Search Results for: science

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: What We Learned from the World Happiness Report with Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 410 of Live Happy Now. Is it just my imagination? Or is the world getting happier? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm sitting down with Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, to talk about how we're doing when it comes to happiness. Every year on the International Day of Happiness, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases its World Happiness Report. Deb's here to talk with me about some of her takeaways from this year's report and why it appears that our happiness is improving. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Deb, thank you for taking time from down under to come on and talk to me about the World Happiness Report. [00:00:44] DB: I am actually excited to be able to do this. This comes out every year on the International Day of Happiness. I had a weird experience this year, Paula. [00:00:52] PF: I love this. [00:00:52] DB: I got on an airplane. I got on an airplane on the 19th of March, and I got off the airplane on the 21st of March because of the timezone changes. So I actually missed the entire International Day of Happiness because I was on a flight to Australia this year. So this is my way of celebrating. [00:01:07] PF: That’s so funny. Yes. Because we were talking about that I was in Dallas with the rest of the Live Happy team, and we were talking about the irony of Deb Heisz missing the Day of Happiness, not just not being able to participate. I mean, completely missing that day. [00:01:23] DB: I had no International Day of Happiness. So talking to you today about the World Happiness Report is my way of celebrating the International Day of Happiness. I'm super excited about it. [00:01:32] PF: This report we really waited for every year. It's something that, I guess, we're a little bit of happiness geeks, and it's very exciting to us to be able to sit down, see what's going on. This year's report, it's the 11th year of the report. It's really showing that even though we had some really tough years, the last three years have been tough on us. But around the world, people are showing a remarkable amount of resilience. I think what struck me so much of the news, and we've had so many discussions about it too, is about how anxiety and depression have really increased during the pandemic and since then. So honestly, I was surprised to see how well we're doing. I wanted to get your takeaway on that. [00:02:14] DB: So, Paula, I do think that there is an increase in anxiety and depression. I think, well, number one, we hear a lot about it because the news focuses on it. News is always negative, always the negative outcomes of things. But I also think if you look at various groups, the lack of social interaction, we know how important relationships are to overall happiness, the Harvard study that's been going on where they talked about how relationships are really the most important thing. But when people are isolated and they aren't able to get together, of course, it fed their anxiety and depression. If you look at young people, people who missed their high school graduations or their proms or had to start university classes in their house and their mom's office because universities weren't doing in-person classes, of course, there's more anxiety and depression, and the world's changed a little bit. But we have to remind ourselves that isn't really what the Happiness Report is about. It isn't really what happiness overall is about. It's about overall well-being. Particularly, the Happiness Report is about population’s well-being. There's a lot of things that changed during the pandemic, that I'm not surprised that we're resilient. People went to the office less. People spent less time in traffic as a result. [00:03:25] PF: That will cheer you up right there. [00:03:27] DB: Absolutely. There are definitely some positive outcomes. But, really, when we're talking about happiness, we aren’t talking about this essentially an absence of anxiety and depression. We're talking about overall well-being. Are you living the life you're meant to live? Of course, we hope that comes with less of those negative things. Really, when you're talking about it as a population or as about a community, it's very different than on an individual basis. So I don't find those two things to be in contrast. [00:03:54] PF: Can you talk about that a little bit more? Because the happiness that people think about, typically, is a lot different than what we often talk about when we are talking about well-being. [00:04:05] DB: So I think a lot of people are short-term outcome-based in a lot of things. They think about, “Oh, if I get that, I'm going to be happy,” or, “When that happens, I'm going to be happy.” Then they define happiness. It’s things like, “I went to that concert last night, and I got to see Taylor Swift, and that was my lifelong dream, and I'm so happy.” That’s fleeting because the next day you go back to the office, you go back to the classroom, and you're right back in whatever your life was like. That gave you a momentary pleasure. You know what they call hedonic happiness, really, where you have this momentary pleasure that brings you excitement and elevates your oxytocin and you feel good about it. That's not what we talk about when we talk about happiness. The type of happiness we talk about is typically called eudaimonic happiness. Not typically called, but I know people that study it that know those big words. [00:04:57] PF: Those science-brained people. [00:04:59] DB: Yes, those science-brained. Not us right-brained creative types, but those science-brained types. Yes. So what they're really talking about is are you living a happy life. Does your life have the meaning that you expect? Are you congruent in what you're doing? Or is your overall well-being happy? That's really what they're talking about. They're not talking about this fleeting emotion. We don't tend to talk about that because that's momentary. What you really want is a life that you feel like is well-lived. The best way I’ve heard this described is – well, I'm going to use two definitions. Number one is the definition that I've heard Shawn Achor use, and I think he's gotten this from Martin Seligman. But what we're talking about is the happiness that you feel when you're striving towards your potential, which, to me, describes fulfillment. Then the other way I've heard it described is when you get to the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, “Did I live a happy life?” That's the life we're talking about. That's what we mean by happiness. [00:06:00] PF: Right, right. Not that day in, day out because we all have up and down. We have good days and bad days, and it doesn't mean we're unhappy if we're having a bad day. [00:06:10] DB: Well, bad things happen to all of us. I mean, no one goes through life without bad things happening to them. No one expects you to be happy in the traditional way you think about it, the hedonic way you think about it, when you're attending a funeral, right? [00:06:22] PF: Right, right. [00:06:24] DB: We all have negative things that happen. We all lose. Well, those of us who are dog lovers, we all lose pets. We all have challenges in our lives. Some are huge, and some are not huge. But it doesn't mean you're happy in the hedonic sense every day. But it means that you're living the life you're supposed to live. [00:06:43] PF: Right. Do you think the pandemic actually helped us become more aware of that? Because I hear people expressing gratitude more and being more aware of just the fact like, “Oh, my gosh. I can get out, and I can be around people, and I can do all these things.” So do you think that has helped made us more content? [00:07:01] DB: I have an interesting way I've started thinking about the pandemic, and I'm going to use the words the great timeout, right? [00:07:08] PF: Oh, I don’t know that. You should trademark that. [00:07:11] DB: Maybe I should. Maybe we should cut it from the podcast, so I can trademark it later. The pandemic was the great timeout. You know I'm a sports fanatic, right? [00:07:21] PF: Yes. [00:07:22] DB: But I have my children playing sports. So they're very into ice hockey. Well, my older two are. So the coaches emphasize that ice hockey is kind of a year-round sport. But one of their coaches emphasizes, “I want you not to do anything hockey-related for two weeks. It's the great timeout so that you can evaluate what it is that you need to work on, what it is that you want to change.” I think if you look at the pandemic as this great timeout, it allowed people to re-examine how they had been spending their time, reexamine what they had been doing with their time. Yes, they were missing a lot of those things. But I think there's a lot of those things they weren't missing. It allowed them to look at what impact they were having what they really wanted out of life in a way that for generations probably had not presented itself. [00:08:19] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Deborah Heisz about the World Happiness Report. But right now, it's time to bring back Kate Vastano to talk about the adventures of Kittles. Kate, welcome back. [00:08:31] KV: Thank you, Paula. [00:08:32] PF: Well, as we told listeners last week, we hook Kittles up with a gorgeous cat tree from Mau Pets. So how's he like it? [00:08:39] KV: He absolutely loves it. We've had other cat trees before where he's kind of lost interest after a couple days, wasn’t super into them. He loves snuggling in the thing, and it is his favorite. [00:08:51] PF: I love hearing that. So what do you love most about it? [00:08:54] KV: Oh, I love, first of all, the design. But I also love that it's made from sustainably sourced wood and has natural wood branches. So it doesn't look manufactured. It doesn't look like something you'd buy at like a generic pet store. Plus, all the parts are replaceable. So if something happens, it's easy to swap them out. As you know, I have three kids, two large dogs, and a cat. So our house is crazy sometimes, and I know it's a matter of time before something gets broken. Or a kid climbs into it and breaks it. I love that there's a replacement aspect to it as well. It's not one of those ugly-looking ones that you want to tuck away somewhere. It literally looks like something you'd find in a museum. It's so beautiful and modern-looking. [00:09:33] PF: If you're ready to upgrade your pet’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's M-A-Upets.com and use the code Live Happy Now to get a five percent discount. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Deborah Heisz. There's one chapter that we both really like. Not that we didn't like the rest of the report but chapter four. Just to be clear, chapter four talked about altruism and how practicing kindness not only has it increased. But we've done just become more aware of the need for it. Obviously, that's something we at Live Happy have been talking about our entire existence, volunteering, donating to charities, helping others, and how good it is for you. Now, this behavior has increased. Do you feel like that is tied back to the fact that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years? [00:10:25] DB: Yes and no. I don't know that it's that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years, as much as it was, I think, when we started to recognize the need to give back in ourselves. Because we talk a lot about gratitude, about being thankful. Well, when somebody does something for you, and you're grateful. But part of that is the joy of giving. It really is people that rediscovered, okay, they had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of – I think. This is what I believe. They had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of extra free time. They wanted to do something to improve the world. The way they do that is by giving back. You see this a lot in young people, their overarching drive to make the world a better place. I think more people, because of the pandemic, they created an awareness in them that they needed to be doing something. Or they felt like they should be doing something. We don't want to ‘should’ all over everybody. You've heard that phrase before. But they wanted to do something to make the world better because it did create a lot of anxiety. It did create a lot of uncertainty about the future. I think in that uncertainty, a lot of people found solace and a place of belonging in giving back to the world around them. I also think, in some ways, it really highlighted need in a way that when you're in the car an extra two hours a day, you might have missed a little bit. [00:11:48] PF: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Of course, we don't have crystal balls. But do you think this pro-social behavior is going to continue increasing? Is this something that we overall are learning? Hey, not only is this good for my fellow man. It's good for me. What are your thoughts on that? [00:12:06] DB: I think a lot of this – I have kids, right? So Generation Z and beyond. I really think that that generation is more pro giving back, more pro-environmentalism, more aware of the economic disparity and resolving that for people. I think that they are more – so I think that because that generation will lead in the future, which always happens. The younger generation ends up leading. I think it will be there. Or more immediately, I think that people have gotten a great benefit from doing more for their fellow man. I mean, we talk about this all the time. You said we've talked about this from the beginning of Live Happy. Yes, the person you did something for is appreciative, and you've done something to share with somebody. But when you go do something like donate blood, which is on the up, by the way, more people are donating blood and things like that, you don't get an immediate impact on who did you help, right? But it helps you. You get an oxytocin boost. You get a sense of accomplishment. You get something out of doing that charitable activity, whatever it is, even if you don't interact with the person who ultimately benefits. So, yes, handing somebody Christmas presents at Christmas time, which is a big deal in the United States. We do all these Christmas tree angel drives, and you can meet at a church, and you get to and stuff out there or Thanksgiving dinners and things like that. I volunteered at a lot of turkey dinner giveaways, that sort of thing. Yes, it's great to be able to give something to somebody and see them, their thankfulness. But a lot of the giving we're doing, you don't ever meet the beneficiary. But you get the positive impact of it. I think as people recognize that it makes them feel good, we're going to continue to see more of that. [00:13:55] PF: I love that because you know I've talked about that, like I said, for years about how – if people would catch on to how good it feels to make others’ lives better, people would really be jumping on that bandwagon. Something that I found surprising in this report, I guess I had never even thought about it. But it said that science shows that even watching someone perform an altruistic act, watching them do something for someone else can boost your happiness. Then it'll encourage them to do their own act of kindness. I didn't even think about that. So from a science standpoint, you are great at the science of this. It's like why. Why does just watching someone do something for someone else give us that same hit? [00:14:39] DB: Well, I'd like to equate it with this is an unscientific answer, Paula. But I like – [00:14:43] PF: Are you going to say it's like a contact high because we can't use that? [00:14:46] DB: Well, yes, a little bit. But I'm going to say it's kind of like when you go see that movie. Or take movies out of it since most people don't have long-form attention spans anymore. How many news reports do you see that show people giving back and doing good in the world? People want to believe there's good in the world. It makes them feel good to see other people doing good. I had something happen to me yesterday. I got out of a cab and left my phone. I'm in the hotel lobby, trying to check in, when I realized my phone's gone. I go into an immediate panic. While the hotel desk was trying to figure out which cab I got out of, the cab driver comes back around the block, has a passenger in the car, gets out of the cab, runs into the lobby, and hands me my phone, and leaves. You could kind of see like the hotel desk was like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he did that. That's so great.” They felt good about the fact that he did that, right? [00:15:37] PF: Yes. [00:15:37] DB: I felt good about the fact that he did that. Of course, I was the beneficiary in that regard. But we feel good when we see other people doing good. It reaffirms there's good in the world, and it creates a positive outlook for us is what I think. I don’t know. [00:15:51] PF: That makes sense. [00:15:52] DB: How many movies have you watched where somebody did something great, and you're like, “Wow, that's amazing.”? It just gives you that good, elated feeling and seeing other people good. But the other thing I do think it does do is it motivates you to recreate that good feeling by doing something yourself. If they did that, what can I do? I think that that is a benefit of things that we do like our Happy Acts campaign. That’s the goal with other people out there doing good things so that people see it. [00:16:22] PF: So there's so much in this report that we could dig into. We could just do like a whole year-long series based on it, but we're not going to. I wanted to find out what you thought the most interesting takeaway was from this volume. [00:16:37] DB: I think a lot of people will be shocked. My most interesting takeaway, and I think from talking about it with you, it's probably yours as well, that happiness in the Ukraine actually went up. Isn't that crazy? [00:16:51] PF: Yes. When I saw that, honestly, I went to the charts. I kept going back because I'm like, “I cannot be reading this right.” [00:16:59] DB: Right. [00:17:00] PF: It was. [00:17:01] DB: It’s startling. Ukraine actually moved up a few spots. I don't want to believe it's because the rest of the world moved down. You could take that negative approach to it. [00:17:09] PF: Everyone else is just sadder. [00:17:13] DB: But that's really not what the report showed. What they attributed it to was really interesting. It's that even though they're in a war-torn region, and certainly that would have an effect on overall well-being, specifically, in the people who live in the areas that are where the conflict is. Our news makes us think the entire country is completely in conflict all the time, and it's not. But what they’ve – yes, it's horrible than it's tragic. It's a horrible thing going on, and people are certainly negatively impacted. But why they are overall up, the report attributed really to the fact that they are united in a common goal at this point, which is really interesting that, once again, we're talking about population well-being, not individual well-being. But it really is interesting how that feeling of being united has put them in a higher position. I correlate this back to why do the Scandinavian countries typically dominate the top of this report. It's always been because there are homogeneous populations that look at the world the same way. So there's very little social conflict in those regions. In Ukraine, there's a ton of conflict but not among the Ukrainians because they're very united in their outlook right now. So I found that really interesting. [00:18:28] PF: Yes. The other thing about Ukraine because I went – I'm just geeky enough to go look at the actual little graphs in the report, and it showed that one of the areas where like they had dipped down prior to last year, they had dipped down in their confidence in their government. We know that's one of the measures that the council uses when they're doing the report is like your faith and your confidence in your government. Well, in the past year, their confidence in their leadership has escalated. So you think that's got to affect their happiness as well. [00:19:01] DB: It does, and it's interesting. I think it's interesting to point out that when we're looking at the Happiness Report, we are looking at the well-being of the overall society. Certainly, confidence in your government, your feeling of security that nothing is going to surprise you from your government. A lot of that is important. They do look at that, so yes. But that is interesting, and it's particularly interesting in our country, the United States. I know that people outside the United States listen to this podcast. I've met a few of them this week in Australia, and it's wonderful. Conflict that we see in our government, I think, and I think it shows in those geeky graphs you're talking about, negatively impacts overall well-being in the United States, the fact that we don't trust our government right now. We're very untrusting of where it's going. That shows up in these reports, and it's something that we struggle with because it's in our face every day. It's on the news every day. You and I have talked about this before. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you can’t deny that there's a huge gulf and there’s polar opposites going on right now. That does impact where the US ranks on this report. [00:20:10] PF: So do you think we as a country can become happy if we don't heal that divide? [00:20:15] DB: I think that there's a lot of factors that contribute to it. I also – I'm Pollyanna optimist. You should know that by now. [00:20:22] PF: I like the way the rainbow sprouts over your head every once in a while. [00:20:25] DB: It does. It does. But I think that like everything else, I think that we will come back together at some point in time. I don't think it's unhealable. I think that you do see some steps towards healing all the time. It's just not overwhelmingly obvious to everybody. But there are things that people agree on that are better. But there's also a lot of conflict. I think that overall, it will always impact our sense of well-being as a nation, until we can get some of that resolved. I don't see how it wouldn't. But I do think that family conflict and more immediate conflict has a more significant impact on us as individuals. So it's one of those things that we're going to struggle with. When you have free thought and free speech, sometimes you really didn't want to hear what the other person thought. [00:21:12] PF: Yes. We’re finding that out a lot. [00:21:14] DB: Yes. It is challenging. But what's interesting is despite that, the US has moved up a spot, again, for the second year in a row. [00:21:22] PF: Yes, we're climbing that ladder. We're going to be in the top 10 like in three years. [00:21:26] DB: If we keep going that direction, which I think the first time I looked, we started at 17th. So we're getting there. [00:21:33] PF: This is great. I wish you had been in Dallas for International Day of Happiness. We could have celebrated it together. But we'll get it next year. [00:21:40] DB: So there’s more on the World Happiness Report we probably need to discuss in future podcasts. We have to geek out every now and then on the science. I'm always excited to be able to do that with you. So thank you for everything you do for us. [00:21:51] PF: Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me and thank you for geeking out with me today. [00:21:56] DB: All right. You take care, Paula. [00:21:58] PF: You too. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:22:02] PF: That was Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, talking about the 2023 World Happiness Report. If you'd like to read more stories related to the report or read the report itself, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. As we wrap up the month of March, we'd like to thank everyone who was part of our annual Happy Acts campaign. Just because the campaign is ending, it doesn't mean that your daily acts of happiness have to end. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired with ideas to make your world a little bit happier every day. 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: How Pets Improve Your Brain Health as You Age With Brittany Derrenbacher [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 409 of Live Happy Now. We know that pets and happiness go hand in hand or maybe hand in paw. But did you know that your pet could also be improving your brain health as you age? I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm once again talking with Brittany Derrenbacher, a mental health counselor and certified grief and pet loss specialist to talk about how pets can change the way we age. Today, Brittany explains what pets can do to keep our brains and bodies healthy, as well as how we can use our pets to create happiness for the older people in our lives. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] PF: Brittany, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:44] BD: Hi. It’s so good to be back. [00:00:46] PF: We have so much to talk about today because brain health, super important for our happiness and our well-being. Now, there's a new study that talks about how pets affect that. But before we get into the pet portion of that, I wanted to find out from you. Can you talk about what the connection is between brain health and cognition and our happiness and well-being? [00:01:08] BD: Yes. So it's kind of like the neuroscience of happiness. I feel like happiness is – it's so difficult to define and measure because it is subjective, right? [00:01:21] PF: Right. [00:01:22] BD: But what I will say on a personal level is that we feel joy in our bodies because of the release of dopamine and serotonin and those two types of neurotransmitters in the brain. Both of those chemicals are heavily associated with happiness. So our brain health, just by virtue of that, is usually linked to our mental health and well-being. That's our happiness. [00:01:48] PF: There you go. What are some of the things that are scientifically proven to improve our brain health and help with our cognition? [00:01:57] BD: Yes. There's a handful of things. A recent study on older adults identified particular habits that are shown to improve cognition in humans and basically slow down the rate of memory decline. Some of those habits are exercising. I feel like these are going to be really self-explanatory, and we will go into those more in-depth. But basically exercising, socializing, healthy eating, no smoking and drinking, brain exercises, things like that, just to name a few. But essentially, what we're saying here is that intellectual engagement, social interaction, physical activity, and having a sense of purpose in our lives slow risk factors for cognitive decline and things like Alzheimer's and dementia. [00:02:47] PF: Interesting. Again, we talk so much here on the show about nature and biophilia. Does that help our brain cognition as well? I mean, I know it makes us feel good, and it really helps us mentally. But does it help with our actual cognition? [00:03:02] BD: I would imagine that it does just by virtue of when we're out in nature, we are living in our conscious mind, rather than our subconscious. So we're really bringing that mindfulness intentionality. We're basically bringing our brain back online. So we're – [00:03:18] PF: I love the way you put it. [00:03:19] BD: Yes. We're actively bringing it back online and bringing it out of autopilot. So there's a lot of power in that. It's building new neural pathways, just by going out into the woods and being more present. [00:03:32] PF: Yes, especially if you get lost in the woods, and you're being chased by someone. [00:03:35] BD: You got to use that big brain. [00:03:39] PF: You got to run. So pets help us in so many ways. When you look at the things that you just mentioned about exercise, well, obviously, they can't help us with not smoking or drinking. But there are several points that they could help us with. Can you explain some of the ways that they're encouraging better physical and mental health for us? [00:03:58] BD: Yes. In one of our last conversations together, we talked about the power of pets in our lives. Not only is pet owning scientifically shown to improve our well-being, our socialization, and decrease stress. Now, through research and data, we can see how pet owning has brain-boosting benefits as well. So this conversation that we're having today really allows us to dig a little bit deeper into those layers and consider the long-term benefits of being a pet owner. I say long term because I feel like a lot of the studies that we're going to be talking about today really explain that it has to be consistent years of pet owning, right? You can't just go out tomorrow and adopt a dog and in a couple of weeks, show all of the benefits, right? So this really has to – [00:04:45] PF: Just like any other health habit, right? [00:04:47] BD: Yes, yes. So this is really a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. I do think it's important to acknowledge that this is about long-term benefits of being a pet owner. It's also like a PSA like, “Go out and get you your animal,” [inaudible 00:04:58], right? What really stood out to me is just how many of the healthy brain habits mentioned earlier are covered by being a pet owner, so exercising, socialization, stress reduction, brain exercises, routine. This really suggests that our relationships with our animals, our companionships with our pets itself can increase connectivity in the brain and become a protective agent against aging. I feel like that's pretty amazing. [00:05:33] PF: Yes. So as if pets aren't doing enough for us. Now, they're slowing down our aging process. So that's – oh, my God. That's amazing. So I wanted to ask you. You mentioned stress reduction. How do pets help reduce our stress? Because sometimes, they are stressors, like when my two guys are like fighting or something like that. But how do they help us? [00:05:54] BD: Yes. First and most importantly, owning pets reduces anxiety and combats feelings of loneliness. So our pets tend to help us self-soothe. They stabilize our nervous systems. That activates oxytocin in our bodies and reduces cortisol level in our brain. So that's what I mean by the stress reduction. So, yes, our animals can stress this out. But our relationship with our animals is so reciprocal that like we're talking about something a little bit bigger here. That this activation of the oxytocin in our bodies consistently and the consistent reduction in cortisol levels in our brains. This is alone known to improve our cognitive health as human beings because chronic stress and anxiety has such negative effects on our brain health. That’s what I see in my field in mental health is that long-term kind of chronic stress that has really built up in our bodies and have a negative effect on our brain health. [00:06:54] PF: That's incredible. One thing you and I had talked about was the study that was recently published in the Journal of Aging and Health, and it specifically focused on people over the age of 65. It was pretty narrow in its focus because not only was it people over the age of 65. It really looked at their cognitive scores and word recall. It showed that people who had pets and had had that pet for more than five years, to your point, it's an ongoing thing. If they'd had a pet for more than five years, they had much higher scores. One thing the study did not show was the cause and effect. So I get so much about what you're saying was stress reduction and helping in that way. Do you have any insight into why that would help with the word recall and that cognition in our brains? [00:07:42] BD: Yes. I want to focus a little bit on the word recall because I think that goes under the category of brain exercise and routine. Pet ownership is so good for working our verbal memory, our memorization in general, orientation to time in place because we're consistently learning how to adapt with our animals and build these kind of new neural pathways through training, right? Through just by virtue of having to take care of them, remembering to feed them, to walk them, to groom them. We have to constantly engage in critical thinking, planning for the future, practicing self-regulation. With patients, you were talking about that, right? With our pets, like for example, I want you to think about how much you have to remember to care for your pets. How much planning and preparation you have to go through just to prepare for a storm. [00:08:39] PF: Yes. In particular, storms take a lot of prep at this house. [00:08:44] BD: Yes. Do you want to talk about that? What do you have to do to prepare for that? [00:08:45] PF: I would love to. We went through it last night. Yes. When we know that a storm is coming in and we don't know, obviously, how bad it's going to be. So it's like we've got to make sure that we've got Josie’s is hemp treat that's going to help calm her down. We make sure that her thunder shirt is nearby. It even affects how we schedule things. If we have a thunderstorm predicted, we might have to change our plans because she really is terrified. You know Josie. You've seen the level of trauma that it creates for her. Last night, we had storms, and we tried something new. We went down into the basement, which is not as horrific as it sounds. It's a finished basement. But we just wanted something that would reduce the sound of thunder because the thunder started. She was shaking. We had her in the thunder shirt. Everyone's huddled together, and it wasn't working. So we go down to the basement. We turned on the television, put on some music that was not going to be jarring for her, and just really did a lot of things to – we were using a lot of brainpower trying to figure out what else we could do to make this situation better, and it did work. Ultimately, it was one of our better storm knights. But, yes, it takes a lot of thought and, as you said, preparation. [00:09:54] BD: That in and of itself is critical thinking. It's memory. It's routine. A huge part of cognitive health in human beings is our structure, is our routine, is our memory. So feeding, exercising, caring for our pets can really help us kind of establish this routine, which it’s just grounding, focusing. It's achieving its purpose. So just these two things alone, the brain exercise and the routine, check so many boxes. [00:10:26] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher about how pets can help us age better. But right now, I'm bringing in my friend, Kate Vastano. We recently hooked up Kate and her cat, Kittles, with an amazing cat tree from Mau Pets. Now, we're introducing the adventures of Kittles to find out how it's going. Kate, how are you doing today? [00:10:46] KV: I'm doing great, Paula. Happy to be here with you. [00:10:46] PF: Well, last week, Kittles got the most amazing cat tree. I mean, I was so impressed by the design of this. I actually thought about going out and getting a cat of my own. [00:10:57] KV: Right. The one I got, it's called the Cento, and it is gorgeous. It basically looks like a piece of art, and I'm so happy that I finally found a cat tree that actually makes my home look better inside instead of being an eyesore. It is so modern-looking. It's not an ugly cat tree, which is refreshing. [00:11:15] PF: Yes, it is. It is really, really beautiful. One thing I thought was really cool about it is that every purchase also gives back because five percent of the proceeds are donated to animal welfare and environmental conservation. For every product purchased, Mau Pets plants one new tree. [00:11:31] KV: It’s so beautifully made, Paula. I will never put another ugly cat tree in my house again. It’s just gorgeous. [00:11:38] PF: If you want to upgrade your kitty’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's maupets.com to check out their amazing selection of stylish, contemporary cat furniture. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher, as she dives into how pets help improve our cognition as we age. [00:11:56] BD: I'd like to dive into this idea of routine a little bit too and kind of go back to that study about folks that are over the age of 65. I’d like to use my grandma as an example because she's now currently in a memory care facility for Alzheimer's dementia. But about 15 years ago, when she was diagnosed, we knew as a family pretty immediately that we wanted her to have her sense of purpose and routine and structure and stay in her home as long as possible. I can tribute her ability to be able to stay in her home as long as she did because of her cat, Tigger. He was such a huge part of her routine. She might forget my name, and she might forget how to work the coffeemaker that day, but she was not going to forget how to take care of him. [00:12:45] PF: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. [00:12:47] BD: I truly like – I associate that time that she was able to really stay in her home for as long as she was with that routine that she had with her cat. [00:12:56] PF: That's such an important point because, obviously, you are involved in rescue. You've seen these situations where people are reluctant to adopt another pet because they're of a certain age. To me, that's kind of crushing because, oh, man, they can do so much for you. They would be so helpful. I understand that concern. So can you address it? Because you've dealt with it from both sides, both adopting the pet and then seeing a pet that outlives its owner. So can you speak to that point? [00:13:27] BD: Yes. I think in rescue work and something that I hope that it's not unique that just our rescue does, I hope that other rescues embrace this as well, is that we never turned an elderly applicant down. We would work with them to make sure that they had a support system and that they did have a plan. I feel like having an honest conversation about that is the best way to go into it. Like, “Okay. What would your plan be if you passed? Who would take care of your pet?” So having open conversations like that. But also, like we never ever, ever shamed any families that came forward with animals because of having a family member pass away. An elderly family member passed away or, say, a parent. But the reason that we truly believe that these elderly applicants should not be turned away is because they're the best pet owners. They're the ones that are really focusing all of their time and energy on these pets and giving them everything that they can. Also, it's reciprocal. We know that these animals and these dogs that they adopt are going to add years onto their life. So as long as we can really work with them to have a plan and make sure that like that animal is going to be taken care of or returned to us, we would never turn them away. [00:14:44] PF: Yes. It gives so much just in terms of the socialization because as we age, people are less mobile. They're less able to get out and socialize. Loneliness is a huge problem among older people. Can you talk about that and how the pets can help with that? [00:14:59] BD: Yes. Exercising and socialization is a huge part of this conversation. Exercise is the most underrated antidepressant and it's free, right? [00:15:09] PF: You don't even have to join a gym. Come on. [00:15:10] BD: Yes, it's free. Physical exercise is it increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain. It’s also directly linked to synaptic integrity and especially in older adults. So that strength of communication between our neurons in our body. So if you think about it, you're out walking your dog every day. This is good, consistent exercise. It's movement outdoors. But it also encourages us to meet other people, right? As a dog owner, you stop. You chat with other people. You run into people at the dog park. You're constantly kind of meeting other people. Other pets can really be a part of this conversation too because pet shops, right? You're meeting people, training classes. You're meeting people. Online groups are huge for pet owners. So this is really good socialization for older folks. Dog agility. We've talked about this before. My mom owns a training and agility facility here in Louisville, and a huge part of the population there is older ladies. [00:16:12] PF: Really? [00:16:13] BD: Yes. They’re there with their dogs. They're working on all of the things that we're talking about; exercise, socialization, the brain games really, the constant movement, the stress reduction. They're doing all of those things, just by attending an agility class with their dogs. [00:16:29] PF: So what about someone who has a cat? Cats are – they're active in their own way. How does someone get the benefit of exercise? Obviously, the socialization comes because of the cuddling with your cat. But how do they incorporate exercise into cat ownership? [00:16:46] BD: Yes. Cats are still mobile creatures. You can get up. You can move around. You can be on the floor with them. You can be sitting with them and moving around. I love seeing those little catnip toys and all the – [00:16:58] PF: Ah, the little ones with the stuff on. Yes. [00:17:01] BD: There are games that you can play with your cats. It's not just dogs that have puzzle games. It can be reciprocal with your cats too. Cats love to play games. They're very engaging creatures. I know we have a lot of assumptions, and there's a lot of stereotypes with cats. But cats come second on the list in these research studies for really improving cognition in humans. So – [00:17:22] PF: We have a relative, and she was wonderful with cats. She always had a lot of cats, rescued all these cats. In the last few years, as they died, she did not get any more because she knew that she was getting older. She's now in hospice care. One thing that's been very hard on her is not having animals around. Unfortunately, she's in a facility where you can take your pets. I thought this was amazing because we were in Cincinnati to visit her, and we took our dogs in there. The dogs got up on the bed. She's able to love on them. We talked to her a week or so ago, and she was saying that, yes, they still talk about when Rocco and Josie came to visit. It was such a big thing for them. They've also even had people bring cats in to visit. Talk about it from that perspective. If you know an older person who doesn't have a pet who is no – and loves them. Let's make sure they love the pet. But if you have an older person in your life who doesn't have access to a pet, how important is that to be able to provide that experience for them? [00:18:24] BD: Oh, huge. We've talked about this too on some of our past episodes that there are service animals for everything. That is literally their purpose is to go and bring joy to other people and provide comfort. I hope that it becomes more routine to establish these type of connections in these places. Not only do we, like with Luna Bell’s, love to do that with our animals, taking them into senior living facilities and things like that. I just think it's such a beautiful reciprocal thing to have happen to be giving to someone while also be giving to yourself and be giving to your pet. It's kind of this beautiful, powerful, energetic exchange that's happening. [00:19:05] PF: Yes. What does the pet get out of it? Because I know Rocco and Josie had a great time visiting there because they got so much attention. It took so long to get to her room because every person stopped and wanted to pet the dogs and see the dogs. What does that do for the pets? [00:19:20] BD: That's confidence building, right? [00:19:22] PF: Ah, okay. [00:19:23] BD: Yes. That’s socialization too. That's just expanding joy for them. It's putting them to work. They love that. They love having purpose. So we've talked about that a lot in this episode too. It's not just important for human beings to have purpose. Our animals need to have purpose too. So I think for them to go into these places and to feel joy and build confidence and connection and both give and receive, that's just so powerful for them. It's huge. [00:19:50] PF: So even as an owner, you might decide like this is really something I want to continue doing with the pet and be able to become a service animal that they can visit and see people. How does that increase that bond between you and your pet when you do something like that? [00:20:06] BD: I don't know. I just feel like we're essentially doing some multi-focused empowerment work here by doing that, helping others while helping ourselves while helping our animals. It just builds this beautiful connection of both giving and receiving. I just think there's just such a unique power in that that we don't get in other relationships. [00:20:24] PF: Yes. Yes, that's so true. We know now from the studies and from what you were just telling us that pets are so good for us. Can you talk about how we can leverage that benefit? [00:20:35] BD: Yes. I think that our lifestyle factors plays such a huge role in our brain health. So having this conversation really, it helps us realize, I think, that why wouldn't we be pet owners? Why wouldn't we actively be wanting to pursue these lifestyle shifts to create a better holistic lifestyle for us? I think that genetics do have a role in determining our health and longevity, obviously. But we do have more control over our future than we previously thought. So implementing healthy lifestyle habits can have a major impact. I think pet owning proves time and time again that it checks all these boxes. We talk about intentionality a lot when we're together, and we talk about the human bond a lot, obviously. But I think just the power of knowing that taking care of our pets can so positively change not only the way that we think about ourselves but our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, our emotional health. There are so many benefits just from being a pet owner. So it's a constant return in our investment. For a lot of people, the most reciprocal relationship that they will ever know in their life is with their pet. So our relationships with our pets are just consistently filling up our cups and allowing us to experience this love and this bond that really is amazing for our mental health. It fosters resilience, and it empowers us to really thrive and live our best life physically and mentally, cognitively. [00:22:14] PF: Yes. That makes sense because I know when you and I talked about grief, and sometimes people have this after the loss of a pet, they kind of feel guilty because it affected them more than, say, the loss of a parent or the loss of a human in their life. One thing that we talked about is like that pet never judged you. Well, maybe if it was a cat, they did. But like they didn't openly judge you. It didn't cause you harm the way the humans that we love and who love us sometimes do it. [00:22:45] BD: Yes. It’s so much more powerful than we give it credit for in our society. I think it's definitely shifting. These conversations contribute to that shift. But owning an animal, being a pet owner, having the bond with our pets, like this deep bond that is really changing over time so beautifully, it affects us in so many powerful ways. I love like this idea that – I don't know. It's like owning pets is really the holistic health care that we need. [00:23:24] PF: It really is. That's a great way to look at it. It's the month of March. It's our happiness month. You're one of our happy activists. So we're really excited about that, and we thank you for that. But there are also several holidays in March to celebrate our animals. There’s National Puppy Day. There’s Cuddly Kitten Day. There's National Terrier Day, which I know you and I think is a very holy day. There's Respect Your Cat Day. Yeah. I know that's actually a thing. What is your favorite way to celebrate your pets and why? [00:23:54] BD: I love this question. I think my favorite way to celebrate my pets, my dogs is by experiencing life with them, living in the here and now, not taking life so seriously, embracing childlike joy, just literally being with them. Because I think our animals are our best teachers when it comes to joy and loving presence. When we actually stop to lean into that, it can be such a beautiful thing. [00:24:27] PF: I love that. Brittany, thank you for once again coming on and talking about this. We're going to tell people as always how they can find you, how they can learn more about all the work that you're doing, and follow you on all the channels. But thank you so much for sitting down with me today and talking. [00:24:43] BD: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:48] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher, talking about how pets improve mental cognition across our lifetime. If you'd like to learn more about Brittany and the work she's doing or follow her on social media, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast app. Just a reminder that we are still celebrating the month of March with our Happy Acts campaign. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired by a different happy act every day. While you're there, be sure and visit the Live Happy Store to find the perfect shirt that shows the world how you live happy. 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: Bounce Back from Burnout With Dr. Mary Sanders [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 408 of Live Happy Now. Do you ever feel like you've hit a point of burnout that nobody else can fully understand? Well, today's guest knows exactly what you're going through and what to do about it. I'm your host Paula Felps. And today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Mary Sanders, who specializes in energetic healing with an emphasis on positive psychology. Dr. Mary is on a mission to empower women over the age of 40 to bounce back physically, emotionally and energetically from the stresses of balancing work and life. Today, she talks with me about how burnout affects women? What warning signs we need to be aware of that indicate we might be burning out? On what steps we can take to reclaim ourselves from burnout? Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Mary, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] Dr. MS: Thank you, Paula. It's my honor, sincerely, to be a guest of yours. I am so looking forward to today's conversation because I have a feeling that you and I are going to tap into some really interesting topics. [00:01:10] PF: We are. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation too. Because, oh, my gosh, there's so many things that you and I could talk about. And I guess that's why you have a podcast because you have so many things that you can teach us. But today, I really wanted to focus on the topic of burnout because that's something that you address, something that you handle. And I know that burnout can mean different things to different people. So just make sure we're on the same page, can you talk about the clinical definition when you are describing burnout? [00:01:42] Dr. MS: Sure. Sure. It's a great place to start. From a scientific perspective, I follow Maslach's Burnout Inventory. And this researcher has done a phenomenal job breaking down burnout in into essentially three different categories. And the first category is what we are most familiar with, and that's called emotional exhaustion. You hear people – you hear women specifically saying, "I'm so tired of being tired. I am just – I feel like I have no get up and go." That's the physical exhaustion. The second component to burnout, clinically speaking, is cynicism, where somebody is experiencing a distrusting feeling. Or they're, overall, just feeling really pessimistic about what is happening within the traditional work environment. That's another category for burnout. Then the last category is all of revolving around the professional efficacy. And what I mean by that, Paula, is are the women working for organizations in which they feel valued for their skills, and their strengths and how they contribute to the overall success of the corporation? When you look at this – and I know, Paula, there are many, many listeners that are saying, "Yeah, but I'm not in the corporate world. How can I still experience burnout?" You absolutely can. Ladies, we are the primary caretakers of our entire families, whether that'd be our aging parents, or whether that be our children, or our spouses. It is very easy to experience burnout on a personal level as well as professionally. But characteristically, people identify burnout as being something related to the work environment. Those three categories that I just talked about can be measured independently. Meaning that you can be experiencing the physical signs where somebody is completely exhausted. They have reoccurring illnesses. Their central nervous system is not firing up. Their immune system is compromised. Maybe they're experiencing blood sugar issues. All of those physical symptoms are associated with the first category, being the physical exhaustion. When you take the survey, if you're reading high within this one category, then we know how to address those issues. We know to bring it right back to the physical body. You may be a person who is rating really high on the cynicism and the pessimism. And so, then maybe we need to be working on the mindset. Maybe it's something that we need to be working on finding more pleasure, joy and happiness within your life to decrease the level of pessimism that you're carrying on a daily basis. Then that's another category. Third category is the professional efficacy. If we know that somebody's reading really high or really low within this category, then maybe we're addressing, "Hey, if you don't feel valued as a team member, maybe we just need to find a different department within our organization that you align with. Maybe we need to find you a different team in which you feel like you can show up in your strength N." That's why I always use the Maslach Inventory to kind of get a baseline, "Where are you? How can we be of assistance?" [00:05:07] PF: That's important. Because I think a lot of times when we feel burned out, we don't even have the skills to say in what area I feel burned out. It's exhausting. And if you're burned out at work, it's pretty impossible to be there for your family. It's just this big overall feeling. Can you talk about how big, how prevalent a problem burnout is right now? And have you seen it since the pandemic? How has it changed? [00:05:31] Dr. MS: Huge, Paula. Huge. Right now, with the pandemic and going through what we're calling globally the great resignation, people are now awake. They're saying, "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Time out. Time out. You mean I don't have to do a nine-to-five job every day? You mean I don't have to do my commute every day? You mean I don't have to do face-to-face engagements anymore? Plus, I didn't really like that. Maybe I want to do something different with my life of all." Because there's a greater purpose that they want to align with. Absolutely. The trend right now is that over 50 – and again, depending upon the statistics that you look at, 50% to 60% of people at this given point in time are going to say, "Yep, I feel like I am burnt out on some level." And if they're not currently in that position, they can honestly say, "You know what? I resonate with that because I have been through burnout." And Paula, when I went through burnout – and, again, my greatest – the peak of my burnout was 15 years ago. And I'll be honest with you. I was so embarrassed that I was experiencing burnout that I didn't want to share it with anyone. [00:06:42] PF: You have an interesting story. Let's talk a little bit. I was remiss in not asking sooner. This is something you know firsthand. Tell us your journey into burnout and why you're so passionate about helping others with it. [00:06:55] Dr. MS: Yeah. And you know what, Paula? I'll share my story for the sake of it being received in a light that I have learned a lot of information from going through this life experience. I do believe that we have divine timing. And I do believe that I received these lessons at the time that I did in my professional career in order to really motivate me to shift and to pivot. I'm going to share the story. And goodness gracious. I was a practicing chiropractor. And to make a long story short, I had a large practice, a central practice. And then I also had a satellite office. I was managing not only my current patient load. I was also managing various different doctors and a big staff. I went into chiropractic because I knew that I wanted to have my hands-on people. I believed in the healing modality of the physical adjustment. I believe that the body had the innate ability to heal itself. And because I had such a strong philosophy, and a good set of hands and a lot of perseverance and resilience, I created a successful practice. It looked beautiful on the outside. Aesthetically, it was gorgeous. But what was happening underneath the surface that people didn't realize is that I was thinking miserable. I was so unhappy. I literally put myself in a complete adrenal exhaustion. The one thing that I I did for my stress management at that time was exercise. I could no longer exercise. What I could do was wake up. I could get down to my office. Treat the number of patients that I had for that day. Come home and fall asleep. That's all the energy that I had. And that's not a life. There was no work-life balance. There was no vitality. There was no spark in my world. It was really dull. And so, I used food. I used alcohol. I used sleep. I used all the coping mechanisms of avoidance. I withdrew from my family and my friends. I isolated myself even more. And I know this doesn't paint a pretty picture. But that was my world. And my husband sat me down, and I was notorious for starting a conversation over the dinner table and then forgetting that I was having a conversation and stop and just like space out for a moment because I couldn't really complete a sentence, complete a complete thought. And he looked at me and he was like, "Mary, how long are you going to do this?" And I'm like, "What do you mean how long am I going to do this?" And he's like, "Well, if you don't make a change, you're physically going to go down a downward spiral. You're going to get worse. You're going to create some kind of a life-threatening illness. If adrenal exhaustion is not enough for you, then the universe is going to create something more." And he's like, "Furthermore, I don't know if our relationship is going to survive." And so, I was like, "Okay, you have my attention. I'm listening. What do I need to do?" And he said, "I have a question for you." And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Do you think that you could leave all of this?" I'm like, "What? What do you mean leave it?" And he's like, "Do you think that we could leave everything that we have created and move to the other side of the world?" And I said, "Oh, no. No. No, that's not happening." Because, I mean, really, I have put all of my blood, sweat and equity into growing this practice. I was miserable but I didn't want to leave it, right? Time passed and my husband acquired a position in Ho Chi Minh City and he says, "Are you on board?" And I said, "Okay." We sold the practices. We sold the home. We sold everything that we had. And I ended up on the other – waking up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on the other side of the world, wondering, "Paula, who am I? What am I here to do? What's my purpose in life?" And I went through these huge identity crises and tremendous amount of depression. I did what any logical person would do. I ran away from my husband in Ho Chi Minh City and I ran down to Bali, Indonesia and I finished up my yoga teacher certification. [00:11:04] PF: Oh, that's fantastic. [00:11:05] Dr. MS: I know. I know. But for the first time, Paula, I was able to think for the first time in my life. I had time on my hand. I learned to meditate. And let me tell you something, I was like, "Wow. Wow. Let me wrap my head around this." I know the human body incredibly well from the neck on down. Obviously, as a chiropractor, I was very familiar with the neurology. And then I'm like, "Okay, something really magical is happening with the space between my ears, the space within my head. What's happening mentally as the result of doing meditation?" The curiosity got the best of me, and that's when I went and studied with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar because I wanted – [00:11:47] PF: We love him. [00:11:47] Dr. MS: Yeah, I know. And he has such a beautiful way of just breaking down the neuroscience behind meditation. Now I had the experience of what meditation was doing. And then I also had the intellectual knowledge. And so, then, as fate had it at that time, my husband and I decided to create a non-profit organization in order to support teachers and the tools of positive psychology so that they can embody them and role model them into the classroom. We left Ho Chi Minh City. Went to Bogota, Colombia. And that non-profit organization went gangbusters. We thought we were producing a product for the United States. And then, once again, I'm finding myself in kind of a stressful situation. How fast can I produce? As fast as I was producing, it was being translated into Spanish and then it would put into the classrooms in not only Colombia, but in Peru as well. I was like, "Okay. Okay. Okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me wrap my head around this." So then, I'm now running the same neurological pattern that I was running when I was in my business. I haven't learned a darn thing. Even though I'm meditating and taking good care of myself, something's happening here energetically. We left our Bogota, Colombia. Went to Bali, Indonesia and spent a year. And it was kind of a sabbatical. And so, again, here I am doing yoga and meditating every day, eating vegan. I was just really just wanted to clean up and I wanted to get online energetically. And then that's when I started my training at the Academy of Intuition Medicine. I was like, "Okay. Well, I got the body. I got the mind. And now I need to understand the energetics." And so, here we are combined now – Paula, I literally could not have planned the sequence of events that I just outlined for you. It had to happen because I had to go through burnout and I had to blow up my world in order to hit rock bottom in order to come out in a full holistic 360 perspective as to how the human body and the spirit operates as one. [00:13:57] PF: What happens to women who don't have the resources you do? Who don't have a husband that pulls him out and says, "Hey, you've got to save yourself?" What do you see when women – we'll just use women because I know they seem to be more prone to burnout. What do you see with the women who come to your practice who are just past what you had gone through? [00:14:20] Dr. MS: I believe that every woman that is listening to this audio right now, this beautiful podcast, who is somewhat aligned with the idea of burnout. Chances are there's a high probability. I'm talking about 90%, 95%, 98% of these women have received signals. [00:14:38] PF: Do we recognize those signs? [00:14:40] Dr. MS: Yeah. And I can talk about these signs. And that was the second part of your question. And I alluded to some of the physical signs. We know that you can literally have a hormonal shift within your body physically as the result of long-term stress. And that comes from the adrenal glands, which are small little glands that sit on top of the kidneys. And the adrenal glands are responsible for producing – when you really truly are in a fight or flight demand, they are responsible for producing epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, DHEA to name a few. And when we are under long-term chronic stress, those hormones create – they get produced on a continuous basis and they create what is called a negative feedback cycle that travels through the entire endocrine system. And the endocrine system is essentially the system that governs all of the hormones that you produce. I'm talking about serotonin and melatonin. How are you sleeping? You know? [00:15:50] PF: Yeah, because that's one of the first things people lose, right? I know so many women who say, "I cannot get to sleep. I'm exhausted. And I go to bed and I cannot sleep." [00:15:59] Dr. MS: Or they pass out before their head hits the pillow, right? And then three o'clock in the morning, like clockwork, they wake up possibly due to a sugar burn off from the wine that they drank the night before or some kind of sugar imbalance. I believe that the hormones and the physical body talk to us in beautiful and mysterious ways. Maybe their metabolism slows down because their thyroid is not working. Maybe they're starting to feel sluggish and that they're having weight gain. Maybe the pancreas is out of balance and they're starting to see blood sugar issues. Maybe the hormones that they're producing – and it's a precarious time for women as they are going through perimenopause, and menopause and post-menopause. But you add those changes hormonally and couple it with the chronic stress, then you're really feeling a little whack-a-doodle, Paula. Just your body talks to you in so many beautiful ways. And those are the signs and the symptoms that I'm inviting the women listening to really pay attention to. [00:17:06] PF: Isn't it often the case you might go to your doctor and they say, "Well, it is just hormones." Because that often happen. Women, they're not being listened to by their doctors. They're told, "Well, it's just hormonal. You can't really do anything about it." Or they give them a prescription for something that's going to help them sleep or help them not be depressed. And then they're sent on their way. [00:17:26] Dr. MS: We live in a society, Paula, that we have been taught from our mother's generation that when we go to a physician, that they are empowered to tell us what to do and they are empowered to tell us what's happening within our body. And I'm here to say that, I'm sorry, there's no other physician that lives outside of your body that can possibly feel as to what's going on in internally for you. Really, the power needed to be given back to the women to be able to understand that there needs to be an integrative approach. Very rarely is a low back pain just a low back pain. There's going to be a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, chemical foundation to that low back pain. And very few physicians have the knowledge skill set to treat from an integrative standpoint nor do they have the time. I really encourage women to take that power back and to really say, "Timeout. Timeout. I know that my weight gain could be hormonal. Yes, I think that there is a chemical portion to the hormones. But I'm telling you that I live in my body and these are other symptoms that I'm experiencing simultaneously. And, oh, by the way, do you have a referral for a good psychotherapist? Or do you have a referral for a good nutritionist or somebody that can talk about the elements of food?" I believe that we as women got to really empower ourselves. I keep coming back to that word empowerment. When we are, unfortunately – and I'm going to go into another branch of what possibly might be showing up as signs and symptoms for women. And maybe you might understand a little bit more clearly why the challenges for women to advocate for themselves, is that when somebody is going through a burnout, I don't care if it's professional or personal, it really messes with their sense of self-worth. [00:19:26] PF: Nobody brings that up. [00:19:28] Dr. MS: Oh, my goodness. Self-worth, there's a component of learned helplessness. Thank you, Dr. Seligman, for educating us on learned helplessness. There is a lack of motivation. People just energetically and emotionally just feel flatlined. Okay? And this creates a trigger, an emotional trigger, which is very similar to a trauma response within the body. All of this, neurologically speaking, there's an imbalance as to the get up and go kind of sympathetic dominance. And then there's a lack of function within the parasympathetics to auto-regulate the central nervous system from the emotional standpoint. We absolutely are not thinking clearly. And now here I am saying we need to be empowered to ask for what it is that we need. It's hard to do that if you're not thinking clearly. Behaviorally, you're like isolating yourself. You're withdrawing yourself. You're not reaching out to your girlfriends and your support team. You don't have your cheer squad on your side. I see how it happens. I understand and I have so much empathy for people that are going through burnout. [00:20:44] PF: And you take an integrative approach. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Before we do it, what is someone to do when they know intrinsically there is so much more going on? And they go to a doctor and the doctor says, "It's just you're stressed. Or it's emotional. Or it's hormones." Where do they then go? [00:21:01] Dr. MS: Yeah, that's a legitimate question. Quite honestly, Paula, that's why I have created my signature program. Because there are very few people that are truly taking an integrative approach. And I believe, and I know and I'm thankful that there are integrative physicians that can address the bulk of the problems. But most of the integrative physicians are not taking in the energetic and the spiritual component. I do think that there are people that can help serve, support and help facilitate the healing journey. But from my perspective it really does require an integrative approach. [00:21:37] PF: Yeah. Tell us what you mean by an integrative approach and then what that looks like? [00:21:44] Dr. MS: Yeah. In my world, an integrative approach is incorporating the mind, the body and the spirit. When I'm talking about the mind, I'm talking about mindset behavioral and conditions, limiting belief patterns, tapping into the subconscious through meditation. That is the mind. The body, we're all very familiar with the body. And so, sometimes that's the chemical component of the body. Is it something structural that is happening? Oftentimes, I have women go through a functional blood chemistry analysis. From a functional standpoint, we look at the biomarkers, we look at the indicators and we look and compare highs, and lows, and medians and average. And then we compare whether it'd be three months, or six months, or year down the road. And then we look at your pre and post blood markers to see where normal is for you. [00:22:46] PF: Yeah, it's so important to point out. It is. Each person is different. And you have to find out what's right for you. [00:22:52] Dr. MS: Long gone are the days where medicine is cookie cutter. I believe that the next evolution of medicine, literally from the integrative standpoint, is to transition into energy medicine. The energy medicine that I'm alluding to takes into consideration that, within all of us, there is an electromagnetic current. And surrounding our physical body is also an electromagnetic current. And we're going to call that the subtle energetic body. It's known to some people as the aura or is known to others as the bio field. And so, essentially, this energy that surrounds this is like the layers of the onion. It's intended to be protective. Protective of the energy that come at us within our environment. I mean, energetically, we have so much information coming at us at all times, it's hard to live in a dense boundary type of way to reflect all of these energies either way. I'm talking about 5G energies. I'm talking about energies from other people. I'm talking about frequencies, X-ray frequencies. You name it, those energies are coming into our bio field once it enters into our bio field. Depending upon the direction, it will enter into an energy center, also known as a chakra, within our energy body. And these chakras have themes. They have life themes. They have emotional themes. They have nerve plexuses that are associated with them. They also have an endocrine gland that is associated with them. You can see where, energetically, if we're not protecting the field coming into our physical body, it then can turn into an emotional disturbance, or a physical disturbance, or an endocrine disturbance. That integrative approach, the mind, body and spirit gets to address all three of those systems simultaneously. And to provide you, the consumer, with the tools, the resources so that you can empower yourself to do your own personal healing. You start to look inward for support instead of outward. [00:25:20] PF: That's so powerful because that's not a prescription you're going to get from your doctor. And you are just really big proponent of meditation. You talked about that earlier. How big a role does meditation play in all of those things, in the mind, the body, all of it? [00:25:36] Dr. MS: Paula, I can almost feel some of the ladies listening to the podcast cringe. I can feel their toes curl, "There's that meditation. That word meditation. I've tried it. It doesn't work for me. I simply just cannot relax my mind. I have too much going on in my world. How can I possibly take the time to meditate?" And I am an advocate. I do believe in a formal sitting practice. But I also believe that mindfulness can be bought into various different daily tasks, such as washing your dishes at night, loading your dishwasher, making your bed, or gardening, or taking the dog out for a walk. I'm not saying that those activities are not grounding. But what I'm looking to do in meditation is to shift the various different brain waves so that you can then start to access the subconscious. So that you can leave the space of the ego and transcend into the place where the ego does not exist. Because I believe, Paula, that as women, as human living or spirits living in a human body, I believe that all of us have the capacity to receive information above and beyond our traditional five senses. Information that is valuable to our own personal healing. And meditation opens up those channels for receiving information. [00:27:01] PF: And then once we start receiving that information, we're going to act on it, how does it start changing the way we look at life? Changing the decisions we make? Tell us that bridge between I'm burned out, and I started meditating and now things are clear. What is that link that takes us there? [00:27:21] Dr. MS: Sure. Well, first and foremost, I'm going to openly admit that just because you're burned out and you start meditating doesn't mean that there's going to be an overnight shift. It's not a quick pill. It's not a pill. It's not a quick fix. This is something that takes time, and repetition and commitment to really see the benefits. But in my own personal experience, I started meditating receiving information intuitively. I didn't trust it. I still didn't trust the information. I just kind of ignored it. You ignore it once. Yeah, yeah. You ignore it twice, oh, maybe there's something to this. You ignore it the third time and you're like, "What am I doing? I clearly am receiving signals about what path, or direction, or decisions I should be making. And I'm not even following the own internal advice and wisdom that's coming from within." I think that most women have to go through that distrust period before they completely can surrender. And what I have heard over and over, Paula, is women saying, Oh, my God, Mary, you wouldn't believe it. I have boundaries now. I feel full of myself. And not from a really standoff-ish place. I'm coming from it from a really heart-centered, heartfelt way." It's like these transitions that women are learning to say, "No. No. Thank you. Let me think about. It I'll get back to you. I'll circle back with you." Once women can understand that they have this power, this life force energy surging through their physical body and their energetic body, they blossom. Blossom into something magnificent. [00:29:03] PF: If women are listening to this and they're saying, "Okay, I know I'm burned out. This all makes sense. But I don't know where to start." Where do they start? I know you offer some great resources on your site. You've got a wonderful podcast that people can tune in and listen to. But what is the next step? After listening to our conversation today, what is their next step? [00:29:23] Dr. MS: Ask for help. [00:29:25] PF: And who do you ask? [00:29:26] Dr. MS: Well, I would love to be a resource. I would be honored to be a resource. If I find that I am not the right match or intuitively that the woman is like, "Okay, you're nice. But you're not giving me exactly what I need." Then I'm going to help find that person that provides you with exactly what you need. One of the things that I really do enjoy about being a podcast host in the field of energy medicine is that it is developing and widening of my referral base. I've got a lot of cool friends and a lot of cool places. [00:29:59] PF: That's terrific. As we wrap up today, what is the one thing that you hope everybody that hears you today will take away from our conversation? [00:30:08] Dr. MS: I really want people to embrace the fact that they're not alone. And that there are people that are experiencing burnout all – it can be a different facet of burnout. But they're not alone. That nothing is permanent. And it that if you are experiencing burnout, whether it'd be depression, anxiety, physical discomfort, know that all of those symptoms are transient. They too shall pass. [00:30:35] PF: That's excellent. I thank you so much for being with me today. We could talk for hours. But I appreciate this conversation and everything that you're doing to help get us through these phases and these difficult times in our lives. [00:30:47] Dr. MS: Thank you again, Paula. Sincerely, it is my honor to be here today. Thank you, listeners. [OUTRO] [00:30:57] PF: That was Dr. Mary Sanders, talking about how women can manage burnout. If you'd like to learn more about Mary, download her free Boost Your Energy Guide, listen to our podcast or learn more about what tools she offers, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. And just a reminder that the International Day of Happiness is just around the corner and we would love you to celebrate it with us. You can do that by hosting a happiness wall in your home, office, church or school on March 20th. And if you'd like to learn more, just visit our website, that's livehappy.com, and click on the happy X tab. That is 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 every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Take the Next Steps to Happiness With Megan McDonough [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PP: We all have times in our lives that are filled with uncertainty and stress. Maybe it's career upheaval, a change in our life stages or the end of a relationship. Even as we wrestle with the challenges at hand, we wonder what the next step is. I'm Paula Phelps and this is Live Happy Presents, a podcast sponsored by the Wholebeing Institute, that looks at what to do when those inflection points arise in our lives. Megan McDonough is founder of the Wholebeing Institute, which is the world's leading educational organization, teaching the science of human flourishing. She is here today to talk about how the challenges we're facing right now, no matter how daunting they seem, actually hold the opportunity to explore, strengthen and reshape your life. Then, she'll tell us about an online program offered by the Wholebeing Institute to help you take the next step to move toward happiness. [EPISODE]   [00:00:59] PP: Megan, this is an incredible program that you're going to share with us today. I have so many questions, and I'm really excited to hear about it. But I wanted to start out by learning, how did you develop this and what got you here? [00:01:12] MM: For that, we're going to go back to the year of 1999. You remember that year, that was the year everybody was saying, computers are going to crash.   [00:01:21] PP: The end of the world.   [00:01:21] MM: End of the world when computers go from 1999 to 2000, the world was going to crash. It turns out thankfully, that the world didn't crash. But in a way, my own life crashed. I remember specifically the day I was working for DuPont, and I was in their corporate offices in a meeting. Even the day I recall, it was a gorgeous spring day, one with the depth of the sky, it was a beautiful baby blue. And there were these cherry blossoms all ripe and opening. It was incredible beauty outside. But inside, it felt like I had my back against the beauty, like I couldn't see it. This was metaphorical. Actually, literally, because I was sitting in a meeting thinking, "Ah, I'm just dying here." It wasn't because I didn't have a great job. I love my job, love the people. But I remember writing on my notepad, "This is killing me."   [00:02:20] PP: Wow.   [00:02:21] MM: So for me, that day, something became very clear. My work here was done, that this was an inflection point in my life. The reason I start with that sort of background back in 1999, is because we hit these, I think of as inflection points all the time in our lives. That was a big one in my life. But many people, as part of being human, because there's no getting around it. We had times when we feel like we've hit a termination, either we get a – either our relationships come to an end, our work feels like it's dying out, our health might be going downhill, our loved ones' health might be going. We look at these points as times of great change ang angsts. It feels entirely like a terminus and it's really a very rich place. Might feel really difficult at the time. That's when I started changing and moving in different ways in the world that looked at the science of flourishing, how we can go forward in a way that really liberated us to live more into an authentic life, in a way that feels rich, and happy and satisfying. [00:03:30] PP: Well, how do we know that we're at an inflection point versus just having a bad day at work? We all have those moments where it's like, "Okay, that's it. I'm going to go home tonight. I'm going to write my letter." How do we know? [00:03:43] MM: It's a great question, because life is full of little stress points anyways. Why is this an inflection point? One of the things that your listeners can pull from your website is a handout that's related to sort of this discussion we're having today. In that handout, I listed sort of all of those who have felt sense of when life is changing for you. When do I know that this is more than just a bad day? That it’s really an inflection here. Part of that answer is, it lasts longer than just a bad mood. It's like a chronic outcoming of this sense that maybe there's got to be something more, a clarity like I had that data. I've run my length around this thing or it might come from an external situation where you lost your job, or the kids moved out of the house and all of a sudden, you have an empty nest. In many ways, these inflection points, they become ways in which we have to actually redefine who I am. Actually, look at the different ways in which we're shaping ourselves because who we knew ourselves to be before is not who we have to be in the situation, as an empty nester, as a single person, as a person who realized their job no longer works for them or has been retired. These are all things that happen. So if you look up that list of handouts, your listeners can get a sense of, "Ah, maybe this is bigger than just a bad day." Part of that is, what is the felt sense. I mean, for me back in 1999, this wasn't just one episode. This was sort of a building of a felt sense over time where I'm just – there was a sense of dryness, a desiccation and it wasn't enlivened by this very sacred life. So those are sort of the key points that point to, "Ah, this is an inflection point. This is a change of who I see myself to be and where I'm headed." [00:05:48] PP: As you're getting that sense, and you realize this is an inflection point. That realization is one thing, but what to do with it is a whole big, scary next thing. What do you do once you've realized that you need to do something? [00:06:06] MM: It's so funny, because what is the first thing we do when we're having difficulties? Where do we go? Let's ask Dr. Google. [00:06:15] PP: I was going to say the bar, but I knew that was the long answer. [00:06:16] MM: Maybe the bar. So, still, maybe we go for a drink, maybe we talk to our friends, maybe we ask Dr. Google. But what we're really doing is just sort of splattering this – not desperation, but this angst that we're feeling, and we're reaching out and trying to find answers. Interestingly enough, when I was going through that inflection point in my own life, I mean, that's exactly what I did. I was reading, I was taking a little bit from this. I was Googling and getting all sorts of junk. Because when you Google, how do I live happier, you don't get your wonderful side of living happy, because that wasn't around back in the '90s. W What you end up doing is creating a smorgasbord of, "Let me try this. Let me try that. Let me try this. Let me ask the same people that I've always asked about and they're –." They might be wonderful, supportive people, but they might not have the answers either. So the first offer is to find a place, which is what we're talking about today. So program that systematically in step by step takes you through the process of living happier now, as you move into that definition of new self. Because what we're really in and this is actually in your handout, you can feel free to fill in these blanks. The place we're actually in right now is a place that the anthropologist, Victor Turner called the liminal space. When we know that one thing is ending, we don't yet know where we're going, that's a place of uncertainty. It's that liminal space of no longer and not yet. [00:07:51] PP: That's a very scary place. [00:07:54] MM: It's a very scary place. That's why we ask a lot of people, and we have a lot of conversations, and we ask Google and we go to the bar and drink. We try to forget about our problems. Because we're searching for this sense of stability in the no longer and not yet. We don't like uncertain places. It's very scary. So when you ask, "What do we do?" First, we realize, "Oh, this is an inflection point. This is a liminal space. This is a no longer and not yet." There are other words too for it. I think this place of inflection points is a really sacred time. It's interesting when you notice these inflection points when you're younger. You might have the graduation from high school, or college, or getting married, or having children, or finding a partner or landing a new job. There's lots of sort of inflection points when you're younger that are noticing as, "Ah, this isn't change." But when you're my age, I'm 60 this year. In midlife, all of a sudden you realize, "Wow, where are the big sort of milestones? Where are the inflection points?" That's why I wanted to elevate this for your listeners that this sort of challenge that you're going through with emptiness, retirement or even younger than I am into second jobs or more children. This no longer not yet time, along with being uncertain, scary is also a sacred time. It is deeply sacred time to do some deep work about who you are as an individual, and where you're heading in doing so in a conscious way. So that it comes from within out, versus the pressure of society, of norms, of expectations driving what you should be doing. When I think of the liminal space of no longer not yet, it's a sacred time. It's also the time that the mythologist, Joseph Campbell said, "This is a hero's journey" or Jack Mezirow in learning and development called it disorienting dilemmas. They're really times where we think about, "Ooh, what’s next for us?" So instead of this trial and error of going out to Google, to the bar, to your friends. How do we apply and study the evidence-based approach to move towards happiness? That's what our certificate in holding positive psychology does. It takes these uncertain times and it spells out clearly, step by step over the course of nine months, so that you can really use the sacred time to craft not only how you're standing in this present moment, but how you're shaping yourself towards the end. [00:10:39] PP: How important is it for us to prioritize personal happiness in this journey, because we – especially as women, I will say, we take care of our families, we take care of our spouses, we take care of the people we work with. We're caretakers and we tend to put ourselves last. As you hit an inflection point, what happens when you begin to prioritize your own personal wellbeing. [00:11:04] MM: It’s so interesting. When I made this change for myself, and I was just miserable at work. Again, not because it was a horrible place to work, but because I had reached the end of my rope that of doing work. I had two young children and my husband was a stay-at-home dad. In one way, it was extremely selfish of me to leave that role. I was the breadwinner. I had all the benefits. Talk about fear when I decided to stay home, but I would leave in the morning, and my kids wouldn't be awake. I would come home at night and they were asleep.   [00:11:35] PP: Oh my God.   [00:11:37] MM: This isn't what I was leaning into. This isn't what I wanted. My husband was 1000% behind me saying, "Yeah, let's do something different. Let's experiment with this." So part of that task of prioritizing happiness is first, realizing that it doesn't just serve us. We serve our children best when we're in a place where we're open, and giving, and loving, not when we're stressed, and unhappy and demanding. The other thing I would say is that, many times it's hard. We think that happiness, we think that prioritizing the successes will bring us happiness. If only I got the right job, if only I had more money, if only I had more time, then I would be happy. It says backwards, because we know that happier people actually set the conditions for more success. So we're actually starting with the primary view. This is what Live Happy teachers all the time, right? This is the basic premise that if we begin with a sense of grounding, and who we are, and using our strengths of showing up in the world in a way that's pointed to the best of who we are. People will enjoy being around us, we'll get more done. So what is selfish about that? We tend to think as women, we need to be martyrs to flagellate ourselves to do more, get more done, to give more, give more, and let me sacrifice myself on the martyrdom of motherhood or womanhood. It's just – how's that going for you? [00:13:09] PP: Yeah. There's a lot of people I'm sure who are seeing themselves right now in that, because I think we all do. It's become so second nature for us. So give me this high-level view of the steps that you took, and that you've learned and you use toward creating personal happiness. [00:13:27] MM: Sure. This was at first a struggle for me, because this didn't come about until I created the Wholebeing Institute. With that creation of Wholebeing Institute in 20 years of evidence-based work, both in yoga and mind body, medicine and in the field of positive psychology, I was grappling around. What I hope to do is give you an overview of how to save two decades of trying into a really cohesive path. I wish I had this program 20 years ago; I would have saved myself a whole lot of time. So I'm going to give you in the next 15 minutes or so an overview of the steps that we take our students through in nine months. This is nine months of community connectedness, where we're all working towards our highest and best and learning what does it mean to live a happier life. It begins at the very start of the course with the understanding that who you are is more than who think yourself to be. What I mean by that is the concept of self. It isn't just one self that lives within us. We identify the different selves of sometimes, we have an ought self speaking to us. I really ought to just work harder and give more to my kids and give more to my family. I really ought to bring on the paycheck, stop complaining, be – I really ought to be grateful for what I have. This ought self voice inside of us that is one voice of a self. We have our authentic self that in this moment might be happy, sad, challenged, angry, all the things that can come up now. But we also have these things in our head, these concepts of ourselves that are called possible selves. That when we do this mental time travel into the future, we see ourselves in different ways. Sometimes we see ourselves a successful business people, or a loving mother, or becoming a loving grandmother. Or sometimes we have these possible selves that scare us, "I'm going to want to die broke" or "I'm going to retire and be all alone or won't have enough money to get by" or "I'll never find happiness" or "I'll never find a mate." These possible selves are all mental concepts in our head about either what we want, or what we're afraid of. Usually, at 2:00 a.m. in the morning is when we’re creative, right?   [00:15:49] PP: Exactly.   [00:15:50] MM: The first thing to do is identify all of those selves that live in this ecosystem of your own experience. Then, when we get them on paper through this process of working together in this course, you can then decide upon the narrative of the possible self that you want to start taking action on and working into today. So we actually pick a possible self that we need for ourselves, the ideal self. This is my ideal. Why that's important and why it's different than goals? Then we have some sort of measure, "Oh, this is the direction I'm heading. This is how I want to craft my life." This becomes a deliberate shaping instead of a, "Let me try this, and let me try that." It's a deliberate shaping of today towards a possible self. And you'll find that, "Wow! There were times when my possible self is here right now and today." That's what's so brilliant about it. As we go through day by day in the program, we realized that there were times as we work towards our ideal self, that we have to understand the concept of learning as a goal before we perform as a goal. I know early on 20 years ago, when I left my corporation, started my own business, I was do, do, do in a performance type mode. Let me do this, let me try that, let me get this done. What we're saying in the sacred time of a liminal space of moving towards your ideal that there is a learning goal before you get to the performance. That's why we take nine months to do it. It's interesting when I think, even in the last few years with the pandemic, a lot of people are in a place of asking themselves. "Oh, that was a completely different experience. What did I want to take from that and shape from that into the next steps?" Because we're all of a sudden entering back into the workforce and feeling, "Wow, that pace has picked up again. I'm right back to where I used to be. How can I shape this more than ever?" [00:17:51] PP: Right. And you wonder, am I still willing to tolerate that? Is that still what fulfills me even/ I think that has changed the way we receive work. [00:18:01] MM: So true. Part of that is, we look at the course in the possible selves. Part of it is about defining ourself, our ideal self. I call that selfing. Selfing in a way in a positive way.   [00:18:15] PP: I like that,   [00:18:17] MM: Right. How are we constructing who we are in our experience as humans, such that it's enlivening, and engaging, and it’s being an expression of divine expression of who we are at the core of our being. This is what I would call selfing. But there's also another part of this work that's equally important. This I like to call unselfing. What are we letting go of? What are we realizing that this isn’t helping us anymore, this way of thinking, of believing. I don't need to hold on to. One of the things we teach in the course is a five-pointed a methodology for wellbeing. It's called SPIRE. [00:19:01] PP: I love this methodology. Yes, explain this to us.   [00:19:04] MM: Each of those belong to a different category of wellbeing. First is spiritual, mindfulness and meaning. What is it that you believe in that's bigger than yourself, that you can let go and trust into, meaning in your life? Because if you go at this happiness thing as you're carrying everything on your own shoulders, it really becomes heavy in and of itself. It's just builds on the ego, so what do you need to let go of and spiritually connect with? Could be your religion, divine, nature, God, the peace, your physical wellbeing. Not only your nutrition, your eating, your exercise, but how are you using your body as a container to express that idea itself? How do you move in the world? I is for intellectual or inquiry. What are you interested in? Curiosity and openness to experience enlivens us, so what are those things that do that for you? What's the relational wellbeing you have? We know that relationships are the number one predictor of wellbeing, so cultivate consciously in its course. How to map your network of relations? Which ones are you using in a way that's elevating? Which ones might you have to just clip back a little bit because they're actually not serving you? The last one of the models is emotional wellbeing, speaking about the power of positive emotions and how to use them to broaden and build your experience. So that the power of the negativity bias that we all have is decreased. So that's the SPIRE model that we use to both build the positive self and unself, letting go of what we don't need. [00:20:38] PP: That's fantastic. I know you've seen it change your own life. You're seeing it change the lives of others. What point in the program does that hit? Is that about halfway through, three-fourths of the way through that you've hit this point of being able to let go? [00:20:52] MM: Well, it's a process. It's so interesting to watch people go through the course, because it is sort of this unfolding. This unfolding doesn't have a specific timeframe. We've had people start at the very beginning of the program, where we unveil that SPIRE methodology and say, "Ah. This is a whole different way of thinking about how I'm working in the day" to then moving on to really defining happiness for ourselves. Actually, in defining that happiness and understanding the components of it emotionally, using our strengths, and using a meaning, it opens us up. So we begin not only to learn the content, but connect with others, the faculty, the group, because we all go through it as a cohort together. In that conversation, community is one of the most powerful. We hear again, and again, it's the most powerful, is working in connectedness around this topic, this content. Because in module three, what we do is we put people into small groups. We call the learning pods. So, you will be working very closely with other people in the group, define how you're using that content for yourself, and talk about how your day is unfolding and how you're utilizing it. That's usually a game changer for people this unfolding of angst, not just about happiness, it's not just about content, it's really working with others who are defining their next step in life. Or imagine, if you're in a small group, someone thinking about retirement and you're working with a woman who is looking at a career change, right? Or a coach who's looking to build this in their business. Those rich conversations inform. Then, in the next module, you talk about what habits am I building on a day-to-day basis. This is all about habit change. So we spend a month on what are you doing every day that's elevating you and bringing you towards your ideal. It could be something as simple as taking pictures or something beautiful every day. Could be doing a vision board, clipping a picture for a vision board every day for 30 days. It doesn't matter what you do, but what you're doing is activating over 30 days, a habit creation. We talk a lot about the science. Then, because no man is an island and a woman is an island, we talk about relationships. How do you really have conversations and relationships that are active and constructive? Mapping out that relational list is so important to understand. It's only then, after we've gone through all of this work, that we asked you what goals are important to you. [00:23:32] PP: That's the opposite of what we’re used to. I love that. [00:23:37] MM: Most people will start with – and then, do you ever find yourself picking a million goals, because you don't know which one is the right one to pick it and try –here, it's almost – with the start of this new year, people have already probably saying, "Oh, that was the wrong goal. I don't want to do that one." But after you understand what happiness is, how you're applying it in group conversations, and how you're creating habits, then you can ask yourself, "Okay. What's important to me? What goal do I want to reach?" So we have a change model where we get clear on what we want, we activate hope. We then activate our actions, and we go forward and navigate this change going for those things that are important to us. So this is the change model. We spend a month on this. Because our goals never go the way we planned them out in our head, right? Obstacles arise, difficulties arise, irritating people arise. The next month we spend on resilience, right? Things are not going to go the way we expected. Resilience is key. How do we have a setback, and then move forward, and then life happens and we move around? How do we think about in context of mindset, and a way of moving forward where we become better at resilience, of moving, of expounding no matter what happens, we're bouncing back, or bouncing forward passed where we were before. I teach the next module, which is the module on leadership. Because at the end of the day, you're becoming a leader in your own mind? How do we think about the power of leadership in our own life? What that does that mean in context with others? So we begin to actually be a hero in our own journey instead of the victim played out by others. Then we come together again, the last module, which is where the students present their final project, which is what was most personally compelling to them. You started this question, when does the unfolding happen? Anywhere and everywhere again, and again in that process, because this human life is about unfolding. What we try and create in the connectedness of the program is a positive, upward spiral that is ever broadening and growing over time. We keep seeing more, and more and more. It doesn't end even after – [00:25:59] PP: Even after the course.   [00:26:00] MM: It doesn't end.   [00:26:02] PP: Let me ask you. What are some of the most compelling stories you've seen in people, some of the transformations that you've seen in people who have gone through your program? [00:26:11] MM: What’s been really interesting, and one of the things that we look at is, what difference does this make in your day-to-day life. There was this one woman, I remember specifically was in tears when we first got together, because she was so miserable in her very highly successful job. She's just – you could tell, she was one of these goal getters, she would just get things done. She says, "But I'm miserable. I'm just absolutely a cranky woman." Her final project was about daily blessings. She set up this mason jar in her home, so when she got together with dinner with her husband and her children, they created a family ritual of counting blessings, and they would put blessings into that jar. Talk about it and put it into the jar. And it became sort of a habit in the family. So it changed not only her life. She came back like a completely different person, because her final project was about counting blessings, not burdens. She came back a completely different person. Her family life had changed, because of that interaction. Another example are people who are coaches, and I've been approaching their coaching work from the premise of how to be a good coach. What they wanted to do is understand how to ask questions that elicited the best out of the clients that they were working with. So they actually wanted the skills of positive psychology to increase their practice of coaching. What they found happening is that, help them get clear about who they were coaching, what they were coaching people towards, so they get clarity on their own business and their own self in it. So we have a lot of solopreneurs, who – whether they have therapists, or coaches, or teachers, wellness practitioners that not only want to use this in their practice, but they use it for themselves. So they go through this program, and they realize that their life is happier as they help others in their life. [00:28:13] PP: What a benefit of – you're doing it for somebody else, but then you end up being able to give this gift to yourself and a lasting one. I love the fact that people are going through this with someone else, because I've seen that power of connection. I know, I've been in programs where, say, a woman didn't feel supported by her family, or by her husband for going through this. That is so important to have that little community. So even if the rest of your world is kind of disintegrating or not supportive, you've got that community that you've built. I imagine that that community lasts long after the program. [00:28:51] MM: Long after. We've been in business for 10 years; we still have our first small groups back 10 years ago tell me that they're still meeting as a group. I guess, this is sort of close out this conversation by asking viewers to think about. If you stayed on the trajectory of doing what you're doing now, where will you be in nine months? If you took the program and helped you shape possible self future into your ideal self, what would look different in your day, nine months from today? That's really the promise of stepping into the science of human flourishing. [00:29:24] PP: That is so powerful. Megan, we're going to tell our listeners where they can learn more about your program. We're going to send them to our website. You've got some great handouts that we're going to let them download from there for free. Tell them more about the program and let them know how they can sign up for this. As we finish this out, is there any other message that we haven't covered today that you really hope everybody hears as I walk away from this? [00:29:50] MM: I want to say thank you to you. We've worked together for years. So my first thing is just gratitude for you in the work at Live Happy. The second thing I want to say is I look forward to seeing your listeners in the course and getting to work with them, and a certificate of Wholebeing Positive Psychology. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:30:10] PP: That was Megan McDonough, founder of the Wholebeing Institute, talking about how we can take the next step to move toward happiness. If you visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab, you can download a free set of worksheets to help you identify what internal signals you're receiving about personal change, and help you think about how this can become a time of positive growth. We'll also tell you more about Megan, the Wholebeing Institute, and the certificate in Wholebeing Positive Psychology and how this nine-month program can help you walk through the changes you're experiencing. We'll also give you a special link just for live Happy listeners to learn more about the program and how you can be a part of it. Enrollment is underway now for the program that begins in March. Again, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you have enjoyed this special episode of Live Happy Presents. From Megan McDonough and myself, Paula Phelps, thank you for joining us and remember to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Making the Most of Your Time with Cassie Holmes  [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 401 of Live Happy Now. Do you feel like you have plenty of time to do all the things you need to get done? Or are you like the rest of us, who are just trying to fit it all in? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with Cassie Holmes, an award-winning teacher and researcher on time and happiness and author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most. Cassie is here today to talk about what it means to feel time poor, and why that has become so prevalent today. Then, she'll explain how we can learn to better structure our days and begin using our time, instead of losing it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:45] PF: Cassie, thank you for coming on Live Happy Now. [0:00:48] CH: Thanks so much for having me, Paula. I'm excited to chat with you. [0:00:52] PF: Well, you have written an amazing book that takes on a huge topic that so many people are dealing with today. I think, before we really dive into that, can you clarify by telling us what you mean when you say time poverty? [0:01:05] CH: Yeah. Time poverty is the acute feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it. I am sure, even if you haven't heard that term before, everyone knows exactly what that is, because they felt it is really prevalent. We conducted a national poll that showed that nearly half of Americans feel time poor. That they don't have enough time to do what they set out to do. [0:01:33] PF: That's amazing. Because I mentioned this book to my nurse practitioner when I was seeing her a couple weeks ago. She was like, “Time poor. I'm not familiar with that.” I explained, not as eloquently as you just did, and she was like, “So that's what you call it.” [0:01:48] CH: Yeah, exactly. [0:01:49] PF: Like you said, and even if they haven't heard the term, everyone has experienced this. I find myself saying a lot like, okay, our parents didn't live this way. What happened? Where did the time go? Why is it that we are all living in such a time crunch? [0:02:04] CH: Yeah. It's a really important question. Because it is such an issue. It's an issue, because it's so prevalent, as I said. It's an issue, because it has really negative consequences, which we can speak to in a second. In terms of why, why is it that we feel this way? I think there's a couple of factors that contribute to it. One is cultural. That there's been this taking on as viewing busyness, almost as a status symbol, a signal of competence, and that you're needed. Then we take on so much, because we feel like we should, right? It's that productivity orientation. Also, recognizing that it is a feeling of having too little time to do all that you want to and think you should be doing. That expectation of what we think we should and could be doing is influenced by technology, to be honest. I think that our smartphones are so useful in so many ways. They help us do those things that we should be doing, to check tasks off our to-do lists. We can order groceries at any moment. We can coordinate schedules. We can respond to emails. Also, it's the idea of all the things we could be doing at that moment. With social media, you have this constant view into other people's lives, but only their happiest moments of their lives. [0:03:32] PF: Like the highlight films. [0:03:35] CH: Right. It's like seeing. Well, you're waiting in line at the coffee shop, or at the grocery store, you're looking at your phone and seeing the amazing vacation, or the fun meal that someone is having and have like, “Oh, I could be doing that right now.” As well as we could be learning Spanish at any moment, watching a performance somewhere. Of course, there's no way that we would have time to do all this notion of what we could and should be doing. I think that that's also one of the culprits of why we feel time poor. [0:04:11] PF: Right. We're going to obviously get more into what it means to be time poor and what it's doing to us, but one thing that I found so interesting early on, that you talk about having too much free time is just as detrimental as not having enough free time. I've found that so fascinating. Can you explain why? Can you also talk about what that sweet spot is of that perfect amount of free time? [0:04:37] CH: Yeah. I think that's a really important learning from the data for all of us who feel time poor. Because in those days and in those states where we feel so time stretched, oftentimes, I know for myself, for instance, I have been like, I don't know if I can do it. I need to quit. There's no way, so I should quit this job that I love so much and I've worked so hard for it, but it's just not possible. We day dream. “If only I had all the hours of my days. Living on a beach somewhere.” [0:05:07] PF: I'd been Costa Rica picking whatever is in Costa Rica. [0:05:11] CH: Yeah. Surely, I would be happier. But is that true? In our work, we looked at with Hal Hershfield and Marissa Sharif, what's the relationship between the amount of discretionary time people have and their happiness? Among our studies, including looking at data from the American Time Use Survey. Looking for among tens of thousands of working, as well as non-working Americans, how they spent a regular day. We could calculate the amount of time they spent on discretionary activities. Across studies, we found this consistent pattern of results. Namely, it was a upside down U-shape, or like an arc, or rainbow, suggesting that on both ends of the spectrum, people are less happy. In that data, we found that folks with less than approximately two hours of discretionary time in the day, they were unhappy. Those were the time for folks. That's because heightened feelings of stress. On the other side, we saw that those with more than approximately five hours of discretionary time in the day, were also less happy. The reason is, because we are driven to be productive. We are averse to being idle. When we have all the hours of our days open and available, and we spend them with nothing to actually show for how we spent that time, it undermines our sense of purpose. With that, we feel dissatisfied. I also want to note that it's not just that paid work is a way of spending that gives us purpose. For many of us, it actually is. Volunteer work, engaging in a hobby that's really enriching and develops us, that's also worthwhile ways of spending. Actually, we see that when people spend their discretionary time in worthwhile ways, that you don't see this too much time effect. You don't see that more is better. You don't see that too much time effect. This is, I think, important for all of us, in those heady days to not quit. Don't quit. Don't sell your house and move to the island, because a weekend, you will be bored and looking for a sense of purpose. [0:07:29] PF: Yeah. As I was reading that, I was thinking about some of the research that exists on people, how the death rate goes up when people retire. It's not really associated with declining health. It really ties back into what you were talking about, when they lose a sense of purpose and their overall happiness goes down, their overall well-being goes down, I feel like, that's got to be connected. [0:07:48] CH: Absolutely. Related to that you see among retirees who actually do volunteer work, that you see higher levels of satisfaction. When you have that available time, is making sure that you invest it in ways that do feel worthwhile, that give you that sense of purpose. Again, our days living on the beach might not be quite as happy as we daydream about. [0:08:16] PF: Absolutely. One exercise that you offer that people can really help to figure out their days is time tracking. I thought this was so excellent. We'll make sure that we have a link to your site, so people can go and download these, because you have given some wonderful worksheets and exercises. Can you talk about time tracking and how it works and why it is so important in the way we see our days, and the way we start shaping our days? [0:08:42] CH: Absolutely. In terms of how to live days that feel fulfilling and satisfying, the trick is to really maximize the amount of time that's spent on activities that feel worthwhile. Minimize the amount of time that is spent on activities that feel like a waste. Then, the question is, well, what are those activities that are worthwhile? Research does time tracking to pull out tracking for that individual, or among a broad sample of people, what activities they spend their time on, how they feel over the course of their day, so they could pull out on average, what are those activities that are associated with the most positive emotion? What are those activities that are associated with most negative emotion? You see that on average, activities that are socially connecting, so whether intimately, or spending time with family and friends are the most positive. You see the most negative are commuting, working and doing housework. Maybe not surprising. What's important is that this is based off of averages. There are some folks and I would like to put myself in the category of work is actually a great source of satisfaction. Also, there are instances of socializing that are not at all fun. I suggest that people track their own time for a week. The worksheet is on my website. It's so simple. I mean, granted is somewhat tedious for that week, but it's worth it. [0:10:12] PF: It pays off. [0:10:14] CH: Is that for every half hour, write down what you're doing, the activity. Being more specific than just work, or socializing. What work activity are you doing, so that you can pull out what are those activities that are the good ones? Also, whether those ways of socializing that are the good/bad ones. Because in addition to writing down what you're doing is rating on a 10 point scale, how it made you feel coming out of it. Of satisfied, happy fulfilling. Then what's wonderful is at the end of the week, you have this fantastic personalized data set. You can look across your time and see what are those activities that were your most positive. Also, what are commonalities across them. You might see, for instance, that actually, it's not socializing per se, or being not at work. It's for me, it was like, I really value one-on-one time, whether with a family member, or a friend, or a colleague, that was actually time that was really fulfilling for me. Then I also recognized in groups, less fulfilling. But that's me. You, as you have your own data, you can really hone in on what are those activities that feel not satisfying. To dig into the commonalities to figure out why. Also, you can see just how much time you're spending across your various activities. Helping you pull out like, “Holy cow. I had no idea that I was spending that much time on social media, or watching TV, or burning like, oh, email.” It's like, my entire life is spent on email. Recognizing that, in fact, maybe not surprising for email, but for some, it's actually quite surprising that social media doesn't make them feel very good, even though they have it in their head like, “Oh, this is my fun time. This is my me time.” It's really helpful to have this information to see where you're spending your time, such that there are opportunities to reallocate away from these times that are actually somewhat of a waste, according to you, not according to me, but according to your own data, so that you can reallocate them towards those activities that are more worthwhile. In the context of time poverty, where so many of us feel we don't have enough time, this is really important information to find pockets, where actually, we do have available time. If we spend it on ways that are more fulfilling, then perhaps, and I experienced this myself and have heard from readers, perhaps at the end of the week, even if you're busy, you look back and you feel fulfilled and satisfied and happy, because you spent on these worthwhile things. [0:13:09] PF: That exercise really reminded me of when you're going to go see a nutritionist, or something, they say, write down everything you eat for a week. You're like, “Oh, I got this. I'm going to blow it away.” Then you're like, “Oh, wow. I didn't realize I really picked up that many little pieces of chocolate, or whatever.” It's like, it really does make you sit down and think, “Wow, okay. There are areas where it's not just time has been stolen from me. I am generously giving it away.” What a great way to reset and figure out how to change that. You also give tips for making chores, or things that you don't love doing. Say, housework. How do you make that more enjoyable and feel more fulfilling? [0:13:48] CH: Time tracking, or even in your reflection, there are activities that are not fun. That's just – [0:13:53] PF: We can't just quit doing them, I guess. [0:13:54] CH: You can't quit doing. They’re necessary. Unless, you want your family, or housemates to kick you out, because you're not contributing to chores. We do have to do them. I do share some strategies to make them feel more positive. One of those is bundling. This is out of research by Katie Milkman and her colleagues. It's so simple yet so effective. Is basically, you bundle this activity that you don't enjoy doing, like chores, like folding the laundry, and you bundle it with an activity that you do enjoy, such that that time that you're spending becomes more worthwhile. It becomes more fun. For example, folding the laundry, if you bundle that with watching your TV show. Actually, one of readers was saying that her husband is now bundling ironing with watching sports and he is now so excited to iron each week, because he sets up the ironing board in front of the TV and that is his dedicated time to watch sports. Commuting, that was one of those other activities that is just so painful, because you're waiting through it. You just want to get there already, and it feels like a waste. During your commute, if you're driving, listen to an audiobook. Or if you're on the subway, or bus, read a book. When in this work on time poverty, I ask people to complete the sentence, I don't have time to. One of a very frequent response is, I don't have time to read for pleasure. If every time you got in your car, or that you're on the train going to work, you are “reading,” then you'll get through a book every week or so. All of a sudden, that time that was a chore, or felt like a waste feels more worthwhile and fun. [0:15:49] PF: One thing that you bring out and we all know this is true that when we feel pressed for time, the first things that go out the window seem to be those things that are going to make us feel better and are good for us, things like exercise, things like preparing our meals, so we're eating more healthy. How do we change our mindset and realize that those are the things we need to schedule in first, so that we don't just disregard them? [0:16:12] CH: Exactly. Exercise is a really important one, because exercise is an activity that has direct implications, not only for your health, but your emotional well-being. It's a mood booster. It is very effective at offsetting anxiety, which so many people are suffering from. Also, offsetting depression. It makes us feel really good about ourselves. Once we do make that time, we realize that we can do it. Actually, in terms of our feeling of being time poor, a part of that is that we don't have the confidence that we can accomplish what we set out to do, given the resources that we have, namely the time that we have. If you actually spend your time in ways that increase your self-efficacy, like exercise, then and I can speak to myself and I share this as an anecdote in the book is that, like you said, when I feel busy, my morning run is the first thing I give up. When I make the time and I'm out there running, it's like, “Oh, my gosh.” Thank, gosh, I did, because I'm feeling good. I feel like, I can take on the day on those important things. With that sense of accomplishment, it expands my sense of how much time I have available to do and complete what I set out to do. Both exercise, as well as doing acts of kindness. I have research that shows that when we actually spend time to give a little to someone else, that increases our sense of accomplishment, and self-efficacy. It actually increases our sense of time affluence, too. But it's important that it's giving time, not that time is being taken from you. [0:18:07] PF: You're an expert at this. How do you tell yourself, go ahead, invest the time, do the exercise, take the time to prepare your meals, whatever it takes? We can make a habit out of it. Once we get into that groove after 30 or 60 days, it's not that difficult, but how do we then, we're at this time of the year where people are trying to develop new habits anyway, so this might as well be one. How do we do that? [0:18:30] CH: It's such an exciting time of the year as people with that fresh start, looking for it and becoming more intentional. Actually, towards the end of the book, I have this chapter on time crafting. Pulling all of the strategies together from across the book, how do you design your week, such that you are protecting, carving out time for those things that matter, putting them into your schedule, so my Monday morning run. In many cases, it's the time and investing in those relationships that are so important to us that often do get neglected, when we're in a hurry. Putting those things into the schedule first. Protecting them. Also, placing them in that important work that you love so much. Your deep-thinking work. Put it into your schedule, so that it doesn't get filled by unnecessary meetings, or even responding to email. So that you make sure that you do have that time in the part of your day where you're most alert and most creative, and then seeing, consolidating the activities that you don't enjoy doing, because as we start activities and our anticipation of those activities have a big effect. If we condense them, then all the bad stuff, it's less painful if you get it all done together. Whereas watching TV, for instance, that first half hour is great. Five hours in on binging, less enjoyable. In fact, quite anxiety producing, because you feel really guilty and bad about yourself and it's not even fun at that point anyway. Putting those half hours and being really intentional. I do talk a lot about how to design your week, so that you are making time for the things that matter. Highlighting and increasing the impact of those activities that really matter. This is so important to do, because – Can I share an analogy that I think is – [0:20:35] PF: Please do. [0:20:36] CH: - really helpful for folks to have in their heads? I continue to touch back on it, when I'm making my own time saving, or spending decisions. It's an analogy about prioritization. It's nicely depicted in a short film that I share in actually the first day of my class that I teach to MBAs on how to be happy applying the science of happiness. In the film, a professor walks into his classroom and on the desk, he puts this large, clear jar. Then into the jar, he pours golf balls up to the very top, and he asked the students, is the jar full? The students nod their head, because it looks full. Nope. Then he pulls from a bag on the side, pebbles, and he pours the pebbles into the jar and they fill the spaces between the golf balls, reached the very top and asked the students, “Is the jar full?” They’re like, “Yes.” But he's like, “Nope.” Then he pours sand into the jar and it fills all those spaces between the golf balls, between the pebbles, up to the very top and he asked the students, “Is the jar full?” By this point, they're laughing. They’re like, “Yes.” He explains like, this jar is the time of your life. The golf balls are all those things that really matter to you. Your relationships with your family members, your friendships, that work that you truly care about. The pebbles are those other important things in your life, like your job, your house, the sand is everything else. The sand is all of that stuff that just fills your time without you even thinking about it, whether it's social media. For me, the email inbox. For some, it’s TV. It’s like, those never-ending requests that come in that it's easier to say yes to than no. Even though, you don't really care about what that task is. What's really important to note is that had he put the sand into the jar first, all of the golf balls would not have fit. That is if we let our time get filled, it will get filled with sand. We won't have had time, we wouldn't have spent the time on those things that really matter to us. We have to identify what are those golf balls, put them into our schedules first. Protect, prioritize that time. Then the sand will fill the rest, absolutely. We need to be really intentional and thoughtful. The time tracking exercise that I mentioned was one way to really identify, what are those golf balls for you, such that when you are designing your week, you're doing the time crafting part of it. That goes into your schedule first. That morning run, or whatever your form of exercise is actually really important. Put that into your schedule for us. Because actually, for exercise for instance, not only does it influence how you feel while you're doing it. You get that mood boost and sense of self efficacy, but also it colors how you experience the rest of your day. It has a really big impact, beyond just the experience itself. [0:23:34] PF: That is so huge. I know we have to let you go, but there was one more strategy you talked about that I had never heard of. Absolutely fell in love with, and really want you to share this with our listeners. That's the idea of time left. That was so powerful. Can you talk about what that technique is and why it works so beautifully. [0:23:55] CH: Yeah. I'm so glad you asked about that, because I do think it's a really important one. It is recognizing that some of those golf balls are really, actually from simple, ordinary moments in our life. These everyday moments, like a coffee date for me with my daughter, or having dinner with your family. Or, it's just these everyday moments that sometimes we're moving through them, because they're so every day that we expect they will continue to happen every day. But that's not true. Our time is passing, our time is fleeting, and circumstances in our life are changing. If those sorts of activities that bring joy involve someone else, circumstances in their life, too, are changing. One way to make it so that we do pay attention, we prioritize time and pay attention during these sorts of simple joys that are right there and the time we're already spending is to count the times left. Picking a experience that brings you joy and calculating, how many times have you done it in your life so far? The next step is to calculate, how many times do you expect to have do this activity in the future, accounting for the fact that circumstances in your life will change, if it involves another, circumstances in the other person's life will change. The last step is to calculate of the total times doing this activity in your life, what percentage do you have left? More often than not, it's way less than you think. Initially, it's sad. But the benefits of seeing this is really worth that initial sadness, is because what it does is it makes me protect the time. Then also, it influences how you experience that time, knowing that it is limited, that it is so precious, we remove those distractions, so that phone gets put away, that constant to-do list that's running in our heads, that gets quieter, because we realize that this is the time of our life that really matters, and to really make it count. It doesn't have to be a whole lot. All of us who are time poor, it doesn't have to be a lot of time for these activities to have a really big impact on how satisfied we feel in our weeks, how fulfilled we feel in our lives. I think that the counting times left is a very lenient and impactful exercise to make us spend our time on the activities that matter, as well as make the most of those times when we're spending them. [0:26:29] PF: I would say, that is correct, because that, like I said, it just stopped me when I read that. That's absolutely incredible. This book is so full of strategies, information, hope, techniques. What is it that you really hope readers take away from it? [0:26:46] CH: I hope that people just become more intentional in the time that they're spending and to really soak up. There's so much happiness and joy right there that's available, no matter how time poor, no matter other constraints that we have facing our lives, that there is a lot of happiness and joy available to us, if we are that intentional about the way that we spend our time. [0:27:13] PF: Cassie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We're going to tell our listeners more about your book, where they can find it. Thank you for writing this. This is something we all need. It's presented so incredibly well. I really appreciate it. [0:27:28] CH: Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. It was a treat. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:27:35] PF: That was Cassie Holmes, talking about how to make the most of our time. If you'd like to learn more about Cassie and her book, download some free worksheets to help you plan your time better, or follow her on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. While you're on the website, be sure to drop by the Live Happy Store and check out our great selection of Live Happy gear and merch, so you can show the world how you live happy. That is all we have time for today. We will meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discovering the Power of Stillness with Jeanine Thompson  [INTRODUCTION]   [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 399 of Live Happy Now. After a busy holiday season, we all could use a bit of stillness in our lives, and this week's guest is going to tell us how to find it. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Jeanine Thompson, a former clinical psychotherapist and Fortune 50 executive, whose new book, 911 From Your Soul, is all about how to learn to listen for what you need and discover your greatest potential. Today, she's here to talk about how important it is to learn to do nothing and listen to the lessons that are waiting for us in that stillness. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Jeanine, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:47] JT: I am so excited and delighted to be with you, Paula, and your listeners. [00:00:53] PF: We're delighted to have you. Our timing on this is so perfect. It's the beginning of the year. People are really being reflective and thinking about what they want to do differently, and your idea of stillness is so important. But it's a word that's become almost foreign in this busy world that we live in. I mean, we are always on. It's 24/7. So I guess before we talk about how to even accomplish that, can you tell us what you mean when you mention stillness? [00:01:22] JT: Yeah. So stillness, to me, means awareness, shifting our attention from our busy brain, our 70,000 thoughts a day that data says we have, shifting our awareness from our head into the inner intelligence, our inter Internet. Typically, I tell people place one hand on your heart center, one on your sacral or near your belly button, and just close your eyes. We follow a touch in the body. So it'll help you move from the hamster wheel into the eternal infinite wisdom that is just waiting to support and guide you. [00:02:08] PF: So is stillness a physical app? Or is it all in your brain? Or where does stillness take place? [00:02:17] JT: I think it's a multi-level experience, right? So I think that there is a physical shifting of attention from the busy brain to the core of your body. I think it's an energetic intention. I usually tell people, say the words I am still. Even if your brain keeps rattling on about what you got to do or what you didn't do sufficiently the hour before, there's an energetic intention to say I am still. When you connect with prana, that vital life force consciously moving in our body, you're making a spiritual connection to say, “I want to connect with the truth of who I am.” So it's this multi-level both practice and experience. [00:03:12] PF: It doesn't need to take a whole lot of time. It's something you can do real quickly. Like if there's anxiety, if there's something going on in your life, you can do these little quick hits to get your stillness. Is that correct? [00:03:24] JT: Yes. Thank you for saying that. That is the truth, and it's really important because I had a narrative. My narrative used to sound like there is no way I can be still. You don't understand how busy I am. You do not live inside this head. It never shuts up. I was in a plane 2 to 300,000 miles a year, a single mom. Stillness was unproductive. By the way, I can't do it. So we must have a narrative that says we just can't be still. Yet it's the most natural act. It's how we're born in stillness. It's actually the truth of our highest nature, peace, quiet, stillness. We just have been duped a little bit along the way. We got seduced by all the external expectations and invitations that constantly moving meant worthiness, meant productivity. So everybody can do it. I tell people, if you are like me, and you have a narrative that says you can't, just commit to 30 seconds. [00:04:35] PF: Oh, wow. We can do that. [00:04:37] JT: We can do that. Anybody can do that, right? 30 seconds to two minutes. Close your eyes. The brain data actually shows on brain imaging, if we don't take a break every hour, our stress levels are significantly higher. So just close your eyes. Feel the breath. Feel that hand on the belly expand and fall and expand and fall. So everyone can do it. If that busy brain of yours kicks up and says, “You must do this. Don't forget to do this.” I want you simply to say, “Noted.” Don't fight the thoughts. If we try and stop them or fight them, they get more persistent. So simply say, “Noted.” Retouch, hand on heart center, hand on belly, feel the breath again. So do that for sure in the morning, ideally before you even hop out of bed, if you can. Then ideally, we would say after every transition. So after we finish this meeting, I will go into breath, just as I began before you with breath. That's true for people at home. If you're working from home, between every kind of transition or shift, close your eyes and practice being still. [00:06:00] PF: And does that become a habit for you now? Because you've been practicing it, you teach it, and you definitely walk your talk. So is it something that comes naturally? Or do you have to remind yourself? [00:06:11] JT: No. Now, it's like brushing my teeth. I would never leave the house without brushing my teeth first. I don't begin my day without being still and getting centered in who I want to be and how I want to show up in the world that day. That's very different for me. I used to get up to my device. What emails did I need to answer? What does my day look like, kids needing love and attention as they woke up in the morning? I still will do all those things, but I do them differently. I make sure I can start my day in stillness and with consciously connecting within. [00:06:57] PF: What a huge difference that makes. I know that I've started a practice of not turning my phone on until after I am done with breakfast. You cannot imagine. Well, maybe you can. How crazy this makes some people. It's not that their need is so urgent that I address it. It's that they can't imagine like why are you not talking until eight in the morning. It makes a huge difference in the way my day feels as I enter it. [00:07:24] JT: Absolutely. Listen, we even know that I'm the beauty of the and girl. We know that from science. We know it from brain imaging. We know it from the High Performance Institute, that when you start with self, you connect with self first. You experience more satisfaction during the day, more calm during the day, better productivity. You're not reacting all day to someone else’s agenda. But then I would say, energetically, you will come to feel a sense of taking command. What really matters today? What are the real priorities? Calming the body, it's incredible. It really is life-changing, actually, that simple act of being with a breath and being still. [00:08:13] PF: Yeah. I want to talk in a moment about the benefits of practicing stillness. But I'm really interested in hearing how you discovered the importance of stillness because to your point, you were traveling. You were a busy professional. You're a single mom. I mean, it's like how did you go from that pace to becoming the go-to person on stillness? [00:08:34] JT: Yeah. Thankfully, it was through the intelligence of the universe. In all candor, I wouldn't have gotten there on my own. Had my other solutions, had always been on call almost 24/7 because I had an international role, had that continued to work for me in my life, I probably wouldn't have changed. I think that's true for your listeners too. Sometimes, we know something needs to be shifted. But honestly, until life starts to get really loud or like, “I'll get to it, but not today.” [00:09:06] PF: Right. [00:09:07] JT: Right? So the practice of stillness came through a time I was going through a 911 in my soul, from my soul. It was a time when the details of my life looked really good from the outside. People would just like, “Gosh, wow. Big job. She loves her kids. She's got a great relationship, really cool travel, the accoutrements of success.” Yet every day, I was successful yet unfulfilled. I had this little whisper that said, “Yoo-hoo, there's something more for you. There's something more through you.” Make a long story short, I ignored the whispers because it wasn't in line with my human plan. I wasn't to leave that job until my kids graduated, until I had reached a certain security. I had a human plan. Then there was the plan of my soul. Ultimately, my familiar solution just didn't work, and I was led to yoga and Reiki and energy work, which is hilarious because I was an evidence-based psychotherapist before I was a Fortune 50 executive. I thought it was woo-woo. I thought I did not have time for this. It taught me that I wasn't just a human being. I was actually this spiritual being traversing in a wonder suit of a body. [00:10:34] PF: I love that. [00:10:35] JT: It taught me that I was living my life through my false self, through a lens of not enough. Don't rest. It's not enough. There's always something to do. I needed to be more. So ultimately, it was through my life kind of falling apart on some levels, my familiar identity being shaken. When our familiar solutions are shaken, we’re invited, but it felt forced at the time to turn – [00:11:06] PF: Absolutely. [00:11:09] JT: To tune inward. I now realize that that yearning, that restlessness, those challenges weren't really a crisis at all. They were the greatest invitation of my life, masquerading in the details of discomfort. [00:11:28] PF: That's so important to hear because I think that happens to us a lot, where our plan is not working out according to plan, and we keep trying to force it. It’s difficult, and it's almost unnatural to us to sit back and say, “Okay, what is being taught to me? What am I supposed to do for next steps,” instead of, “What do I want to do as my next steps?” That's a change in thinking that takes some time. [00:11:55] JT: It's a huge change in thinking. I call it earth view and soul view. In our earth view, we say, “I got a problem. Fix it. I've got an issue. Find the solution.” Go external. Go to the experts. Go to your friends. Go to somebody. Got a problem. Fix it. The soul view says, “You already know the answer. Rest. Be in the discomfort. Talk to it. Say what do you got. What do you have to say? What do you want me to know?” It's about allowing. It's about resting in the stillness of your breath or resting in the stillness of a sunset or perhaps resting in the stillness of a freeing run, anything that softens that busy mind. When you rest in that stillness, the treasure trove of intelligence you actually are starts bubbling up and whispering. You'll start to get an inspired idea. You'll see number sequences. You'll see animals. You'll be in a store, and you'll overhear something, and you're like, “Ha, that's it.” All of a sudden, that shift from outward is my answer to tuning inward becomes your greatest lighthouse, your greatest guiding path to your highest life, honestly. [00:13:25] PF: Don't you think it’s interesting because we resist that? It's like I want the answers. I want the answers and the thing that will ultimately give us those answers. We intrinsically know that we can get the answers that way, but we push against it. It's like, “Nope, not going to sit down and be still with myself. I'm not going to listen to what's going on because I've got too much going on in my head.” So we resist it. [00:13:49] JT: We absolutely resist it until we can't. So that's what happened to me. There was a time where I actually had heard my truth. I heard the inner whispers. I heard I was to be like a matchmaker for the soul, helping people actually reunite with the part of themselves they've lost sight of. Most of my folks were over functioners. They were too much of a caretaker or a peacekeeper, lived for others, and they truly lost sight of themselves. They got to midlife and they're like, “Who am I? What made me come alive?” So avoidance numbing, external solutions, we'll all do them for a while. But I promise you, for all of the listeners, there will come a time where life is going to say there's a greater possibility for you. So I'm going to get a little noisy. I'm going to get a little uncomfortable. But ultimately, you long to meet you, and I'm going to help you remember the truth of who you are. [00:15:00] PF: That's so powerful. Can you talk about what the benefits are when we begin to practice stillness? Let's talk because there are so many. Your book is just such a magical guide to all the things that this can unlock. Let's talk about some of those benefits. [00:15:15] JT: So one of them is clarity. This is – It’s a noisy world. [00:15:20] PF: Yeah. And it’s getting noisier. [00:15:21] JT: It is. It’s exquisitely beautiful. There's so much beauty and love every day and a lot of heightened division, a lot of struggle. So there's a lot of and. I think one of the first benefits is clarity. No one else, and I don't care what their expertise is, I don't care who they are, will never know your unique truth. So one is discernment of personal truth. Secondly is access. We have this treasure trove. It is amazing jewels of the soul; kindness, compassion, love, infinite intelligence. Truly, this wisdom of all ages resides within us, and it connects us to – I would call it the field of all possibility. So it gives us an access that we cannot access in our normal 70,000 thoughts a day. Our mind is going to go to what's wrong. I got to fix it. I got to protect, right? That's our mind. Our soul says, “You are literally everything you seek. Rest, dear one, and I'll show you the way.” [00:16:34] PF: It’s beautiful. [00:16:35] JT: Alignment. When we pause, whether it's 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is, we get to choose again. We can choose a higher quality thought. We can choose a higher quality action. Especially when we get triggered, most of it's automatic. 40 to 90 percent of what we do every day was repetition. It's behaviors that are habitual. So stillness helps us choose a better choice. Rest and renewal. I think the breath is a sanctuary. It's better than your best vacation. It is more peaceful than anywhere you've ever been. It can be a grand adventure. I mean, it is just this sanctuary of goodness, and we all need it. We're all actually trying too hard. If we'd allow just a little bit of faith and willingness, we can let go of the steering wheel. Or at least let go of their grip. [00:17:39] PF: We don't feel like we ever can. There are so many people who feel like, “If I take my hands off the wheel for a moment, this whole thing, and there's about 30 cars connected to it.” [00:17:48] JT: The house of cards. [00:17:49] PF: It’s going to crash. [00:17:51] JT: Oh, man. Do I have empathy of any one of you listening right now who is saying you don't understand. I can't do this, or it's all going to fall apart. I wish I could look you in the eyes and give you a giant hug and say, “I actually do understand. I don't understand your unique life circumstances. However, I really understand the reluctance and the fear of letting go because you're worried your life is going to crash.” So I totally understand that, and then I'm going to ask you to say, name five times because I bet she can. Name five times in your life where kind of the synchronicity happened. You met this person who opened up a door. You drove down the street, and you don't even remember stopping at the stop signs. Or you could’ve hit the car in front of you. By the grace of whatever you believe, the great mystery in life, the universe, you didn't hit that car. There have been so many times in our life. There's this brilliance that weaves together our life experiences. It's our training ground. It's our training ground to live our highest possibility, and it's a falsehood. I believed. I made myself sick in my 20s with ulcerative colitis. Because I was so perfectionistic, I thought he had to control everything. So it was a lot of lessons learned along the way that, actually, as powerful as I am, I am a co-creative agent, and there's also something else going on. There's a little something bigger than me going on here. Thank God, we never travel alone. [00:19:37] PF: Yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. What a powerful thing to recognize. You and I talked about this a little bit before we started recording that, that our age kind of factors into it. Because when we're younger, when we're in our youth, in our 20s, and even into our 30s, we can go on autopilot. There's so much that we can just like, “Here's our path. We know we're supposed to go to college, get these jobs, do this, start this family.” Then you hit this point where it's like, “Wait, I've been on this treadmill, and I didn't even mean to jump on this particular treadmill.” [00:20:11] JT: Yeah. You know what? Days turned into decades like in a blink of an eye. So I think for a lot of people in their 40s and beyond, there's this sense of urgency like, “Wow, I cannot believe how fast it's gone.” They want to make sure that they don't have regret, honestly, that they look back. I do a lot of hospice work from my – The last 30 years. I learned from my hospice patients, in particular, that they never wanted to look back and said, “Geez, I wish I would have worked a little more,” which they usually will say the moments that mattered most were the moments they connected with something meaningful for themselves, connected something meaningful, or shared a meaningful connection with someone else. It was truly the small things, the ordinary things that became extraordinary. [00:21:16] PF: When we start practicing stillness, intentionally practicing stillness, do we start finding that more? Do we start recognizing that? Is it already there, and we just recognize it more? What really happened? [00:21:28] JT: It's already there. It is in our truth. We really – Our pure essence is simply love, joy, peace, wisdom, compassion, those jewels of the soul. That's our true essence. The longer we were in earth school, I call this gig earth school, we got encumbered. We kind of got covered up. We were told by the outside world, “You are not enough. You don't dress right. You don't weigh the right thing. You don't have the right bank account. You don't have the right education. You don't have the right house.” If you turn on the news, it's some version of you are not enough. So our real work here in earth school is to uncover all of that gunk, all of those old messages, all of those old narratives. That's why it's so important to sink into the deeper truth and listen to what the highest self in you wants to whisper. [00:22:28] PF: I love that. So another thing that I want to make sure we touch on is you talk about stillness that can be active. So this is great news. There are some people who the idea of just sitting down and being still is actually kind of horrifying. [00:22:45] JT: Yes. We totally get that. [00:22:47] PF: So explain this. Tell us because you talk about it can be music, running, dancing, weightlifting. I mean, this is great news for a lot of people. [00:22:55] JT: So I'm the beauty of the and girl. There are quiet and there are active. So quiet might be with a breath, might be with a sunset, might be with a flickering candle, etc. Then there are more active pursuits if they get into a place of transcendence. What I mean by that is a lot of people will say when they go on a run, there's a certain point where their mind softens, and they just feel more free, right? In dance, there's a certain point. You're almost not listening to the music, and you're just moving, right? So the active pursuits are active pursuits that also allows for an emptying. So the hamster wheel is not spinning. You do you and commit to starting with 30 seconds to two minutes of just being with your breath. So let's do the beauty of the and. If you really want to be active in physical exercise, that's different than an active pursuit that softens the mind. Does that make sense? [00:23:59] PF: Oh, interesting. Yeah. [00:24:00] JT: Agree to learn to still again. See, it's a falsehood we've taught ourselves, just like I did. I can't do this. I can't sit still. I’ve got too much to do. It's not true. We've got to tell a new narrative. This might feel funky. It might feel a little weird. I might not even be still. I'm practicing stillness, and I'm not still. I'm a little antsy in my chair. My little head is racing away. That's okay. I promise you in time, if you just commit to learning to practice stillness with the breath and whatever way you want, in time, you will start to reclaim more of your natural true nature. [00:24:44] PF: What kind of changes do you see like the subtle? We talked about the benefits of it, but what kind of changes can people kind of look for that like, okay, this is adjusting me, and I'm thinking and living differently? [00:24:57] JT: I think that they'll come to what I call expanded solutions, kind of things that they had never thought of before. All of a sudden, they get an inspired idea that maybe takes them down a path they would have never have went to. So there's some inspired ideation that happens. There is a sense of empowerment. It's like, “Oh, my gosh. I always thought it was outside of me. And now, I recognize that it is within me.” There is – And this is a key. One of the things we're all searching for is what is sacred to us. What is precious to us? When we get to this stage in life, I have people ask the question. If you don't like the word sacred, use the word precious. What is sacred within me? Just rest with the answer. Either that day or that moment, you're going to start to notice maybe even something in a magazine or on a billboard or whatever. It’s like, “Wow. [inaudible 00:25:57]. I want to go play with that again.” When you start asking those questions, what’s sacred within me, around me, and beyond me, you are going to start to feel a spark of feeling a little more alive, more empowered, more of your natural true self. [00:26:18] PF: That is so wonderful. What do you hope that the people listening today who are hearing your voice, what do you want them to walk away from this with? [00:26:27] JT: Oh, my gosh. I want you to get so excited because there's somebody you have been longing your whole life to meet, and it's you. It's your true nature. It is that part of you that knows exactly where you're headed, what this year is about, what this life is about, how to surf through the seasons of life with more ease and more joy. So I'm excited for you to reconnect with the deeper truth of who you are. [00:27:02] PF: That's excellent. Jeanine, thank you, again, for sitting down with me today. You have so much to teach us. This was a wonderful experience, and I really appreciate your time today. [00:27:12] JT: Thank you. It's been a gift to be with you and gift to be with your listeners as well. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:23] PF: That was Jeanine Thompson, talking about how to discover stillness. If you'd like to learn more about Jeanine and her book, 911 From Your Soul, or follow her on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, we invite you to sign up for Jeanine’s free email course that will walk you through the steps to help you learn to listen and lean into the stillness. 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: Create Your Fun Habit With Mike Rucker  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 398 of Live Happy Now. It's a brand new year, and we're all thinking about creating new habits. So why not make yours a fun one? I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Mike Rucker, an esteemed organizational psychologist whose new book, The Fun Habit, looks at how the pursuit of joy and wonder can change your life. He's here to talk about how we can learn to prioritize fun, and how that can make us both happier and more productive. And as you'll learn, it can also improve the lives of those around us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:39] PF: Mike, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:43] MR: Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:44] PF: We've been talking about this for a while. We had to wait for your book to get out. Just talking before the show, there were so many delays because of COVID. So first of all, congratulations on release of The Fun Habit. [00:00:57] MR: Thank you so much. Yeah. It's been a long time coming, so I'm excited to be – [00:01:00] PF: Yeah, it has. It has. I feel like we've been talking about it for a couple years, at least. [00:01:04] MR: Yeah. The pub date’s gotten moved twice. Once, it was like a soft one. Then this last one, June to January, was a hard one. You know, like – [00:01:13] PF: But we’re here now. [00:01:15] MR: Yeah. That’s right. [00:01:16] PF: What a great way to – [00:01:16] MR: [inaudible 00:01:16] are, right? [00:01:17] PF: Yeah. What a way to kick off the year. It's so interesting because you have such a distinguished background, including being a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. So from the outside, we would expect that you'd have the whole happiness thing down. But as we learn in your book, that was not the case. So can you kick us off by talking about how you learned to recognize the distinction between happiness and having fun? [00:01:43] MR: Yeah. I'm still a believer in happiness, right? So I’ll explain that. But the backstory is I was a charter member. Positive psych could have been something prior to that organization coming together. Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow years before. 2009 is when that kind of came together. It was really Marty Cyclamen that kind of created the movement, him and Ed [inaudible 00:02:08]. I think authentic happiness had come out the year prior, and there was this need for it, right? The movement was doing something positive. Up until that point, clinical psychology was really just to treat deficits, and there are some amazing tools for folks that are living a life well to create things to make it better. So those tools were certainly fairly useful to me during that time, up until 2016. I still benefit from gratitude journaling, I still keep a mindfulness practice, and I still value happiness. What had gone awry was I had become overly concerned with my own happiness. So I'll explain that distinction, and that is really when something goes wrong. In my case, it was the death of my younger brother quite suddenly and just having to process that all at once. Then these two aren't related. But a couple months later, after years of being an endurance athlete, not professional or anything, but really just enjoying that and that way to mitigate, I've always had low level anxiety. I haven't needed medication. I've used fitness to mitigate anxiety. I identified as a runner, for sure, and I was told I had advanced osteoarthritis, probably due to an injury. It wasn't genetic. But it probably tore my labrum and just a 220-pound guy doing a couple Ironmans. [00:03:38] PF: Right. That'll start doing some [inaudible 00:03:39] there. [00:03:40] MR: Yeah. But because it happened at such a young age, I was told I shouldn't run again. So I lost my younger brother, found out that this identity I had as a runner was destroyed, and then this third thing happened. It wasn't really misfortune, but I just finished my doctor [inaudible 00:03:56] and graduated. My wife, who had supported me through those six years of academic work, we had two children during that process, so you can only imagine. [00:04:05] PF: Wow. That was home. [00:04:07] MR: Yeah, right. Again, over optimizing for a lot of stuff. She got an amazing opportunity, and this amazing opportunity manifested and wanted to have her back. But I was still going through a lot of stuff, and that essentially moved us away from our support network of family and friends. So I wanted to figure out how to will myself to be happy, and the more I was doing that paradoxically, I was becoming really unhappy. Because I am a researcher, I identified fairly quickly that something wrong was happening, and I was getting close to probably low-level clinical depression. But I understood that there was some sort of awareness that I was doing it to myself, and I don't know if I would call it serendipitous. It was just more happenstance and good timing. Emerging research was coming out that you're probably familiar with. A professor I liked a lot is Dr. Iris Mauss out of the University of California Berkeley. But her work has been replicated now that here in the Western world, folks like myself, how I found myself in 2016, that are kind of just always chasing happiness, have a pretty direct line to being pretty unhappy, paradoxically. So, wow, okay, so here's sort of empirical evidence to suggest what's happening to me. But if that's the case, what can I do? Because I really want to get back to being happy. Over time, it started to change my perception. Like, okay, life can suck sometimes, but I have more control over sort of shifting my life to the good side, rather than kind of wallowing in this act of rumination and introspection, which is essentially wasting energy, waiting for happiness to come, when I can kind of move in that direction and not necessarily chase it. Just live a joyful life that things that enrich me like pro-social behavior, hobbies that really connect me to things that I like, make me realize that it's not just about myself. Again, just understand that I do have some autonomy over my time. [00:06:09] PF: As adults, even though we all want to have fun, we don't make it a priority. So what in your research did you find is keeping us from doing that? [00:06:19] MR: A lot of it's rooted in the Puritan work ethic that's still pervasive here in the West. Quite literally, we think our self-worth comes from how we can contribute, right? What's unfortunate is there's been this kind of fast evolution from what Daniel Pink calls algorithmic work to heuristic work, whether – You could call that the knowledge economy, whatever you want. Unfortunately, in this new paradigm of work, we don't know where the goalposts are, right? Also, because of advances in technology, we're always kind of connected to our workplace and that – [00:06:54] PF: Yeah. Our workdays do not end, where like we just fall asleep. [00:06:57] MR: Yeah. I mean, from the moment we wake up till our head hits the pillow, there are a lot of people that are always on their phone. If they get a notification, they feel like it's a prime to have to answer it. Because of that, even when we think we're in a state of leisure or a state of our domestic duties like enjoying time with our wife or our kids, half the time, it's still an extension of work because if our phone buzzes, we pick it up. What we know is that, subconsciously, that essentially just becomes an extension of work. We've never created this transition ritual from work to leisure. So the rub there is that the same way that we champion people that lived in a state of sleep deprivation in the ‘90s, like – [00:07:44] PF: Oh, yeah. I remember that. [00:07:46] MR: Yeah. I fell victim to it. I never took down the post because I didn't want to be inauthentic. But if you search deep in my website, I think I was like, “Oh, Gary Vee is amazing.” And like, “Yeah.” [00:07:57] PF: If I can do four hours of sleep a week. [00:07:57] MR: That’s right. Yeah. So we now know that's asinine, right? Like the research is in. If you're not getting sleep, a year later, you're not even going to be able to work, right, because that is a direct line to all sorts of physiological and psychological ills. We're now finding that that is true. This is emerging research. So I like kind of being on the forefront of it. Emerging research is suggesting that when we're not engaged in leisure, so whatever that means, if we're really being honest, there's two to five hours a day that we could potentially recapture, depending on where we are in life. We're not doing that. What we're doing is essentially pacifying that time, a lot of times. If you don't believe me, just look at the health meter on your iPhone or your Android and see how much time you're on social media apps or some sort of mobile game. Ultimately, we know that those seem to be fun. But when we look back and ask ourselves, how did you spend that time? Tell me what you saw on social media between the hours of 4:00 and 6:00? Your phone says that you're on that. There will just be a shoulder shrug because that essentially displaced boredom or discomfort, or it wasn't something that really added to your betterment or attracted joy. [00:09:14] PF: How do you build in little pieces of fun? Because it's not like you have to take a vacation. It's not like you even need to take 30 minutes. You can do something in five minutes to add a little fun to your day, and that's going to really change your brain. Can you talk about how we work that in? [00:09:31] MR: You need to start by creating space, and then we're going to get into play model. So we'll discuss how to do that. But I think, first, you need to look at activities that aren't adding anything to your life, right? In the book, I call them the nothing, like this time that's just contributing. Because I think where positivity kind of got off the rails, now we term it toxic positivity, is that everything needs to be additive, right? So kind of falling back on my understanding of system design, it's just so hard for us to remove things, right? Because that's just – We inherently think that adding stuff on is always better. So we start by figuring out what are those moments that we can capture back. So a simple one could essentially just be your lunch hour, right? Like a lot of us will just kind of hang out. If we're working in a workspace, we'll just kind of hang out and let that hour pass. So I like this metal frame of like if you can't go on holiday, maybe you can take a whole hour, kind of playing into your point, right? [00:10:32] PF: That’s great. [00:10:33] MR: So can you schedule a time with a friend, if you're more of an introvert? Because fun doesn't have to be a high arousal activity. Like I love [inaudible 00:10:40] in this area, right? Like it could just be enjoying a book, but recapturing something so that you can enjoy yourself in a pleasant way, rather than just kind of trying to get through the next hour. So you're exactly right. Like, what are those opportunities, especially if you – A time for where you can add in elements. Now, I will be careful on that. I talked about this in the book that task switching is definitely another way to become unhappy, right? We know that if you're kind of just always moving around from task to task, even if they're pleasurable, the cognitive load of that can just zap your energy. We don't want to over optimize your life, but we do want to create the space so that you can exchange things that really aren't adding anything to your betterment, and figure out how you can have more joy in those spaces. [00:11:28] PF: Yeah. I think that could be a fun exercise in itself to kind of step back and say, “What is it that brings me fun? What are things that I want to do?” Because I think so many of us jump on this treadmill. If someone says, “What do you do for fun,” it’s deer in the headlights. They're like, “I don't know. I haven't had fun for a while.” So I think too there's that part, just that brainstorming of what brings me joy, what is fun for me. [00:11:55] MR: Yeah, exactly. You're spot on, and that's like another one of those interesting headwinds that I mentioned, like the resistance to that, because it does seem super silly, right? Like so many of us, I know how to have fun. Yeah, you know. But you need to remind yourself. [00:12:08] PF: But what do you do for it? Yeah. [00:12:10] MR: Yeah, that's right. So being premeditated and just making a simple list, one, it's fun if you approach the activity with curiosity, right? Like not to stay and like, “Ah, I can't believe I have to do this to have fun.” But like, “Hey, let me remind myself of what lights me up,” right? So that exercise of brainstorming can be fun in and of itself. Even if it's not fun, it's sort of a quick, necessary step because you want to remember. What are the things that really did bring you joy before you had all of this responsibility? Some might not suit you anymore. So you can get creative with this list and make it expansive. Then figure out what is it that you can incorporate and start figuring out, with the space that you created, what to do. [00:12:53] PF: One thing you mentioned in your book, and this can really help people out, it’s like what's your fun type. That’s great because you actually can go onto your website, and there's an assessment quiz, and it's very easy. It's not like you have to study for it. Then you figure out like, okay, this is your fun type. So maybe these are the kinds of things that you should look for when you're creating your little fun list. [00:13:15] MR: Yeah. I think that one was – I did graduate in sciences. I think everyone is all for fun types. It just kind of points to where you seem to really enjoy yourself. [00:13:25] PF: What’s your dominant? [00:13:26] MR: Yeah. But to your point, you could use kind of whimsical tools like that. Or you could identify, in the chapter on fun and friends, who are your fun friends and see if you can create more opportunities with them. Because, generally, if you've identified them as fun friends, they can be great mentors in getting you to have more fun, right? [00:13:46] PF: Absolutely. [00:13:46] MR: What are they doing? Because I do believe it becomes problematic if you're overly marketed things, or if you're mindlessly scrolling social media, and just kind of going, “Oh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that.” Because that's just incoming stimulus, right? It's not really an inward like, “Oh, I really identify with that.” Some people are mindful. Like if you're into crafting and you only follow crafters, like there's always the exceptions to the rule, right? But a lot of us are sort of – If we don't do it with our own interests at heart, we’re sort of like, “Oh, they're having so much fun.” Well, they are. But is that what you would find fun, like if you were really in their shoes? Do you really want to be on a yacht? Because the last time I remember, you would throw up every time you’re on a boat, right? So – [00:14:33] PF: That is a trap of social media because you're like, “Oh, that looks like so much fun.” But then, yes, when you break it down, it's like do you want to do that? It's like, “Oh, heck, no. No.” [00:14:40] MR: Well, and it’s curated, right? Like these are post photos of people that are trying to gain your attention. It's called the attention economy for a reason. But, ultimately, if you fall victim to that, and you think that that's real life, that can become problematic because, again, it goes back to what I fell victim to like, “Oh, my gosh. Happiness is here on Instagram, and I'm way back here in reality.” All of a sudden, that gap between normal reality and this fictional reality becomes like – You start to identify like, “Well, I'm not where I want to be,” and that can slowly become identifying as an unhappy person, which isn't necessarily true. It's the subjective reality you've created, and it's clear from the evidence that it's kind of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy. You now have these negative scripts that you're not even necessarily consciously aware of. They're leading you to believe that you're unhappy, when that's not necessarily true. [00:15:38] PF: That's why your play model is so fantastic. It's a great way to assess how we're spending our days. Can you talk about that? Explain what it is and how we can use it, so we can incorporate more fun into our lives. [00:15:50] MR: It’s essentially a sorting mechanism. So it helps you identify like things that really have gone off the rails, right? So play stands for pleasing, living, agonizing, and yielding. Pleasing activities are activities that are really easy to do, right? Like walking your dog, taking a nature walk, engaging in pro-social behavior with the friends that you enjoy. The living quadrant takes some energy, but ultimately leads to really engaging activities. So that can be mastering a new skill. That can be a vigorous hike, like if connecting to nature is your thing. That can be a spiritual practice because mindfulness becomes hard if you – So etc., etc. But things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do all the time because they do take some energy, people are now classifying that as type two fun. I think that's a playful term for it. [00:16:40] PF: That’s great. [00:16:42] MR: Agonizing are the things that we have to do. So, again, in the book, I make it clear that we can't engineer all of those out of our life. There are things that we need to do as humans that are hard. [00:16:52] PF: Like our taxes? [00:16:53] MR: Exactly, yeah. I mean, that's a common one, right? But a lot of times, when people look at like things that are really agonizing that happen week after week, there's generally ways to improve them. So looking at those critically and thinking what is it? If you get creative, things that kind of suck for you, you could potentially change them, either by changing the activity or outsourcing, if you're in a place that you could do that. The last one we've already kind of talked about, but it's the most nefarious, is the yielding, and that is things that don't bring us joy. But because they don't take much energy, we kind of do them mindlessly. Oftentimes, especially in this modern life we live, they're engineered to make us believe we’re enjoying our time, but they really don't. So social media is an obvious culprit. Again, I don't villainize watching TV. There are shows that I certainly like that are fun to watch because I'm watching them either with my kids or my partner. But what is a common routine for people is they’re so burnt out from work. They plop down on the couch and just turn on whatever is there. If I were to ask you the next week like, “Hey, I know you watched TV Wednesday from 7:00 to 9:00. What did you watch?” They’re like, “Ah, I don't know.” [00:18:06] PF: Then you're frustrated. When you're done watching television, you look back, and it's like, “I wasted this time. I could have done something.” Yet we haven't identified what we would have done. So we just keep doing. That's why we need our fun. We need to like figure out what we do for fun because we would have done something differently. [00:18:22] MR: That's exactly right, and that identifies another headwind. That is in those moments, it is hard for you to believe that you could go out and do something, right? So what I've seen, and this has to happen with multiple people that I've worked with, is that there's two things going on. One, for a lot of adults, for whatever reason, there's this notion that you can't do things on a school night. We've just been programmed to believe that we can't go out and have fun Monday through Thursday. That’s fundamentally not true, right? [00:18:52] PF: Right. [00:18:54] MR: Then the second headwind is, I'm just so tired. Like let's say dancing because, surprisingly, but in a fun way, like dancing seems to be one of those really fun activities that a clear majority like. I would say like 60 or 70 percent. We just don't do anymore, right? So, okay, try taking a dance class during that time, right? For the folks that really do want to reconnect with dancing. The first couple of weeks suck because you're still tired. You're still in that state like, “Oh, plopping down on the couch would be more comfortable.” Not necessarily more fun but it’s more comfortable. By the third week, it's such an invigorating activity that they realize, okay, now they're looking forward to it. And, two, they're a better person when they show up for work. Then three, oftentimes, once you get a taste for that, like, “Wait a second. I am a better version of myself. I'm also more productive,” then it turns into this upward spiral, and you start to figure out what are those boundaries. I was good at work. I'm going to stop now and go take time off the table for me. Now, it's not just a dance class. It’s a comedy club with a friend and it's – Again, all the things start to fall into place. It's just that initial nudge, like how can you break the inertia of this kind of habituated life that we lead. [00:20:13] PF: You bring up a really good point about our productivity at work. A lot of times, when we think of having fun, we don't think of it improving our productivity. If anything, we think, well, it's going to cut into my time, and I'm not going to be as productive. So how does it actually make us more productive? [00:20:30] MR: So the first is I always explain this with a simple math equation because I think it really highlights it, and it's easy for people to understand. When we're living the best version of our self – And this is clear, you can go to Google Scholar, and there's plenty of studies that back me up on this. When we're living with vitality and vigor, then we produce more, right? So think that if you're living a life where you're actually capitalizing on your leisure and feeling like you're fulfilled in all areas of your life, that you can produce two units of output per hour. So you're working a simple 40-hour work week, but you're – For each one of those, whatever you're doing, creating widgets, or making websites, or writing manuscripts, whatever it is, you're creating two units of that output. People that are working 60 hours a week, so they think they're working hard, but they're really just busy and aren't taking time to recharge their batteries, are working a lot longer. So that might feel good, but each one of those hours are only producing one unit of output. So the person in scenario A is producing 80 units of output and living a really fun life and just kind of happy with how everything is going. The person in scenario B is creating 60 units of output, thinks they're a hard worker, but isn't having fun at all, and is on a fast track to burnout. Again, that's not just an assertion. That's been backed up. So that's why I think, again, leisure and fun are going to – We're going to start to understand that making sure we protect that is as important as protecting sleep. Again, no one now is telling you not to sleep, right? Like even the most staunch supporters of healthy culture, right? [00:22:13] PF: So absolutely. [00:22:15] MR: The second is their amazing research coming out of social science, the person I really liked in this area, her name's Caitlin Woolley, is that when you make activities more fun at work, one, you just do more. Two, obviously, you enjoy going to work a lot more. So there's all sorts of creative ways to do that, and it can be as simple as if you really enjoy the people that you're with during that meeting that needs to take place, just taking it outside of the office, and doing it as a walking meeting to creating like gamified aspects of your work so that you enjoy it more. It's really going to be specific to how you engage in work, but there's all sorts of really neat ways to make your work more fun. So figuring out what that means to you, so you don't dread it that you're actually like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to do this activity because I've figured out a way.” Another great method is exploring it as an anthropologist like, “Wait, I've done this work the same way for five years. It’s so habituated and boring. That's probably why it's not fun. Could I do it in a totally different way?” Whatever that means to you. A lot of times, just that curiosity of approaching your work in a new fashion can be enough to make it fun. [00:23:26] PF: That's excellent. Mike, this book is so engaging. It gives us so many entry points to rediscovering fun in our lives. We're going to tell our listeners where they can find it, where they can find some of the great quizzes, so they can identify their fun type and learn more about themselves and having fun. But before we let you go tell us, why is it so important for us to get back to having fun and not put this off anymore? [00:23:49] MR: One, for our own wellbeing, right? There's a clear path to psychological and physiological benefits, especially as we start to age. Not only that, but we know from Bronnie Ware and others that when we index joyful memories throughout our life, we tend to really enjoy our later years because we have so much to look back on, and we generally have better social nets too, right? Because we've made friends through this amazing thing. We also know through social contagion theory that when we’re fun, we make everyone around us have more fun and live more joyful lives. So we're not just doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for the ones that we love. So even if we live this dutiful life, where I want to be selfless because that's not necessarily a poor trait, you could do it for the ones around you because when you're more joyful, you just spread that, right? So it's similar to kindness. Having fun is going to affect all those around you. Once you really master it as a method, you can start to contribute to the greater good as well. It’s not just about you, but it's really about the world at large and making the world a better place. [00:24:53] PF: I love that. That is a great place to wrap this up. Thank you so much for coming on the show, explaining it to us, and for writing such a wonderful, insightful, and necessary book. [00:25:05] MR: Thank you for those kind words, and thank you for having me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Mike Rucker, talking about his new book, The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. If you'd like to learn more about Mike and his book or follow him on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. 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: Women Supporting Women With Caroline Miller  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 393 of Live Happy Now. December 1st marks Women Supporting Women Day, and this week's guest believes that's something we aren't doing nearly enough. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm joined by author, speaker, and coach Caroline Miller, who's concerned about women's failure to support one another led her to write the e-book, #IHaveYourBack, which is about creating mastermind success groups for women. This week, she's here to share what she's learned about why women don't support one another, explain what it's doing to our culture, and then tell us what we can do about it. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Caroline, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] CM: Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much. [00:00:48] PF: It has been a while since we've talked and had you on the show. But when I saw what you're working on, I knew we had to get you back on to talk about this. So tell me – First of all, before we jump in, why don't you tell us what it is that your new project is? [00:01:04] CM: Well, I have a new e-book out called #IHaveYourBack, mastermind success groups for women. It's available as an e-book download for purchase on my website. I decided to just self-publish because I had been obsessed for several years now with finding a solution to why we, as women, know but don't always talk about the women don't support each other and how we actually actively undermine each other. I finally got to the point where I was brave enough to not just write about it, but include an evidence-based solution because all I saw was the problem being made more beautiful. I wanted to put out something that was proactive that people could do something immediately about, and that's the project. [00:01:53] PF: Let's talk about what it was that you saw that made you say, “I have to write about this.” [00:02:01] CM: The fact that women were standing still and going backwards, in terms of female CEOs and fortune 50 or fortune 500 companies, the World Economic Bureau saying it's going to be even longer, 185 years that the women achieved pay parity, the Me To movement. Time's Up was all coming out. What I saw was a lot of demonization of men, but no one talking about the problem of women shooting at each other inside the tent. I thought, okay, yes, we have real problems with what men have historically done to women. The patriarchal culture is very dangerous and difficult. But it's not the only thing that women are up against, and I didn't understand or know why it's so dangerous to talk about this topic as a woman. I wanted to understand, first of all, is it just me knowing that this has happened to me and every woman I know, while we whisper about and talk about it? Or is it real? That's number one. I wanted to find that out from an evidence-based perspective. Number two, the thing was if I opened my mouth about this publicly, I want to put out a solution. So I had to name the problem. I had to put it in the context of the fact that, yes, men do need to pay a price for what they've done and continue to do to women. But that's not the whole shooting match because we're sliding backwards. Why? Why are women sliding backwards in terms of pay equity and reproductive rights and all these other things? Is it possible that women are also holding other women back? Can I talk about that? So that's what I took on board. As I said, I just hired two researchers. I went through thousands of pages of research. What I learned was sickening and upsetting but hopeful because I did come up with something that I believe can change women's lives. But you have to be thoughtful and strategic about how you do it and are prepared to talk about that, so yeah. [00:03:59] PF: Can you tell us some about what your research found, what you were finding? [00:04:05] CM: A bunch of things. I found that what – Scarcity theory. A lot of people just go, “Yeah, women don't support women in professional settings.” But that's just because there's only one seat at the table. Women have to guard their seats, just like Katie Couric saying, “I wasn't going to mentor Ashleigh Banfield. That's career suicide.” I think she said career suicide. So I found that, yes, there's a scarcity theory theory out there, but we continue to act as if it's true. So even when it's not true, if we continue to believe that there's only one seat at the table for a woman of power, we will continue to act as if there is no room for the rest of us. I'll tell you another thing, culturally. I remember watching a football game with my husband maybe a year ago, and I watched a kicker make a field goal, and the whole team celebrated, went out, hugged him. I turned to my husband and I said, “I can't think of a single time the bench is cleared theoretically in an analogy in any possible way for me because I did something well. It just hasn't happened for most women that the bench is clear when a woman supports another woman's individual success.” Women tend to be friends. What they don't do is believe and achieve together. So what I found were all these examples of sisterhood coming together to change communal causes, reproductive rights, the Jane movement, the domestic workers strike. This is why the sisterhood is considered so important and like that's the way it is. But what I can't find, what I couldn't find, were examples of women coming together to support each other's individual goals. Communally will come together and work for rights and this and that thing, but the minute you have women going for their own goals, if you bring them together to support each other, that's considered just like a unicorn. It's considered so unusual for women to support each other's individual goals that when it happens, it elicits this, “Oh, my God. Where are these people?” [00:06:18] PF: Yeah. You talk about this in your book. Like how do you then start turning this around? [00:06:23] CM: Okay. So here's what I really do believe is going to make a difference in is making a difference is if women get together in strategically formed mastermind groups, and there are a number of reasons why they have to be formed carefully. You can't just go to like a Sheryl Sandberg lean in group and be assigned a group of people. Too many women tell me they've been assigned to groups put together by organizations, and you have to pay for the privilege. They don't know anything about these women's backgrounds or character. How do you know who's in it? So what you have to do is you have to go straight with Shelly Gable’s research, active constructive responding. You have to pull together a mastermind group of women who have a demonstrated history of being curious and enthusiastic about another woman's individual goals and dreams. That's number one because she found that that's the Rorschach test. You want to know if someone's in your corner, float an idea or success or some dream of yours in front of them and just watch. How do they respond? Are they curious? Are they enthusiastic? Do they change the subject? Are they passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive? She found that those are all wrong ways to respond to another woman’s success or dreams. The only one right way that I think determines whether or not someone is invited to be in your mastermind group is active constructive responding. So that's number one. Women have to get together and be agentic. We have to talk in ways we haven't been encouraged to talk about, which is about our goals and dreams. We have to do it in groups where we're not interrupted, where we're not mansplained. Most women never even get their dreams and goals out of their mouths, let alone their ideas, because they're always interrupted. So if you're in a mastermind group that has guidelines, and that's what I published here. It's a 43-page e-book. I lay out the case, the evidence for why we're doing this consciously and unconsciously, and here's how you start a mastermind group. Here's how you do it. Step one, step two, step three. So that’s it. You find those people. You have guidelines about how long people talk. You state your goals and dreams. You have to create psychological safety. Then all these amazing things begin to happen when you have accountability to the right people in the right group for the right reasons. You find that there's more creative risk taking. You begin to believe in yourself because other people support your dreams. They believe in you. They see you the way you want to be seen, the Michelangelo effect. People sculpt you with their praise and their feedback because they see you the way you want to be seen. That's just some of the reasons why these groups work. [00:09:03] PF: Let's talk a little bit about how someone goes about putting this together. Someone's like, “Okay, yeah. I want that support from other women.” So where do you start looking at? You've told us what we don't want and kind of the people that we want. We can't really go around interviewing people and saying, “Hey, how about this? Are you going to fit in my group?” How do you get it started? [00:09:24] CM: Well, it doesn't have to be your friends. In fact, some of your friends will be very threatened if you dare to dream bigger than who you are at that moment or what you want life. So it has to be people who fit this criteria, active constructive responding. You can observe people how they talk about other people's successes. Take a look at your social media feed. How many people are actually trumpeting another woman's success? If this is someone you know or want to get to know better, maybe it's an acquaintance, ask them. Reach out and ask them if they want to be in your mastermind group. That's one way. So I would keep it small. My current mastermind group is four people. I think the biggest could be seven. So you can find them either through your social circle. Or let's say you have one person you know you want to be in the group. Ask them if they know someone who fits all these criteria. That's the first way. I go into the rest of it in the book. So that's where you start. But it has to be somebody who wants to become her very best self, who has, let's say, a future best self in mind. There are three ways that people live. They have an ought self, an actual self, and an ideal self. Most people, and I'm going to say a lot of women, live as an actual self, just the person they show up as or as the ought self, the person they think they should be, according to their relationships, the way they're raised, the culture they're in, whatever. But many people never shoot for that ideal self. You want somebody who wants to maximize their potential and do whatever it takes, have grit. I think the last time you interviewed me, it was about my book, Getting Grit. This takes grit. So you have to be able to have the grit to pursue that. It's so much easier when you have the wind at your back because other people are brainstorming with you, supporting you. So you start by creating that circle. I also want to say that it's really important, once these groups get going, that these benefits continue to go into what Barbara Frederickson talks about, the upward spiral. You begin to feel like you matter. All this new research on mattering and an organization, how many people actually feel like they matter in a group? Not a lot of women have an opportunity to feel like they matter in a group where other people have their backs. They do begin to feel like experts. We all longed to be experts. When you bring your expertise into a group, you have an opportunity to teach people something. You bring what it is you know about web design, or web hosting, or writing a book, or giving a speech. Those collective energies coming together allow every person in there to be an expert. That's another huge psychological boost. It's just massive, having the freedom to ask other people to give you their ideas, to support you. I've had female friends ask me to lead a round of applause when they take the stage because they're worried other people won't clap for them. It's often the people who should be leading the applause for you who are not. I think the thing I want to be sure I'm doing here is talking about the fact that I think we do these things not because we want to, but because we're acculturated to do this. We are supposed to believe that there are mean girls. That that’s just the way women are. I mean, and so when we believe this, we unconsciously behave this way. So I want to take some of us just off the guilty hook and say we don't always know why we do these things to each other. But I do think that there are too many women who also know better who don't make any effort to lead a round of applause, amplify another woman's success. [00:13:01] PF: Well, let me ask you the purpose of creating a group like under – There are several different reasons and several different flavors, if you will, of groups that you could create. What would be – To who's listening, like why would you want to – What would be your purpose in putting that together? [00:13:19] CM: Because not enough women voice their dreams period. Being be able to voice your dreams and your goals, and brainstorm your way with also goal setting theory behind the pursuit of these goals, you will maximize your chances of succeeding. So as everyone in the field knows, I wrote – Not everyone. A lot of people know I wrote the first book to connect the science of happiness with the science of goal success. That book was my capstone at creating your best life. It was reissued last year as kind of a global bestseller. But it was the first book to put science to goal setting. I think every woman should be in a group where people have her back, but she's pursuing goals with the evidence of goal setting theory behind how those goals, learning goals and performance goals, are set, pursued, and achieved. We have to make it possible from every angle for us to succeed. So this is not just about coming together to talk in a nice way about each other. This is a working group. This is your board of directors. But do not go into an organization and be assigned a group. That is a nonstarter, as far as I can tell because you have to know the character and the behavior of the people you're going to be essentially opening the kimono in front of. Too many women have been violated by other women who blossom about them, make fun of them, tear them down. I mean, this one woman said at some of the research I looked at that she had to choose between her sanity and her career because the more she succeeded at work, the more she was torn down by other women. So you have to be in that kind of group. Let me quickly say some of the – What I've heard as a criticism. People say, “Well, men take each other down. Men are critical of each other. Men bully each other.” Yes. Of course, that's true. However, men are socialized to be goal directed, and, and, this is more important, and they are not biologically wired to be in friendship dyads the way women are socialized and wired to be. This Tend-and-Befriend research from the year 2000 that came out of the UCLA nurses study found that women need other women. We often have best friends who are good for us, but generally we do not. So the Tend-And-Befriend research found that oxytocin is secreted when women get together, and they take care of each other, and they bond. Especially they nurture each other when they're down. So that's why this being thrown out of the tribe is so existentially hellish for women because it violates our chemical nature. So, yes, it happens to men, but women are relationship-oriented. Men are more transactional. So it's even more potent for us to be in the right group in the right ways at the right time, as much as possible. [00:16:17] PF: So by bringing this out and by, one, sharing the massive research that you've done on it and bringing it forefront to women, what do you hope to accomplish, and how do you hope this is going to change the way that we interact and support one another? [00:16:31] CM: I want every woman to have access to just the guidelines on how to support a mastermind group and all the reasons why we need to do it. Even Kristin Neff has said, her most recent book on radical self-compassion, she's like, “This is what women don't do for themselves. They're compassionate for the world, and they lack compassion for themselves to do this.” We all need to understand that it's a compassionate act for us to come together in support of our own dreams and goals. Especially when – Just go back to the diseases of despair. Women are dying in numbers disproportionately larger than men. As Case and Deaton, the economists, have found, often because they lack a sense of purpose, so alcoholism, eating disorders, depression, suicide, women are really paying the price more than men. So that's a piece of why I'm doing it. I want women to be armed with these tools. I want them to know why it matters, and I really want women to understand we're not doing this just because we're nasty people, meaning us tear other women down, or we're jealous of them, or we pass along gossip about them. I think we've all been conditioned equally poorly, some more than others, and we need to understand the conscious and unconscious reasons why we do it. But we all have learned to override yelling at our in-laws at Thanksgiving, hopefully. I mean, there's all kinds of wiring that we overcome in order to be socially appropriate, to be members of tribes. We can overcome this wiring and this conditioning if we want to. That's what I believe. [00:18:03] PF: I love it. You know I love that you've done this because I think it really does open our eyes toward our behaviors and the fact that we can change them. You give us a really great blueprint for making that change and starting our own little path to success into turning this ship around. As we let you go, what is the one thing that you hope everyone takes away from this conversation? [00:18:29] CM: When you hear of another woman’s success, whether you want to or not, pass it on in a positive way to somebody else. Override that instinct to be envious, which I have, which we all have. Share another woman's success on social media. Do it twice a week, and you're going to feel better, and the world's going to be better. [00:18:50] PF: I love that. I love that. Thank you for that. That is a terrific tip. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:18:59] PF: That was Caroline Miller, talking about the importance of women supporting women. If you'd like to learn more about Caroline and her research, follow her on social media, or find out where to download her e-book, #IHaveYourBack, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Just a reminder that today is the last day to take advantage of Live Happy’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday savings. Visit our store at store.livehappy.com and take 30% of everything in there. That’s store.livehappy.com, and no promo code is needed. 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]