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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Why Sports Fans Have More Friends With Ben Valenta and David Sikorjak  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 390 of Live Happy Now. If you're a sports fan or you know someone who is, you're going to love today's guests. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I have the pleasure of sitting down with David Sikorjak and Ben Valenta, authors of the new book, Fans Have More Friends. These two strategy and analytics experts are diehard sports fans, who set out to prove their hypothesis that being a sports fan leads to happiness. Their research proved them right. And this week, they're here to talk about why cheering on your favorite team is doing more for you than you might have realized. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: David and Ben, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:41] BV: Thanks for having us. [00:00:41] DS: Thanks for having us. [00:00:42] BV: Happy to be here. [00:00:43] PF: Well, this is exciting because this is something we have not touched on at Live Happy, which is unusual. It feels like a lot of things we've looked at from so many different angles but not fandom. Sports are such a huge part of our culture, and I don't think we've ever touched on how it really affects us psychologically. So I guess for starters, how did the two of you meet, and how did you decide to write a book about this? [00:01:08] BV: Our relationship goes way back. We've been working together for, I don't know, 10, 12 years. We've always been kind of collaborators and like-minded in how we see the world and have been working in the sports business in some way, shape, or form for the last, I don't know, 8 of those 10 years and have constantly had some insight into – Or maybe the better way to say it is we had an intuition that sports fandom was all about social connection, and this came through kind of years of spending time with fans, of thinking about the sports business, of working in sports media. At a certain point, I think we became convinced that that intuition was actually a truth, and we could elevate it to the level of an insight, something that kind of defined how people approached the space. At a certain point, I think we decided we should prove this out. We should sort of see. We should put our insight to the test and see if it really does hold water, if we really can define fandom as a social enterprise. Eventually, we landed on – I think a testable hypothesis is what we're looking for, and that's where we got to. So the fundamental insight was that to be a fan is to be a part of a community. That’s a line that we landed on years ago, working for the New York Knicks. That stuck with us for some time. We decided that if that's true, if fandom is all about community, if it's all about the social connection, then fans would enjoy more robust social networks, more robust social infrastructure. So the shorthand way to say that is fans would have more friends. So we set out trying to devise a way to reliably test fandom and compare it to the number of friends in one social network. What we found over the last several years and 30-plus surveys and tens of thousands of respondents is that it's true. In fact, fans do have more friends, and that's the title of our book, Fans Have More Friends. [00:03:03] PF: So how long did it take you to go from an idea to a finished product? [00:03:09] DS: To be a fan and to be part of a community was something that we coined back in 2016, where we got to the point where like, “Let's test this out.” We’re seeing it come up in different contexts around sports over and over with different types of people, men, women, white, black, all sorts of people, younger and older. The same thing held that we were observing social relationships as the incentive for the devotional behavior of sports fandom. We didn't start testing this until – Devised a way to test this until the end of 2018. Then once we kind of landed on a method, it kept coming back. Fans have more friends. It's not only that. The bigger fan you are, the more friends you have. The bigger fan you are, the closer you are to all your friends. The more you interact with those friends, the closer you are to family. Just every single – It kind of – This is what we thought all along. We never thought we would be able to prove it out in such a consistent and robust way, and it's kind of held now for three years now in testing this. [00:04:16] BV: Just to draw a line into that, like the way to think about it is the bigger fan you are, the more likely you are to have a positive healthy relationship with your mother, right? It extends a great aspect of your social life. So it's not just that fans have more friends, as Dave points out. It’s that you have a close relationship and closer ties with your family, both as parent to child, child to parent, kind of working both ways throughout one's life. [00:04:39] DS: Just to give you an example on that, we ran surveys recently where if you have measured from non-fans, so basically the general population, and then rated them across the scale on how big of a fan they are, if you have children living out of your home, we ask if there are adult children, how close do you feel with child number one? How close do you feel with child number two? What we found for whether kids are at home or not, but it's really the most acute for when you are an empty nester, the bigger fan you are, the stronger of a relationship you report having with each of your children. [00:05:12] PF: Were you able to determine why that is? Because that's super interesting because people – I mean, parents struggle like, “How can I be close to my children?” Now, it's like go to games. Yeah. [00:05:21] BV: Well, it's really like the reliable rhythm of being a sports fan keeps you in constant connection. So I have three brothers. We all live dispersed around the country. I'm from Colorado, and my folks are still in Denver. The thing that we talk about most often is the Denver Broncos, right? That will anchor those conversations. Now, that will unfold into how are the kids and how's work and all that kind of stuff. But it usually starts with the Denver Broncos. Actually, this just happened. It's the NFL trade deadline when we're recording this. The Broncos made a big trade at the deadline, and my phone just lit up with text messages mostly from my family, my mom included, but a bunch of friends as well. When you start to see your fan engagement as that social connection, you sort of can't unsee it. Then you begin to recognize, “Oh, this is actually the thing incentivizing my fandom, but it's also the benefit of my fandom.” It results in more conversations. It results in more text messages. It results in more frequent interaction that is ultimately good for us and leads to strengthened relationships. [00:06:27] DS: Build on the point is it's like a covert way of just saying how are you doing. But sports just gives you many times over and over like your mom texting you have how's it going and after a while could be braiding. But if it's around sports, if the sky has something else, that conversation keeps on going, and it's just a fluid back and forth, which is just more pleasurable for both parties. [00:06:51] PF: That can even work if you are on opposing teams because I know in our house, there are friends who do not support the proper teams. When we'll have it, it's like that back and forth of like really just talking trash, but you feel closer. I mean, it really does kind of – It keeps you in contact, even though that's the way that you're going about it. [00:07:11] BV: Absolutely. I mean, that's the one thing we – The one question we get most often is like, “Well, what about the tribal nature of sports? What about rivalries and things like that?” What we find is that those things actually tend to make the experience of being a fan more engaging and more fun. That means that they animate those interactions and those connections in the same way. In other words, like they make those conversations with those people more fun, right? When you're talking trash, it's all with a tongue in cheek. It's all in good fun. We're able to kind of play in this space that is ultimately very playful, and we can have that kind of conversation, that kind of interaction, which leads to just more intimate conversations down the line that aren't necessarily about sports. It just kind of creates this space where we can bust other’s chops, and it's all good. [00:07:54] DS: There's not many spaces where we can do that, where we could actually mock a friend, a family member, or a stranger because of sports affiliations. With sports, you actually have that permission to do it in a way that is just – It’s fun. It's playful. It's childish. All those things are really good. [00:08:11] PF: What about right now? Because it seems everyone's pretty sensitive to people who don't agree with them. There's a lot of polarization. There's a sensitivity when someone disagrees with us. With sports, that disappears. Can you address that? [00:08:28] BV: Well, that's exactly right. I mean, because it's playful. Because it sort of seem to matter so much but not matter at all, that gives us that permission to not be so sensitive and to recognize that this is one space in my life that I cannot – I'm not taking these things personally, right? I'm not going to be overly sensitive. I can just go in there and have fun. I can receive the comments, and then I can take a lick in it. I can dole one out. It’s all good natured, and it's all in good fun. [00:08:55] PF: How can that help us? Or can it? Maybe I'm assuming. How can that help us in the real world? Because, again, there's so much polarization. Is there a way that sports fandom can help us get past some of that? [00:09:09] BV: Well, yeah. We addressed the notion of polarization, so we can get into that in the book. Before we get into the polarization piece, though, just to address the question kind of point blank, the way it can help us is we just have more interactions, right? So we have this safe space where it's fun to interact, and that incentivizes us to get involved and interact. As it turns out, we're social creatures, and those interactions, those connections are really good for us, right? We've talked a lot about so far fans have more friends, and they interact with those people more often, and they have better relationships with their families and so on and so forth. But it turns out that those connections have a meaningful impact on your wellbeing. So it's not just that fans have more friends. It's because of those friends, fans are happier. They are more satisfied with their life. They're more optimistic about the future. They're more confident in themselves. They're more trusting of other people. They're more likely to give to charity. They're more likely to be registered to vote. There's this whole cascade of wellness markers that come out of this connection, and it's partly because it's fun, probably because it's entertaining, probably because it's all of those things. But the connection is what's most important. [00:10:15] PF: Did you find what the connection is between being a sports fan and having those tendencies? [00:10:20] BV: The connection, I would say, is connection. Like it is that you're just more plugged into the world around you. You're more plugged in your community. You are more engaged in the world because you have all of these different touch points to draw on. [00:10:33] DS: You saw a game with friends, and your friends will tell you about, “Hey, there's this thing going on in town. You should go to it.” Probably you're going to go or you're out in the world, connecting with other people, and that's how you learn about other things. You're getting depolarizations. That's how you're exposed to people who may be slightly different than you. It doesn't mean that you kind of adopt their views, or it shifts your views. But it just means you feel a closeness to somebody else that's different to you. That's important, where – We talked about this in our book, and we mentioned there's this feeling thermometer to kind of get into the polarization piece that is used in political science. They're used in political science for years, and it measures how – It's a 0 to 100 scale, and you're taking the survey or asked, “How do you feel about Democrats with zero being cold and 100 being hot? Then vice versa, how do you feel about Republicans?” What we lay out in the book is the bigger fan you are, if you separate the sample out into Republicans and Democrats, Republicans have warmer feelings towards Democrats, the bigger fan they are. Democrats have warmer feeling towards Republicans, the bigger fan they are. To be clear, the feeling is cold from opposing views. That's the nature of our polarization. But the fact is, and we've read a lot about polarization in writing this book, and it often left us depressed. Like there's no way out. We're just growing apart as a country, as two separate countries, and we don't talk to each other. What kind of the psychology teaches us is that in group and out group becomes more solidified. Therefore, we don't talk. Therefore, we dislike each other more, more and more, regardless of how much we are into the politics of it. But our contention is sports fans, and it actually gets us to mix those in groups a little bit. If you're a Dallas Cowboys fan and you are a liberal that lives in New York, when there's a lot of Dallas Cowboys fans here in New York, you know there's other fans that are not – Don't share the same views as you. You also know that it crisscrosses race and religion and education and income. You're part of this one Dallas Cowboys tribe, and that actually has an impact on you. So that's why we see the warmer feelings towards the opposing party within both kind of Democrat and Republican tribes. [00:12:52] PF: That is so interesting. So how can that be used by individuals, if we start understanding that? How can we use this as a tool for trying to build a bridge? [00:13:04] BV: Ultimately, that's kind of what we're advocating for is to, I want to use your words, use this as a tool. We all – There's a lot of people who are sports fans. This cuts across a major segment of the American populace. So it's a mainstream behavior that people are engaging with but not necessarily consciously aware of the benefits that they're receiving because they're fans. So what we want people to do is become aware of this thing as a tool. Now, that tool can be used to mitigate polarization. It can be used to mitigate loneliness. But these problems that kind of befuddle us can be lessened, can be decreased, can be dampened by recognizing that that fandom is this thing in your arsenal that you can pull out at any time to create connection, to expand your worldview because it's going to create the interactions with other people around you and create that engagement in the world that we were talking about previously. [00:14:01] DS: Even if you're at the airport and see somebody with an Alabama jersey on and you make a comment about Alabama, it's a 10-second interaction. The science says you both are uplifted as a result of that interaction. You as a sports fan, if you're conscious of what's going on in the world, and you can go up to a complete stranger and talk about the Phillies and Astros game tonight, those interactions are really good. We encourage – As Ben was saying, this was our motivation of if you're a fan, lean into it. These are good things. It's good for you, good for others, good for society. Realize that this is the impact of it, and it's already happening. Now that you know it’s happening, lean into it more, and more good should come out of it. [00:14:41] BV: I guess what that means is, specifically, recognize that sports can be the anchor to a interaction, right? So one thing that I've changed in my life is I will say yes to anything that comes my way that sports-related I will say yes, right? To where I was kind of like falling out of love with the fantasy leagues and the pick’em pools, I will now say yes. Let's go do it. I realized that this is not a fatuous kind of obnoxious thing but actually something that's really meaningful for my life, right? But I'll also extend that invite. So whenever I see some – I’ve even started going through my contact with my phone. If there's somebody I haven’t talked to for a while, I'm aware of kind of like the teams that they follow. I'll use that as a way into sending you that message. Hey, I saw so-and-so traded so-and-so. What do you think of that? Oh, by the way, it's been a while. How you doing? Right? Or I'll invite people over on a Sunday to get together. Whether I care about the game or not, it almost makes no difference. It's just the device that gets people together, and then you're reaping the rewards of that togetherness. [00:15:36] PF: That's great, and it's interesting that you talk about fantasy leagues, things like that. So it's not just straight up fandom for the game. It reaches well beyond that. [00:15:47] BV: Absolutely. I mean, again, let's just change how we think about fandom for the game and all these different activities. The activity almost doesn't matter. It's the activity that creates connection, right? My fantasy league with 10, 12 college buddies generates on a weekend probably 250 text messages on average, right? Those would, otherwise, not happen. If I see now that the fantasy league across whatever 24 weeks of NFL season is generating 250 text messages a week, like that's a lot of interaction that I would have otherwise not had, if I didn't have that fantasy league. Now, all of a sudden, I've reframed how I think about and approach that entire enterprise, and it puts it in those terms. Now, I know it's impacting my wellness. I know it's actually causing oxytocin to be released and flow through my bloodstream. Like it's changing how I see the world. If you're aware of that and you can lean into it, then all of a sudden, you can really start to reap the rewards. [00:16:39] DS: I can give another example, a more personal [inaudible 00:16:42]. We wrote the book and we’re – Ben and I talked about this. We're living the book, so to speak, as kind of a – What we found is it’s like it's telling us to think of things differently. So I'm a Yankees fan. The Yankees had a great start to this season, looked like a dominant team. Then in August, it all fell apart. It often left me depressed on days, and I would go into work and work on stuff and be angry about going home to watch the game or having to watch the game. I have an eight and six-year-old boys, two boys who are obsessed with the games. Our family time, and my wife who is not a sports fan or who was not a sports fan, has now kind of signed up, as it is our best family time. Well, it's seven o'clock. We are – The four of us are on the sofa. We are talking. They’re asking questions. We're engaged in things. We are together as a family, watching this thing called baseball. So like learning from the stuff that we're writing in that book, it's like, well, just forget about that and stop being angry about all the stuff that's wrong with the Yankees and what's right with the family engagement around it. We just have this beautiful time every night when the Yankees are on that, otherwise, would – We’d still have beautiful time, but it just wouldn't be as kind of cohesive as sports has made it in our home. [00:17:57] PF: Yeah. How does that bring it together? When you're cheering together, when you're bemoaning the loss together, how does that tighten you as a family unit? [00:18:06] DS: Well, it gives you something else to talk about, and it's great that you bring up the loss because we often – Another question we get is, well, is this true for winning teams that you're happier, as opposed to perennial losers. It works. It works both ways. You can celebrate together, which is great to commiserate and find the occasion to do something together and celebrate. It's also great to commiserate. Yankees lost. When I get together with Yankee fans, I – We all want to like vent about it, and like venting is good. Like in other things in life, you keep it in, and you boil inside. With sports, we all vent, and it’s actually just like a positive release, and somebody else is listening on the other end and understands and gives examples of it. There's not much stuff that we can vent and do that stuff and have that kind of dialogue so freely with other people, whether it's somebody close or a complete stranger. [00:18:56] BV: You know, Paula, the way to think about it I think is you're going on an emotional ride together, and like all of those components are important. The emotional aspect amplifies the togetherness and vice versa. But ultimately, the celebrating, the commiserating doesn't really matter. It's just the fact that you're going on this ride together. [00:19:14] PF: I love that. I love that. One thing that you talk about is the importance of passing down fandom in your family. Two questions related to that is like why is that so important, and then how do you do that? [00:19:26] DS: Well, the first one, I think the reason it's important, we talked a little bit about the impact that this can have on your relationships with your children or your parents, kind of going both ways. So I think just recognize like in the data, what we see is that relationships are improved or the likelihood of relationship being improved are correlated with fandom. So basically, it’s just a way of trying to kind of stack the odds in your favor to ensure that you have a close relationship with your children or with your parents. Because, again, you come back to just the cadence of communication increases, and that's ultimately good for relationship. The way to do it, Dave and I are kind of like working through this right now. We both have young kids. My son is just kind of getting into it, and he calls every sport on TV baseball, whether it’s baseball or not. He calls every team the Los Angeles Rams, even though the Rams only play football. But it's getting them into the space where they can use sports and create social connections around sports, right? Like that's, I think, ultimately, what you're handing to your kids is a tool that will help them socialize, right? We see. We just did some polling with teens that this all holds true with 13 to 17-year-olds. So if you're a highly engaged sports fan as a teen, you're going to have more friends. You're going to be happier. You're going to do better in school. You're going to have closer relationships with your family. It's not so much the fandom that's doing anything there. It's just the fandom gives you a way to connect with people, and the connections are good for us. If I think about my kids, like one of the things that I want for them is to have close friendships. I think that that's an important to a fulfilled life. By giving them fandom, by kind of indoctrinating them in this school of fandom, what you're doing is giving them a tool that allows them to connect. It increases the likelihood that they will have more robust friend networks, if they're fans. [00:21:08] DS: One more thing of it kind of goes back to the playfulness of sports fandom. There’s not many things as a parent with kids that it doesn't matter. Like there's not an expectation. You have to do these things for school or even if you're playing in a sports team. Or did you work out? Did you prepare? Did you think about these things? It's all freedom sports fandom, and it creates a playfulness within the family that is highly beneficial. [00:21:31] PF: You also say that it can help us build confidence in other people. I found that interesting. What mechanism is at play there to make that happen? [00:21:40] DS: Well, it's all the same mechanism at work, right? You're interacting with people, and you will then kind of view them more positively. So we have several questions that we ask around. How trusting are you of other people? Do you typically trust somebody when you meet them? Or do you not trust them? So as you can predict, that the bigger fan you are, the more trusting you would be of that person, whether you're meeting a stranger. It really just comes down to your interacting with more people, and that exposure to other people [inaudible 00:22:10] them. You’re not always on guard in these interactions because you're happy to walk up to a stranger and talk about the Cowboys. Again, that's good for you. We see this time and again, and then we measured it further in confidence in institutions. How you feel about whether it's the police, the military, religious leaders, the news media, professors, scientists. We see with that that the bigger fan you are, the more confidence you have in those institutions. [00:22:39] BV: I think one way to just sort of sum up everything that Dave just said is a line that we include in the book. Actually, we quote Brene Brown, who I would assume, Paula, you're familiar with. [00:22:48] PF: Most of our listeners are. [00:22:49] BV: I would – Yeah. I guess we're playing to the right audience here. But she has a line that I love, and that resonates with us and really encapsulates a lot of what Dave was just saying, which is it's hard to hate people up close. The idea – [00:22:59] PF: I love that. [00:23:00] BV: Effectively, what we're saying is fandom puts you in a place where you are connecting with more people, both intimate connections, relationships, family, close personal friends, etc. But also just strangers on the street, right? You're going to have those interactions with the barista because she's wearing the Dodgers hat in Los Angeles, and you can have that brief 10-second interaction about the team that's going to impact your day. But it also exposes you to other people, right? It just kind of like helps build that muscle of connecting with other people. Ultimately, that's the thing. That exposure is the thing that changes your worldview. It creates that sense of trust in other people, it creates that sense of confidence in other people, and it just sort of broadens your perspective on the world. [00:23:39] PF: I like that. This is so well researched, and that's what's interesting too. How difficult was it to get research on this, put this all together? [00:23:47] DS: I mean, this is what we do, the research and fielding surveys, conducting focus groups, doing ethnography. So we feature a lot of people in the book that we tell stories about, and those came about. We met them in focus groups. We conducted ethnography, so I wouldn't do – We went into homes with people, with the games with people, with the sports bars. I mean, this is what we do. So we enjoy doing it. We felt like early on, we had an interesting thread to pull on. The book is about just continually pulling on the thread. Fans have more friends. Their measures of wellbeing, it leads to a broadened worldview. All these things just came out through the research that we conducted. [00:24:28] PF: Very interesting. So this is a terrific book. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find you, how they can find a copy of the book. As I let you go, what is it that you hope people take away from reading this book? [00:24:42] BV: I hope that they take away that they should lean into their fandom. If they’re fans themselves already, lean into that. Embrace it. I think maybe more broadly, we take kind of a step back. It's really to – We want to reframe the conversation we have around sports fandom. I think the current cultural conception of sports fans is sort of the obnoxious face painter bro, maybe a little drunk in the stands and making you feel uncomfortable. That person does exist, and that thing does exist. But when we focus exclusively or we frame our conception of fandom exclusively around that person, we miss all of this other connection that's really good for us. So what we want to do is get people to recognize, “Oh, this is actually really good for me,” right? I can lean into it. I can enjoy this. I can use it as a tool. But I should lean into it because it's going to impact my life. Dave on his line earlier, being a sports fan is good for you, good for others, good for society. We want people to recognize that. That's the ultimate takeaway here. [00:25:37] PF: I love it. [00:25:38] DS: It's available for anyone, everyone, young, old, male, female. Sports crosses everything. [00:25:45] PF: Yeah. There's a few sports out there that you can choose from. You can find one. [00:25:48] DS: We have a lot here. Yeah. [00:25:51] PF: Well, I thank you guys so much for sitting down with me. I just – I love this topic. I love the approach that you've taken and the way that you're opening this door that just really hasn't been walked through yet. So thank you so much for the work you're doing and for sitting down and talking with me about it. [00:26:05] BV: Thanks, Paula. It was a lot of fun. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:11] PF: That was Dave Sikorjak and Ben Valenta, authors of the new book, Fans Have More Friends. If you'd like to learn more about their research, follow them on social media, or buy their book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. A reminder that November is gratitude month, and what better way to show your gratitude to others than to gift them with a plate of homemade treats. The Live Happy Store has a brand new giving plate, which you can fill with your favorite treats and share with a neighbor, your kids’ teacher, a coworker, or anyone else in your life whom you'd like to show appreciation to. The poem on our Live Happy giving plate encourages them to continue spreading the joy by doing the same for someone else. You can check it out right now in the Live Happy Store at store.livehappy.com. 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: Becoming a Happy Leader With Tia Graham  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 389 of Live Happy Now. Not everyone feels that work and happiness go hand in hand. But today's guest believes that not only can you find happiness at work, but you must. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm sitting down with Tia Graham, a certified chief happiness officer, Founder of the company Arrive at Happy, and author of the new book, Be a Happy Leader.   Tia has multiple certifications in neuroscience, positive psychology, and leadership coaching, and she works with executives and teams to help create happier workplaces. Today, she's here to teach us how we can find more happiness at work. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:45] PF: Tia, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] TG: Thank you for having me. [00:00:51] PF: Work has long been a challenge for people, and it's so important because it's something that we spend most of our time doing, and there's a lot of unhappiness in the workplace. I wondered, in your studies, in your research, what made you decide to focus on leaders in the workplace? [00:01:10] TG: Yes. So prior to starting my company, Arrive at Happy, I was a director of sales and marketing, a leader in the luxury hotel industry and different places in the United States and Europe. So I was a leader of teams for 14 years. Positive leadership was always very, very important to me. I took it as an honor, leading people. In my 14 years of leadership in the hotel industry, I had some incredible inspirational happy leaders, and I also had the complete opposite. I had some toxic, very negative leaders. One of my big missions is to have more happy leaders in the world of work. Then when I started researching the levels of disengagement with leaders, that was another big motivation. Also, the science of happiness isn't extremely well known within corporate America. So, yeah, lots of motivation to bring this into work. [00:02:12] PF: What is the difference between unhappiness at the leadership level and unhappiness at the employee level? Have you seen any differentiation? [00:02:21] TG: So it's actually quite similar, and this is all of the Gallup research. There's a little bit more disengagement at the employee level, but it's pretty close. In terms of people who are actively disengaged in both groups, it's around 13 to 15 percent, so really everyone's interconnected. [00:02:42] PF: Because you tend to think that leaders, at least from an employee standpoint, employees think, well, they should be happier. They're making more money. They get to take some time off for golf. Whatever it is, it seems like leaders should have it a little bit easier when it comes to happiness. They're in a little bit more comfortable position. [00:03:00] TG: Yeah. There is some correlation, like how you reference being able to play golf. There is some correlation between how much money you make and how happy you are and having less stress and anxiety about money. Really, some leaders have more time affluence, right? They have more time for friends and family, for hobbies, etc. Also, though, with leadership comes more stress, more anxiety, more pressure. So there's different challenges as well. [00:03:31] PF: The leaders that you have worked with that you've seen, is that happiness kind of an innate thing, that they are naturally happy people, and they bring it to the workplace? Or is it something that they've had to work at? [00:03:43] TG: So the research shows, and this aligns exactly with all of the companies that I've been working with over the past six years, is there's a group of people who are more genetically predisposed to be happier, and life circumstances do play a part. But there are some leaders who actively make choices that increase their wellbeing and create sustainable wellbeing. Then there are some leaders who do not, right? Who do not prioritize their own happiness and focus on whether it be their physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, mental health, psychological, investing in their relationships. As I said, little bit genetically predisposed. But then there are some people who truly make this a priority and focus on it and others who don't. [00:04:40] PF: What kind of outcomes do you see in the leaders, and what are the differences in the outcomes they see in their workplace? [00:04:47] TG: So a leader who is happy at work is more productive. So they work faster and they work smarter. They are more creative and innovative, as their brain broadens and builds with more positive emotions. They have higher rates of employee, team member loyalty, less unwanted turnover. Motivation within the team is higher. Sales are higher. There's a direct correlation between sales, and the customer service scores are higher as well. That all translates to the engagement scores, which most companies do engagement surveys once a year. [00:05:27] PF: There’s actually a cost to the company of unhappiness and stress in the workplace. [00:05:32] TG: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Whether it be the cost of recruiting, hiring, training, the cost of knowledge drain, when people leave, the cost of customer unhappiness or customers not being satisfied, and then putting that out on social media or choosing not to come back to that business as well. There's this huge phenomenon happening called quiet quitting, where people are doing the bare minimum, right? You think about the cost of productivity there, which directly relates to engagement. There is also the cost of potential revenue. The research shows that when sales or business development professionals are happy while they're working, they'll sell 37 to 45 percent more. So if you have a lot of your sales force that isn't feeling that great, they're not making as much money for the organization as well. [00:06:36] PF: So interesting because I think if more people equated the financial outcomes with happiness, they might kind of change the approach. So how do people start changing that mindset? Because, obviously, this has to start at the top for you to change the organization. So how do they start changing that? [00:06:57] TG: Yes. So the world of work is changing fast and for the better. I'm actually very optimistic about where it's going and how it's going to benefit humans globally. There are some organizations. Like Deloitte, for example, has achieved wellbeing officer at the very top, Jen Fisher. So leaders at the top, if you think about the CEO and the executive team, is first to understand about positive psychology, the science of happiness and the neuroscience behind happiness. Also understand and be motivated by the direct connection between happy employees and business outputs. To see the correlation, how it directly affects the bottom line, right, just what we were talking about earlier. Then be committed to creating a positive work culture and focusing on supporting the whole being all different aspects of people's lives. In addition to continuing to focus on productivity and output and driving results, focus equally as much on the relationships and how people feel, cultivating a sense of belonging, making sure that people have psychological safety, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and so on. Really investing in leadership training and development, as well as measurement to make sure that people are feeling happy, they're feeling engaged, and that the executive team can see, can be proactive, if there's an area of need, if there's a leader that's not creating this type of culture. [00:08:41] PF: So what do people do in situations, where maybe you have an organization, and the top leader or the CEO, owner, whatever it is, is not happy, is not going to be happy, is not going to buy into this? How then does a team underneath that start making it happen? Because that's something I have seen a lot of, where you have a leader who is a bully, really. It's a situation where they want things done a certain way, and they don't care about happiness. They don't care about wellbeing. They just want it done. So how does the rest of the team then create an environment that can kind of override that? [00:09:21] TG: Yes, such a great question. I was in that exact situation when I worked for five hotels in New York City, and the leader above me was just as you described, and then I had a team that worked for me that I truly wanted to create a bubble. So the first step is to know that even though everyone at the top might not be a happy positive leader, it doesn't mean that you can't create a positive culture within your team and to never underestimate the ripple effect that you have with your coworkers and with the people that you work with because emotions are contagious. Mirror neurons in our brain have us feel the way that other people are feeling around us, whether it be virtual or in person. So just to remember that you truly can have a positive effect on people, and to look at strategies and tools for you to contribute to make the team happy, as well as make yourself happy. There's a wonderful book by Dr. Annie McKee called How to Be Happy at Work. So for anyone listening, who's not necessarily a leader but really wants to increase their happiness at work, there's a lot of great actions in there, proven actions in there for how you can increase your wellbeing, even if maybe the CEO or executives aren't that happy. [00:10:49] PF: That's great, and that's great to know there's a resource out there for that because that is becoming more and more important for people and especially with Gen Z entering the workforce. I think that's really going to change the way that leaders have to create an environment because Gen Z places such an importance on mental health. You think that is going to help turn this tide too and help us realize like we really need to foster a culture of happiness and creativity? [00:11:19] TG: Yes, absolutely. I mean, the levels of anxiety and chronic stress, overwhelm, burnout with different generations, even including teenagers, that it's bringing to the forefront and need to focus on mental health. Of course, there's been so much focus on physical health over the years, and yet mental health now is really, really coming into the foreground. Leaders and people need to go farther than maybe suggesting meditation or saying, “Okay, here's a discount to a yoga class where you live,” or that sort of thing. But to really actually create safe spaces, where people can have vulnerable conversations. I can't help but think of the wonderful Brene Brown of talking about having hard conversations at work. Recently, I heard the CEO of Microsoft speak at this conference called The Future of Work, and he was talking about he shares with his team when he's not doing well mentally. I'm like, “Okay, if the CEO of Microsoft can talk about this when he's feeling extremely stressed or he's feeling very anxious, everyone should be able to.” So the old paradigm of it's sort of like game face for work, do not show emotions, be strong, have your work face is not working for people right now, right? I don't think that people need to be authentic. Of course, they’ll be professional, but to be authentic and to have vulnerable conversations about how people are really doing. [00:12:58] PF: Yeah. That is a big shift to turn around, but it is slowly listing toward that side. [00:13:04] TG: Yes. That will take time. [00:13:06] PF: It will. What about people who are workers, but they're working from home? So they have a different kind of struggle. How do they apply these things? [00:13:20] TG: Yeah. So for people who are working at home, there's benefits and, of course, there's challenges, right? So a lot of people are loving that they have more time back, don't necessarily have to commute. Maybe they can get a quick workout in at lunch. Maybe they can eat lunch outside, give their kid a kiss and a hug when they get home from school, etc. So first up I would say is savor and recognize and have gratitude for the blessings that are in your life with that working from home. Also, recognize that the challenges include feeling more disconnected and some people even feeling isolated, so being intentional about creating human connection moments. So human connection is the number one driver of happiness, right? Spending time with people you care about who care about you. So whether that be video calls, walking meetings, sending little video chats, having that human connection piece is really, really important. Another potential driver of unhappiness from working at home is sort of that work scope creep. It can creep into every part of your day. So having very clearly defined boundaries of when you’re work and when you're not working and making sure that the habits that help us stay healthy like good sleep, good food, meditating, exercise, time for hobbies, time for learning, spending time with friends and family, loved ones, etc., that you honor those. I recommend scheduling them. I joke of like I schedule everything. I schedule meditation. I schedule date nights with my husband. If not, it's very easy to just keep working. So, yeah, and I would say at home, as much as you can also incorporate if you can get a standing desk, if you can have a little more movement and keep your body healthy at home, to do that as well. But really focus on the human connection piece. [00:15:20] PF: Whether you're working at home or in an office, how do you then reach out to someone who is working remotely or another coworker to help them have that same experience? How do you help them along in their happiness journey? [00:15:33] TG: Yes. So I mean, one just resource that pops in my head is if you have someone on your team who or that you work with that you see is struggling or maybe could use some more happiness and wellbeing, I would highly recommend people take the free Yale Happiness Class by Dr. Laurie Santos. It's a great resource of sort of this introduction to positive psychology or the science of happiness. Another great resource is the book Happier by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who I actually studied with for a year. He's a fantastic teacher. I speak on this multiple times a month, and most people aren't that familiar with the science of happiness, so really just starting to share those resources. A very simple question is when you're connecting with people to say, “How are you doing really,” and truly being present for someone that you know is not doing so well, and they're kind of like, “I'm fine,” is I would say open up and share maybe some challenges that you're going through right now. By being vulnerable, they might feel safe to do the same. But I think just checking in with people is really, really important. [00:16:47] PF: Yeah. It’s something we got away from during the pandemic, and it feels like a lot of people are having trouble going back to that, that check in. Would you say that's what you're seeing? [00:17:00] TG: Yes, yes. I mean, during the height of the pandemic, when everyone was so isolated, right? It was like this constant, “Is everyone okay? Is everyone okay?” Even though life is more open now, there are a lot more experiences that we can do, there's still a continuum of people feeling lonely and feeling isolated. So I would, yeah, say reach out as much as you can. [00:17:28] PF: Obviously, technology has made all this possible, our ability to work remotely and connect remotely. But how does technology also negatively affect our happiness and our stress levels? [00:17:41] TG: Yes. Thank you for bringing this up, such a great question. Yes. So the research shows that too much technology, and especially too much time on social media, increases human anxiety and increases levels of sadness and depression. So it's about being very intentional and cognizant about how and when you're using technology. So in my keynote talks, I talked about being very intentional about the content that you consume. Obviously, this podcast is a fantastic piece of content. This is a great type of content for people to consume. But if you are watching and checking the news throughout the day on your smartphone, it's going to make you less happy and more anxious. So maybe you have one or two times a day where you check. I tell people never watch the news on television because it makes you 31% more negative for the rest of the day. But stay informed. Read about the news. But it can consume you, and it can make you feel very negative and anxious. Also, in terms of email, right? Having – Setting boundaries for yourself that – For example, my two young daughters go to sleep around 8:30 PM. I try to have connected time with my husband and not sit and do email from 8:30 to 10:00 at night. I really try and have that as focus on our relationship time. Again, it's being very intentional and also noticing how you feel engaging with the different technology pieces. I tell people, if you get on Facebook and you're full of anger, maybe you need to unfollow a lot of accounts. Or maybe you just need to not get to be on Facebook. [00:19:39] PF: Go watch a cat video, right? [00:19:40] TG: Exactly. So, yeah, I say nourish your brain the way you nourish your body. [00:19:46] PF: It’s so important, especially the emails. I'm glad you brought that up because that gets overwhelming. Being able to put limits and boundaries on that in itself is just a huge thing to be able to do. As we let you go, where do people start? As they walk away from this, what is the one thing that they can do today to apply one of your principles in the workplace to start making it a happier place for them? [00:20:11] TG: Yes. So one place to start is to increase the amount of specific appreciation that you give to others. People, adults are not acknowledged enough in life or in work. When you give specific appreciation for something that they did for you, a way that they took care of a customer, whatever it is, they are going to be filled with happiness, and you're going to feel happier because you deliver that information, whether it be verbally or written, etc. I would say whatever team you're a part of is increase that type of communication, where people are appreciating each other more, and everyone's happiness will rise. [00:21:07] PF: That's terrific. Tia, your book gives us a lot to learn. I'm going to tell all our listeners how they can get it. We'll have something on the website about it. But thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us today. You're doing some really important work, and I'm glad you took 30 minutes out of your day to be able to spend this time with us. [00:21:25] TG: Oh, thank you. You can't see me right now, but I have a huge smile on my face. So thank you for having me. [00:21:30] PF: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:36] PF: That was Tia Graham, author of Be a Happy Leader. If you'd like to learn more about Tia, follow her on social media, access some her great tools online, or buy her book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. As we begin November and enter the season of giving, Live Happy has a whole new way to share your happiness with others. Brand new in Live Happy Store is our giving plate, which you can use to pay it forward to others. Just fill it with your favorite treats and share it with a neighbor, your kid’s teacher, a coworker, or anyone else in your life you'd like to show appreciation to. The poem on our Live Happy giving plate encourages them to spread joy by doing the same for someone else. You can find it right now in the Live Happy Store at store.livehappy.com. 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: Make Space for Happiness With Tracy McCubbin  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 387 of Live Happy Now. If you're like most people, you probably have a little bit of extra stuff laying around the house. But by the time you finish listening to this episode, you just might be ready to let it go. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week I am joined by decluttering expert, Tracy McCubbin, author of Make Space for Happiness: How to Stop Attracting Clutter and Start Magnetizing the Life You Want. Tracy has some surprising things to say about the relationship between clutter and happiness. And what straightening up the space in your house can do for this space in your head. Check it out. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Tracy, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] TM: Paula, thank you for having me. I love the title of your show. I love it. [00:00:51] PF: Thank you so much. Yeah, it pretty much tells what we're about. [00:00:55] TM: You know, I think there's this – I see it. I'm a professional declutter. I own a decluttering company. And I see with so many of my clients that they are waiting for something to happen to get happy, “Oh, if I get that bigger house, then I can start being happy.” Or, “Oh, if I just get my kids out of middle school, then I can be happy.” And my feeling from my own life is that there's no waiting. It starts now. You're not guaranteed tomorrow. You're not – so much can happen. And so, sort of putting off finding the happiness, I think we waste a lot of time. [00:01:32] PF: We do. And so, that's why we're here. We're here to give the little shortcut. [00:01:36] TM: I love. Happiness hacks. [00:01:38] PF: That's right. That's right. Well, you have several. I've got to say, I spent time with your book over the weekend, and I love everything about it. Because you connect decluttering and happiness in a way that I just have not seen done. And it's so concise. And you simplify it. And I guess before we really dive in, can you tell me how you discovered that connection between clutter and mental health? [00:02:05] TM: Well, I kind of came to being a professional declutterer. I've had my company for 15 years. I have nine people who work for me. We are unbelievably busy. I'm so grateful for all of our clients. But over the years of doing this, I just started to see – I live in Los Angeles. I have a lot of very – like, celebrity clients, and wealthy clients, and all stratas. And I just started to see that there was no correlation between stuff and happiness. And actually, what I really saw is that the more stuff people had, the more burden they are. It wasn't storage units full of stuff, or big giant houses, that wasn't equating happiness. And another component is I'm a child of a hoarder. My dad is an extreme hoarder. Diagnosed. And we're dealing with that right now. I've also watched the extreme end of someone really being a prisoner to their stuff, and how it's affected every relationship in his life. Everything about it. For me, just working with people, and then starting to do my own research like you, like, “Well, how can we be a little happier? What can we do?” And sort of realizing that it comes back to the same principles. Get some exercise. You don't have to run a marathon. Just take a walk around the neighborhood. Move around. Just move your body. Be of service. Help somebody outside of yourself. Connect with your friends. And have a gratitude practice. And know where in that stuff is buy more things. Nowhere in that as shopping will make you happier. [00:03:48] PF: That's such a great point, because how big of a problem is clutter in our world? I mean, when you said you have 15 people working for you? [00:03:57] TM: Yeah, yeah. [00:03:58] PF: Started answering my question right there. [00:04:00] TM: Yeah. Yeah, we are in a clutter crisis. This country especially is in a clutter crisis. And it's a perfect storm of a lot of things. And one of the things that I talked about in the book, Make Space for Happiness, is that what we don't realize today, 2022, that we are being marketed to 24 hours a day. Back in the old days, when I was a kid, I'm 57, there were three TV channels. You knew the commercials came on at 18 minutes. And you kind of knew the drill. And now, we are – commercials marketing to 24/7. And it's also never been easier to shop. You don't even have to put pants on now to go shopping. We're just buying, buying, buying at this breathtaking, breathtaking speed, and we're not any happier. [00:04:56] PF: Yeah. One thing, as I was reading your book, it made me think about how – as a kid, you and I are about the same age. And as a kid growing up, you get the newspaper. And if there was like a sale going on, that was a big deal. Like, Sears has having a sale on something. And now it's like you get the paper every – Okay, what's on sale at Target this week? What's on sale here? There's just a constant barrage of print as well that's hitting you. [00:05:21] TM: Yeah. And we have a thing around our house. I was at the grocery store the other day, and it was like, literally, almost everything was on sale. Buy three, get – And I was like, “Wow! If everything's on sale, nothing's on sale.” That it's sort of this. And also, speaking to you went school clothes shopping. I wasn't getting a new outfit every weekend. You went school clothes shopping. And you got some stuff for holidays and your birthday. But this constant I need, I need, I need, I need something new, it's really flipped our priorities. And so, for me that was taking the jump of working with so many clients. Dealing with my dad. Just going like, “This isn't fixing things. This isn't fixing things.” And look, I say this, I'm not saying that you're never going to shop again. I'm not saying there are some amazing people have done in podcast about not spent money for a year. And I think those are fantastic. I'm not saying that. I'm saying I want us to have an awareness. What are we bringing into our homes? Are we being mindful about it? Are we just shopping and shopping and shopping and shopping? And thinking that it's going to give us happiness? There's a little bit of science – there's a lot of bit of science, around shopping. And what happens, especially if you online shop, is you get a hit of dopamine when you put the thing in your cart and you hit by now. You get a hit of dopamine when the package shows up on your doorstep. You get a hit of dopamine when you open it. You've kind of had these little events where you're like, “Oh, I'm a little happier. I'm a little happier. I'm a little happier.” But it's not sustainable. It doesn't stick around. So, then you're like, “Oh, well, I got to buy more to get that feeling back.” Not unlike that first cookie made me feel good. Maybe the fifth one will make me feel better. You know? And so, it's understanding the shopping, the acquisition cycle, and really seeing what it does to go like, “Oh, right. I'm actually not getting any happiness from that.” And getting a good feeling for a few minutes. One of the things that I want people to realize about clutter, especially about bringing it into your house, is that there are forces working against us. It's not necessarily that you're weak, or that we're lazy, or we're bad housekeepers. It's that we're being told to buy all the time. All the time. And I think when people kind of realize that, they can sort of see their part in it and also not beat themselves up so much. [00:08:05] PF: Mm-hmm. Well, it happens once they look around and they say, “Well, I have all this stuff.” Do they then want to stop? Or do they keep going? Typically, when you're working with people, what happens? [00:08:16] TM: I define clutter as the stuff that gets in the way of what you really want to do. If you want to, every morning, cook yourself a really healthy breakfast so you can start your day off right, but your kitchen counter is covered with appliances that you don't use, and mail, and all this stuff, and it's not set up to cook, then that becomes clutter. If your closet is so stuffed with clothes that getting dressed in the morning literally brings you to tears. I cannot tell you how many people are like, “I cry in the morning.” I'm like, “That's not a good way to start your day.” [00:08:49] PF: No, it's not. [00:08:50] TM: That's when your stuff becomes clutter. It's realizing when it's crossed over, when it's become clutter, and how that clutter is affecting you. Your home should be the place of respite. It should be the place of refilling your well. That you come home, and you sleep, and you nourish yourself, and you connect with your family, or your partner. Or if you're by yourself, you take some downtime. But if you're moving your stuff back and forth laterally to make room for yourself, that is adding stress to you. It's understanding the effect that the clutter has on you. And in this book, it's really about understanding why you're bringing the clutter in. What do you think that's missing? What's the hole inside of yourself that you're trying to magnetize something to fill it? [00:09:38] PF: And one thing in your book, and you identify seven clutter blocks that keep us from getting rid of things that we don't need, we don't want, we don't use. I loved the way that you break those down. Can you talk about those a little bit? [00:09:53] TM: Absolutely. The clutter blocks are the emotional stories we tell ourselves about why we can't let go stuff that we don't want need or use. It's a complicated story. And the funny thing is we all tell ourselves the same story. This ranges from everything from clutter block number one, which is my stuff keeps me stuck in the past. This is maybe you have grown kids, and you still have their rooms exactly the way they were. This may be clothes that you don't fit into anymore. And let's acknowledge, let's acknowledge that there is gravity, and your body is going to change over time. It's going to change over time. Things that you wore 20 years ago, you may not be able to wear anymore. And I see so many people hanging on to that stuff, especially those clothes, “Well, I used to be that size.” And I remember – what that stuff does is tells you that your best days are behind you. [00:10:52] PF: Oh my. Wow! What a powerful way to look at it. [00:10:57] TM: Yeah, that you're not moving forward. Another clutter block is clutter block number three, the stuff I'm avoiding, which is, full disclosure, that is my clutter block. That is I hate to open mail. I hate emails. Everything about being a grown up is really stressful for me. And so, I avoid it. But it doesn't get better. That letter from the IRS, ignoring it is not going to make it better. [00:11:26] PF: I got to confess, that's my thing, too. [00:11:29] TM: Yeah, it's funny. Oftentimes, very productive, successful people fall into this, because they kind of are doing so much other stuff that they don't deal with being a grown up. We got to be a grown up. Another great clutter block, this is one of my favorites, and this came up so much during the pandemic, I'm not worth my good stuff. This is my people who have beautiful things, but don't use them. They don't burn the fancy candle. They don't wear the nice sweater. They're saving for a special occasion. It's always this time down in the future. And what I like to say is use the nice stuff. You're worth it. Even if you're just heating a piece of pizza, put it on the piece of China. Burn the nice candle. Why have all these beautiful things if you don't use them? What are you saving them for? Big part of my company, dClutterfly, our business is that we help families after someone has passed away. We'll help empty out the house. And I cannot tell you how many times I've been in homes where, literally, their wedding presents from 40 years ago that were never opened, that were never used. That they're sort of waiting for that special occasion. And then life comes and goes and they never used it. I'm like use it today. Today is the special day. Today is the special day. Another great one, and I really see this. This is clutter block number six. And I really see this with people, especially women kind of between 40 and 60. We're really starting to kind of get the impact of being the sandwich generation. Still have kids. And your parents are aging. And clutter box number six is trapped with other people's stuff. And this is really about inheriting. Someone has passed away. Someone has gifted you things that you're sort of got all this stuff from someone else and you feel guilty letting go of it. But you have no use for it. I work with people all the time who have rented a storage unit to pay to store the furniture that they don't want from their parents or grandparents, but they can't imagine getting rid of it. They're really trapped in this cycle of holding on to things that they don't – will never use, but can't let go of them. [00:13:53] PF: In that case, you're really dealing with a lot of guilt, aren't you? [00:13:58] TM: Yeah, so much guilt. So much guilt. And what I really say, this one, is start to have the conversations now. Everyone is so nervous, or they think it's morbid, or it's too emotional to talk about what happens when someone passes. But I am very big on getting your house in order, getting your stuff in order. Telling people what really is valuable. Not what's imagined valuable. Who you want to have stuff? I have a lot of my – I call them my little old lady clients. They're sort of 85 and above. And they're at their last chapter. And they're enjoying it. And they have started – I see more and more. They're starting to give their jewelry away now before they pass with the idea being – And one of my first clients said it to me. She was like, “I'm never going to wear this ring again. I can't get it on my fingers. But I want to see my granddaughter wear it.” I don't want to wait until I'm gone. I'm going to go to lunch with her and see it on her finger and know that she's enjoying it. And so, I think that we, when this generation starts to do that, accept it. Understand. Don't shy away from it. Really know, “Oh, they're celebrating. And this is something that we can share together.” [00:15:16] PF: I love that. And you don't have to wait until you're 85 to do that, right? [00:15:19] TM: Nope. No, no, no. My niece just went up to visit my mom. And she's like, “Nana was giving me all this stuff. What does that mean?” And I was like, “Because Nana doesn't need it anymore. Nana's retired. Take the cute clothes. She wants to enjoy it with you.” I think that if you're out there, and you're listening, and you're trapped with other people's stuff, remember this. You don't really want this stuff. You want the connection to the person who's passed. And so, we think by keeping all the stuff, we're going to keep the connection. And what I say is, if you're keeping more stuff than you're comfortable with, if you're keeping stuff and it's a financial burden, if your garage is full of stuff, you start to actually lessen the connection because you start to get resentful. And so, what I'm saying is maybe you just keep a small amount so that you can truly be happy. And when you look at it, you remember that person enjoying. Not like, “Ugh! I have a $400 a month storage in it full of my grandma's furniture. You know? That really honor that connection. I think that people are so – they think they have to keep everything. And it really becomes a burden. I mean, it's called trapped with other people's stuff for a reason. That people are really stuck. And I do gently joke with my clients, because they're like, “I don't know how I'm going to get rid of this. My mom would be so mad.” And I was like, “I've been doing this for a long time. No one has ever come back from the great beyond to be mad at you about –” And I feel like if people – Honestly, if people – If you were able to, let's say, have an hour with someone who passed away just by magic, they would want you to be happy. They wouldn't want you to be burden. They wouldn't – I really know this with all my heart, because they’re at the end with so many people. And so, if you're in this, if you're trapped with this, just change your lens on it. Just look at it a little bit of a different way. Would that person really want you to be beholden to their stuff? [00:17:28] PF: Yeah. Yeah, because you tell a really compelling story in the book about the woman had a whole storage unit full of precious moments, figurines, and it was costing money, and it was creating problems in her marriage. [00:17:40] TM: Yeah, exactly, exactly. That she was paying to store these things that were her mother's. And she had a very fraught relationship with her mother. And she was like, “Well, this was so important to her.” But it was really financially a big burden to them. And so, here she was financially putting her and her husband. And they were trying to start a family. They were trying to do all these things. And they have this giant storage bill for stuff that she didn't even want. And so, it's like she had to get real with what she was doing and the choices that she was making. And that those precious memories weren't her precious memories. [00:18:15] PF: Right. And so, how big a shift is it? Because it's not as simple as you sitting down with someone and saying, “Okay, here's what you're going to do.” And then they say, “Oh, that works.” And now everything's fine. How big a shift is it to turn around? Because we didn't get into this spot overnight. [00:18:33] TM: Well, I’ll use my favorite expression. Rome was not cluttered in a day. I think that it's a shift. It's a mindset shift for sure. And I think to start – before you even start decluttering, before you even get into it, the most important thing is to figure out why. Why do you want to make this change? Because the change will never stick if you don't have a compelling why. Do you want to declutter and have less stuff because you want to have friends over for dinner and feel comfortable at that? Do you want to be able to shut the door and go on vacation and not worry about it? Do you want to downsize to a smaller house? What is your why? And notice, in all of those whys that I list, it's never about, “Well, I want to just be a good housekeeper.” It’s not what it's about, right? It's just not there. And it's not about the shame. It's about what's the positive actionable thing that you hope to do by having less stuff? One of my favorite phone calls I ever got from a client, she had a cute little apartment, but the stuff had taken over. She had two bedrooms in it that she couldn't use. She hadn't had friends over in I think she said like 10 years. And so, we decluttered. And she did great. And a couple of weeks after we worked together, she called me and she said, “A friend of mine called me and said, “Hey, I'm just down the street. Do you want to meet for coffee?” And she said in the first time in 10 years, “I could have them come over to my house and have coffee.” And she said, “The joy that that brought me, that I wasn't like rushing to meet them at a coffee shop, or embarrassed about my house.” She said it changed everything. [00:20:25] PF: That’s amazing. [00:20:26] TM: Yeah. That for me is what's your why? Why do you want to go on this journey? And you know, Paula, it can also simply be as simple as like I just want a little empty space. I just want a little corner to breathe. I just want some peace. Right? It can be that. And so, it's definitely click into your why. Go easy on yourself. Start small. Be aware of why you've held on to the clutter. Why you're bringing the clutter in. Just start to make some changes. And don't be a weekend warrior. Don't think you're going to get it done in one weekend. It’s just not. You're just not. I think we got to go a little easier on ourselves. [00:21:14] PF: And then how do we remind ourselves about our goals and our purpose in this journey? Because just like a diet, or an exercise program, you can get gung ho at the beginning, and then get off track. [00:21:27] TM: You know, sometimes it's as simple as writing it out on a piece of paper and sticking at your desk where you see it every day. It's some visual reminder. It's also when you do declutter, like, let's say you do a shelf in your linen closet, or you do the junk drawer in your kitchen, take a moment to see how good that feels. When that the next time you've got to go find a rubber band, you know exactly where they are and they're not old, broken ones. Go like, “Oh, right. That's why I wanted to get decluttered, because it works. This just made my life easier.” If you celebrate those wins, if you celebrate how it feels and the change that came out of it, then the behavioral change starts to stick. [00:22:09] PF: That's terrific. And what about, at the top of the show, we talked about the constant marketing? The emails? The text alerts? All these things? How do we kind of put a bubble around ourselves to minimize or eliminate as many of those as we can? [00:22:27] TM: I think it's understanding, especially around social media. Look, I love social media, I have a big Instagram and TikTok presence. I love connecting with people. I do these five things you can declutter in under five-minute challenges. It's great. But also, having literacy, media literacy and understanding it's still a sales platform. People are still selling to you. Somebody went said to me about television years ago. They said, “Oh, the shows, we're just the filler between the commercials.” You know? And so, I think it's having literacy and understanding, “Oh, right, that influencer is not my friend. I may like them, but they're not.” Even though it looks like it's my girlfriend saying to me, “Oh, try this thing. That's not the case.” And so, understanding the reality of it, right? Understanding the cycle of acquisition. When you order something online, “Bing!” You get a dopamine hit when you buy it. The next day, “Bing!” When it shows up on your doorstep, you get a dopamine hit, “Bing!” It’s this. And that dopamine hit doesn't last. So, you're like, “Oh, I got to buy more to get it again.” Just really understanding what – just educating yourself. Like, everything, right? Educating yourself. How can you – when you understand, “Oh, these things can hack my happiness.” One of the most fascinating things, they did a study, and I think at Yale. And they found out, if you write a handwritten thank you note, you raise your serotonin for 30 days. [00:24:14] PF: Oh, my gosh! [00:24:16] TM: One handwritten note, you raise your serotonin for 30 days. That's amazing. Like, amazing, amazing, amazing. [00:24:26] PF: That’s a heck of a payoff for one night. [00:24:27] TM: It’s a heck of a payoff. And if you think about that, happiness hack, that not only are you raising your own serotonin, but you're also doing it for someone who gets the note, right? You're being of service. You're having a gratitude practice. It’s those little things that makes such a big difference. [00:24:48] PF: Yeah. And let's talk, because I know I have to let you go, but I don't want to. Talk about the payoff in this of reducing clutter and what it does for our happiness? Because you spelled it out so beautifully in your book. Can you tell us that? [00:25:03] TM: Absolutely. First of all, on the kind of simplest scientific clutter equals stress. They’ve proven it. They've done millions of studies. Visual clutter, it raises our cortisol levels. And women especially, and especially women who are perimenopause and menopausal, it is – You know, it's a real thing, this cortisol. It's kind of where the tummy comes from. And more clutter raises your stress. The other important piece of information is that every piece of clutter in your house is a decision you have to make. Do I want this? Where does it live? Will I ever use it? Do I spend too much money for it? And all of those constant decisions put you in decision fatigue, which is basically your brain is just tired of making decisions. So, what will default to making bad decisions. If you think about the science of this clutter, it's definitely working against you. This isn't – I really want people to take this in. This isn't about being a perfect housekeeper. This isn't about looking like a page from Pinterest. This is about creating a home that supports you. A home that makes you happy. [00:26:22] PF: And everybody has a different level of what they consider cluttered. And I have a friend who is very proud of being a maximalist. And I'm very much of a minimalist. And for her, it's not stressful. It stresses me out to go to her house, but she's great with it. Different people do have kind of like this different barometer of what they consider clutter, right? [00:26:45] TM: Of course. Yeah. And like in our house, my partner, his kids are older. I don't have kids. We're two people. But if I go into a house where there's a family of five, it's a very different amount of stuff. That's why there's no recipe for, “Oh, you should only have 30 books. And oh, you should only –” No. What works for you. But the caveat to that is, is it really working for you? [00:27:09] PF: Right? [00:27:10] TM: Is it really working for you? If you walk in your closet in the morning to get dressed, and you burst into tears, I'm going to tell you, it's not working for you. And that's another thing on the decluttering journey that I tell people, is just spend a day or two going through your house, living your life, and seeing where the log jam happens. Where are you not cooking a healthy meal because the kitchen is too cluttered? Is your bathroom full of expired makeup? And all that kind of stuff. Where's the log jam? And start there. [00:27:47] PF: That's terrific. Tracy, you have so much we can learn from you. I really am excited to tell our listeners about your book. We're going to tell them how to get your book. How to follow you on social media, because they can get all kinds of tips and great advice that way. And thank you so much for coming on the show. Because like I said, you've just got a lot that we can learn from you. [00:28:07] TM: Thank you. I love it. I love connecting with people. And I really love connecting with people who are on a happiness journey, and realizing that so much of it is in our own hands. And there are things – Look, life is hard. We just got through – I don't know if it'll ever be replicated in my lifetime what we just went through, you know? And so, the things that we can do within our power to bring ourselves and our community a little more happiness, I think we got to be both feet in. I think we got to – how can I make my world a little bit better? [00:28:45] PF: Yeah. And this is such a great way. It's simple. Not necessarily easy, but it can be done. [00:28:52] TM: Exactly. [00:28:55] PF: That was Tracy McCubbin, author of Make Space for Happiness: How to Stop Attracting Clutter and Start Magnetizing the Life You Want. If you'd like to learn more about Tracy, follow her on social media, or download a free chapter from her book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Phelps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Making Time for Kindness With Dr. Michelle Robin  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 386 of Live Happy Now. World Kindness Day is just a month away, but there's no reason not to start observing it right now. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm joined by Dr. Michelle Robin, Founder of Small Changes Big Shifts, the Big Shifts Foundation, and the 31-Day Kindness Campaign. Launched in 2019, The Kindness Campaign is a free inspirational email adventure that begins October 14th. When you sign up, you'll receive a daily email suggesting an act of kindness that you can do that day. Michelle is here today to explain why kindness is so good for our wellbeing, how the campaign came about, and what it can do for you. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:47] PF: Robin, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:50] MR: Thank you for having me. I love the mission. [00:00:53] PF: Oh. Well, I love your mission, and it aligns so well with everything that we do at Live Happy Now. So you've got a wonderful campaign we're going to talk about, but I've got to know, why is kindness your jam? Like why is it such a hot thing for you, and how did you get so involved in it? [00:01:09] MR: Well, it's kind of a funny story. So my background’s around wellbeing. I’ve been around the space about 40 years. As I replay my life, which you tend to do the older you get, you got to kind of see where people have enriched your life. So in my second book, The E-Factor: Engage, Energize, Enrich, I really talk about getting engaged in the wellness journey, and then you have more energy. Then once you do that, you try to just enrich. So part of my mission right now is to enrich other people's lives and make an impact. As a kid, my mom was married four times. By the time I was 17, I had a little bit of sexual trauma and a little bit of alcoholism trauma, and just really didn't feel like I mattered, especially to the people that you think you should matter to. But by the grace of God or universe, there are people that came along in my life that were kind to me. You don't really see it until you can reflect older and realize what has happened and what has sustained you through some of those tough moments. But this Kindness Campaign is pretty funny. One of my friends, Ann Koontz, who's in our wellness movement in Kansas City, she's a mental health advocate. I happen to be working with her daughters when they were teenagers about 15 years ago, and she knows that I have other online programs that we do around sleep and around posture. She said, “You know what? You really need it.” You know when somebody says, “You really need to do something around kindness. You need to do a 21-day kindness program.” Paula, I don't know about you. But sometimes, it's like, “Really, you want me to do one more thing. I'm already running a practice. I'm running a movement. I do a podcast. I've got seven books.” [00:02:37] PF: Like, “Sure. Let me just tack that on to my to-do list.” [00:02:40] MR: One more thing, it happened to be the fall of 2019. Thank God that she kept insisting that I do something. She said, “I'll even help you. But we need to start it, and we need to end it on World Kindness Day with Lady Gaga’s movement.” I said, “Okay, Ann. You win.” She kind of wore me down. I believe in being kind. I'm the person that holds the doors for people. That's just kind of who I've become. Interesting enough, I talked to one of my friends, Dr. J. Dunn, and she's a genetic specialist, and she said, “Michelle, you actually have the kind gene.” Some people actually have this kind gene, which is pretty fascinating. So that was put inside of me, and then Ann kind of poke the bear. Then we know what happened in March of 2020. Thank goodness, we'd already built The Kindness Campaign. [00:03:22] PF: Let’s go back to that for a minute. When you talk about the kindness gene, one, if there's people out there saying, “Oh, crap. I don't have it,” let's talk about how they can develop this like a muscle. But what is that? What do you think that does, the kindness gene, and how does that change how you're interacting in the world versus how someone else might interact in the world? [00:03:42] MR: Yeah. We all have a genetic roadmap called the genome, and that genome has different – I like to call it divisions. So like if you were, let's say, in a Walmart or a Target, they have different divisions. They have a toy division, and they have a home goods division, and they have a food division. They may have an auto division. Well, you have these different divisions in your body that make your systems work because we're chemistry. We work because of chemistry, right? Those divisions sometimes have hiccups, whether it's in the way your liver detoxes or in the way your body – In my case, I have a vitamin D receptor defect, and so my body has trouble keeping my vitamin D up. So I have to work really hard at that. It could be where I have trouble with the thyroid genes. It could be where I have trouble with the genetics that go along with neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. I mean oxytocin. So what we have found out through the work of, especially, Dr. J Dunn, who's a chiropractor by training as well, but she specializes in kinesiology, in genetics. So there's a way to start to, in a sense, hack the genes in a positive way through chemistry, not necessarily pharmaceutical. Sometimes, that's necessary, but more through the right supplementation because those – I think about them as wheels. Those cogs in the wheels move because of chemistry, whether it's a cofactor like vitamin D or a B vitamin or B12 or B6 or magnesium or calcium or boron, whatever type of maybe nutritional supplement. For myself, personally, I got my genetic genome. The cheapest way to do it is through someplace like Ancestry. There's some places that don't give other people access because they're not owned by Big Pharma. Then I have a functional medicine doctor who practice kinesiology that will actually help test through and compare to my blood work what I can be doing. So some of us have this cup half full, and some of us have a cup half empty. If it's half empty, you got to work really hard to make it full. Paula, for me, I suffer from anxiety, and I believe after caring for people for 30 years that most people have a level of anxiety. Some people manage it through music. Some people manage it through medication. Some people manage it through alcohol. Some people manage it by maybe playing a video game. For me, I actually manage it by being a connector. That's probably one of the biggest ways I manage my anxiety is be of service for people. [00:06:06] PF: That's so interesting because your mission and kindness has been – You've created something so incredible and so big. It started with your Big Shifts Foundation. Can you talk about what that is? Then we'll get into The Kindness Campaign. [00:06:20] MR: Sure. Big Shifts Foundation is a foundation to make generational change for 30 and younger. You can say, “Michelle, why 30 and younger?” Think about a pond. If a pond has a bunch of dirty fish, you probably don't want to be fishing in that pond, right? Because you don't want toxicity. [00:06:35] PF: That's a great point. Yeah. [00:06:37] MR: So if you have a child who has autoimmune disease, anxiety, depression, maybe some cancers and allergies, how could you clean up their pond because their pond got toxed out? In our medicine, we believe people are sick because of two reasons. They're toxic or they're deficient. Toxic in, let's say, gluten. Deficient in vegetables. Toxic in hate. Deficient in love. Toxic in medications. Deficient in the right supplementations. Toxic in sitting around, being an office potato too much, versus movement. So the foundation's job is to really pour into young people, ideally, before they have babies, so we can clean up their pond. Because our parents, they did the best they could. If you really look at our parents did the best they could, but their training was by – In my case, my grandparents and my great grandparents and my great, great grandparents. Sooner or later, you go back to evolution and whatever your beliefs are. Something got messed up. Because as we talked earlier on a previous show is that we innately are pretty designed to be well. Some people come in with a few hiccups, but innately we come in. We're happy. We're cooing. We have this ability to bring smiles to some of the hardest people as a little baby, and then something changes, and what is that that changes? Is it the thoughts we were told? Is it the food we're fed? Is it that we sit on a device too long? Is it that we're not sleeping because we're scared? So the foundation's job is to pour into young people to help them realize that they were designed to be loved, and they're designed to be well. So we teach them about posture, we teach them about sleep habits, and we teach them about labs. We actually do their functional medicine. As I'm sitting here, one thing that we've not done yet, this will be our third year doing a scholarship program with them, is we've not talked about their genetics. So I'm going to add that to the program. We have a six-month discovery program where they get to go to therapy, and they get functional medicine, blood work, and they get a wide membership, and they get to get massage and acupuncture and chiropractic. We just love them. Or they get Reiki. Can you imagine being an 18 to 25-year-old? Some 18 to 30s are arranged for our scholarship program. All of a sudden, you have a bucket of money to really take care of yourself. They do they do the Hoffman weekend experiments. Experience was really how do you start to heal your heart for some of the bullying you've had done too. [00:09:01] PF: That’s so important because I've been doing some research. I just did a report on Gen Z and how different they are. This generation, more than any previous generation, is interested in mental health. They're concerned about their wellbeing. They will put their mental health above a work situation. It’s like they're not going to tolerate some of the things. I think it's such a huge generational shift. The fact that you're giving them the tools to be able to do some of these things is really going to help propel that forward. [00:09:34] MR: I think the word – When you look up the dictionary wellbeing, it means happy. I think people want to be happy, and it's hard to be happy when you have a bellyache, or you have a headache, or you are nervous of what somebody's saying about you, or you're in pain. So how do we help them really make that shift to be happy? It's a super fascinating time that these young people are forcing us to really look at mental health, and they're forcing parents to really identify and think, “You know what? I've had depression my whole life, and I've not sought help for it.” So it's time. There are so many tools to living your best life that don't cost a lot of money. Of course, some do. But there's a lot that don't. Being kind is one that doesn't cost a lot of money, getting sleep. But how do you do – I mean, I understand that some people don't feel safe enough to sleep. So how do we try to address that? But for the average person, at least in America, we can put down our device. We just don't. [00:10:27] PF: Yeah. Right. We’re connecting. [00:10:28] MR: So there's all those little things that we can do to try to help ourselves, and that's what we're on a mission to do. We're on a mission to reach a billion people that the small changes they can do can lead to big shifts in their life and that our foundation, Big Shifts Foundation, ultimately, is really how do we help 30 and younger, not that we don't want to help the people that are older. I mean, this campaign is for everybody. But we do know that if we change a person before they have kids, they change their genetic makeup for the future generations, and it's going to take 2.5 generations to change what we're in right now. We can do it inch by inch, wellness is a cinch. [00:11:03] PF: I love that. Absolutely love that. So let's talk about The Kindness Campaign. 31 days and it's not a challenge. Tell us why it's a campaign, not a challenge. [00:11:12] MR: Yeah. So one of our friends here in Kansas City came to me. One of our corporate clients said, “Okay, Michelle. We've talked about building rhythm and resilience through this whole thing called COVID.” I know resilience is kind of a buzzword for people, but the word I was hearing when this came on like COVID, and I've heard before, even when I had a bad accent is, “Michelle, you got to develop a rhythm or consistency so that you can have resilience.” To me, resilience – I know a lot of people are super resilient, but it's hard to be resilient when you are dehydrated. It's hard to be resilient when you are having irritable bowel syndrome and just like I talked about being happy. So they came to me and said, “Michelle, you know, we're at August of 2020. We know mental health is at all time high right now. What do you think we should do?” Who wants to hear how to not to have anxiety? That doesn't sound like a great class to go to, right? Not that we all don't need it, but I said, “Well, you know what? We have this Kindness Campaign.” In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, “That Ann hounded me about doing it.” “Why don't we do that?” They said, “Yes. But we don't want it 21 days. We want it 31 days.” They actually made that call because we used to do our online programs for 21 days. They said, “Because we are in this nasty 2020 election cycle,” like we're in a nasty 2022 election cycle and the 2023 and 2024, probably, they wanted to overlap that. But I wanted to end on World Kindness Day. That's important to me. [00:12:27] PF: I love that. [00:12:28] MR: So that's what we did, and they helped us take it around the world. We just have grown it, and another company helped us take it last year around the world. Then we went on a listing tour to some of the schools, and they said to my team, they said, “You know what? We love what you're doing. But can you make it more specific for kids? Because kids are really suffering.” They said, “Can you not only make it? But can you make us a curriculum for the whole year?” We said, “What we can do this year is we can make a specific deck. So we have seven kindness acts for elementary, seven for middle and seven for high school. Then we have the 31-day deck and campaign for anybody who wants to do that. So we said okay. So we thought, “Well, wait a minute. This fits with our foundation's mission.” The reason why it started is that's why once again and kind of kicked it off. Then some other corporations got behind us. Now, we have 11 sponsors. [00:13:24] PF: So tell me how this works. People sign up, and then what happens? [00:13:28] MR: Go to bigshifts.org, bigshifts.org\kindness, and you can just sign up right there. Then all of a sudden, on October 14th, you're going to get an email that says, “Hey, Paula. Thanks for joining us. Here's what this is about.” We have this fun thing that my team – I've got a great creative team, Desiree and Zach. They said, “You know what? Why don't we give people an opportunity to kind of keep track of which ones make them feel the best?” Because I believe we all have medicine inside of us, that the creator put medicine in me that says, “Michelle, you're able to be a connector.” Paula, it may say that you have a singing voice. I don't have a singing voice. Or you have a writing voice, right. So you're a good writer. I personally am not a great writer. I have great ideas and thoughts. But sometimes, I forget even how to spell the – So that's not my skill set. But I do believe that once we start practicing these acts of kindness, that we’ll realize, “Well, wait a minute. I am really great at this act,” and that we start to realize that's one of our secret sauce. That's some of the magic that makes us who we are in the medicine. So you're going to get an email every day for 31 days. That's going to say, “Hey, here's an act of goodness today.” If it feels right to you, execute it. Why we called it a campaign is people were already challenged. We don't want people to be challenged more. We want them to be inspired that they can not only shift their lives but they can shoot somebody else's. [00:14:49] PF: I love that. So what are some examples of the kind of acts of kindness that’ll get recommended? [00:14:54] MR: Well, it could be smile at somebody. [00:14:55] PF: That’s an easy one. We can do that. [00:14:57] MR: That's an easy. It’s easy. It could be to wave at somebody in the car next to you. We all have on our forehead an MFI, make me feel important, and we just want to want to know we matter. Last year, we got a chance to talk to the YOU Matter team, which was fabulous. This gal actually had signs in her car that she had put on boards, and she had pulled them up. “Hey, nice smile,” or, “Nice color of car,” whatever that would be. Or, “You matter.” It could be that you write a note to a friend, maybe a snail mail or a card. It could be where you send a text to somebody and say, “Hey, I'm thinking of you.” So many little tiny things, and I'm excited to see what people love, and I want to hear new ideas, so we can continue to always freshen up the content. [00:15:38] PF: I love that. So you're a health practitioner. So what is it that you see about kindness that is so crucial to our overall wellbeing? [00:15:48] MR: That is a wonderful question. I want to tell you, I would not have known that answer four years ago. [00:15:53] PF: Really? [00:15:53] MR: I would not have known it. I mean, I would have intuitively known it was good for you. But I would not have known the science behind it, probably much like the work you do with Live Happy Now, you find out the science. This is a soft skill. But this is a soft, soft skill that the research and the science proves is beneficial. So the science shows that by doing kindness to yourself, for yourself, or your pets. I’m a dog person too. I know you are too. Or somebody else, it changes your neurotransmitters. We talked about neurotransmitters just a little bit, but you've got the oxytocin which is what helps you feel like you belong. We do know that people are disconnected more than ever, and they don't feel like they matter, and they're lonely. So people want to matter, and they want to feel like they belong. Then it also – You've got the serotonin and the dopamine that'll give you some motivation and also just help your brain think more positive. So kindness actually shifts those brain chemistry. It is a natural drug to shift your mental health, and it's one of the greatest tools you can use. [00:16:54] PF: Let’s talk about what's going on in our brain when we start practicing kindness. What is that – How is that changing the way that we think? [00:17:03] MR: Well, you think about a couple things. You think about there's something in the brain called the amygdala, and the amygdala helps control the anxiety control centers in the adrenal glands. If you're able to help down regulate that, so instead of kind of – You know when you have caffeine, and you've had nothing else, and you've had maybe three cups of caffeine too much, and you're jittery, and you're kind of on edge. So kindness kind of takes that down a notch. [00:17:26] PF: Then as we start practicing it, how does it then become part of our daily being? Because it is kind of – You and I have talked about this. It's not – I wouldn't say it's addictive, but it does become a pattern if you do it consistently. [00:17:41] MR: I think people start to pay attention. Once again, sometimes it's harder for young brains to get that. Under 25-year-olds, they don't see the patterns yet. But as you get more age, you get more wisdom, and you start to see the patterns, happiness and kindness, if you start to just practice those tools on a regular basis. Sometimes, people forget. I have moments where I forget. I wouldn't say I had days I forget. But sometimes, I get tripped up maybe to an old pattern of some of those negative thinking that we all have. The committee that gets tripped up and you're like, “Gosh, where did I go from there?” I can almost pinpoint the minute where I'll be like, “Michelle, at 10:00 AM, you were fine. And at 10: 20, you weren't fine. What happened between 10:00 and 10:20 AM? Did you forget to eat today? Did you get a phone call that you're processing, and you're thinking it's the end of the world?” So I believe for myself that the more I practice this lifestyle. To me, kindness is a lifestyle. [00:18:38] PF: I like that. Yeah. [00:18:38] MR: Eating vegetables is a lifestyle. Moving is a lifestyle. Listening to positive music is a lifestyle. Reading affirmations is a lifestyle. So when you practice this lifestyle, you have more life in you to share with the world. [00:18:53] PF: Then how do we remind ourselves even after the campaign ends? How do we kind of remind ourselves to make this part of our daily routine? [00:19:01] MR: Well, it could be you printed off a few of the ones that you absolutely love that really spoke to you. Once again, I believe we all have medicine inside of us, and that is what was planted inside your soul for you to find. That is your gift for the world. I don't know what it is, and I hope that people will find something in this campaign that they say, “Oh, wow. That is it. That is what gives me juice and gives me jazz.” So you might post it. We’re seeing each other live by camera right now, and other people are listening to us. But I'm looking to my right, and I know you probably see me look to my right occasionally. I have a board over here to my right in my studio, and it says, “Thank God for this moment.” Underneath it, I have some affirmations, but I also have some of my people in my community that have poured into me. So when you say, “What's my why,” this kind of can be, “I am just pouring it back to the world.” Because people have cared enough to pour it into Michelle Robin, this young woman who, to be totally transparent, is living the best life she could have ever imagined because people poured into me. I wasn't meant to succeed. I wasn't – I grew up poor. I grew up abused like a lot of people. For some reason, I'm sitting, and I have a home, I have a car, I have my health, and I've got community. It doesn't get much better than that. So I think that if you start to plant stuff around you to remind you, “Oh, you know what? Today's the day or this moment I could choose another way to be.” I could be grumpy at that person who pulled out in front of me, or I can bless them. I could send them love. That's – I think it just becomes who you are, almost moment to moment. [00:20:38] PF: I love that. Thank you so much for all the work that you're doing and for sitting down with me today and talking about it. [00:20:45] MR: Well, thank you for getting behind the movement. Like I said, I love what Live Happy stands for, Live Happy Now. I love following your show. You have brought on some really insightful guests through the last 380-some episodes. That – [00:20:58] PF: Yeah. Number 386 right here. [00:21:01] MR: The last 386 episodes. It matters, and you just don't know what a person's life is tuning in today that’s going, “Wow,” that maybe make a different decision, and maybe it's to stay alive. [00:21:12] PF: That’s terrific. Thank you again. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:18] PF: That was Dr. Michelle Robin, talking about the 31-Day Kindness Campaign. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle, sign up for The Kindness Campaign, or follow Michelle on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. 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: Discover Live Happy’s Halloween Happy Acts  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 385 of Live Happy Now. Now that it’s October, it’s time to start looking at how to make this a truly happy Halloween. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I’m joined by Deborah Heisz, CEO, and co-founder of Live Happy, and Casey Johnson, our ecommerce marketing manager to talk about our all-new Halloween Happy Acts Campaign. If you’ve been with us for a while, you already know that every March, we encourage wellbeing with a month of intentional activities that we call happy acts. This year, we’re combining happy acts with our favorite holiday to create an entire month of happiness while celebrating the spirit of Halloween. Let’s hear what it’s all about. [INTERVIEW]   [00:00:45] PF: Deb and Casey, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] DH: It’s such a pleasure to be here. As usual, always excited to get on a podcast, Paula. I know we have a lot of fun stuff going on. [00:00:55] PF: This one, I’m particularly excited about because Halloween is my favorite time of year. I absolutely love Halloween. When Casey told me about the Halloween happy acts, I got super-duper excited about it. I guess the first thing we need to do is talk about what happy acts are. Since Deb, you’re pretty much the originator of the happy act, why don’t you tell us what happy act is and where those came from? [00:01:19] DH: I’d love to. But also, everybody, say hi to Casey. Casey, say hi.   [00:01:23] CJ: Hi, guys. [00:01:25] DH: She has come up with some great ideas for Halloween happy acts.   [00:01:28] PF: Oh my gosh! Yes.   [00:01:28] DH: I am excited to have extended it out of the month of March, which is when we typically do happy acts. Because they really should be an all-year thing. They shouldn’t be confined to March where the International Day of Happiness is, but of course, putting some attention on it and doing it at that time of year, we get a lot more coverage, we get a lot more people participating. Because it’s something you can hang your hat on and say okay, “In March, I’m going to make sure I’ll up my happy acts game. But doing it in Halloween is great because like you, it’s one of my favorite times of the year, one of the happiest things for me at Halloween is Halloween specials for whatever reason. All the shows that just run specials that are Halloween themed, I think back to Roseanne when it was on in my childhood and how the family got dressed up in elaborate costumes every year. It was just a lot of fun. One of my happiest times a year and I’m an October baby.   [00:02:20] PF: Oh, you really.   [00:02:21] DH: Yes, and my mother’s an October baby, and my older daughter and I actually share a birthday in October. So October is like my month, it’s great. [00:02:28] PF: That is the month. It’s like the whole month off to celebrate. [00:02:33] DH: I think it really works that way, but you asked me what happy acts are. Happy acts are little things that you can do or big things. But things you can do intentionally with intention to make the world a happier place. It’s as simple as, you always hear about the pay it forward, buy somebody a cup of coffee when you’re in the Starbucks line or something like that. But it’s also donating a book to a library, reading to your kids’ class, it’s checking on a neighbor, it’s making a phone call to someone you haven’t talked to in a long time, it’s sending a thank you note because you know how big I am on gratitude. [00:03:10] PF: It comes up once or twice. [00:03:11] DH: It has a few times, but it’s sending a thank you note to someone for making a difference in your life. It’s something that you’re doing actively and intentionally to help make the world a happier place. It doesn’t have to be for a person either. It could be picking up litter, it could be donating time at a pet shelter. It doesn’t have to be anything massive or significant. In fact, we do the happy acts walls in March. That’s where we put up walls, challenging people to commit to doing a happy act. We do a lot of them in schools, because kids come up with things like, “I’m going to smile more. I’m going to eat my vegetables my mom tells me to.” Whatever it is, but it can be something simple. But the point here is that, you’re doing with intention, you know that you’re doing it. It’s not just, “Oh, I held the door open for somebody and I didn’t give it a thought because I always hold the door open for somebody.” Doing something with intention to make the world a happier place, because we know the science says that whoever you’re doing whatever it is for is likely to feel happy. It’s likely – we always say happy, but what we mean is likely to feel grateful or have an elevated sense of well-being. But the reality is that you are going to have a greater sense of well-being by doing happy acts, doing things with intention, with positive intention really does affect your overall mood, you overall – how you perceive the world. All of those things are improved when you do happy acts. That’s what happy acts are. [00:04:38] PF: And they’re a wonderful thing. Then when Casey said, “Hey, we’re going to do Halloween happy acts.” I remember that call because I was like, “I love this idea.” Casey, I mean, that was such a great idea. What made you want to tailor these happy acts tradition to our Halloween? [00:04:38] CJ: Yeah. So kind of like what Deb was saying earlier. Happy acts aren’t just for March and International Day of Happiness on March 20. We encourage people to practice happy acts all year round. Halloween and Christmas, I read this earlier, I heard it somewhere, someone defined them as like gimme holidays. Getting rather than giving. I just thought it would be a good chance to kind of practice maybe some like reverse trick or treating and tie in some happy acts to that month. [00:05:27] PF: I love I, because, as I said, you’ve done such a great job of coming up with happy acts. There are times when you’ll send out, “Hey, these are happy acts. This is what we’re going to do.” I’m like, “Wow, how do we –” like the fact that you can come up with so many new things each time, that always impresses and amazes me. How did you come up with, here’s how we can celebrate it for Halloween? [00:05:47] CJ: Well, thank you. First of all, it’s definitely a team effort. It’s not just all me. But yeah, you know, just Halloween happy acts, there’s so much you can do to spread kindness in October and still kind of celebrate that spooky holiday. Though, I guess I’ll just kind of jump into some of our Halloween happy acts. [00:06:02] PF: Yeah. Tell us what we’re going to do.   [00:06:04] CJ: So we’re kind of thinking of making it a competition, right? We want to spread the love. The plan is to highlight a different happy act every week. If people want to participate, they can tag us in a post, a reel, a story, as long as they tag us of them performing a Halloween happy act of the week, or they can get creative, and it’s not our Halloween happy act of the week, and they’re still out there spreading kindness that works as well. But so, I’ll just kick it off. So week one, we encourage people to donate blood. Deb and I actually went and donated blood together, which was amazing. Week two, trick or treat with UNICEF. Every year, UNICEF, they encourage people to kind of do that reverse trick or treating, donate candy to people in need, who don’t have the luxury of being able to go trick or treating. Week three, paint a pumpkin, we always encourage people in March to paint positivity on rocks. In October, we’re encouraging people to paint pumpkins. On week four, we’re encouraging people to wrap someone in love. So basically, give someone a big old bear hug. Or if you’re someone who doesn’t like hugs or like to be touched, you can – [00:07:15] PF: Are you talking about me now?   [00:07:17] CJ: Of course not. [00:07:18] DH: She might be, Paula. She might be.   [00:07:20] CJ: I might be. Wink wink.   [00:07:22] DH: No, I’m just kidding.   [00:07:24] CJ: But yeah, so I mean, not everyone likes to be touched and that’s okay. You can wrap yourself in like a warm blanket, or we’ve also got some awesome Live Happy hoodies on the Live Happy store, and they’ll make you feel nice and cozy. [00:07:37] DH: Shameless plug there, but they do. They’re awesome. [00:07:41] CJ: I’ve got like two Live Happy hoodies. They’re my favorite. Then week five, so that’s the actual week of Halloween, so we’re kind of going big that week. We’re going to have two Halloween happy acts. The first one is to bake a healthy treat for your class or office. I’m kind of thinking of baking like some pumpkin muffins, or some zucchini bread for our office.   [00:08:02] DH: Let me know what day. I’ll make sure I’m there. [00:08:02] PF: I can fly in. [00:08:07] CJ: I’ll make sure you guys are in the office. Paula, I’ll send you some zucchini bread or pumpkin muffins.   [00:08:11] PF: All right. Okay. That’s a good deal.   [00:08:14] CJ: Then on Halloween, we encourage people to create a Halloween card for your neighbor. So like maybe like –   [00:08:21] PF: I like that.   [00:08:22] CJ: – picture of a Halloween pan or just something, spread the love. [00:08:25] PF: Yeah, I like that a lot. Because especially making a card, or doing something, or even painting a pumpkin, and giving it to them, giving it to a neighbor. I think that’s so important right now, because I feel like we’re still a little bit disconnected from each other. We talked about getting back to normal, but it still feels disconnected in so many ways. I think these are great ways. Go ahead. [00:08:46] DH: No, you know, you’re talking about that getting back to normal. But if you think back, before what we’re all talking about how we didn’t know our neighbors, maybe we are back to normal, and we just realized that we didn’t know them anyway. I bring that up, because it’s not just getting back to normal, it is a proactive activity or asking somebody to do. It’s not just being in your comfort zone, it’s reaching out just a little bit to somebody that you wouldn’t ordinarily be having contact with, and helping them have a happier day or a happier Halloween. I love the idea of the reverse trick or treating with UNICEF. These are all things that are super easy to do. I love them. Thank you, Casey.   [00:09:25] CJ: Of course. [00:09:26] PF: Yeah, they’re fun. Then, how are we going to turn this into a challenge? [00:09:31] CJ: So, it’s kind of like our gratitude challenge if any of our listeners remember when we did that a few years ago. Say week one, you donate blood, post a picture, video, whatever on your story, tag us and also, tag a friend and encourage them to keep the momentum going. [00:09:49] PF: I like that a lot. Because really, that’s the way we’ve seen that with other challenges, where that’s really what makes it take off. People were like, “Hey, I just didn’t think about doing that.” I think that’s what’s so wonderful about the happy acts. It’s not that we don’t want to do them, we just didn’t think about it until someone says, “Hey, this is a great idea” and then they start – next thing you know, you’ve got a movement. [00:10:09] CJ: Exactly, or a new Halloween tradition. [00:10:11] DH: Yeah. Well, and the guinea holidays are something I’d never heard of before. I’m glad that you brought that up, but you’re right. I think that’s especially true of kids. They really look forward to Halloween, and they look forward to Christmas, based on the gimme, right? And you can even throw Valentine’s Day in there. I think it’s important to involve your kids in something like this. I mean, certainly, if I painted a pumpkin, it might look like my 10-year-old did it. But I could actually –   [00:10:35] CJ: No one has to know that.   [00:10:37] DH: I could actually –actually, in this particular case, but my next to her, she’s quite artistic. You’d probably think I painted hers and vice versa. But I mean, involve your children, and teach them as well. But giving back to others, or doing things for others, or taking the time to do something to make the world a happier place is worthwhile and not just a march. [00:10:57] PF: Yeah. How does this kind of set us up for the holiday season? Because I do like the fact that so oftentimes, we kind of rush through October. Well, not this group, because we love October. But many people kind of rush through October so they can get to the start of the holiday season, which starts now apparently. the day after Halloween. But how can we kind of shift our thinking, because of the way we’re approaching October, and maybe even approach the holidays differently? [00:11:25] CJ: I just think a bit more of as – so Halloween, Christmas, it’s all about kind of like what we touched on earlier, it’s about getting, so it’s – this shifts your mindset into – okay, rather than getting, I’m going to give back. [00:11:40] DH: Well, we spend a lot of Thanksgiving. Thank giving, right? It’s the, you should be thankful this day, whether you are or not holiday. [00:11:51] PF: Sorry, if you’re having a bad year, find something to be thankful for. [00:11:54] DH: There is always something to be thankful for. We talked about that a lot. But you know, you go into Thanksgiving with the, “I’m going to be around some of my relatives, I don’t want to be thankful for them.” But others I’m wonderfully thankful for. I just think that setting up the concept that life isn’t about getting something, and your happiness isn’t about getting something. Very rarely will a gift truly change your life. You can ask my kids what they got last year for Christmas, I guarantee you, they probably don’t remember. Every now and then, you’ll get that life changing, “You know, I got my first 10-speed bicycle on my 12th birthday kind of gifts.” But it’s not, it’s not usually about getting, but giving and creating positive relationships, and being a larger part of the community, and doing things that are within your control to make the world a happier place, and frankly give you greater positive well-being is something kicking out off in October is great. Because as we all know, and we all read every year, the holidays are some of the most times a year when people are most depressed. I think starting that in October, and leading into it and remembering to be thankful for Thanksgiving, and for the month of November, and right into the holidays. You might see some marketing from Live Happy during that timeframe about being thankful and giving.   [00:13:09] PF: It’s possible.   [00:13:11] DH: Because it’s thanks giving. It’s not thanks taking, right?   [00:13:17] PF: I like that.   [00:13:16] DH: I should do some stuff on that. But I think it sets us up in the right mindset and the right frame of mind for the rest of the year, where we’re doing something positive every month. We don’t have to wait all year for that. [00:13:28] PF: Oh, there we go. We can start doing happy acts every month. [00:13:30] DH: Well, you know, you can. In fact, I want you to do them every day. But as marketing campaigns go for those of us who’ve got degrees in marketing, it’s better if you coalesce everything around a particular time of year. But it doesn’t mean we don’t want people doing happy acts every day, it doesn’t mean we don’t do happy acts every day. It simply means that we just run a really large advertising campaign to get people involved in March. So now we’re doing the same in October, but it’s something you do every day. I think it’s a good reminder, particularly this time of year where the weather starts changing and people start feeling more isolated, to just get out in front of that and start a little bit early this year. [00:14:10] PF: I like that. Casey, how are they going to know about the campaign, and how are they going to know what to do, and how to keep up with what’s going on? [00:14:17] CJ: So we will be sharing each happy act on our social channels. So if you’re not following us, make sure to hit that follow button. We’ll also be sending out an email that highlights each of the happy acts and how you can participate and join in on the challenge. Excellent. [00:14:37] PF: What do both of you, each of you want to see out of this? What would make you just go, “Wow! I’m so glad we did it because –”? [00:14:43] DH: I’d love to see a lot of social engagement. I want to see a lot of people flagging Live Happy, and discovering the content that’s on there, and hash tagging, and liking us, and sharing what they’re doing. But you know, it really is about – I want to see people actively doing something. I want to see hundreds of pumpkin pictures, painted pumpkin pictures. Because the reality is, it doesn’t matter how many people you involve, how many people you touch, just knowing that some people are making a difference, and it’s making a difference in some people’s lives is really the most rewarding thing for me. Running into somebody and having them share some of their experience, which does happen is just a phenomenal, humbling experience for me. I think everybody who works at Live Happy know that while we’re talking into a computer screen, what we’re saying, or putting on a computer screen eventually has a positive impact in the world. So for me, I just want to see activity, I wanted people out there doing stuff.   [00:15:42] PF: I like it.   [00:15:43] DH: Tag us, tag me. By the way, I’m the only Deborah Heisz on Facebook or probably in the universe. You can find me; I promise on Facebook or Instagram. Tag me. I’d love to see it.   [00:15:58] PF: That’s cool. That’s cool. How about you, Casey? What do you really hope for this because you’ve kind of masterminded this campaign? [00:16:04] CJ: My hope, and Deb and I, we were kind of talking about this a few weeks ago. I just want to see people being assets to their community, whether it’s donating blood, painting a pumpkin, donating their candy to a food shelter, or like a senior living home, no happy act, big or small. It makes a huge difference. [00:16:25] PF: Yeah. What if people come up with their own happy acts. Can they call it a happy act? The #halloweenhappyacts? [00:16:32] CJ: Absolutely. Yes. So I mean, we’re only highlighting about five or six happy acts that we can do in October. But there are so many that people can go out and do their own. So like donating candy to a food shelter. I don’t think we have that on our list. Donating Halloween costumes. There are kids out there who can’t afford Halloween costumes. So donating materials or just old costumes, that makes a huge difference in kids’ lives. [00:16:57] PF: That’s great. I saw one thing where there’s a group, and they do this anyway, they paint rocks, and it’s like abandoned rocks, they call it. They paint them, and then they go around, and they put them in neighborhoods, and they have positive messages on them. I saw that they were doing that for Halloween. They’re painting a bunch of stones, like orange, and black, like pumpkins, and then putting a positive message on the back, and sharing them. I thought that would be cool. But again, I fear that I paint even not as well as Deb, so I shouldn’t be doing that. Well, thank you guys both so much for coming on and talking about this. I’m really excited to see this happen. I know it’ll get bigger each year and we’ll keep it going. But thanks again for making it happen and then come in and telling me about it. [00:17:41] DH: Well, thanks for being the hostess with the mostest, as usual. [00:17:46] PF: Thank you. [00:17:49] CJ: Thank you, Paula. Happy Halloween everyone. [00:17:51] PF: Oh yeah, Happy Halloween. [00:17:53] DH: Happy Halloween. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:17:57] PF: That was Live Happy’s own Deborah Heisz and Casey Johnson, talking about our all-new Halloween Happy Acts Campaign. If you’d like to learn more, you can follow Live Happy on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, or visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you’re on the website, why not pop into the Live Happy store and checkout are brand spanking new, Choose Happy tote bag. This cool and useful bag is great for work and play. Oh, what the heck, it can even double as a trick or treat bag. Check it out in the new merch section at store.livehappy.com 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]