, I want to forgive people and I try these different things, try to take these steps toward joy. I practice kindness and it's just not getting them quite there. This is kind of like tilling the soil, to make the – plant the seeds that will really be able to grow and make those practices bloom. [0:04:38] ES: Absolutely. So, one other example is I have a whole chapter on the mind, and so many of us don't realize that we are conditioning our minds all day long with the information we're taking, and we're taking in over 60,000 gigabytes of information across all our media channels every day, which is enough to crash a small computer in a week. I mean – [0:04:56] PF: Oh, my gosh. That’s overwhelming. [0:04:58] ES: It’s overwhelming. When you think about it, so what is it that we're taking in? And are we aware of what we're taking in, and the impact it's having on us? If you're constantly taking in, let's say, news, you're conditioning yourself for fear and anxiety. If you're constantly taking in, if you're just doom scrolling, and looking at accounts that are making you want to buy something, or making you feel like you're not attractive enough, or whatever the other things, many things that evoke desire are ways that we're conditioning our mind for anxiety, for depression. Many of us are not aware of everything we're taking in, and what the quality of our mind that ensues. So, you are what you eat is also true of your mind. One of the things I'm inviting people to do is okay, what are you conditioning your mind with? Of course, the mind is also conditioned by everything else, it's received, like, for example, that the self-loathing is something that is passed down in families and societies. Yes, I mean, there's so much more to say. I mean, trauma is obviously also something that everybody, most people have to deal with a certain level of it and that's a form of mind conditioning. There are ways that we can help ourselves to become aware of state of our mind and what we can do about it, to have a more sovereign mind. [0:06:11] PF: This is such a huge topic and I look at all the different silos that it affects when you talk about, we're being programmed, we have our own internal cues that we're giving ourselves. How did you even start mapping out what all needed to be included in this? What you needed to address, and then how did you research this? Because it is a massive, massive, and it's not something that I've seen touched on a lot. [0:06:37] ES: Thank you, Paula. This doesn't sound very scientific. But it does, in some sense that I feel like this book came to me. Actually, when we look at research on creativity, we get our ideas. Those aha moments often come in times when we're in meditation, or when we're in this alpha wave, brainwave state. I feel like this book came to me, and I had it all mapped out in my mind. Of course, also, was my own experience. I went through my own experience of feeling like, “Wow, I'm applying all the happiness principles, but I'm still in this bound state and I had like a major health issue.” I realized, “Well, there are certain beliefs, there are certain habits, and things that we engage in that can bind us, regardless.” Like I said earlier, of the practices we're doing. So, the book really mapped itself out in my own mind, and each chapter could be a book on its own. In fact, I've had early readers read it and be like, “Oh, well, I'm not going to write a book about this whole topic that you address in one chapter.” I have one chapter on intuition, which doesn't sound scientific, but there's research on it. Neuroscience research, the military is doing research on it and there's really interesting findings. One of my colleagues was like, “Well, my next book is about intuition, because I read your chapter.” So, you could go so deep and this is sort of an introduction to sovereignty, I think. And then readers can explore the topic further as it applies to them. [0:07:56] PF: How does it specifically fit in this time we live in? Fifteen years ago, it wouldn't land the way that it lands today. So, can you talk about this, why this is a book that is really a book of our times? [0:08:10] ES: We live in a time of hyper-distraction, and to the point where there's so much coming at us that sometimes it's hard to know what we think, who we are, and what we believe, because there is so much and it's a sailing on our senses. And it's a sailing on our mind, and we know that the quality of our life depends on the state of our mind, right? You could be in traffic and still be happy. Or you could be on a desert, on a beautiful – Hawaii or something and be unhappy. It's all about state of our mind. This is a time also where there's just chaos. There's chaos outside, there's chaos on the globe, there's distraction, like crazy through, all of our media channels, different messaging, who knows what to even – what to align with. In a sense, we can so easily lose our footing with regard to our state of mind or state of being and a lot of people are struggling. There are also countless forms of addictive distractions to help us feel better, right? Whether it's – anyway, I'm not just talking about the regular alcohol and drugs. There's – [0:09:12] PF: We’ve progressed past that. [0:09:14] ES: Yes. There's so much now. There's so much and so many people profiting from that and so many businesses run off of them many ways. Even some people it's like, “Well, they're overworking or over exercising or you whatever it is.” I think a lot of people feel lost. [0:09:31] PF: It's like we're bombarded with so much but our lives feel empty. There's such a dichotomy there. But it's like there's so much coming at us and coming at us and we don't really drink in the nutrients that we need for a healthy life, emotional, healthy life. [0:09:48] ES: I love how you just said that, Paula. That's exactly right. So, this book is an invitation to become aware of the many different ways in which we are being bombarded, in which we are standing in our own way without realizing, and waking up to the fact that we have a choice, and what are some things we can do to reclaim the life that we want to live, how we want to live it. Ideally, in the fullest expression of ourselves and to how to navigate these times. [0:10:15] PF: Can you talk about where someone starts? Does it start with identifying where we're at? And then deciding what you need? Or how do we start reclaiming that personal sovereignty? [0:10:25] ES: So, I do include a lot of tools in the book, because I remember this, there was so much talk about self-love at some point, and you kind of felt like, what the heck is that? How do you even do that? As a scientist, I like to keep things really pragmatic. My first chapter is actually about sovereign self. Sovereign self, sovereign emotion, sovereign mind, sovereign relationship, sovereign intuition, and so forth, sovereign body. But I start with sovereign self because of that, like I said earlier, that state of self-loathing that most people are in, and that we don't even realize. I think one of the first steps to sovereignty is becoming aware of how we treat ourselves, and also having – but in order to build that self-awareness, a practice I really encourages meditation, which is now no longer – which is now popular, thanks to research that my colleagues and I did, and we've done some of that research. But I think for a lot of people, meditation is still a strain. Because when there's anxiety and you sit to meditate, it's really hard. So, I think a lot of people have tried meditation and kind of feel like, “It doesn't work for me.” We actually conducted research on breathing. For veterans with trauma, those are my original studies that we ran, because there was such high levels of anxiety that sitting and meditating was not an option. I can relate to that, because I was in New York City during 9/11 and I tried eating after that, and it was just not going to work for me. What worked was a breathing practice called SKY Breath Meditation. Then 10 years later, and I’m working with veterans with trauma, and again, they were falling through the cracks with regards to therapy and pharmaceutical approaches. Then meditation, the mindfulness studies were not working out at the time in the VA that I was in because they were, again, when you have high anxiety, sitting and closing your eyes is just more anxiety provoking. So, we wanted to see, “Well, maybe this breathing practice that I learned all those years go through to that non-profit called Art of Living.” I thought maybe we can work with them, to see if we can work the veterans. We did, and it was really amazing to see how using your breath, you can really reprogram your nervous system. In a sense, and again, actually the nonprofit that we worked with is called Project Welcome Home Troops and they offer this breathing for veterans, military, active, and their families. But what's really interesting to me, as I call it, and Paula, tell me, if you agree on this, that psychology is such a top-down approach. It's like all about change your thoughts, change your life. Right? [0:12:50] PF: Right. We want that simple, like, “Okay, but where do I start? I'm anxious, I don't have time to sit down and read a book. Tell me what to do.” And we can take a breath. You can learn to take a breath. I know that breathing is just a lifesaver. I remember being told when I was going through a very difficult time in my 30s, and someone said, “Paula, just breathe.” I thought, “That's stupid.” Then I breathed, and it's like, okay, and that saying just sticks in my head forever. Like, “Paula, just breathe.” That's that trigger, when I get anxious is like, just breathe. And it does, it changes everything for people. [0:13:29] ES: Changes everything. And it was the most moving research study I've ever run, because the veterans were at risk for taking their own lives and they said, “Thanks for giving me my life back.” And I thought, “Wow, something so simple, and yet so powerful.” In fact, yes, this week, actually, just this very week, I'm actually teaching someone who grew up as an enslaved person in Nepal, working in the sweatshops. I just met her a couple of days ago. In fact, I talk about her in my book in the introduction. She said, “Can you teach me?” It's making a huge difference. It's like, wow, I wish all people and all children and like – imagine everyone learns at 18. There goes your childhood trauma. Move on, sovereign. [0:14:12] PF: There you go. We'll get right back to my conversation with Emma. [MESSAGE] [0:14:15] PF: But I wanted to take a moment to remind you that Mother's Day is just around the corner. If you're still trying to figure out the right gift for your mom, why not give her the very thing you took from her when you were born? Sleep. Sleep is so important to your physical and mental health and one way to get better sleep is with luxurious bedding from Cozy Earth. I recently discovered their incredible super soft bamboo sheets and I'm telling you, this is the easiest way to give your mom an incredible night's sleep. Their temperature-regulating bedding means it doesn't matter if she runs hot or cold. She's going to enjoy a fabulous night of sleep while enjoying the ultimate and comfort and indulgence. This is truly a gift that keeps on giving and even better, we're going to give you a discount so you give her the luxury she deserves with Cozy Earth. Head over to cozyearth.com and use the promo code happy 35 for an exclusive 35% off. That's cozyearth.com and use the promo code happy 35. Now, let's hear more from Dr. Emma Seppälä. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:15:19] ES: SKY Breath MEDITATION is a really powerful protocol. But what it showed us is that just as you can train your muscles to be strong for you to go out in the world, you can train your nervous system to be more resilient to stress by conditioning it and to be more in that parasympathetic mode. It's stress resiliency and that's what I love. [0:15:38] PF: Yes. That's such an important step. Then what about with all this self-loathing and self-criticism? What's so interesting, because it can be self-critical, but I've never thought of it as self-loathing. I just thought, I'm just mean to myself sometimes. So, when you frame it like that, that gives you a whole different perspective. So, how do people go about correcting that? Because that's a huge part of creating that better relationship with ourselves. [0:16:03] ES: Well, first, you have to want to. It's shocking how many people really relate to – well, I have to be critical of myself, because I'm so X, Y, Z. It's like, “Says who?” Right? So, I think one way that can shock you into paying attention to this is when I was postpartum with my second child, my first child was three, and he heard me saying something out loud, like, “I just can't do this.” Regarding parenting. Someone was screaming. I was like, “I just can't – I'm not good at this.” I said something like that. And then a few days later, when he messed up at something, I heard him say the same words. Sometimes you need a shock like that, like, “Oh, really? Are you going to pass this on? You're going to pass the self-loathing onto your child? Really? Is that what you want for your child?” Sometimes something like that. Because it most definitely has been passed on in our families, in our societies, in our culture. If you're a woman, even more so. What does it do? It disempowers you. It takes away your sovereignty, and you have to decide, “Wait a second, do I don't want this for me, let alone for my child? Or do I want to live the life that I want?” There's that. But that’s like, “Well, how do you do it?” I want to break this down in the most practical way possible. Is that throughout the day, just tuning in, and instead of asking, “Am I good enough?” Which so many people ask themselves. Am I good enough to be a spouse? Am I good enough to be doing the work I'm doing or whatever it is, right? Asking what's good for me right now? What do I need right now? Tuning in a couple times a day, especially when you're feeling stressed, or you're feeling tension. Just what do I need right now? I can tell you that right before this podcast. This morning, I had some different, like, other PR stuff that I'm doing to the book and I tuned in, after lunch, I tuned in like, wow, it's been a lot today. I have an inbox overflowing with people emailing me, again, because I haven't responded to their email and I should be doing that, but I didn't. I went on that couch and I meditated. That’s what I needed to do. What do I need right now? That allows me to then show up for you, Paula, but also, for me to show up for me, in a way that I have taken care of my nervous system. So, sometimes just training yourself to ask that. Sometimes you might need a nap. Sometimes you might need, if you don't have any time, you just have five minutes. But what are you doing in those five minutes? Are you doing scrolling? Or you can take five minutes to go outside and just breathe some fresh air, or pet your dog, or whatever it is. Just a few minutes. In those few minutes are you doing something nourishing for yourself and keeping it really practical? Are you getting enough sleep at night? Are you eating enough? Are you eating quality? Little things like that. But I often think like when you have a child, you're constantly aware, “Oh, wow, they haven't had any water in like four hours if you're aware.” Constantly, like, “Oh, my gosh. If they don't eat soon, they're going to have a meltdown. But we don't do that for ourselves. So, it's a little bit like training that, training that awareness inward. [0:19:03] PF: How do, especially women, get past the idea that self-care is selfish? Because even though we know it's not, we can tell each other it's not – there are still a lot of times that little bit of guilt like, “Man, I shouldn't be taking this time for myself when I still have laundry to do. I have this to do. I've got places I need to be.” So, how does someone get past that and recognize the importance of that self-care both physically and emotionally? I [0:19:30] ES: I mean, this is such a – I mean, scientifically speaking, I can definitely share with you that when you take care of yourself, you show up with more emotional intelligence. So, you're able to enact more successfully with others. You show up with a – so you're going to have better relationships, whether it's at work or at home. You're going to make better decisions. You're going to think more clearly. You're going to remember things better. You're going to be more efficient in what you're doing because you're going to be more present with what you're doing. So, in a sense, if you want to be successful, you doing self-care is going to help you. But it's also going to help others because we all know what it feels like to be around someone who's stressed and burned out. It makes us feel stressed and burned out. Someone who's stressed and burned out is also more likely to fly off the handle, and to be even hurtful ways. Oftentimes, our inability to take care of ourselves makes us hurt the people we love the most and want to hurt the least. So, it's not selfish. It's absolutely essential. If you want to – just for the people around you, if not for yourself. [0:20:37] PF: Yes. So, it's really an investment in not just yourself, but in your working relationships, in your personal relationships. It's improving that for everybody. [0:20:47] ES: Absolutely. Then, when you go to sleep at night, you don't regret something you did or said, right? When you have greater self-care, you're going to be more mindful. You're going to be more thoughtful. You're going to be more perceptive. You're actually going to see more things. Our research shows that when you're stressed, you’re tunnel-visioned. When you’re taking care of yourself and are in the sort of calmer space, you're able to perceive more things, which is when you think about it, whether you're a parent or leader, or whatever you're doing. Being able to perceive more things and think from a broader perspective, is going to make you a lot more successful at what you're doing. [0:21:23] PF: Yes. When you invest in that strong personal relationship with yourself, how have you seen it change people? You've done so much research on this. When they really do make a personal relationship their priority, what does that do for them? [0:21:37] ES: What happens is that they become more successful in everything that they're doing. In their relationships, in their marriage, in their –why is it that marriages are so strained when there's little kids, right? It's because both parents have a hard time doing the self-care. Really, the relationship could be just fine, if everyone had time to sleep, to eat, and a few minutes to just be by themselves, right? That applies for the rest of our lives. So many people might not have little kids, and yet, are straining themselves by overworking, not sleeping enough, not taking care of their mind or body, their sleep, et cetera. Then, they're suffering, and so are the people around them. [0:22:17] PF: So, if someone reads this, and they start making this change, and they make it not just for themselves, they pass that on with their family, and then their friends start making that change. How does this start reshaping the way that we move through the world? Because as you've mentioned, we're inundated with too much information, too much stress, too much negativity. How can we change that? [0:22:39] ES: Well, I think that once people start making more sovereign choices with regard to themselves, and how they live, it can change society, and it can change families and society, and help us to navigate this world in a way that we actually live the life we want to live in accordance with who we really are, and most importantly, we can live in a way that fully expresses the gifts that we have. [0:23:04] PF: That's fantastic. [0:23:05] ES: Yes. I mean, I'm just thinking now of a story that someone shared about his son, who has been so addicted to screens since he was about five years old. But he's now 18, and unable to really focus on anything and sits in his car, and drains his car battery, because he's scrolling through his phone for hours. When you think about that, and that boy who has undoubtedly his own very unique gifts, and how he has been completely bound up by what the technology has done to him. Now, other things may be going on there as well. But we all have our own beautiful, sovereign potential, and are we going to choose to live it? Are we going to choose to model it for others and for our children? That's for us to do and the potential is huge to make this world a better place. [0:23:50] PF: Yes. I think what's so wonderful with your book is it kind of gives us the path to get there, and the hope that we can get there, and through ways that might be more simple than we thought. Not easy, necessarily, but simple. Two of the things that you talked about that I really want you to touch on before I let you go is like elevation and forgiveness. So, can you tell us about what each of those means and why they're so important? [0:24:17] ES: Yes. Whenever you see someone helping another person, it can be very moving to see that, whether you're out in the street, seeing someone helping another person, it's very inspiring and moving. That's a state we call elevation. Psychologists call elevation. What's really interesting about that is that when you see someone helping someone else, you are then more likely to go and help someone else. What the research shows is that whenever one person acts with compassion or engages in acts of kindness, it actually ripples out to three degrees of separation away from them. So, when they do an act of kindness and the onlookers are impacted, and so are two degrees away. Let's say you do a kind act for a work colleague, and then someone else sees you. You're impacting that person's sister’s brother-in-law or whatever. That ripple effect is happening so often, especially in this world that's so chaotic and crazy right now. We think, “Oh, who am I? What difference do I make?” You don't even know the ripple effect that every micro-moment of kindness, the joke you share with the person at their cash register, the kind gesture you do for your neighbor, the kind words you share with your kid’s teacher or whatever. You don't know the ripple effect of goodness that happens. That, to me, gives a lot of hope. Because each one of us can make an enormous difference, without even knowing it, and everybody does. That's one thing. Then, with regard to forgiveness, it can sound so sappy. Yet when you look at the data, forgiveness has nothing much to do with the person you're forgiving. Everything to do with you. Because when you forgive research shows that it literally lightens your load. You literally can jump higher after you've forgiven someone. This research has been done. Just showing just how heavy a load it is to not forgive or to live in resentment. Living in resentment is kind of like punishing yourself for what someone else did. Living in anger, it's like, because you're the one reaping the health benefits, and we know for example, that anger has health impact on your heart health. So, people who tend to hold on to anger or resentment tend to have heart issues. When you're forgiving, you're not only unburdening the other person, possibly, if they know or they don't know. But your own blood pressure reduces, and you're able to move on with much better mental health and well-being. So, forgiveness is really for yourself. [0:26:41] PF: On that note too, self-forgiveness is super important. Because as you've noted, we're self-critical and we can also beat ourselves up for years about things that we did, that maybe nobody else even remembers. You're a wonderful researcher and scientists. How do you discover self-forgiveness? [0:27:01] ES: That's such a good question. Whenever I feel the guilt coming up, often it's around my children. It’s like, “I wish I did this.” I just breathe through it and I bring myself back to the present moment, and I'm like right here, right now. I can always – I'm doing my best right here right now and I did the best that I could then. I think that's one of the mantras, self-compassion mantras I used, I still use, doing the best that I can. [0:27:26] PF: That's wonderful. You have so many tools and guides within this book to help people understand and achieve that personal sovereignty. I'm really excited to see what happens as it reaches the world. You also have some wonderful bonus tools that you're offering people, and so we're going to give links to all of that on our landing page. But what is it, you've poured yourself into this book, you've poured your work into this book, what is it that you hope people take away from it? [0:27:54] ES: I hope people take away that they have a choice as to how they want to live, how they want to manage their minds and their relationships, and that they have the option to live a very fulfilled, happy life in which they can live in the fullest expression of themselves, that they have that for permission. Because sometimes I think we've forgotten that we can do that. If people remember that they have their own gifts to fully express and that they can and have permission to do that, it's going to make their life more fulfilled, but they're also going to become a gift for everyone who meets them. [0:28:29] PF: I love that. If you're not doing it for yourself, do it for those around you, right? [0:28:32] ES: Mm-hmm. [0:28:33] PF: Well, Emma, such a pleasure to talk to you, really excited to see this book come out, as I said, and we're going to tell our listeners where they can find it, where they can order it, how they can get those free bonuses. Thank you again. Thank you again for sitting down with me. [0:28:47] ES: Thank you, Paula. Lots of pleasure. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:28:53] PF: That was Dr. Emma Seppälä, talking about how sovereignty can help us improve our relationships with ourselves and those around us. If you'd like to learn more about Emma or her new book, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now, and if you aren't already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think. That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Embrace Earth Day With Casey Johnson [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 464 of Live Happy Now. This week, we're celebrating Earth Day, and that makes it the perfect time to talk about what we can do for our planet. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm sitting down with Live Happy Marketing Manager, Casey Johnson, who created this year's Earth Day #HappyActs campaign. As you're about to find out, that campaign grew out of her passion for the planet. So she sat down with me to talk about how we can all take small steps to create big changes. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:33] PF: Casey, thank you for joining me on the show today. [00:00:35] CJ: Thank you. It's great to be here. [00:00:38] PF: Well, Earth Day is coming up. [00:00:40] CJ: It is. [00:00:41] PF: There are so many ways to think about it, celebrate it, and talk about it. People probably don't know that that is one thing that you and I have in common. We like animals. We like the planet. We have a lot of things in common. I wanted to bring you on and talk about it because over the years that I've known you, I've just seen how intentional you are with your life and with taking care of the planet and taking care – [00:01:04] CJ: Thank you. [00:01:05] PF: Well, I wanted to talk. What do you do in your daily life? Let's forget about Earth Day for a second. What do you do for the planet just on a day-to-day basis? [00:01:14] CJ: This is one of my favorite topics, so happy to share. I'll start off with this. I mean, people might find this interesting, but I limit my plastic consumption, which is no shock. But I have not bought Ziploc bags in over five years. I will not buy them. [00:01:30] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:01:31] CJ: I know. I haven't bought them in over five years. [00:01:34] PF: Yes, because I have wanted to cut out that kind of plastic consumption, and it is so hard. How did you do that, and what do you do instead because they're a staple? [00:01:44] CJ: I know. It was honestly really difficult at first. But I've replaced all of it with Stasher bags. That's the brand, Stasher. I mean, they're basically Ziploc bags. They're dishwasher-safe. You can even put them in your oven to a certain temperature, and they won't melt. They're safe. If they get warm, they won't get chemicals on your food or whatever. That’s what I do. [00:02:06] PF: You’re not going to have a BPA sandwich. [00:02:08] CJ: Exactly, yes. No chemicals. That's what I've used in replacement of Ziploc bags, and it's made it just so easy, and they sell them in different sizes. I feel like I should be sponsored right now. Sponsor me, Stasher. Please. But I have them in so many different sizes. I have really large ones to even super small ones where I can even hold ChapStick and small little makeup items. You can repurpose them. They're not just for food. You can use them however you'd like, but that's what's made the transition away from Ziploc bags work for me. [00:02:40] PF: How did you do that? This is incredible. [00:02:42] CJ: I know. People are so shocked when I tell them I don't buy Ziploc bags. [00:02:45] PF: I know. What made you decide like, “I'm not going to do that anymore.”? [00:02:49] CJ: Yes. I mean, I just see all of this pollution and plastic waste, single-use plastic. I just thought, one, and I won't request plastic ware when ordering takeout. That's another simple thing. But, two, Ziploc bags. I'd go to family gatherings, and they'd give me leftovers, and they would give me 10 different Ziploc bags. Then I would just throw it away. So if you add that up every day, it's hundreds of Ziploc bags per household each month. Just eliminating that alone I feel like makes a big difference. [00:03:20] PF: That's amazing. What are other areas where you've cut out? Because I cut out plastic but not as well as you have. I haven’t – [00:03:28] CJ: I know. [00:03:28] PF: Done the Ziploc thing. [00:03:29] CJ: I’m extreme about it. [00:03:30] PF: I love that. I love that. What are some of the other things that you've done? [00:03:34] CJ: Yes. I eat meatless meals. I was actually vegetarian for 10 years, but I had to incorporate meat back into my diet. I only eat meat like one to two times a week, and I feel like that is a significant way to reduce your carbon footprint. [00:03:51] PF: That's terrific. If you're already living like this and then you have Earth Day, do you do anything special? The things that you're doing are things that people would say like, “I'm going to try that for Earth Day,” and then the next day go back to their habits. Then how do you observe Earth Day? Do you do anything special? [00:04:07] CJ: Oh, man. I love Earth Day for so many reasons. I love spending time outdoors and connecting with nature. It just brings a lot of joy into my life. I mean, since I have these daily practices already in place, on Earth Day, I try to spend as much time as I can outside. We have a pond near our house. So maybe I'll go bring some grapes and seeds for the ducks. But, yes, I really just love to be outside. One thing we're doing this year in celebration of Earth Day is #HappyActs to celebrate Earth Day, so eco-friendly #HappyActs. I'll definitely be doing some of those as well. [00:04:44] PF: Yes. We're going to talk about some of those before we end this broadcast. [00:04:47] CJ: I know. I'm jumping ahead. [00:04:49] PF: No. No, you're not. But what I wanted to do – no, that's a teaser. It's like, “Everyone, stay tuned, and we're going to –” [00:04:54] CJ: Yes, the teasers. Stay tuned. [00:04:56] PF: Casey's tips for #HappyActs for Earth Day. What's interesting to me is that you and I are from different generations, not in spirit. [00:05:05] CJ: Hardly. [00:05:08] PF: That’s something I have really seen is people of my time don't have the same kind of compassion and passion about the Earth that my generation's children have and that Gen Z has. Can you talk about that? Did you grow up with the passion for the planet? Or how did this come about? What sparked all this, and what is happening with younger people in terms of how they view the planet? [00:05:37] CJ: Yes, that's a great question. No, I did not grow up with this instilled in my brain or in my lifestyle. It's just something that I've just developed over the years. I think the driver behind this younger generation is that we're extremely aware of the impact humans have on the environment. It's all we've known. We've grown up in a world of climate change, pollution, plastic waste, what we were talking about earlier. [00:06:03] PF: Or millennial. After you, you have Gen Z. [00:06:08] CJ: Gen Z. [00:06:08] PF: How do you think they are even more affected by this? [00:06:12] CJ: They're huge advocates because many schools, they teach kids about climate change and pollution. I think this education just leads to a greater understanding of the importance of sustainability and eco-friendly practices and just saving the planet. [00:06:30] PF: Right. I think that's very cool that they're being raised to think this way. [00:06:35] CJ: They're very vocal. [00:06:36] PF: Yes. We didn't even talk about it. Nobody thought. It's like our whole thing was like, “Don't litter.” That was it. That's as far as it went. [00:06:44] CJ: You got to start somewhere. [00:06:45] PF: Exactly. But what's very interesting to me is how I'm seeing different aspects of loving the Earth come up in my podcast interviews. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had Caroline Paul on, and she was talking about outdoor adventure and how it's so good for us as we – especially for women who aren't encouraged to be adventurous. As they age, it's really fantastic for them. But one thing that she brought up toward the end of the podcast, and she brings it up very well in her book, is that we need to get outside because the outside is going away. If you look at what is happening, we are losing our green space. We are losing our fresh air. So get out there and enjoy it. That has been interesting to me. Then another thing that's come up is just gardening, getting out and tending to the garden. How good it is for you to be in the soil, dig in it, breathe that air. It's amazing the health benefits that it has for you. [00:07:44] CJ: Yes. Grounding, too. [00:07:46] PF: Yes. I've started doing that. Since we moved from downtown Nashville to the rural area, I started earthing a lot. I walk around barefoot a lot, just to get that – [00:07:59] CJ: I love that. [00:07:59] PF: Connection with the Earth. It makes a huge difference to be able to get out and enjoy a green space and to really have that Earth connection. [00:08:07] CJ: Yes, I agree. I mean, I think everyone loves nature. There's just so much science behind it. It does so much for you. One thing I love about Gen Z is that they're demanding action to save our planet. They are demanding it. They're keeping businesses accountable for their environmental practices and demanding cruelty-free ingredients and clean ingredients and just keeping everyone responsible so that we can enjoy these green spaces. [00:08:37] PF: Yes, yes. They do go away, and I noticed quite a bit. I know Dallas is going through the same thing where it just keeps expanding and expanding. Nashville has – [00:08:45] CJ: It’s a concrete jungle. Yes. [00:08:47] PF: It is. It is. Nashville has experienced that. Now, even it's coming out by where we live. We talk about that. Where is the food going to be grown? Where are people going to get that green fix? Where do you get that? We have so many people. We live on a lake, and so we have people already booking for the summer, now booking for the summer 2024, where it's like, “Can we come out? We want to kayak. We want to do this.” All these things that you just can't have access to. I'm impressed, and just I'm surprised to see how much people feel like they need that. I think it's really indicative of how much our green spaces are going away. [00:09:28] CJ: Yes. I mean, gosh, you got me talking about the environment, so I'm going here. Going back to keeping businesses accountable, people want these beautiful spaces. People want to be in nature. Limiting our plastic consumption, we're not using plastic straws. But I think it all comes down to these businesses who are the huge drivers behind climate change and pollution. It infuriates me so much, and I just like hearing you talk about the lake and how people are seeking that out. From the city, they're coming out to basically the country to be in nature. It proves that people want more green spaces and less concrete and buildings. [00:10:14] PF: Yes. Because what's happening, too, in a lot of cities, obviously, it's great to take a walk. Get out in nature. If you're walking on a sidewalk, okay, at least you're getting – there's, hopefully, some trees around you, and you're getting some of that interaction because trees are so good for you. Oh, my gosh. Just everything that they put off and they’re so, so healing. [00:10:31] CJ: Hug a tree on Earth Day. [00:10:33] PF: Exactly. If you can get off that sidewalk and actually find something green to walk on, it's incredible. This is what Caroline Paul talked about in one of her chapters. She was walking with this 93-year-old woman, I believe, and the woman refused to walk on the sidewalk. She was walking through a neighborhood, and the woman's walking in their yard. Caroline's waiting for them, somebody to come out and be like, “Get off my lawn.” The woman's like, “I'm not going to walk on a sidewalk. It's a completely different experience. I want to be in nature, and that's being on the grass.” That's the thing. We don't get that when we're just walking on a sidewalk, even, though, yes, it's good to be outside, breathing the fresh air. Then one thing I saw a lot of is, say, they'd open a new dog park, and they put AstroTurf in there. [00:11:17] CJ: Oh, you know. [00:11:18] PF: It's like, “How's my dog –” [00:11:19] CJ: Don't even get me started on AstroTurf. [00:11:23] PF: You know. So it is. We've gone to that, too, where we we're getting away from nature. In what you're seeing, I see so many ways where we're getting away from nature. How do you see us also getting back to nature? [00:11:37] CJ: Yes. That's a good question because I see little green patches in the middle of a city. Well, that's nice. It also kind of makes me sad in a way. We have this little sliver of green. But then surrounded, it's just the hustle and bustle of the city, although I do see some things on a more positive note. I see in other countries and, hopefully, the US can adopt this, but they're adding greenery to buildings, adding plants on the outside structures of buildings that you're getting that clean air, and just to kind of combat all of the emissions from cars and stuff. Plus it's pretty to look at. I feel like business or building structures now, they all kind of look the same. So I feel like adding the greenery just makes it even more beautiful, beautiful and functional. [00:12:24] PF: Yes. Vertical gardens. Yes, vertical garden. [00:12:27] CJ: Vertical gardens, yes. Yes, exactly. [00:12:28] PF: I love that. I love that idea. Just it's so functional. Like you said, it's beautiful to look at, and it just gives you a different feeling than staring at some concrete. As we move toward Earth Day, you've created some #HappyActs that we could talk about. How do you propose that people can get out there and help celebrate Earth Day? [00:12:52] CJ: Yes. I don't think we've ever done Earth Day #HappyActs before. [00:12:55] PF: We have not. We have done holiday #HappyActs. We have done Halloween #HappyActs. Now, we have Earth Day #HappyActs. [00:13:02] CJ: Yes. I think a lot of this stemmed from wrapping up our 10th year of our annual #HappyActs celebration last month in March. We didn't want to stop there. [00:13:15] PF: We didn't want to stop happy acting. [00:13:17] CJ: No. Happy acting all year round, but yes. Starting this week, we're going to start sharing some eco-friendly #HappyActs leading up to Earth Day, just to make the world a happier and healthier place. [00:13:30] PF: Pray tell, Casey. What would a Earth Day happy act look like? [00:13:34] CJ: Yes. One of them is starting a compost bin for organic waste in your home. They make a lot of – I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, that's going to be so smelly.” They make a lot of small compost bins for your kitchen that you can just put in the corner, and it's not smelly. They have some that actually look aesthetically pleasing, so it can match your kitchen décor. You can also repurpose that for garden. [00:13:59] PF: Can I tell you about our composter? [00:14:01] CJ: Please. [00:14:02] PF: You will just geek out over this. We've discovered something called Lomi, and it's – [00:14:08] CJ: What’s that? [00:14:08] PF: Electric. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous design. It's L-O-M-I. We can put all our food waste in there. Then we turn it on when it's full, and it takes 16 hours. At the end of that, you have this beautiful, dark compost that can go directly into the garden. It's amazing. [00:14:26] CJ: Oh, my gosh. [00:14:27] PF: The amount of food waste that we have eliminated between being able to do that, and then, obviously, there's still stuff that you can throw directly out. It's been amazing. It's been absolutely great for the garden, and it's so simple. You feel great doing it. [00:14:45] CJ: That's amazing. You're living my dream. I want to live out in the country and have a garden. I want to compost the way you guys are. You guys are doing it right. [00:14:54] PF: Come on out, Casey. [00:14:56] CJ: I will. Don't tempt me. A few other happy acts. I could talk about composting all day, but just a few other ones, I saw this on Instagram, actually. I thought this was a really cool idea. One, it eliminates food waste we were talking about. But you can also support your local wildlife by creating a bird feeder. You can cut an orange in half, and scoop out the part that you would eat, and then use the peel as a bird feeder. Just put seed in there and then you can hang it from a tree. [00:15:24] PF: How nice. [00:15:25] CJ: Yes. It’s also bee-friendly. We got to save the bees, too. [00:15:28] PF: Oh, that’s cool. [00:15:30] CJ: Yes. [00:15:30] PF: Oh, Yes. You got to take care of them. That’s cool. [00:15:32] CJ: I thought that was a cool way, yes, to just eliminate food waste and support the birds and pollinators. [00:15:39] PF: I like that. How many happy acts do you have in total you're going to share over the next week? [00:15:43] CJ: I think we have four, five. They’re super simple ways. The whole purpose of this was to make it simple and sustainable for everyone, not make it too complex, simple actions that you can apply in your day-to-day life. I don't expect people to ditch their Ziploc bags right away like I did. [00:16:01] PF: We got to ease into it. [00:16:02] CJ: Yes. You got to start somewhere. [00:16:04] PF: I like that. Where are they going to find the happy acts? Is it – are you sharing it on social? Is it – where's the best place to look for that? [00:16:11] CJ: Yes. We'll be posting that on social; Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Then I'm sure we'll also be sending out a newsletter just for easy access with all of them in one place. [00:16:22] PF: I love this. I love that you took the initiative to create this, and I'm really excited to see how it does. [00:16:28] CJ: Thank you. [00:16:28] PF: I just love how you're so diligent about – it's like Mother's Day for the Earth for you. [00:16:34] CJ: It is. Protect our mother. [00:16:36] PF: I love how you do that. [00:16:36] CJ: Our Mother Earth. [00:16:37] PF: Exactly. She's the only one we got, so – [00:16:41] CJ: That’s right. [00:16:41] PF: Let’s take care of her. I love it. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking about this. I know we can just geek out on this all day, but I really wanted to talk to you about it. [00:16:51] CJ: Of course. Thank you for having me. I love, love, love, love talking about the Earth and how we can make it a better, healthier place. [00:16:58] PF: Let’s do it. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:17:04] PF: That was Casey Johnson, talking about how we can all care for the planet this Earth Day and beyond. If you'd like to learn more about our Live Happy Earth Day #HappyActs or follow us on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to check out our article by Dr. Randall Hansen, who explains the history of victory gardens, the benefits of gardening, and explains why we should all be looking at how to start our own garden no matter how small it might be. You can also sign up for our Live Happy newsletter to make sure you're getting a little bit of joy in your inbox every week with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Days With Jodi Wellman [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 463 of Live Happy Now. What if thinking about death could give more meaning to your life? Well, today's guest says, it can, and she has the research to back it up. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Jodi Wellman, founder of Four Thousand Mondays, a company designed to help people make the most of their time on this planet. Her TED Talk, How Death Can Bring You Back to Life has more than 1.3 million views. And her new book, You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets is being released in just a few weeks. I sat down with Jodi to find out what started this mission and more importantly, how we all can live better by counting the Mondays that we have left. Let's have a listen. [EPISODE] [0:00:49] PF: Jodi, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [0:00:53] JW: Oh, I'm just downright giddy to be here with you, Paula. [0:00:55] PF: As I told you, I have been so looking forward to this conversation. We've been emailing for a while. I kind of had to wait until we are closer to your book coming out, and it's going to be coming out soon. But even without your book being on the shelves, yet, you've been creating some incredible content that reminds us to live our life and be alive. I wanted to find out your backstory. How did that become your mission? [0:01:19] JW: Well, thank you for the compliment, and thank you for asking. I have been – I would say, appropriately interested in our mortality for a very long time, so since I was probably my early twenties. Just to cut to the chase, I really do believe that the way that we can wake up to living is through the – sometimes stark, and sometimes, a bit of a splash cold water in your face reminder that, "Right, right, right. We're totally going to die." How do we use that not to feel morbid? I found in my twenties; I was always just fascinated by it. Then, my mom died. She went and had the nerve to die, that lovely lady in her late fifties. It wasn't so much for me that she died, which was obviously a crappy thing. But it was my perception at the time that she died with a bunch of regrets. It broke my heart to see as I cleaned up her place, like the vestiges of all these dreams that were just sort of like – well, I don't know. I think I call it somewhere in the book, like the land of dormant intentions. Like all these ideas that she was talented, and creative, and fabulous and just didn't execute. It really woke me up to this idea that we have an end date, we don't know when it is. Here we are taking our time for granted. I guess that was a huge wake up for me, which was not just so much that, "Oh, you could die unexpectedly early." But it's like, oh, you could die in a way where maybe we didn't do this life justice, because we all have hopes, and plans, and dreams, and goals, and things. What a shame if we don't get to do them? [0:02:54] PF: That's so insightful that that occurred at such a young age, that you're interested in this, and your fascination, because we are immortal into our thirties. It doesn't cross our mind that anything, even when we lose friends unexpectedly, it's like well, that's tragic, and it's not supposed to happen, but it's not going to happen to me. [0:03:14] JW: Right. Thanks for touching on that, because we do a really good job of sort of just denying the inevitable. If it happens to other people, or they're older, or it is just a very rare tragedy and occurrence that will not be my fate. Then, you're right, as we age, we start to see that, "Wait a minute, maybe this ruse I've been telling myself is, maybe it's actually closer than I think." So let's use that instead of triggering an existential crisis. Let's make it like existential catharsis. Oh, we just coined something new here today. Let's use this, right? [0:03:46] PF: Yes, because you could almost call this the joy of death, the way that you approach it. I mean, you give us so much inspiration to like, "Okay, I have an end date, and here's what I've got to do before." It's not like a bucket list, it's different than a bucket list. Can you explain that? [0:04:01] JW: Oh, sure. I think many of us, I have strong feelings about the bucket list. It can be lovely just as an aside to touch on that for a sec. If we do identify things that we yearn in long to do that might light us up, but I do think that there's danger because it creates this sort of false sense of satisfaction. There's research around this, right? The idea that sometimes we identify a goal, we put it on a piece of paper, or a spreadsheet, and we put it away, and then we go and live our whole ho-hum Monday to Friday lives. Because it's this notion that we'll do it later. And danger signs, like let's have flashing lights happen, because this deferral of life. I'm not even just worried that we won't get there, because odds are maybe slim, but many of us were waiting to live when we retire. Well, being exactly in our prime at that stage of life, to be traipsing around the world. But, I just think, what about our lives now, don't they deserve something? It is more than just ticking things off a list. I think I have this framework about living wider with vitality and deeper with meaning. I love just using that as a way to stop and assess how wide and deep is my life while I'm here. [0:05:11] PF: Can you talk about Four Thousand Mondays? First of all, when it started, and then explain to us what it is because I really, really love this. And your TED Talk, we're going to give listeners a link to your TED Talk, because that is a such an excellent 15-minute explanation of it. [0:05:26] JW: Thank you so much for that. Well, Four Thousand Mondays, I named my company that because that is approximately the math of what we get if we're lucky to get that many weeks. I've chose Mondays on purpose, because they're just the most annoying and I don't want to annoy people, but I want to – if it was like 4,000 Saturdays, we’d be like, "Woohoo. Life's great, don't need to think about it." But Monday's do rankle, and I want to rankle in the right way to say, "Are you enjoying getting up on a Monday morning, or are you dreading it, or maybe somewhere in between, depending on the day and week?" So, roughly with that timeline, that's what we have. Started Four Thousand Mondays after I studied positive psychology of all things at the University of Pennsylvania. That was in 2020. A very interesting year in our globe. [0:06:13] PF: That's a great year to be doing positive psychology. [0:06:17] JW: Yes, it was roll time, didn't know it when I started. I'll just share, having been interested in this mortality topic for years, but skirting the edges of it, because I just told myself a story, that while I worked with corporations, either as an executive coach or leadership consultant. Prior to that, working corporately for 17 years. I was like, "I can't talk about the Grim Reaper and have anybody take me seriously." Then, I think I found a way; studying it. Anything that you can say that there's empirical evidence behind, all of a sudden, you can stand on a stage. At least, I could with more confidence. That for me was this, and in addition to the plague happening to our university. It was like, I think I have a chance to restart. I cannot not do this, like I was grabbed. And I don't know, I'm very visual, but I'm imagining myself literally being gripped on the arm by the Grim Reaper. I couldn't let it go. It was, I have to do this, I have to scream from the mountaintops. It's like, "Live, guys, because time is ticking." [0:07:13] PF: I love that. I mean, that's so much purpose, so much clarity of, "This is my mission, and I have to spread this message." I mean, I very rarely seeing people who are that clear, and that determined, like, this is it, and I've got to get it out, and I will find a way to do that. [0:07:30] JW: Maybe it will be a show that for some people that I work with a lot of people who are trying to find the thing that they are super passionate about. It's an important part of living a life well lived, is feeling like you did the thing that sparked you. I feel fortunate that – I think what I did was I listened finally, and lit the spark. Like I could tell that it was sizzling in the background. I feel fortunate that in my mid-40s back then, I came to this like, "Oh, no, I'm doing the thing. I'm no longer putting that thing aside. I will find a way to talk to corporations about legacy and mortality." On one hand, if you're waiting for that thing to bite you, it could still come. Also, just a little shout out to go and sus around, and find that little ember of a flame of passion, and see what's there, give it a go. [0:08:16] PF: One thing you advise us to do is to count our remaining Mondays. I did that, and then I decided like, I needed more Monday, so I decided to live longer. I expanded it. Why is it a good idea to count our Mondays? They might do like I do, where it's like, "You've got to be kidding me?" [0:08:38] JW: Right. Right. Yes. It is definitely potentially morbid, and eye-opening, and good, I say. This granularity that I am hoping we all get like I just like breaking things down to the ridiculous for the purpose of the wakeup call, right? The idea – and I have a calculator on my website if math is not a good way to spend your remaining Mondays. It's on the resources page. It's a way to say, like I know I have 1,841 Monday's left. When you do the countdown, it usually does create that little reaction, and then the science behind it is what's called temporal scarcity. That's that phenomenon that happens when we tune into something that is limited time only. Our perception about it all of a sudden is very different than when we just thought we could live forever, now that we consciously think that. But when we know something is like a pumpkin spice latte, only going to be around for a certain amount of time, or a rare gem. It's so much more valuable. That is exactly the deal with counting our Mondays. I think we get halfway there when we just talk about the idea that we are finite, "Ugh, sucks to be us. What do you want to do?" Then, go answer your next email. But when you do the math, I don't call it morbid math. I guess, I call it motivating math. That is the thing that makes you say – maybe it takes a bit your breath away. I'd like I did it recently about my working Monday's left. I don't really know if I'll ever really retire. But whatever, like at the age that I feel like I'm allowed to say no to stuff, and it took my breath away. It caused me to cease, and say, "Oh, wait a minute, that's not enough time to do the things I want to do." All right, let's just all take a moment of silence to acknowledge that, "Crap, there will never be enough time to live the lives we are to live." Okay. So now, it's just like a recalibration exercise of like, what matters, what do you want to stuff in there? My exercise was like a career exercise of, "Oh, I do not want to be doing these things anymore." So, I redesigned my business. For example, doing weight less one-on-one coaching. It's like, I want to be doing all my things over here for now. We reserve the right to change. This is that editing that we get to do. It's the reprioritizing that we get to do of, how do I fit in what matters? Presuming you've done a little bit of internal work to figure out what really does matter, now, we can do that in an afternoon at Starbucks. [0:10:59] PF: Yes. Yes. What your message does is give us hope that it doesn't matter how many Mondays we have left. I do have friends. They're either thinking about retiring, or they have retired recently. They're kind of throwing up their hands like, "Well, I didn't do that. I wish I had. Da da da." I'm like, "You still have time, especially if you're not working. You can go do it." That is what your message delivers so clearly, just because you didn't do it. Okay. So you didn't join that rock band in high school, and now you're 70. Pick up a guitar, figure it out, do it now. That is the kind of hope that you give us. [0:11:36] JW: Okay. We're right on the same wavelength, and you're just making the burst here at the seams. Because I have this notion, and it might be my next book that I would call, Not Dead Yet. It is this idea that, wow, while we still have – depending how spiritual you are, but the gift of being alive is preciousness. We're only limited by our imagination and our confidence to be super honest. I think it's fear. We all know, the dreaded F word that just holds us back. You're right, it is not too late, and this is what I call pregrets. I know it's a silly phrase, but it's this idea about –   [0:12:07] PF: I love that.   [0:12:08] JW: Okay. When you do that age-old deathbed regrets exercise, like, "Tonight was my night, what would I be thinking? I wished I did that? I didn't do that. Darn it." Make that list. The good news is that, "Well, hallelujah, you're not dying tonight." Knock on [inaudible 0:12:24], here. Yes, it's your chance. This is why it's a pregret. It is a regret in the making that if you continue down your life course, yes, you will regret not learning Italian and not getting into that band. And not maybe starting that side hustle or whatever. But good news, you're not dead yet, so you could do it. Technically now, even a small version of it. [0:12:48] PF: You know what? Last year, I covered the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp in Nashville. That's where people who have always wanted to be musicians get to come, and they jam with big name musicians. It was the women's version of the camp. I met a woman named Carolyn Price who was 65 years old. When she retired two years ago, she was like, "Well, I've always wanted to play the drums." She went to the School of Rock. Now, if you know School of Rock, these are kids. They're like eight, 12-year-olds. Here she is in her sixties getting out there and learning how to play the drums. I saw this woman get up on stage, and jam with people 20, 30 years younger than her having the ab– she was living her dream. She told me, if that is the only time I ever got on stage like that, worth it. [0:13:37] JW: Oh my goodness, this is fabulous. You reminded me, my sister in Toronto has a friend nearby who was in her early eighties. She said, "I don't know how much time I have left. I got the convertible, and we're driving to Niagara on the Lake, and we've got scarves in our hair like they did in the old movies. And we're driving, and our scars will be blowing in the wind, and we're in a convertible that I just bought, and I just did this." We all know examples. I'm thinking of a fabulous friend who went and got her master's in her sixties, and her early seventies got her PhD. We are not limited. I mean, clearly, sometimes we're resource limited. But usually, we're just holding ourselves back. We get to live wider. Your example there of the school rock gal, that's living wider with vitality at saying, "I want to do these things. I want to feel proud that I showed up and lived it." It's not for optics, it's not just to make other people feel like, "Oh, look at your social media life. It's so glitzy." It's like, I prioritized and I made sure that this list of stuff that I thought would be pretty cool to do, and a life well lived. I made the time for it, and I didn't defer it. I didn't defer it to tomorrow that maybe wouldn't come, or I didn't defer to tomorrow when I maybe wasn't able bodied, and I couldn't actually go on the cruise, and go on the – I know people that have planned, they said I'm going to travel later when I retire, when I retire later, later, and then they did it, Then, their fibromyalgia is so bad, that they basically stayed on the cruise the whole time, and couldn't go on any of the excursions. [0:15:06] PF: Yes. It's so sad because I've seen that as well. We had done some adventure travel, probably 10, 15 years ago, and saw a couple that they had saved up, and they had lived for this adventure, and he couldn't get out of the dinghy to do the climb. Just as sad. It's like, you do, you want to act on your dreams now. One thing that you do to help us get there is you have a quiz to identify how alive we are. I want to find out like, how did you come up with this? And also, what have you discovered through this? [0:15:36] JW: Oh, I've discovered things I did not expect. It's a pretty simple quiz that gets you, it's right on the website. If you go to the website, and annoying pop up will occur, and that's the quiz that will take you there. Pop ups can be good. That it really tracks to the framework that I was telling you about earlier around this idea about living wider with vitality, and deeper with meaning. If you put those two quadrants – not quadrants, those axes together, then you get quadrants. My goal is to help us see where are we today. Are we in the dead zone? Which is like negative on meaning, negative on vitality, faint pulse. Are we vitally empty, which is where we've got lots of fun happening. We are out there, and we are going to the street festivals. But we come home, and we feel like maybe we don't have a purpose, about 10%, 15% of people follow that zone, and 10% fall in that dead zone I told you about. The meatiest zone where most people fall in it, and it oscillates between like 39%, 40%, 41% of people call themselves while they identify as through the survey meaningfully bored. That means, they have enough meaning in their life to be plus on meaning. Maybe they have a job that contribute something, or they're a parent, or looking after aging parents, or something that feels meaningful. But man, do they need a little more fun in their lives? Where's the excitement, and the novelty, and like, I haven't tried Thai food in a while. Like living a little. Maybe the sort of the all work, no play feeling. That's the majority. Like 9% of people are in astonishingly alive, which is truly positive on meaning and truly positive on vitality. That's, of course, where we're aiming to be. If in case, you're a quick mathematician, and you're wondering where the math, there's a big chunk in the middle called the mid zone. That's where a lot of people just kind of it's like a catch all where it's a little bit of everything. [0:17:31] PF: Yes. How do people become astonishingly alive? Because that phrase, it's like, I want to be that. [0:17:39] JW: I know, I know. My first step is to do what I call diagnose the dead zones. Okay. I would be a pretty horrific positive psychology practitioner if I didn't do a quick shout out to identify where the things are feeling lively in your life, and just do more of them. Amplify your positives and strengths. Do more of it, which actually is a great shortcut. It's like, if hanging around with Mitzi makes you feel just like you're laughing, and you pee your pants, and it's so good, hang around with Mitzi more. Okay, do that. But we also have to diagnose where things have flat lined, and I think sometimes we need to clue in and go, "Oh, the thing that's making me feel just kind of, "Ugh" is that I haven't really perked up my social life lately." Or, it could be that, "Wow, my recreation has just fallen off the map, and I haven't really done much lately. I used to go to concerts, or I used to take online courses and learn new things." Maybe if growth matters to you, identify where things need some CPR, so to speak. I've got all the metaphors with the jumper cables on it, and then activate by finding one thing you can do in order to help get a little bit of life back in that action. Many of us think it's an all or nothing thing, or it needs to be a big grand gesture. Like, "I need to go on a big trip I can't afford" or "I need to pick up and move across the country" or "Quit my job and go back to school" and do those things if that really gets you going. But for most of us, we just need like the subtle little sustainable things, which include having a list of things that, again, might be on your deathbed regret list. What's something you really yearn to do, that you would feel that paying of regret for if you're cashing in your chips. What would be a thing? Well, you know, I've always wanted back to speaking Italian. The good news is, we have the Internet now, and we could just look it up, and we could find a way to start to learn Italian tonight. So, just one small step forward. It's sort of committing to a small step is a really big deal. Then, back to the idea about, don't forget to count the Mondays. Don't forget. The memento mori is the concept we're talking about here. [0:19:39] PF: Can you explain that really well. Can you tell us what that means? [0:19:43] JW: For sure. Yes. It's an old Latin phrase that dates back centuries. It means, "Remember, we must die." It is just this whole entire carpe diem philosophy, which is, wow, it's only by remembering through that temporal scarcity that my time is limited. That it will actually egged me on to do those things that normally I would just procrastinate forever, and go to my grave with a whole lot of coulda, shoulda, wouldas. [0:20:09] PF: I think the timing on this, I think it's incredible that you started your map in 2020. You have this whole mission, because I've seen so many people who haven't regained their vibrancy since the shutdown. I see people who are still in their own personal lockdown. I think what you're doing here is reminding us, like, get out there, and do these things again. So, everybody needs to hear this message, because we are still locked up in a lot of ways. [0:20:37] JW: Thanks for saying that. I agree with that fully. Your discussion about get out there, I think about this, like the workshops I give, there are people that rightfully will say, "Hey, what if though, I'm more of an introvert, and getting up, and out there is actually to me my version of like a horror show." I would say, "Well, don't ruin your life. I'm not – there's not a full prescription." You must be out five nights a week? No, because I also am a homebody, and my inclination is like cozy at home with a great movie and a great meal. I also know, it's like finding your right balance for now. But I think we have that sense, if we're being honest with ourselves. Even if you've been feeling like, "No, I like the quiet life, or I just want to read, and I just want the –" great, do that. What else though, look back in history, has made you feel alive? And usually, it does mean saying yes a little bit more to some of those invitations in life. I have to force myself. I in my own case study, because my inclination like I said, "Hello, Netflix." I need to be the one to remind myself when I get an invitation to go out to a happy hour. My first thought is, "Oh, I just want to wash my face, and get in my jammies." Well, you know what? When you come home from the thing from the happy hour, how often have you regretted doing it? Not often. Usually, just makes you feel a little more invigorated and alive. I just know my dose, is I can't have more than one night a week, like one thing a week, but that's my prescription. If I go a month, where I'd have been kind of cocooning, well then, I know. "Oh, honey, you're going to need – remember, don't forget to widen your life with some vitality." What might that look like? [0:22:15] PF: I love that. I love that. You have a new book coming out. It's ready for preorder. It's coming out in May. But we're going to tell listeners how they can preorder it, we'll give them a link to that. Can you talk a little bit about what they can expect from this book? [0:22:28] JW: Oh, thanks for asking. It's called, You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets. You know what? It's like everything we've been talking about here. It's 10 chapters, or we start with a premortem. It's meant to be experiential, because as a coach, it's like, I'm not just going to be telling you stuff. I want you to do, and think, and then, literally do more. But it's this premortem to analyze, like, "Where am I today? Where do I want to be? What scares me? What would like an astonishingly live life look like?" Then, we get into. Okay, let's just talk for a quick hot sec, that we are going to die, and why all this works, and how like talk a little bit about death. We go on a date with death. Then, we talk about the idea about tapping into your regrets, and how to shake things up, and bust some of your habits that might be just kind of turning you into that highly functioning zombie. Then, talking about how to widen your life with vitality, how to deepen your life with meaning. Then, I'm really literal about like a paint by numbers approach to you designing what would make you feel. Like as Hunter S. Thompson said, like skidding in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out into our graves. I want us to skid in broadside, and so, this book is helping you to figure out what's your version of skidding in broadside. Then, of course, there was a post mortem, which is analyzing, okay, wrapping it all up. What one thing do you want to do next, because it needs to be manageable. So yes, that is the experience. That's the wild ride of you only die once. [0:23:51] PF: So excited for this book to come out. So excited to see what this does and to really share your message with our listeners. If they're listening right now, they can't get their hands on it until May, what do they do right now? Where do they start? How do they get off autopilot today, and really start living with purpose?   [0:24:06] JW: Love it. Love it. Love it. [0:24:09] JW: My thought is let's just go to the good old fashioned, count your Mondays. So go to the resources page at fourthousandmondays.com. Do that. Get yourself centered, see how it feels. You may look at it. I did a workshop earlier this week, and someone was like, "Well, that looks like a lot of Mondays." I said, "Well, high five to you. Still, what do you want to do within those Mondays?" Mind you. she wasn't even at the halfway mark yet. [0:24:31] PF: Then, it seems like a lot. [0:24:32] JW: I remember those years. Yes. I would say, yes. First thing is. count the Mondays, and then. even something simple is just start jotting down notes about the stuff that you longed to do. It could be the most miniature version of a bucket list. Silly little things like – I remember when I turned 33, which was a very big year for me at that time. Three is my favorite number, so that I knew was going to be a big year. I'm going to cook my own artichoke. It just felt like that was something I wanted to do. Then, of course, there were things that were bigger scale that might sound more impressive for whatever, but who cares. Little big, minute, magnificent. Just start listing some things that you might love to fit into this one wild and precious life. Then, when the book comes out, you can make more sense of it. Absolutely. [0:25:19] PF: I love it. I love it. Jodi, we have so much to learn from you, and you make it so fun to learn, which doesn't always happen. I appreciate you sitting down, taking his time with us, and talking to us about living like we were dying. [0:25:33] JW: Well put. In a world where like time is scarce, spending this time with you has been time well spent. So, thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:43] PF: That was Jodi Wellman. Talking about how recognizing our mortality can help us make the most of the time that we have left. If you'd like to learn more about Jodi, take her free astonishingly alive assessment. Follow her on social media or by copy of You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets. Just visit us at livehappy.com, and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every Tuesday, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.   [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Living Better Longer With Caroline Paul [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 462 of Live Happy Now. We all have one thing in common, and that is that we are not getting any younger. But today's guest gives us a whole new way to approach the years ahead of us. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm talking with New York Times bestselling author, Caroline Paul. Her new book, Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking―How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age, turns some common myths about aging completely upside down. Combining stories of women who are embracing outdoor adventure in their later years with cultural and scientific research, Caroline gives us a roadmap for improving and enjoying the journey. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:46] PF: Caroline, thank you so much for joining us on Live Happy Now. [0:00:50] CP: I'm really happy to join you, Paula. It's going to be great. [0:00:53] PF: You have written an amazing book. First of all, the title describes you, tough broad. So, that had my attention immediately. But this book is so engaging and it's so inspiring, and in many ways, a call for us to up our game as we get older. So, I wanted to find out how this book came about, and really, who you are writing this for? [0:01:15] CP: Honestly, I was kind of writing for myself. I was 55 and looking around on my surfboard and seeing no women my age surfing. I'm not a really good surfer. So, I knew there was a lot of women who could be out there, but they just weren't out there. The same when I was on my electric skateboard. I saw no women my age, certainly no women older. And when I was flying my experimental planes, the same. But I saw men my age and men older. So, I started to think, “Well, I'm seeing 60 blank on the horizon. What is my future look like?” I decided to go and ask women who – because I wanted to keep outdoor adventure in my life, but maybe I wasn't supposed to. I kind of thought I was, but I wanted to go ask women who were there already. This is about those women. It's actually about fulfilling aging and those women explained it to me. [0:02:03] PF: Was it hard to find the people? Because you cover a lot of different types of activity and we'll get into that. But was it difficult to track these women down? [0:02:12] CP: It kind of was. I mean, first of all, women tend not to trumpet themselves on social media and stuff. So, you don't find them that way as much. Frankly, it felt like there weren't a lot of women out there doing these things. It turns out that they are out there. But what I did was I told everybody that I was working on this book and so people gave me names, and that started to snowball. Then, I did hire a researcher who found a lot of people. [0:02:38] PF: Okay. That makes sense, because one thing that we really work on here at Live Happy Now is to make sure that we back everything with science. And your book, the stories are so rich, but every one of them is backed by the science of what it's doing for us. How did that all – how did you marry all that? Did the story come first, and then you did research on what it was doing? Or how did those two components come together? [0:03:03] CP: Honestly, I was going to throw myself sort of like the paraglider that I was, off a cliff, and with an inflated, shoot and float around and talk to these women, and see how the book would come about. But I knew I didn't want it to be – it's not a book about profiles about women. This is a book about fulfilling aging in the outdoors. How the outdoors optimizes that. So, in a weird way, the pandemic was good for me, because it hit just as I was about to go interview people so nobody could talk to me. I had to sit down and do a lot of research about fulfilling aging. And I started to see what we needed to keep in our lives, and I was thinking about how outdoor adventure married perfectly with that. I went out and interviewed people doing specific adventures. I went and did the adventures with them. I usually had a specific idea of where that adventure would fit in to what I considered the five pillars of healthy aging. Usually, it came out completely surprised by something new. I was constantly schooled in this book, because again, it was a quest. [0:04:05] PF: Yes. Can we talk about those five pillars? [0:04:08] CP: Yes. The first four are pretty obvious. It’s we need, and we need as human beings, but they tend to fall away as we age. So, we have to be specifically cognizant that we need community. We need purpose. We need health. We need novelty. Those four things are really important as we age and they are harder to find. The last one, the one that intrigued me the most, the one that I actually started off with was we need a positive mindset about our own aging. The reason I say that is because I was interested in the messaging that we get as older women, because I had a feeling that was why these women weren't out there in the water with me are in the air with me. Because the messaging about women aging is really toxic and subliminal and insidious and we tend to believe it and the people around us believe it. It's basically that our future is one of declining cognitive health, frail bones, and increasing irrelevance. I mean, frankly, we're boring. You'll hear – I mean, I hear this from a lot of my peers who were disheartened about their own aging. We feel invisible. We feel invisible to the culture. So, I was interested in that messaging. Then, I found research that made it even more important to pay attention to because the research says that the way we look at our own aging predicts how well we age. That means negative view of aging, you actually have a significantly higher chance of a cardiac event earlier, cognitive decline earlier, and the opposite is true. If you look at your aging as a time of vitality and exploration, then you are going to be healthier, happier, and statistically, you live seven years longer. That seemed really important, and kind of mind-blowing. But the scientists had told us this, but they didn't say how to get that positive mindset. Of course, when something, how are we going to do that in the face of such difficult and disheartening messaging, and I had a feeling that the key was an outdoor adventure. [0:06:17] PF: It was, as we discover in your book. And I want to go back to what you were just talking about, and the research about how you aging affects how you age. Because it even changes your brain. Weren't you saying that in the book, it talks about the brain of a person who had negative perceptions is actually different after death than someone who had positive perceptions about aging. [0:06:39] CP: Yes, they had all those tangles and the neural ill health that signifies memory loss. I mean, they have actually shown that conversely, if you have a positive view on aging, you have a much higher chance of not turning on that AOPE4 gene that makes you more predisposed to Alzheimer's. That's pretty big. But we think it's inevitable when we see both our parents or our grandparents have Alzheimer's. We have that gene, but it's actually not. [0:07:10] PF: That is so interesting, because we just talked about the World Happiness Report last week, which came out, and one of the chapters was about well-being and dementia. It backs up everything that you talk about in your book where they had done all this research, and people who had a positive view of aging were less likely to develop dementia. At the same time, people with dementia who had a positive attitude, fared better with that dementia. It was really interesting to me to receive this report at the same time I'm reading your book because it was just like this companion research piece. I love how you bring in the adventurer. I wanted to know as I read this, it seems like you were probably always adventurous, and what about women who haven't been adventurous throughout their lives? How can they turn into someone who is a little bit more adventurous and try some of these things? [0:08:05] CP: Yes. After I did my research, I was clear that the outdoors is really good for us. So, just getting outside is super important. Because as the science shows, it's medicinal. From the tree chemicals that are emitted, to bird song, to even the architecture of like horizon lines that are soft and rounded, and the fractal nature of the outdoors is all really good for our well-being. On a biological level, it improves our immune system. It also makes it so our brain processes less noise, which makes it healthier and able to deal with what we really want to deal with. So, people who took walks outside, for instance, tested better on cognitive and memory tests afterwards. Your brain wasn't doing the busy work when it has to filter out noise, and just all this information that urban environments in the indoors, computers and stuff give you. So, I wanted them to get outside. I knew that adventure wasn't for everybody, at least my definition of adventure, which is fairly was fairly high octane. So, I wanted to talk to all different kinds of people who got outside. Among them, for instance, was I went birdwatching. Birdwatching, no one would think of as an adventurer, including me. In fact, I was kind of like, “Yes, I'm doing a book about outdoor adventure.” Then, in my head, I was like, “You're not an adventure but I'm going to include you because I wanted everybody out there.” But it turns out, and all the bird watchers already know this, that bird watching is an adventure. Because there was the quest of trying to see the bird. There was the exhilaration when you saw it. There was the physical vitality because we actually walked and I was with Virginia Rose who's actually in a wheelchair, and so she wheeled six miles. There was a physical vitality of an adventure. Basically, birdwatching had all the rhythms of an adventure and I had to – during the quest of that, was my book. One of the things that happened to me is I had to change, I'd expand my view of adventure and realize it's not about the actual action. It's about how you feel during it. So, if you're accessing your exploratory side, feeling exhilaration, pushing maybe a comfort zone, feeling physical, vital. That's an adventure. That was exciting to me. [0:10:21] PF: One thing that you talk about, and I love this, because we've talked about it on the show, is the importance of awe, and how changing that can be to even just take a walk and experience awe. Can you kind of talk about that a little bit? [0:10:35] CP: Yes. Well, it turns out another great reason why the outdoors is so healthy for us is that it's a surefire trigger for awe. Because all is that feeling that you get in the presence of something bigger. It's something that religion has used mostly, and we associated with religion. But in fact, we feel it when we look at the big sky. We look at the Grand Canyon. Of course, I felt it on some of my adventures. But it turns out, you don't have to go. I mean, it is in the presence of something bigger that you feel, but you can also access awe. You can cultivate awe. They did studies on this here in San Francisco, where the researchers asked people between the ages of 60 and 80 to go on walks, and simply look at things with childlike wonder, with fresh childlike eyes, I think is a quote. They were basically getting their participants to access awe. Then, they had a control group that just walked like we all walk, which is we ruminate and look at our phones. And they found after eight weeks that the people who were doing the awe walks had measurably different inflammatory markers. It went way down. Inflammation is a big sign of ill health. They reported feeling weightless, anxious, and depressed. And this was kind of crazy, they felt more compassion and gratitude, which makes sense, because awe is about seeing yourself in a larger picture. So, it made sense that they feel gratitude and compassion because you feel interconnected. The other thing is, is that we live in a world of anti-awe devices, especially inside. Our phone, our computer, it's all narrowing our focus, and making us seem like we have a lot of power and control. That's the opposite of awe. It's not that good for us. It gives us an inflated sense of ourselves and that's not healthy. So, awe is good for us. Getting outside is a really easy way to access awe. [0:12:25] PF: Yes, it is simple, and it's like, if you get out every day and you do it, it will absolutely change the way that you see the world. As you bring up so many times throughout the book, your mindset makes such a difference in how you age. So, as you look at how you're changing your mindset, what role does awe in developing positivity? [0:12:49] CP: Well, I mean, I think that, just because it does – one of the things they call awe is a reset button for the brain. What it does is that it changes your neural patterns. It kind of shakes them up. It kind of opens them up. You become more open to new ideas. They found more creative. And all that is really important for, well, anything in your life, but certainly for your just exploratory spirit, and your sense that there's more to do, more to access, just that openness. So, yes, awe is indispensable for our emotional well-being. [0:13:25] PF: You talked about how good it is to be out in nature. But in the book, you really drill down into the combination of nature and movement. [0:13:33] CP: Yes. Specifically, I was interested in ironically, not movement, but the brain. I wanted to know how a novelty was good for us, because I knew that one of the big things we worry about as we age is our memory. We need to keep challenging our brain. There is a sense that our brain is hardening, that we can't learn new things, and that it's probably withering away too. Well, it turns out, that's not true. The brain is highly plastic. It is laying down new neural pathways, growing new brain cells, well into older age. I don't even know if it ever stops. Even if you slow down some of the neural pathways for some reason, the brain then decides – they'll figure out how to lay different routes. It's almost like taking a different exit on the highway. I mean, the brain is amazing. So, you can continue to learn and you continue to explore. One of the things I did was I was interested in memory, because we're afraid of losing that. It turns out navigation and memory are in the same parts of our brain. So, I wanted to find someone who navigated in their outdoor sport. I found it orienteer. I went orienteering, which is basically when you race from a start line to a finish line, but you stop on checkpoints on the way that are on your map. Using your map, she called it running with a map and compass but she really call it running and thinking. [Inaudible 0:14:56]. What I found was that researched showed that if you actually are physically moving, you are more creative in your brain. Because our brain is not like a computer. A lot of great thinkers like Einstein would go on walks, and they would come up with great ideas during or after, because there is a way that they have shown that if you use your kinetic self, when you are thinking of an idea, you have a greater chance of solving it. So, an all waves movement, which is obviously important, physically is also good neurally. Also, then you feel better about yourself. [0:15:37] PF: I love that. We've become a society that's just sitting down and stuck in front of a screen and not trying to go outside and get creativity that way. We're trying to find it within. To change that – [0:15:50] CP: We’re on the Internet. [0:15:52] PF: Yes. I'll just Google that. I'll get my OpenAI and write that for me. But it is, like to be able to change that thinking, what have you seen it do either for yourself or someone else to start adopting that approach of saying, “I'm going to get up and move because I'm stuck on this problem.” [0:16:12] CP: Well, let me just say, I'll back up just a tiny bit and just say that. Back to that messaging about how we view ourselves, we have all these sort of subtle ideas about our own limitations as older women, especially because of the messaging that we get, and that's what's stopping us from going outside a lot. Because again, the messaging is about how frail and kind of incompetent we are, and boring, like I said. It's just a sense that our life is narrowing down. But what I found with the women I interviewed, especially the ones that had never gone outside before, that when they did – so, for instance, I went boogie boarding with a bunch of women in San Diego, and they were between the ages of 60 and in their 90s playing in the water. I talked to someone named Lorraine Voight. At 60, she saw these women when she was walking on the beach during the pandemic, and she thought, “Oh, they're having fun.” But she had no outdoor experience. She didn't even like the water. But it was that inflection point. It's the pandemic and she had had really tough 50s with deaths and just a lot of like reversals in her life. It was kind of a what the heck moment, probably, and she got in the water with them, and she was hooked. But not only did she love boogie boarding, she said to me, “Caroline, boogie boarding changed my life.” Now, boogie boarding is a very simple activity. That's something that kids do. I mean, you really are just – you’re just on a little floatation and just let the wave push you to shore. How could it change your life? I asked her, “How could it change your life?” She said, “Basically, look at the big cold Pacific Ocean. Look at the tumbling that happens. Look at the fun I'm having.” Basically, what she was telling me, she had up ended her own expectations of herself by simply taking those steps into the water. Because of that, it opened up all these other things about what she could do. [0:18:02] PF: I love that you bring up fun, because as adults, we tend to forget how important that is. Adventure is fun. It can be terrifying. But also, it's fun, and we need to be able to bring fun into our lives. [0:18:19] CP: Well, I looked into play, which is an actual science. I mean, people look into the benefits of play, and it's incredibly important. I mean, it's what we do to get to know ourselves better, and the people around us and community. I mean, that's what we did as kids. That's what dogs do in the dog park. You're right. It's actually a trust exercise. It's actually, obviously, you're getting physical vitality, but then there's lots of connection because there's a dance to it. Yes, play is important, and it's especially something that we lose not just as adults, but as women, because we're sort of expected to be such a certain way and trod such a particular path. Really, women are really watched a lot during their life in certain ways and judged. So, play is something that is scary for us because it's an abandon that – I say the word unruly in the book, and I think that's really apt. Unruly is an unusual way to describe women. We don't want to be described that way usually. But play is really good for us and it lets loose this sense of judgment. You don't care what other think and you're simply connecting with somebody else. [0:19:28] PF: So, as women are listening to this, and they're saying, “Oh, my God. I want to be her. I want to do that.” But there's something that holds us back. It's like, “Oh, my husband, my spouse, my kids, whatever. What will the neighbors think?” Kind of thing. How do we break out of that kind of thinking of like, “Yes, that's great. I wish I could, but I can't.” [0:19:51] CP: I've heard this a lot from people and it is hard to break out of our comfort zone. Especially, as women, we're not really taught to. I think men are often given training for very young age to kind of burst out and try new things and explore on your own and do it on your own. We are not. I did a lot of research on this for my book for girls. We are basically taught to be fearful about a lot of things at a very young age, which means we don't have that exploratory spirit, and we don't trust ourselves. Here's what I say, I say, I'm just trying to convince you how good it is for you to go outside and have an activity outside, and experience those aspects of adventure, like I said. So, if you believe me on that, you take pharmaceuticals, for whatever ails you, because you think it's going to make you feel better. There are always side effects. In fact, there's a very long list of side effects that are really unpleasant. They look like vomiting, diarrhea, don't drive ahead a vehicle. I could go on. I mean, you see them on the TV. If going outside your comfort zone or feeling a little fear, feels like something insurmountable, I urge you to think of it as just a little side effect of this incredibly health-giving pill that you're going to take. It is not only health-giving, but it's just going to open up your life in ways that I want you to tell me after you do it. Because again, as a rebuke to all the messaging you get, you find out things about yourself in the smoke without even trying. It's not like you're sitting down at a test and being like, “Now, I have to figure out about myself.” No, you're just going outside to birdwatch. That's what I just say. It's a side effect. I want you to take a small step. Do not fly a gyrocopter like I did for the book. [0:21:31] PF: But that was a great story. [0:21:33] CP: Do not BASE jump like somebody else I interviewed. Do not scuba dive like Louise Wholey who's 80. Don't do that. Take a walk with a friend. Do not learn to swim, maybe, like [inaudible 0:21:44] did. But go to the ocean and play in the side of the waves. Just push your comfort zone a tiny bit and I think it'll start to somersault as you find that – first of all, let me add one more thing, which is that every woman told me who was older than me that the 60s was their favorite decade. [0:22:02] PF: I love that. [0:22:04] CP: I know. It was unbelievable, because we're not told that. We're told that our best years are behind us. I remember my supposed best years and they were angst-filled and insecure. Now, I feel great. I enjoy everything, because I have that capacity to do it. So, we cannot let this slip by, by giving in to things like a little fear, like a little discomfort about our comfort zone. Because it's such an opportunity. It will be the best decade of your life or if you're past 60, the 70s, the 80s. [0:22:34] PF: I had an aunt who died at, she was either 96 or 97. I can't remember which. She had told me when I was younger, I was a lot like her. I tended to speak whatever was on my mind. She explained me like, “Yes, you will get in trouble. As a child, they're going to say you're insolent. As a young adult, they're going to say you're immature. As a middle-aged person, they're going to be like, we're not really sure about her.” She goes, “Once you hit 60, you can say anything you want, then now, you're the quirky fun person.” I was like, “Oh, man, so she really had me like looking forward to this.” [0:23:09] CP: We’re underestimated, and sometimes it's good to be underestimated and so – [0:23:13] PF: Exactly. [0:23:15] CP: You're invisible. Go do what you want. [0:23:17] PF: See if anyone finds out. You interviewed so many different women. You tell such great stories. One way I look at this book is as kind of like a catalogue of adventures that you could try. Like, “Oh, I never even thought about that.” I wondered if there was any single person or adventure that affected you most? [0:23:41] CP: All these women were amazing to me. I mean, I looked at women who were of different races, because I know that it's really hard for people of color to feel welcome outside. Of course, different abilities and different knowledge. Everybody amazed me. I feel like that since I mean really honestly, the chapter that was the most moving to me, of course, was writing about my own mother, who turns out was my subliminal messaging that made me blossom because I saw the way she opened up as she aged. That chapter was, of course, really important for me to write and difficult, and perhaps the most moving. [0:24:19] PF: Yes. Did you have any surprise learnings when you set out to write a book – [0:24:23] CP: Every single time. No, I came in with a swagger like, “This is an adventure.” Then, realized, when I went on a walk with a 93-year-old, just a mere walk was eye-opening and exhilarating because of the way she did it. She looked at everything. She quoted poetry while we did it. She looked at the sky, she looked at the birds. I mean, basically we went on an awe walk. I hadn't yet discovered awe, because awe discovered in this book. I did not understand that concept at all until I found it myself. But I had gone on an awe walk with dot. So, I guess I was just continually surprised. [0:25:04] PF: And as you look back on the experience of writing it, what was your biggest learning, would you say? [0:25:10] CP: Well, that, a small thing like an outdoor adventure will cover all the pillars of healthy aging. People say, but I can go to a book club, or I go to the gym, and all that is great. You got to do that too. But I'm just saying, it's to have the whole enchilada, basically, of community, purpose, novelty, vitality, and keep surprising and up ending expectations. Keep that positive mindset about your own aging. It's really an outdoor activity that will do it for you. Here's my final thing is that, with the climate chaos, we need to get out because it's disappearing. We only save what we love, as somebody said, someone very smart. So, if we begin to see just how vital the outdoors is, maybe we can save it before it's too late. [0:25:56] PF: I love that. I love that. Caroline, you have written a fantastic book. We are going to tell our listeners where they can find it. I strongly encourage them to pick it up during your 50s or up, or if you know someone, it is truly one of those books that gives so much inspiration, and even excitement about moving into the next 30 years. First of all, thank you for writing it, and then thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. [0:26:19] CP: Such an honor. Thank you, Paula. Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:26:25] PF: That was Caroline Paul, talking about how outdoor adventure improves our lives as we age. If you'd like to learn more about Caroline, follow her on social media, or buy a copy of her book, Tough Broad. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every Tuesday, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.   [END]