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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating The Purest Bond With Jen Golbeck [INTRO] [00:00:08] PF: Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Derrenbacher, presented by Live Happy. We know that the bonds we have with our pets are special, but today's guest may have you thinking about that connection on a deeper level. Jen Golbeck is the creator of social media's popular channel, The Golden Ratio, dedicated to sharing photos and videos of her rescued golden retrievers. With her new book, The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, she provides the science behind those incredible bonds and offers new insight into how we can use that information to improve our relationships with our own animals. Listen in as Jen and Brittany talk about how our pets can improve our well-being, as well as our community. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:53] BD: Hi, Jen. [00:00:54] JG: Hey, Brittany. How are you? [00:00:55] BD: Good. It was so interesting because when we were looking for guests for the show, I was just looking on Amazon for books that were coming out. I saw your book and was just immediately drawn in because of the cover and the topic. But when I started reading your book, I realized that I had already followed you on Instagram. Yes. So tell us a little bit about The Golden Ratio. [00:01:23] JG: Yes. So we rescue special needs Goldens, so a lot of seniors, medical cases, hospice cases, usually. Occasionally, somebody else sneaks in there. We've been doing that since – I guess 2016 is really when we grew from having a couple dogs in an occasional foster to four and five and six and sometimes seven. But, yes, it was after the 2016 presidential election, and like everybody was angry online, regardless of who they voted for. It was also the same time as Brexit, so everyone there was angry. I was like I just need a corner of the Internet to take a break from all of this. I couldn't really find it, and I was, “Well, poor Golden Retrievers,” at the time. Like that's happy. So I started posting them, and it really resonated with people, both for kind of a wholesome little piece of online life and then also following the stories as we would take in senior dogs or dogs that came from really traumatic backgrounds and rehab them. I think everybody likes to see that really hopeful story unfold over time, see them get better, see them live their great life. Even if it’s a hospice case, where we know that we don't have a lot of time with them, to see them like get their first swim in the ocean or their first KONG and have a good couple months, even if that's all they have left. I think it feels a need for people. [00:02:44] BD: I love this. So I have the same background as you in the same year that my husband and I started our special needs rescue. It’s breed-specific with Boston Terriers. How long until you really started brainstorming writing this book? [00:02:58] JG: So I had off and on thought about it because now across all the platforms, we have close to a million followers. It's like a 100,000 on Instagram. I was finding that we were getting a lot of people coming to us for questions often around end-of-life issues or treating medical things. But also like as a scientist, my area of expertise isn't animal science, but I have always followed these stories about the benefits that we get in our life from having dogs and read those articles. But it was really the pandemic, early in lockdown, when everybody started rescuing dogs and bringing them in that I started talking with my agent, my book agent, to be like, “You know, there's a book here about this idea where we can really share that science but also the really uplifting stories of how dogs have helped people in their lives and put that together in a happy book, which I feel like we don't have a ton of happy books coming out lately.” So it was a great opportunity, and the pandemic kind of gave a little extra time to work on that and get this coming out now. [00:04:05] BD: The title of your book is The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection. I love this because the purpose of this podcast is to illuminate the gifts and the lessons and the magic that animals bring into our lives every day often in very unassuming ways. Every chapter of your book hit that on such beautiful notes. I actually wrote down a quote from the beginning of the book because I just felt like it was so spot-on with our message. You say that this book, the goal of it is to explore and illuminate the profound impact the human-canine connection can have on our physical, emotional, cognitive, and social health and well-being often without realizing it. I love that. It's so spot-on to the message that we want for this podcast. That brings joy into people's lives too. Like you said, it's a happy topic, and we need that right now. [00:05:01] JG: Yes. I think on one hand, when we were thinking about writing this book, it's like who's the audience for this. Is it people who are thinking about adopting a dog? You can hear mine maybe barking in the background. Is it for people who have dogs? I really think people who have dogs are going to come to this. On one hand, I'm not going to tell them anything they don't know in terms of this being a really important connection. But I hope what I'm going to do is give language and kind of expand the understanding that they have about the role that dogs can play in their life. [00:05:34] BD: I love that. Tell us more about what readers can expect from your book, The Purest Bond? [00:05:42] JG: Yes. It's both science and story. So you're not going to get hit over the head with like really deep statistics or anything. We try to give like the good overview, so you get the gist of what the science was trying to achieve. But we want to ground all these insights in actual rigorous peer-reviewed scientific studies. So that will be everything from how do dogs help kids when they're learning? How do dogs detect cancer in their owners or tell you when you're having a heart attack. What role do service dogs play in the community? How are communities impacted by people having dogs and look at the research of that? But we mix it with stories from a lot of people that we recruited on social media of the really profound personal impact that their dogs have had. So we can say, “Look, here's a bunch science about how dogs’ noses work and how they can smell diseases or if we're going to have a seizure.” Then we're going to share some stories with you that people have given to us about how their dogs saved their life or saved their baby who was dying in a room, and they didn't know, how they detected their cancer. You really get to see that on a science level and then in a really intimate personal level. I mean, I'm so grateful that so many people trusted us with these really intimate stories. I think you've read them and you agree that you get these glimpses into sometimes dark and difficult points in people's lives and how their dogs were really there for them. So I think it gives this well-rounded picture of how dogs help us and how we see it play out. [00:07:13] BD: Yes. I felt as a reader that I was getting that dopamine hit as I was reading those personal stories from people. So I really appreciated that because when you get statistics and facts in a book but also paired with these really beautiful human stories and, I mean, very heart-centered stories, I just felt like it was the perfect balance. [00:07:33] JG: I mean, that's exactly what we wanted, right? That this isn't – like I love all the dog science books that are out there. I have all of them. Even before I was writing this, I have them all. But I wanted to make sure like that this was a very heartfelt book, right? That there was soul in this book because that's the critical thing about this relationship that it's not just a bunch of statistics. It really is something that speaks to like the real depths of what makes us human. [00:08:00] BD: What was the most surprising fact that you learned and you found out while you were researching for this book? [00:08:06] JG: The one that I like the best which I wasn't expecting was on one hand, we know if you have a dog, and you go out and walk them, that you learn who other people are in your neighborhood from their dogs. You often don't know their names. I'm terrible at human names anyway, but like, “Oh, that's Rufus's dad, and that's Phyto’s dad.” So, of course, like you get that connection if you're out walking dog. Of course, science says like that makes us meet more people, and that's great. But a result that I was really surprised by is that scientists have found that in communities where there are more dogs, like if your neighborhood has more dogs, the community has a stronger sense of cohesiveness. Often, we'll have like lower crime levels and better community participation, even if you don't have a dog. It tends to because you see a lot of people in your neighborhood more, and you have a chance for positive interaction. Even if you don't have a dog, you get to meet them. You get to see their dog. So the presence of dogs in a neighborhood brings a greater sense of civic responsibility, a greater sense of community, connection, even to the people who don't have dogs there. That really surprised me, but I think it's beautiful. On reflection, it makes sense. It kind of carries over that benefit that we dog owners feel into the whole neighborhood. [00:09:21] BD: I love the civic responsibility of that. We were talking about this on our last episode, just the benefits you can get just from petting. Like if you don't have an animal, you don't have a dog, and you're out walking, and you get to pet your neighbor's dog. You also get all of those feel-good hormones, and you get this very reciprocal exchange that can be healing in unassuming ways. So I love that. [00:09:43] JG: Yes. I mean, it's amazing that it's only like a few minutes of petting a dog. Even if it's a dog you don't know, that you get all these like biological indicators of your stress levels going down, which is pretty amazing. So absolutely like ask to pet every dog that you go past if you get the chance. [00:10:00] BD: Yes. In your opinion, what lessons do you think that we can learn from our dogs? [00:10:06] JG: This is such a great question because it's one that we're looking into more in-depth for the book that we're writing now, which is going to come out a couple years, November 2025. But really looking into like how our dogs think about things. So there's an area of psychology. If you think about going to a therapist, right? Psychology is normally looking at stuff that's going wrong with us and helping us fix it. But there's a complementary area of psychology called positive psychology which is about like joy and happiness and gratitude and civic responsibility, loyalty, all these kind of good things because we want to make sure we've got a lot of those too. What we found in this book, and we're going to explore more in-depth over the next couple years, is that dogs have a lot of those positive psychology traits. They're able to feel and show and express gratitude. We can kind of measure that scientifically. Obviously, they feel love. We talk about that in the book, how you can see the parts of their brain light up that you see in babies light up when they see their mother. Our dogs have that same activation when they see us. You can see it in the hormones that you measure in their blood, for example, that they really do love us back. I think being able to be mindful and in the moment and forgiving, right? To be able to allow for people to change, it's hard to do that as a human with other humans. But I think we can look to dogs. If you do rescue, you know this too, right? You can bring dogs in from really traumatic backgrounds, where they have no reason to trust or have joy or have anything good in their life based on what they've gone through. In like two months of being in a loving household, they’ll bond with you. It’s not like they're completely over what was there, but they're really able to embrace a new life and trust again. I certainly aspire to have more of that kind of trait in my own life. It’s a thing that really inspires me watching my own dogs. I think in this book, we really see that they're good at that. It'd be great if we all could be a little more like that. [00:12:08] BD: Absolutely. When I think of all of the dogs that we've brought into our home and the conditions that they've come from and the neglect or maybe even just physical abuse, emotional abuse, just the amount of forgiveness and trust is so profoundly beautiful. I mean, you're so right. That is a message that we can all take away from our relationships with our dogs and other animals as well. [00:12:35] JG: For sure. I mean, if we could all be like that, especially like in our close personal relationships, right? Stop holding those grudges because the person you love did that one wrong thing that one time. That'd be better. [00:12:48] BD: Can you talk a little bit more about the profound love connection that we share with our dogs? [00:12:55] JG: This is really amazing. So we kind of came in with a little bit of research on oxytocin, which is this neurotransmitter. It's a chemical that you can measure in your blood, and it's kind of this feel-good hormone. So if you get an oxytocin hit, like that's great. That's what you want. Parents will often describe feeling it when they like cuddle with their newborns. It's important for bonding, the release of this hormone. We know that if you stare into the eyes of your dog, you will get a release of this oxytocin. But your dog will, too. I think this is so interesting, right? That it's not just us feeling good because we're with our dogs. For a long time, we tried to like dismiss and be like, “Dogs don't really have the same kinds of emotions as people. They don't really love you. They're just operating on instinct.” That's clearly not true. We know how these chemicals operate in people. We get them when we interact with our dogs, but the dogs get them too. Then I had mentioned earlier, in people we look at a kind of relationship called an attachment bond. So in psychology, these are the bonds that infants form with their mothers primarily. If mothers and infants are looking into each other's faces, this helps create the attachment bond. They do have this oxytocin, but it's also like a psychological bond. Psychologists have done studies where they will use functional MRIs, FMRI machines. That’s the thing you've seen pictures of where like different parts of the brain light up. When they show infants pictures or play them the voice of their mothers, certain parts of their brain will light up. That really shows that there's an attachment bond forming there. They don't get it when it's a stranger talking. When dogs are put in an FMRI and they're given the smell or shown a picture of their owner, the same part of their brain lights up. So we've been able to measure because we can talk to people that we feel like we have these really close attachment bonds to our dogs. They're like the bonds we form with our closest family members. But it's so interesting that our dogs form them back to us. So it's a real like deep biological and psychological connection that we form with each other. It's not just one way. It's not us kind of anthropomorphizing onto an object. They love us back, and they do it all the way down to like the deepest parts of their brain in biology, which I think is so beautiful and a really lovely way to like see the science play out in something that we all go like, “Yes, I totally felt that.” But, man, can we measure it in a lot of ways. [00:15:22] BD: You're speaking my love language. So I'm a therapist, and there were so many parts of this book where I was like, “Yes.” The attachment styles was one of them because I talk about this a lot. I specialize in pet loss grief. So when I'm working with my clients, I actually try to help them understand that about themselves in their relationship with their pet. Because oftentimes, I have clients that come in, and they're so shocked by their grief. They're like, “Oh, well. It was just my pet.” I'm like, “It's not just your pet, and this is why.” So we talk a lot about attachment styles. When I read that in the book, I was like, “Yes.” [00:16:00] JG: I got to say like I started – I was on sabbatical from my professor job for a lot of the writing of this book, and I started getting a master's degree in psychology while we were writing the book. So literally, like every week, I'd come back to Stacey, my co-author, and I'd be like, “Stacey, I just did this thing in class this week, and we have to go back and put that in chapter five.” So the attachment bonds were one of those things. We had written that chapter already. When I finished my class on close relationships, and we did a lot on attachment bonds, I was like, “This totally recontextualizes for me the kind of stuff we had in there.” So I'm very happy as a therapist that you found that relevant because, yes, for me, it really added this layer of, okay, it's not just that we're measuring. This is a really important relationship, and we know how to talk about that. That became one of the major themes of the book. It tied together so much different science to think about the relationship that way. [00:16:51] BD: You and I, we share a love of seniors. We share a love of hospice cases and dogs with special medical needs. Can you share with the listeners what being an advocate for these animals has taught you about yourself? [00:17:05] JG: I think I've always had this feeling that I want to find the ones that weren't wanted the way that they should be, and like show them that they've got value and that they deserve better than that. I'm sure I've got some like deep-rooted trauma that informs that. But that's always what I'm really drawn towards is like who are these dogs that like everybody's forgetting, that no one has treated right? Let me come along, and like I will take care of it. That feels really rewarding and like I'm fulfilling some need and probably trying to like heal myself by doing that. But taking them in has really shown me how easy it is to do so much work, and you don't even really know that you're doing it. So there was one point where we had two hospice dogs and another senior who was close to the end of his life. We had seven total at that point, including three very high-maintenance dogs. We had to hand-feed them, and it was no problem. I wasn't like, “Oh, my God. I can't believe I've got to like hand-feed spaghetti and get covered in this.” It's just like, “Of course, this is the thing we do.” I suspect parents often have this feeling. I don't have any kids of my own, and so I suspect parents who like really love parenting are like, “Yes. Of course, I got up at like three in the morning. It's like not like the most fun thing, but like it's fine. It didn't bother me at all.” I think about doing that with a kid, and I'm like, “Man, that's the reason I didn't have any.” But with a dog, I'm like, “Of course.” I'm hand-feeding them in different rooms and doing this. When you lose them then, you go, “I had no idea how much our life had started revolving around taking care of this.” But it's not a problem at the time, and that's a thing that I was like very happy to kind of realize about myself that it can get to be a huge amount of work. But it's just you're taking care of a soul that you love, and it doesn't really feel like work then. [00:19:02] BD: Yes. I resonate with that so much. I tell people a lot that this work has taught me just how much love I had to give. [00:19:09] JG: For sure. [00:19:10] BD: I loved that you in your appendix included the quality of life. Will you talk about that for a minute? [00:19:17] JG: Yes. A question that we often get from people on social media when their dog either has gotten a pretty catastrophic diagnosis or is just clearly at the end of their life is like how do I know when it's time to make this decision. It’s decision that I've made more times that I can count about when to say goodbye to your dog. I have guilt over every one of those decisions, even though I know I have made it correctly every time. But it's hard to talk through with people if you don't know their specific dog. Frankly, you don't want to tell them, yes, it's time or, no, it isn't. What I wanted to be able to do was tell people like here's how we make this decision. So that quality of life survey that's in the appendix is not a – it's a bunch of questions, and they have scores. But it's not like, “And if it's above this level, you're fine.” Or below that you say goodbye. It's more for you to get a sense of the different parts of your dog's life. Because like we were saying, when you're in it and you're taking care of a dog who's declining, you may not realize that like, oh, the fact that they're not eating actually has gotten to a pretty extreme level, the fact that they don't want anybody to really be around them. Or if you try to move them, they snap at you, which is something they didn't do before. To really see where do they fall in a bunch of different aspects of the quality of their life and be able to track it over time and see like, “Oh, it's going down,” or like, “Man, I didn't even think about this part.” I have sent that to so many people like since we wrote it. We pulled together from a bunch of different surveys to make that one. That is really helpful for us. That's basically the kinds of things that we think about. I also tell people, we kind of set a threshold, depending on the dog. So sometimes, we have Golden Retrievers. A lot of them have hemangiosarcomas, which are these very fast-growing cancers. A dog can be fine on Monday and be dead on Friday. They just show up really fast. If we're able to catch them, you can't really treat them, and we go, “Okay. If they are up all night panting because they're uncomfortable, like that's kind of going to be the marker for us.” We give ourselves the freedom to reassess. But I think having some objective things to help guide you can be really helpful. Of course, you can make whatever decision you think is right at the time. [00:21:28] BD: Yes. It's a really great resource, and I'm glad you included it. [00:21:31] JG: Thank you. [00:21:32] BD: What do you hope readers will take away from your book? [00:21:36] JG: I hope they come away, if you're a dog owner, with a really deeper appreciation of the complexity of the mind of your dog and the depth of the relationship that you have with them. I don't think anybody's going to love their dog more. Hopefully, you love them the maximum amount already. But, hopefully, you come away from it really understanding that they are complex creatures that have the capability for so much emotion and connection. They give that all to us freely and willingly and to the fullest of their abilities, which is pretty amazing. It's hard to get that from humans, right? It's a relationship that we can feel safe in. Maybe it'll get more people like telling their secrets to their dogs or wanting to take him out for a walk and like deepen that connection. I always think it's great if you're like, “Is there a thing I could do now that would make my dog happier? Let's go do that thing.” That's what I want people to do. Put this book down and be like, “You know what? Let's go get some French fries, and you can have a few.” [00:22:37] BD: I'm so glad that you came on this podcast because your message is exactly what we want our listeners to leave every episode thinking is like, “Man, I have so much gratitude for the animals that are around me.” Kind of switching that way of thinking where we've always thought, well, what can animals bring into our lives and reversing that? Well, what can we bring into animals’ lives? How can we kind of return the favor to them for all of the profound gifts that they bring into our life every day? I love to close out the episode sharing a story of an animal in your life that has really brought magic or done healing or taught a lesson in an unassuming way. I know you've had so many animals in and out of your home. But is there any one particular animal that stands out to you? [00:23:26] JG: For sure. So Voodoo was our epileptic dog. We only had him for like a year and a half. He was, obviously, a very complicated dog. But that dog did not care about anything you wanted him to do. He was just like the most mischievous dog. We had to actually move the toilet paper roll holders up the wall in our house because he would eat the toilet paper. Not just grab it and drag it around the house. He'd, like an apple, just take bites out of it. He would eat anything, the recycling. Anything below like shoulder height of a human, he would eat it. You couldn't make him upset. Like if you were to yell at him, he'd be like, “Whatever. I'm going to go eat it again.” He just didn't care at all. He’s just absolutely his own dog, doing whatever he wanted but loved us and was like so happy to spend time with us. He thought he'd want to go for walks, and he'd get all excited. He'd walk halfway down the block and throw himself to the ground. I'd have to call my husband to like bring the car and put him in the car, and he'd be fine. He just didn't want to walk anymore. He was very independent and did whatever he wanted. It was the like most joyful amazing thing ever. He was really a magical dog, and I miss him so much. [00:24:40] BD: Voodoo. [00:24:41] JG: Voodoo. [00:24:42] BD: Jen, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was such a beautiful conversation, and I'm so excited for people to read your book. Yes, The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection, it’s amazing. [00:24:56] JG: It's been a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:58] PF: That was Brittany talking with Jen Golbeck, author of The Purest Bond. Brittany, that was a fantastic interview. I know that as a therapist and as a grief specialist, you really enjoyed it and as a rescuer. So it's so easy for us to think like, “I got this out of the interview.” What did you get out of the interview as you were doing it? [00:25:17] BD: I felt like Jen did a really good job of bringing that happiness message. Listeners that go out and get her book and read it will see that there really is this kind of like dopamine hit that you get from reading her book because there's so much happiness in it, the stories. I read this on an airplane, and I remember at one point like putting my hand on my heart like, “Oh, my God. I wish I could go home and kiss my babies right now.” I just felt so much gratitude towards them reading through the stories and just like the research and the way that Jen's able to put that together. That's the purpose of Happiness Unleashed is to share the these little moments of happiness and the happy lessons and all the joy that animals bring into our lives. So I love that she led with that immediately. [00:26:08] PF: I love it. I love it. That was a great interview. Lots that we can learn from her. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find her book. Of course, how they can find out more about you and the work that you're doing. We'll have them meet us back here again next month for another fantastic episode of Happiness Unleashed. [00:26:24] BD: Thanks, Paula. [OUTRO] [00:26:26] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher talking with Jen Golbeck. If you'd like to learn more about Jen, check out her book, The Purest Bond, or follow her on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, you can also learn more about Brittany and the work she's doing with animals. Of course, Brittany will be back here again next month to talk more about how pets bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our best teachers. Until then, for everyone at Live Happy and Happiness Unleashed, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrating 10 Years of Happiness With Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 437 of Live Happy Now. Ten years ago, the Happiness Movement was just beginning to gain a global presence, and that paved the way for a birth of a company called Live Happy. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Deborah Heisz, CEO and co-founder of Live Happy LLC, as we look back on 10 years of sharing happiness. Deborah’s going to explain how her work in personal development led to discovering positive psychology and how that opened the door to launching a company that remains committed to sharing the many ways we can discover greater well-being. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:41] PF: Deb, we're 10. [0:00:43] DH: I know. Isn't that crazy? [0:00:45] PF: Oh, my – [0:00:46] DH: I don’t know what happened. [0:00:47] PF: I know. See, now, here you have an advantage, because you're a parent, so you're used to raising 10-year-olds. [0:00:53] DH: I can't believe my kids are over 10 either at this point. When they say, time flies, they mean it. That’s unbelievable that we're 10. [0:01:02] PF: I know. It was so important. I mean, 10 years is a huge accomplishment for us to have reached there. This just seemed like a great time to talk with you. I wasn't there in the very beginning. I was about three months late to the party, but I'm glad I got invited and I'm glad you've let me stay. Can you take us back to the mindset behind Live Happy, because there was such a compelling argument for creating this movement and creating this platform and it was unlike anything that people were doing. Take me back there of what was going on and what made this ball get rolling. [0:01:37] DH: Well, the initial – my experience up to that point had been in personal development, which was great. I was founding editor-in-chief of the current version of Success Magazine. We were putting out content for people to improve their lives. Really, micro business owners, small business owners, and with tips on how they can have a better outlook on life, or a better attitude from the experts. Since you guys can't see me, I'm doing air quotes when I say “the experts.” Because there's a lot of people that put out content on personal development. Some of it's great, like my co-founder, Jeff Olson and his book, The Slight Edge, and others of it, we're not going to name any names, just not so great. [0:02:18] PF: Really questionable in the science. [0:02:21] DH: Yeah. Well, lacking in science. What happened was, as I'm working on that project, on that publication and really diving into personal development, which I really believe in, I believe we should all be working on ourselves, that there's ability for us to enhance our lives, we can all get better, we can all become better humans, this thing called positive psychology came on my radar. There is an organization called the International Positive Psychology Association and they put on something called the World Congress. At the time, I believe it was their second world congress, and some people that I was working with on Success, the owner and some other went to this and came back and said, “You know what? This positive psychology stuff, it's personal development, but with real science.” I started digging into it and looked at it and it's like, you know what? There is a lot here. There's a lot of stuff they're studying and a lot of things they've learned about human behavior that where people – how people can enhance their lives, that is scientifically based. Because positive psychology is the study, and it was really started by Dr. Martin Seligman, who has been all over our publication for the decade, the decade, right from the beginning. It really started with him standing up in front of the American Psychological Association and saying, “Look, psychology isn't just about helping sick people get well. It could also be about helping well people thrive.” That was the foundation of positive psychology. A lot of people started studying it. He's professor at UPenn. A lot of the positive psychology program at UPenn, a lot of people we've talked to come out of that program. But really, for me, it was, this isn't just somebody talking about experience. There's real data that this works, that if we can take these simple principles, these simple activities and incorporate them into our everyday lives, we can be happier. People need to know this. For me, Live Happy became the ultimate personal development project. It was getting better, becoming a better human, building better families, building better communities based in science. Scientists are really good at studying stuff, and then they publish and share papers with other scientists, so the general public never hears about it. [0:04:45] PF: Exactly. [0:04:46] DH: Never. I mean, they're really good at talking to each other about everything, and the rest of the world isn't even aware of the conversations occurring. We looked at it as this is an opportunity for us to take this fantastic content to a broader audience, to the rest of the world, and that's what really founded Live Happy. Jeff was a big believer in personal development. I’m a big believer in personal development, worked in that space for the previous decade, and now I guess, two decades. Well, but it really was about bringing that out and helping others understand they can make choices that will make them happier. When we talk about happiness, I think it's really important. I know, everybody who listens to the podcast regularly has heard us talk about what we mean by happiness. We don't mean I'm running around with glee with my hand thrown in the air, because I just scored a touchdown, or did a homerun kind of happiness. We mean, the kind of happiness where your personal well-being is higher. Things that you measure to determine how your life is going, how you're feeling about life in general, about how congruent your life is with your dreams and where you want to be, that's what we mean by happiness. [0:06:00] PF: You bring up such a good point, because that has been really instrumental in my development and growth during this last decade, because it let me recognize that I ended up doing a presentation at IPA called when happiness has a bad day. It allowed me to accept that bad day like say, “Hey, this is actually cool. It's fine if I'm sad for a week. That is okay. I still have great levels of well-being.” A bad day does not mean I'm not happy. I think it really has – I'm among those people that's been able to really broaden that and stop judging day by day what happens and look at it over time. Look at the overall satisfaction of my life, instead of the dopamine hits. [0:06:45] DH: It's huge. It makes a huge difference in your life when you start looking at it from that perspective, from the long-term, from the whole, its entirety. I think we've all been exposed online to various toxic positivity discussions. Happiness is not this toxic positivity, where you're positive about everything in life. You always say yes. You always are going, “Oh.” That's almost a disease in itself, right? [0:07:16] PF: It can be dangerous, if you're not acknowledging, if you're not allowing yourself to feel the negative emotions. One, you're not going to enjoy the positive ones as much. Also, you're glossing over some pretty important feelings that need to be dealt with. [0:07:34] DH: That's not what we're talking about when we talk about live happy anyway. You see that outside view in that, hey, this is everything that's toxic about positivity, that there are real problems in the world, that there are real challenges that people need to overcome. Not everyone can just live happy. One of my favorite things that we've done is we don't run away from that. I mean, our top downloaded article is post-traumatic growth. Just basically, how do you grow out of bad things that happen to you? How does that impact your life? It's a remarkable article and it's a really good article and it's on our website. We don't shy away from the fact that you can't be happy in that arms in the air, running around, circling the bases, I hit a homerun every day of your life, because it's life. We're talking about living happy, which is not that, right? [0:08:38] PF: Exactly. Let me ask you, as you were coming up with the concept of the magazine and mapping out what it was going to cover and how it would be involved, how did you determine all that? [0:08:52] DH: We didn't want it to be fluff. We wanted it to have a scientific backing, which wasn't to say that every article was about science, but we wanted it to be scientifically based. We also wanted it to have practical information in it, as well as inspirational stories. Really, we just started dissecting what we felt was good content, versus what we felt was too light, because a lot of stuff that people want to put in is just, that's nice, but that's fluff. We didn't want to be fluffy. That's the best way I know how to put it. [0:09:26] PF: Exactly. [0:09:27] DH: We also didn't want to be so overly technical that your average broad audience couldn't pick it up and read it and get something out of it. A lot of these papers that we read that create ideas for articles, as you know Paula, really go so deep into the science, you almost need a master's degree to start reading the paper. [0:09:47] PF: I had to Google a lot of stuff, when I was – I would be reading a paper and it's like, I don't even have the slightest idea of what they mean by that, or what other study they're referencing. It's like, it was such an educational experience for me, just to be dropped into all that. [0:10:05] DH: It can be a rabbit hole. [0:10:06] PF: It was. [0:10:08] DH: We also, really, particularly the early years, I think less now. Now that we've got a very, very established guardrails on what we will and won't do, we got a lot of stuff that was just fluff. We had a lot of stuff that was just like, pop people's ideas. I want to say, diet of the week, but it was happy idea of the week. This might make you happy. We really shied away from that. Another important piece was we wanted to integrate family. We wanted to integrate home. We didn't want it to be a workplace-only magazine, but we also wanted to include work. Success was really a workplace-only that had some personal development when we're working on it. We wanted to take that and make it a whole life concept. We wanted that to put that positive experience on a whole life perspective. That was really important for the magazine, particularly for me coming out of success, where I felt like, when you talk about business and you talk about personal development, everything ended up being tied to money and monetary success. As we know, money and monetary success and happiness are not – they don't necessarily exist together. [0:11:20] PF: Right. Right. [0:11:21] DH: For some people, it's an neither or. For others, it can exist together. For others, they've got nothing to do with each other. [0:11:26] PF: What I loved about Live Happy, what I loved about it from the beginning is that each issue, you would have a different approach. It doesn't mean the one that was the last month didn't work. It's just that different people have different things that work for them. I think that was always, for me, it's been a delight, because I got to explore things that I wouldn't have known about. I wouldn't have known to research them, had it not been for Live Happy. [0:11:52] DH: One of my favorite things we did was the book, Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, which has my name on it, but the whole editorial staff participated in. It says my name and the editors of. I have to tell you, and the editors of. It should have been the editors of and Deborah for the amount of time you guys spent putting that together. One of the things I love about it is Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, for those of you who haven't read the book, it's available on Audible. It may, or may not be out of print on Amazon, but I recommend you get your hands on it, because what we did was we did Ten Practices for Choosing Joy, and for each practice, whether it was attitude, health, spirituality, mindfulness, creativity, these are all things that there was science behind practicing these things. Can bring you joy, live happy type joy. Each chapter has the science behind what the studies say. Some people put it into practice and then some things you can do to put that practice into your life. We say in the book, and I've said over and over and over again, just because there are 10 practice of choosing joy, you don't do all 10. Pick one, or two, integrate that into your life before you even look at number three, right? [0:13:10] PF: Exactly. Find the one that works for you. It's like a catalog, basically. [0:13:14] DH: It is. Pick the ones that you think. If it's resilience that you need to focus on, focus on that. Don't focus on resilience. It's a recipe for failure trying to do too much. When you talk about the magazine, and by the way, we started as a print magazine, folks. We’re not that anymore. We should probably talk about that in a second. When we look at every issue, we had a slightly different look. Same thing with the book, we had a slightly different focus. It all contributes to your happiness, to your joy, to your meaningfulness in life, to finding your purpose. But you don't do it all. Is just, you pick up the practices that speak to you and make it work. [0:13:54] PF: Yeah. You find what's good for you. It's just like a diet and exercise plan, or a spouse. You find the one that works for you. [0:14:00] DH: If you can't stick to it, it won't. [0:14:03] PF: That's so true. Another thing that is turning 10 this year are our Happy Acts. I think, again, your timing on creating Live Happy was so phenomenal, because the world day of – International Day of Happiness had pretty much just been declared. We were there when that was all picking up steam, and we were able to be part of that. Do you want to talk about, especially that first International Day of Happiness, you were on the floor of the United Nations. [0:14:35] DH: Yeah. I was there. Jeff, Co-Founder, he got to speak to the United Nations. I spoke the following year. We really were right there at the beginning of the International Day of Happiness. It was coincidental. We were doing the magazine and that happened. It wasn't that that happened and then we started doing the magazine. [0:14:54] PF: That's what I mean of the timing was just perfect. [0:14:57] DH: It was. But it was really important and we've continued to see the World Happiness Report every year, we put out. What was happening is governments around the world and the UN was a forum to discuss this and to start talking about it and analyzing it a little better, really had started looking at the well-being of their populations as being a measure of successful country. Happiness, their countries had started with happiness officers, which is something that never happened before. Ministers of happiness. Sounds like we're in a Harry Potter movie. It's the Minister of happiness. Ministers of happiness. Governments were starting to pay attention to this. It truly is, and we're a part of it. I think we're a leader in bringing that information to the general public to a general audience, but there really still is a movement that was started about 10 years ago towards improving the well-being of humans through practices that they themselves can take on and paying attention to that as a measurable outcome. That World Happiness Report every year, there's a list of happiness countries, happiest countries and why. It's been very interesting. But the privilege of speaking at the United Nations is one I'll never forget. It's such an honor, and for Jeff to have that honor that first year and for me to be able to follow it up the second year, it truly was, for me, the indicator of how important what we're doing is. [0:16:29] PF: Yeah. Then, what made you decide, “Okay, we need to do our own thing that's going to be our own celebration and observation of this and create happy acts”? Because that's been so enduring and really to me, something that just is, it’s so unique to live happy and it's something I really love that we do. [0:16:50] DH: Well, I think it goes back to what I was talking about earlier, where scientists study stuff, but they don't share it, right? For me, it really was the, we need some way to get the word out, something simple to get the word out, that there are things you can do to make the world a happier place, to make your world a happier place. We conceived of Happy Acts, which I've described it like this from the beginning, is a social intervention campaign. Meaning, we get people to stop for a few minutes and do something with intent, to make the world a happier place. Even if it's just smiling more. Even if it's just talking to a stranger. Even if it's just dropping a thank you note to someone. Something simple to show gratitude, show grace, show thankfulness, help someone else, buying that cup of coffee for a stranger, we've all seen that go viral. But to make sure that it's done with intent. That's why the cards, that's why people, I will make the happy – the world a happier place by. We're not asking you to make the world a happier place by starting a global charity. Oh, you want to put that in a card and follow up with it? We’re all in. We're asking you to just think about something you can do and realize, which is why it's social intervention, realize that there is something you can personally do to make the world a happier place right now. That's why we did it. I think it's been a great success. I think the world has changed a little bit since we did it, obviously trying to do Happy Acts during a pandemic was a little bit – [0:18:29] PF: That wasn't so good. [0:18:31] DH: Yeah, people don't go to walls, or walls. We did. We did. But we had a great online experience those years. I'm looking forward to making a few tweaks. I'm looking forward to getting back to everybody early next year and talking about how that changed. [0:18:43] PF: I know. It also spun off the Halloween Happy Acts, which we're doing in, I guess it's, yeah, later this month. [0:18:50] DH: No, and I love that. [0:18:53] PF: Yeah, I think there's so much potential for us to be able to do different things with it for different times a year. I'm excited to see what we continue to do with that. [0:19:01] DH: Note, podcast listeners, Halloween Happy Acts, that's later this month, but not later this month. You can check it out right now online. [0:19:10] PF: Yes, you can. You just mentioned podcast listeners. That was another element that you brought in and brought in very early on, even before a lot of people really understood what was going on with the podcasting space. [0:19:26] DH: I'm so thankful we did. [0:19:28] PF: I know. I'm glad you got in there at the time that you did. Really, that was a way you saw that as a way to amplify the content that we had in Live Happy Magazine. Can you talk about that? It was so interesting the way it started and then how it's evolved. [0:19:43] DH: At the time, I did. We were doing these great interviews with these thought leaders, these very eloquent, passionate people. You sit in the interview and you're doing the interview, and you know this, Paula. You're doing the interview, and you're like, “I wish everybody could hear this,” right? This is right near the beginning of when podcasting was starting to take off. It's like, well, everybody can hear this. We started doing some of our key interviews for the magazine is for the podcast. That was why. I thought it was so important, not just for us to take the information and drill it down into an article and pull a few quotes, but for people to hear how passionate these people are about this, how important it is, how detailed the information was. We started there and then we – when we quit doing the print magazine, we still have the website, which puts out original content on a regular basis, and we still have a newsletter, which puts out independent original content. If you guys are not signed up for the newsletter, you need to. Go to livehappy.com and sign up. Free to everybody. Please, take the opportunity to do that. As we started to move from the print format into a more digital format, the podcast also evolved into being the key content, where we used to do a feature article. Now, we do a feature podcast, is the best way to know how to describe it. We're still have all the same great content we had, but in a way that's more accessible. Frankly, I think in a way that broadened our audience. Because I think, when we were doing the print magazine, people didn't really understand it was for everybody necessarily, that it was a little bit more of a science-heavy, because reading can sometimes be science heavy. It was a little less accessible to everybody. I think the podcast with most of them being 25 minutes or less, really, people can listen to that as they walk their dog, as they drive to work. It's two people talking, or more, but usually, two people talking and they get so much more out of it. Then, of course, we had the follow up materials on the website if people want to delve more into that topic. I just think it's made the content so much more accessible, and that evolution took place over time, but I'm really happy where we are right now and where we've ended up. It's been a phenomenal, I think eight years of podcasting? [0:22:10] PF: It is. Yeah. [0:22:12] DH: Eight years of podcasting. [0:22:12] PF: Hard to believe. [0:22:13] DH: Ten years of Live Happy. I'm getting old. What am I going to do next? [0:22:19] PF: We'll have virtual something. We'll have our avatars doing this for us, I guess. One thing that I've noticed with the podcast is sometimes, people will reach out because someone had sent them a podcast, because just as with our practices, not every episode is going to resonate with every person. Some things like, that's not really my thing. But then, especially like the pet loss episode is one that I know has been shared quite a bit and that's something – that's a great thing to have in your back pocket. Hey, your friend loses their pet, you just send them a link. I know firsthand of that having happened. There's other situations, like other episodes that we've had that people can just share and say, “Look, this spoke to me, because I know you're going through it and I thought you'd want to hear it.” I think, to me, that is really the power of podcasting. That's the power of the reach is to be able to just have that, to give to anybody at any time when they need it the most. [0:23:14] DH: I agree. I think, be able to share that. I think accessibility is key. [0:23:21] PF: We've had 10 years. We don't want to quit anytime soon. What do you think? What do you see for the next 10 years? How do you think we're going to grow and change? [0:23:30] DH: I think that as the world has changed, more people need this content. I think, our number one goal has always been reach. It's always been building a happiness movement. It's been building a group of people who really understand the power of things like gratitude, who really want to make a difference in their local communities and their families. For me, over the next 10 years, we're going to continue to try and reach people where they are, where they have the most access. Whatever is after podcasting, I'm sure we'll go into. Whatever is after the Internet, I'm sure we'll figure that out, too. One of the things we've discussed recently is in expanding our presence on social media, to reach people who aren't necessarily looking for podcasts, or looking online to go read an article and figuring out how to do that in a way that isn't just flippant, that isn't just, “Oh, that made me laugh,” but something that actually adds value to someone's life. We did something before called The Happiness Minute, it was in the wrong format. Maybe we bring that back and maybe that's a TikTok. Where my head spins is, how do we continue to get the message out? How do we continue to get this message to more people? How do we evolve Happy Acts to get the message to more people? How do we evolve, get more involvement? Because this is something anybody, whether they're two, or a hundred can participate in and can make a difference in the world. Our mission hasn't changed. Sometimes the medium changes, but we're going to continue to try and expand to reach more people in any way that we can. That's where I see us going in the next 10 years, and continuing to produce the fabulous content that we produce, that you help us produce, Paula. It's been a great ride so far, but we're just getting started. [0:25:14] PF: Yeah. Saddle up. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:21] PF: That was Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, talking about how we got here. If you'd like to read some of our great content, sign up for our free weekly newsletter, or follow us on social media, just visit us at 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: Unwinding Anxiety With Dr. Jud Brewer [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 436 of Live Happy Now. Anxiety is so pervasive today that more than 40 million adults in the US are living with it. But this week's guest is trying to change that. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I am talking with Dr. Jud Brewer, a New York Times best-selling author and Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center. In his 2021 book, Unwinding Anxiety, Dr. Jud shared his scientific insights into how to break the cycle of worry. Now, those steps are also available through an app, and he's here today to tell us how we all can learn to break free from anxiety. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:45] PF: Dr. Jud, thank you so much for joining me today. [00:00:48] JB: Thanks for having me. [00:00:50] PF: You have written, researched, done so much work in the area of anxiety. This is such a huge, huge problem for people. To start it off, this has been problematic for generations. I wondered why we're not getting better at managing it, given the amount of time we've had to learn about it. [00:01:07] JB: This is way before neuroscience was even a field . Neuroscience is a very young field of study. It wasn't even coined until like the 1970s. But if you think about this approach to changing human behavior and working with ourselves, it's about I think, therefore, I am. I think, therefore, I could think. I can think my way out of anxiety. So that's been a dominant paradigm for a long time. Even I love – one of my favorite comedy skits is from the 1970s. This guy, I don't know if you remember Bob Newhart. [00:01:41] PF: Oh, I loved him. I loved Bob Newhart. [00:01:44] JB: So he had a skit called Stop It, basically, where this person, this woman comes into his – he's playing a psychologist or a psychiatrist. Woman comes into his office and says, “I have this fear,” talks about this fear. I won't give away the skit. Then he basically just says, “Stop it.” But he's highlighting what has been this dominant paradigm back in the sixties, seventies with cognitive behavioral therapy. Still present to today as the dominant thing is just control yourself, to stop it. If only that worked, if we could find that switch in our brain that we could just flip off that anxiety switch or that worry switch or that overeating switch or that whatever switch. It just doesn't work that way. [00:02:28] PF: Right. It's like growing up, my mom would be like, “Well, just calm down.” It's like that is what I'm trying to do. Literally, I'm trying to calm down and I can't. [00:02:37] JB: Yes. The more somebody tells us to calm down, the more anxious we get. [00:02:41] PF: Yes, exactly, exactly. Then we feel like we're doing something wrong. Like, “Why can't I get this under control?” Is that part of it too? We felt like we have to do it ourselves. [00:02:50] JB: I think that's a lot of it, where it's just like, well, what's wrong with you if you can't control your anxiety. So we also get into loops of self-judgment and unworthiness and guilt and shame and all that stuff. [00:03:04] PF: So is it more prevalent? Or are we just hearing more about it? Are we more willing to talk about it? Because it seems it's everywhere I turn, I hear conversations about it. I see reading materials about it. So I don't know if we're just more comfortable with talking about it or it really is a bigger problem. [00:03:22] JB: It's hard to know whether something's increasing, decreasing, or staying the same if you haven't measured it. So I don't think it's been measured historically as much as it's been measured today. So what I can say is we do know some of the factors that contribute to anxiety more, and we can certainly say those factors are pretty prevalent. So for example, our brains don't like uncertainty, and that's actually a built-in mechanism to help us survive. If we hear some rustling in the bushes, think of our ancient ancestors. You can't just ignore that and be like, “Yes, whatever. I'm going back to sleep.” [00:03:55] PF: It’s probably just a tiger. I’m fine. [00:03:57] JB: Yes, yes. It – pet tiger, pet tiger, not the dangerous non-pet tiger, right? So, yes, just a tiger. No big deal. So our brains are set up for survival in that way. In modern day, we've never had so much access to information, right? So it's like our brains are like, “Oh, more information, good.” But you can't drink from the fire hose. On top of that, there's a lot of unintentional misinformation and then intentional disinformation. So back in the day of our ancient ancestors, there was no such thing as the deep fake tiger or the whatever, the intentionally misleading tiger. It was like tiger or no tiger. So now, we have to become the expert on everything. When we hear something, we're like, “Well, is that true or not,” and then – so our brains start to go into overload because not only is there a ton of information, but we don't know what to trust, what not to trust, and we're not the experts. So I would say that certainly wasn't available back, before the Internet, for example. The Internet's really made information much more available and also mis and disinformation as well. So that's one piece in modern day that historically hasn't been there that is certainly contributing. [00:05:14] PF: And we don't get that time away from it. We used to have like you walked away from your life a little bit. Your work life, whatever it was. You had your evening. You could kind of decompress. That doesn't happen now. So what's that doing to give us this heightened always-on circuit in our brain? [00:05:31] JB: Yes. Well, there's a – it's now coined the FOMO, fear of missing out. That fear of missing out is not just social. So that can start in someone's teenage years or even probably earlier. But also in adulthood, it’s not only the social FOMO but also the work FOMO. So it's like, well, I could be checking my email to see if I'm missing an email. I could be doing this or that. Or somebody can always get a hold of us via text and say, “Hey, call me immediately,” when there used to be work-life boundaries. [00:06:02] PF: Yes. I read an article in the New York Times this past week, and it said that texting from work is starting to invade our personal space. I'm like, “That's just starting.” Like – [00:06:12] JB: Starting. I was going to say what. [00:06:14] PF: That’s been going on for a little while there, NYT. So it is. It's absolutely overloading. What is it doing to the brains of kids who are growing up in this kind of always-on environment? [00:06:28] JB: Yes. That's a good question. We now have a generation of digital natives, which means children that were born and don't know what it's like not to have smartphones, not to have social media, not to have the Internet. It is an uncontrolled experiment. [00:06:46] PF: On your children. [00:06:48] JB: Yes. That you didn't sign a consent form for. [00:06:53] PF: And you’re probably not going to like the outcome. But, yes, it is. It's going to be – it will be interesting to see. Will the way that anxiety is addressed with that generation be different than, say, someone like myself, who actually saw the screens go off like at 2am when they're babysitting, and there's no more TV for hours? [00:07:13] JB: It's a good question. Happy to be wrong here, but my hypothesis is that, regardless of whether we're a digital native or not, you treat it the same way. Part of that is that our brains are so adaptable that we can certainly remember what it was like to not have a cell phone or not have email or not have the Internet. But it just feels like ancient history because that's not what's happening right now. So whether we were born before or after, it doesn't really matter because what we're dealing with is the present moment, like what's happening right now. [00:07:52] PF: That makes perfect sense. You have done so much research in a lot of areas, but we want to talk about specifically what you've done with anxiety. I'm interested in learning what made you start researching anxiety. [00:08:04] JB: Basically, I was really anxious at the end of college, and I didn't know it to the point where my body had to give me some very clear signals through I developed irritable bowel syndrome. One of the big drivers for some people of irritable bowel syndrome is anxiety and stress. So my guts were letting me know, “Hey, pay attention. This is not good.” Also, fast-forward eight years later, when after I had finished my MD-PhD program, I started getting panic attacks during residency. So those were kind of precursors for my personal experience with this. Then interestingly, I – my lab – so I had started studying mindfulness training when I started my career as an assistant professor because I was really interested in how people can change addictive behaviors and habits. As a psychiatrist, I was really seeing the limitations in current treatments for addictions. So I really wanted to put – contribute there. I felt like people with addictions were my people, and so I really wanted to help there. So I started developing these programs. I developed a program for smoking. We actually got five times the quit rates of gold standard treatment, so that's – [00:09:16] PF: Oh, that’s amazing. [00:09:17] JB: Yes. I was thinking, wow, this works pretty well. Then we even developed an app for eating called Eat Right Now. A study led by Ashley Mason at UCSF found a 40% reduction in craving-related eating. That’s even gone, so we're like, “Wow, that's pretty good.” That program is now actually CDC-recognized as a diabetes prevention program, the first one that's based solely on mindfulness as a way to change it. I would say mindfulness. We can talk about this in a bit, but mindfulness really targets some of these neural mechanisms which other programs don't. But somebody in our eating program said to me, “Hey, anxiety is actually triggering me to stress-eat. Can you create a program for anxiety?” I was thinking, well, I'm a psychiatrist. I prescribe medications. But I was realizing, if you look at the data, there's this scientific term called the number needed to treat, which basically gives you a rough and dirty of how many people actually benefit from a treatment. That number is 5.2, which means one in five people benefit from the best medications we have out there. So I was basically playing the medication lottery when treating my patients with anxiety. One in five, I didn't know which one of the next five was going to benefit, and I didn't know what to do with the other four. So I was getting anxious about how to treat my patients with anxiety .So that question that somebody had asked me from our Eat Right Now program, can you create a program for anxiety, was kind of burning a hole in my ear, and I started – so I went back as a scientist and looked at the literature. Somebody back in the 1980s, ironically back when Prozac was introduced as the first SSR that's supposed to help anxiety, they had largely ignored the psychological research, where this guy Thomas Borkovec, had suggested that anxiety could be driven like a habit. When I read that, I was like, “Anxiety, habit. I research habits. I never thought of anxiety as a habit.” I was like mind-blown. So I developed this Unwinding Anxiety program and as a researcher wanted to study to see how well it worked. Get this. We started as like who's – what's the hardest population for us to work with? Oh, yes, physicians. Like we’re a pain in the ass. We don't take care of ourselves. We learn to armor up. We learn to be martyrs because if we're focusing on ourselves – we could be saving patients’ lives, and so don't waste our time on ourselves. Of course, that's why we get burnt out. So we did our first study with anxious physicians, and we got this whopping 57% reduction in anxiety. We also got burnout. But I was like, “Wow. Okay, this might have some legs to it.” So we got some funding from the NIH and did a randomized controlled trial in people with generalized anxiety disorder, like the worst of the worst. They wake up anxious. They feel anxious all day. Then they have trouble sleeping because they're anxious. Rinse and repeat. Really, really challenging condition. Here, we got a, ready for this, 67% reduction in anxiety, yes. The number needed to treat there, remember with medications, it's 5.2. The number needed to treat here is 1.6, the smaller number. [00:12:15] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:12:16] JB: Yes. So we're like, “Wow, this is pretty good.” We went on to work out the mechanism. We did more studies showing that you could even improve sleep by treating anxiety, all this stuff. So all of that is to say work effects conjecture his hypothesis that you could treat anxiety as a habit was just so important. Here we are able to test that hypothesis in a way that's accessible for anybody with a smartphone. Here we're getting gangbuster results. It's really exciting to see that the theory lines up with the practice and also that the practice can be very pragmatic. We set these programs up to be 10 minutes a day for people to incorporate them into their busy lives. Importantly, what we're seeing from the data is that it's really helpful for people to reduce their anxiety. [00:13:02] PF: There's so many aspects to anxiety, and one thing is being able to access that help when you need it. So what are some of the tools that you teach people? We'll get to your app in just a moment. But what are some of the tools that you teach people to use so that when anxiety hits, they can start managing it then? [00:13:22] JB: Yes. I go into all the details in the Unwinding Anxiety book, but people don't need to read my book to get this. I think of it as a three-step process, where the first step is to map out our anxiety habit loops. Now, I didn't even know. As I mentioned, I didn't know that meant anxiety could be triggered like a habit. So the first thing for anybody to know is that anxiety can be a habit. The way that works is you need three elements to form a habit. You needed a trigger or a cue. Behavior is the second step. Then a result or a reward from a neuroscience standpoint is the third. The way that works is that the feeling of anxiety can trigger the mental behavior of worrying. Yes. Mental behaviors count just as much as physical behaviors, right? Then that mental behavior of worrying makes us feel like we're in control or at least doing something, right? Because it's better to worry than not to worry. [00:14:12] PF: Oh, interesting. I think most of us don't even think of worrying as a form of control. Again, it's just a habit. It's just – it's what I do. [00:14:21] JB: Yes. Well, I think that's accurate because worrying doesn't actually give us control. But the research has shown that for enough people, it makes them feel like they're in control, or it distracts them from the feeling of anxiety that it's rewarding enough, at least initially, for it to feed back so that the next time somebody feels anxious, they worry. Then like you point out, it quickly becomes a habit. [00:14:43] PF: Interesting. So you've got these three steps. Then how do they – how does that equate into being able to handle them? [00:14:51] JB: Yes, yes. So that first step. We've talked about the first step is just mapping out these habit loops. So being able to identify what's the trigger, what's the behavior, what's the result. We can actually even simplify that to just puts the behavior, and it tends to be worrying, like you're highlighting. But sometimes, it can be distracting ourselves with social media, stress-eating, emotional eating, drinking alcohol, things like that. Second step is where we really lean into the neuroscience. The way that works is our brains are going to keep doing a behavior if it's rewarding, and they're going to stop doing that behavior if it's not rewarding. If we're not paying attention, and we don't see how rewarding or unrewarding a behavior is, we're going to just keep doing it. We actually did a study with our Eat Right Now program to have people where we had people specifically pay attention to what it feels like when they overeat. It only takes 10 or 15 times for somebody to overeat and pay attention to see that that reward value is not rewarding. That reward value drops below zero in their brain, and they start to shift that behavior. So it doesn't take a lot of time. It doesn't take any effort. Notice how none of this requires willpower. This is really all about awareness, paying attention in the present moment. So feeling of anxiety triggers the mental behavior of worrying. If we don't pay attention to how rewarding or unrewarding worrying is, we're going to keep doing it because we're going to think, “Oh, this is just what I do,” like you pointed out. If we start to ask the question, what am I getting from worrying, and we really feel into our direct experience, we start to see something pretty clearly. Worrying makes me more anxious, right? It doesn't solve my problems. It doesn't help me predict the future. All it does is make me feel more anxious. That gives us a negative prediction error, where our brain says, “Hey, is this worrying thing really working for you?” No, no. It's not. It's not. Pay attention. Then we start to become disenchanted with the worrying. That's step two. That step applies to any habit. When my patients come in and want to quit smoking, what do I have them do? Pay attention as they smoke. They come back. I had a guy. He’d been smoking 40 years, right? We calculated the number of times he had reinforced this process. Ready for this? It was like 293,000 times. [00:17:04] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:17:06] JB: And he hadn't been paying attention. So I said just set up a follow-up appointment and told him to go home and smoke and pay attention. He comes back and he's like how, "How did I not notice that before,” right? Cigarettes taste like crap. So it's much easier to quit smoking when you really see, feel, taste, smell what cigarettes are like. [00:17:25] PF: That's amazing. Yes, because you can’t – I can see how that works with any habit. That's absolutely amazing. [00:17:30] JB: Yes. Smoking, overeating, anxiety, all these things. Self-judgment, big one in western society. We're really good at beating ourselves up. We can start to ask, “What do I get from this,” right? So that's the second step. Third step is actually leveraging that same process. So if our brain is going to only do things that are rewarding, and they start to become disenchanted with these other behaviors, our brains are going to look for something better. Spoiler alert, it's not social media. [00:18:00] PF: Yes. Dang it, I got my answer wrong. [00:18:05] JB: Yes. Just scrolling on our social media feeds or checking our email, it might scratch that itch, but it just makes it itchier. It's like poison ivy. So we need to find things that are intrinsically rewarding that help us step out of these old habit loops. The good news is they're already there. We already have them. We just need to dust them off and use them a little bit more. Two main flavors here. One is curiosity. The other is kindness. Let's see how we can apply both of them. So if we have anxiety and we start worrying, we can worry, which tends to come into the mental flavor of, “Oh, no. This is happening,” or, “Will this happen,” or, “What's going to happen?” We can flip that to, “Oh.” That oh awakens our curiosity, and we go, “Oh, what does this anxiety feel like in my body?” We can even ask questions like is it more on the right side or the left side, front or back? It doesn't really matter what the answer is, but that awakens our curiosity like, “Huh, where is this? What does it feel like?” When we go looking for the anxiety, it starts running away because what we start to notice is that these physical sensations are constantly changing. If we're not feeding them by worrying, they tend to go away on their own. They might not go away instantly, but we can start to see, “Oh, these are physical sensations. They might be unpleasant, but I can tolerate this.” That curiosity helps us work with them. There's this saying attributed to Marcus Aurelius who is a Roman emperor and a stoic. He says, “What stands in the way becomes the way.” I love that because we can think of anxiety as a problem, or we can think of it as an opportunity to learn. Oh, this is what unpleasant sensations feel like. That curiosity helps us develop that distress tolerance. Instead of running to our phone to distract ourselves, we can turn toward this experience. By turning toward it, it's like the rats that scatter when you turn on the lights, right? It’s not as powerful as we thought it was. So that's how curiosity can help. I think if it has flipping that, “Oh, no,” whether it's a craving or worrying or whatever to, “Oh,” awakening that curiosity. The other flavor that I talked about was kindness, and that can be very helpful when we're judging ourselves. So we can compare judging ourselves, what do we get from this, to kindness. What do we get from this? No-brainer, right? Which one feels better in the body, being kind to ourselves. Yes, right? So here, this third step helps us step out of the old habit loop of judging ourselves by stepping into the new behavior of being kind to ourselves. Then because that is more rewarding, it becomes the new habit. Same for curiosity, it helps a step out of the old worrying habit loop and into the new habit of being curious. [00:20:56] PF: Those are such incredible techniques. Obviously, they take practice. It takes one remembering to do them when it strikes, which might be the hardest part of it. Once anxiety kicks in, it kind of feels like just grab your hat and hold the hell on. You don't really have the chance to do anything. But if you have a plan and you know, “Next time I feel anxious, this is what I'm going to do,” then you can start changing it. [00:21:20] JB: Yes. It's kind of like if you're flying in an airplane, lots of people have fear of flying in an airplane. Talk about lack of control. So the pilot comes on, and she says, “Attention, there's going to be some turbulence. Buckle up.” We can go, “Oh, no. Turbulence.” Or we can go, “Woo-hoo. Oh, no. Here we go.” [00:21:38] PF: Am I going to be YouTube famous? Hey. [00:21:42] JB: Yes. We have no control over that turbulence, but we certainly have control over how we respond to it. [00:21:47] PF: That's terrific. With your book, Unwinding Anxiety, it was widely acclaimed. It has helped so many people get through it, and that led to creating an app of the same name, which we're going to let our listeners try out for a month for free. But talk about how the app allows them to implement these principles and kind of how that works for them. [00:22:10] JB: So the app is set up as a – we have these core trainings where it's 10 minutes a day for 30 days to help people get the core understanding of how their mind works and how to work with their minds. So it's about 10 minutes a day, videos, animations that kind of teach a concept and then importantly have people start to put it into practice that day. Okay. So that's the psychoeducational component. The other components are we've got in-the-moment exercises. So when somebody feels anxious, they can buckle up, and we've got some great practices to help people ground, help people get back into the moment. So we can get their brains back online and working. The other piece is through those 30 core modules, it walks them through this three-step process. We use the analogy of gears, like driving a car. You shift into first gear, second gear, third gear. On top of that, there are a bunch of theme weeks that help solidify the core concepts. Then also, and this is actually one of the favorite parts of my week, every week, I run a live group through Zoom at noon Eastern Time on Wednesdays for anybody to join and ask a question. So we can actually go through what they might be struggling with live. So there, we can reiterate the concepts of three gears. Then we can see where somebody might be struggling to shift into one of the gears. Then, usually, in 5 to 10 minutes, kind of identify that and have them through an exploration process together. Have them see where they might already have it, and they just don't think they do or give them a couple of things to play with, and then let us know how it goes. So those are the key elements. We also have a very active online community where we now, over the years, have developed this very large crowdsourced knowledge base, where people ask questions. I answer the questions. Then over the years, people – there's basically a very rich library of answered questions because 80 or 90 percent of the questions that people have are the same, and they've already been answered. [00:24:06] PF: That's terrific too because just knowing you're not alone in your anxiety journey can be absolutely huge. Having someone else say, “I felt the exact same way, and here's what I did,” instead of going like, “Dude, that sucks. I'm really sorry.” [00:24:21] JB: “It sucks to be you.” [00:24:23] PF: Exactly. “Ah, so glad I didn't get that.” But, yes, I think that's so helpful. That community approach is really incredible. [00:24:31] JB: It is. Community is everything. [00:24:33] PF: So all the work that you've done in this space, and you're continuing to do more. What is it that you really want everyone to know about anxiety and, two, like really hope this accomplishes in the long run? [00:24:44] JB: Well, I would say the most important thing is for people to know it's not their fault, right? They think there's something wrong with them. They're broken. They can't be fixed. Well, there's nothing wrong with them. This is just their survival brains that have gone a little off track, and they can actually get them back on track in a relatively simple way, right? It's not magic. It's not to say one and done. But it's also not to say, well, you've been anxious for 30 years. It's going to take another 30 years to help you become unanxious. That's the good news. I've had plenty of patients, et cetera, success stories, where people come in 30 years of generalized anxiety disorder, full-blown panic attacks. Within six months, they're like, “Wow, I don't know what to do with all this extra time now that I'm not worrying.” [00:25:34] PF: I love that. How freeing is that? [00:25:36] JB: I'm like, okay, great opportunity to go help the world. [00:25:40] PF: Yes. There you go. This is such an important conversation to have. The work that you're doing is so incredible. I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down with me today and talk about it. I'm really eager to share your work with our listeners because I don't want to say I think they will. I know that people will get so much out of this. So I appreciate you coming on today. [00:26:01] JB: Well, I really appreciate you having me. This has been a great conversation. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:06] PF: That was Dr. Jud Brewer, talking about Unwinding Anxiety. If you'd like to learn more about Dr. Jud or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're on this episode's landing page, be sure to check our anxiety links and resources, including a one-month free trial of the Unwinding Anxiety app. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

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

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Introducing Happiness Unleashed With Brittany Derrenbacher   [INTRO] [00:00:08] PF: Welcome to the very first episode of Happiness Unleashed with Brittany Derrenbacher, presented by Live Happy. Each episode, we're going to look at how our pets bring us joy, help us heal, and just make us better humans. To kick things off, Brittany is talking with me, Live Happy Now host, Paula Felps, about what to expect from this new podcast, why we're doing it, and why it's so important for us to get in touch with our animals. Then we'll talk about why petting other people's pets is scientifically proven to be good for you and why you should stop phubbing your pets. [00:00:41] BD: Hi, Paula. Thank you so much for coming on the very first episode of Happiness Unleashed. [00:00:46] PF: I am so excited. First of all, I'm honored that I get to be your very first guest, and I am just so excited to see this finally coming to fruition. Congratulations on making this happen. I'm really happy for you. [00:00:58] BD: Thank you so much. I can't think of a better person to kick off the show with. [00:01:02] PF: I know I live happy wanting to do this. Why don't you tell us like how this all came about, and why it's so important for us to do this podcast that's devoted to pets and happiness? [00:01:13] BD: Well, first, what I love is that, really, animals brought us together. So just in us having conversations on Live Happy, I think everyone was kind of able to see just how much people wanted to hear about our relationships with animals, how much people really tuned in for that. So it kind of validated just how much we wanted to talk about animals and bring that to public knowledge. I really think that we are doing ourselves a disservice and future generations a disservice if we don't include the human-animal bond in our research. Research on animals’ interactions with us is still relatively new. As that research really evolves, so does the role that animals play in our lives. So I think it's incredibly important that we continue to support this and understand just how happy animals can make us and what we can learn from that. [00:02:06] PF: You're very right because I even think about how I grew up and the role the animals had then and how different it is now. We couldn't do the things for our pets that we're able to do now. Last weekend, I was doing some spay-neuter volunteer work. The woman was helping me get these cats into my truck. I opened the back, and she saw I have dog beds with – they're very nice little dog beds in the back seat. She said, “Animals at your house have it really rough, don't they?” It’s true. We are able to make them true members of our family. I'm able to take my dogs with me on trips and on little errand runs and things like that. We get so much out of it. They get so much out of it. I love that we have changed how we view animals. I love that the research is giving us more validation and showing us more ways to do that. [00:02:57] BD: Yes. I love how much it's evolved from this understanding that animals or outdoor animals, they were kind of in the background. Now, they are people's children. They have more rights in the home than sometimes the humans do. [00:03:13] PF: Especially when it comes to that bed space. It's like – [00:03:15] BD: Right. [00:03:17] PF: “I'll be taking that. Thanks.” I know that you are so well-researched on this, which, obviously, that's why you're hosting this podcast. You want to share some of the things that they do for us emotionally and physically as well. [00:03:31] BD: Our relationships and understanding of animals can be a powerful tool to increase a lot of things in our life, so joy and happiness, first of all, health, longevity, emotional and social skills. Then also, interacting with animals has been shown to decrease levels of cortisol. That's the stress-related hormone in our bodies. Then it also lowers blood pressure. So I find that so fascinating that animals have this ability to uniquely shift that in us in our bodies, in our mental health. So this mental, physical, emotional support that they give us. Other studies have also found that animals can reduce loneliness and increase feelings of social support and boost our mood. That's just to name a few. That is so profound to me and almost magical that these animals can do that for us, and we don't talk about it enough. [00:04:24] PF: Right. Do we know the why of it? We're seeing the action and the what. But why is that? Like why is it that the act of petting my dog can absolutely lower my blood pressure, can decrease my anxiety? What is it that's happening that makes that? [00:04:40] BD: Yes. This is stuff that we're really going to be diving into in this season is exploring from a very unique lens and heart-centered lens how we can understand animals benefiting us from those perspectives in our life, so that mind-body-spirit approach. [00:04:57] PF: So those are some of the things. Like you said, those are some of the things that you're going to talk about. I know that you've already been lining guests up. You've got some great things in store. Do you want to talk about some of the things that we can learn and what we can expect from the next several episodes? [00:05:12] BD: I think listeners are really going to be in for a treat, the topics and the guests that we’re kind of brainstorming for the season. Uniquely, I think that animals, not only are they a part of our house and our families and our hearts, but they are out in communities healing people. They're out doing a lot of really unseen work and behind-the-scenes work that is bringing a lot of joy and healing to people. I think that needs to be illuminated. So that's really the goal of this podcast is to have those conversations and really take a dive into how animals can bring so much to our lives. [00:05:52] PF: Yes. Because once we realize that, I think we give them a lot more space, and we give them a lot more credit maybe than we have in the past because I think we all know like, “My dog makes me feel good. My cat makes me feel good.” But we don't realize just how far-reaching that is. [00:06:07] BD: Right, and understanding that animals are our teachers. Animals prompt us to experience the world more like they do. They bring us happiness. They bring us comfort. They bring us love, wonder, and awe, living in the moment, purpose, and like I said before, healing, which is huge. I think that animals heal us on a mind-body-soul level. When that happens, I think they begin to heal us on a cellular level. What I mean by that is studies show that interacting with animals reduces cortisol, like I mentioned before. But also, it's increasing dopamine and serotonin. So that's on the chemical level, which improves our mood. [00:06:48] PF: Yes. Explain to us what dopamine and serotonin do for us. [00:06:52] BD: That's the happy feel good. That’s the opposite of the stress hormones. That's what puts a smile on our face and an ease in our bodies. So understanding that we can get that support on a chemical level, but also realizing that animals and playing with animals and interacting with animals can be an intellectual and an inner child experience for us all. [00:07:14] PF: You bring up such a good point because as adults, we forget to play. We've done episodes on play before, and I'm guilty of that myself. It's like I love to play probably more than the next person. But I get caught up in work, and I forget to play. Newsweek just had a huge cover story on this about how dangerous it is for us not to play. What I love about animals is they kind of force you to do that. Whether you want to or not, they are ready to play. That is so healthy for us. That is doing so much more for us than we even realize. [00:07:47] BD: Yes. Play is healing. Play is used a lot in trauma work, reconnecting with that joy center and those hope receptors. Animals can be that safe and supportive space to then navigate that trauma, even using play. This can physically help us but also mentally help us. [00:08:06] PF: Because you have a healing center in Louisville. Do you use animals in that center? [00:08:11] BD: Yes, yes. Several of the therapists have a support animal, and I also bring in animals. I also encourage my clients if they have emotional support animals and therapy dogs to bring them in with them because they will always aid and speed up the process if they're involved. [00:08:28] PF: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. I'm so excited to see how this season unfolds. What do you want to talk about today because we can't tell them everything that you're going to do? We'll ruin all the surprises. I think you said you had something you wanted to talk about today. [00:08:42] BD: Yes. There's actually a new study that came out, and I think it fits perfectly into our conversation today. Last month, we celebrated International Dog Day, and it just so happens that this study was published around this time. What the study shows is that petting other people's dog is good for your health, even – [00:09:01] PF: I saw that. That was a great story, actually. Actually, just reading it made me smile. But, yes, I love that. Tell us about what they found out. [00:09:09] BD: I feel like it's so powerful. Who else does that? Who else does that? Just briefly any interaction with someone. [00:09:17] PF: In positive psychology, we talk about micro moments. Barbara Frederickson, that was a big area of study for her and how even just short exchanges with people can lift our mood and help us feel happier. But we had never applied that to pets, to animals. So to think about the fact that when I'm reaching down and I'm petting somebody's pooch as they're walking. If we’re walking in the neighborhood, there I am. I say hello to the dog and pet it. It's like it has done something for me that we don't even think about how much good that can do. [00:09:48] BD: I think the reason that this study seemed like something that really would fit into what we were talking about is because we're talking about how animals can do all this behind-the-scenes work that we're not even aware of. This is a perfect example that just a quick exchange on a walk, getting the okay to pet someone else's dog because PSA, everyone. We should ask. [00:10:11] PF: Always ask first. [00:10:12] BD: Always ask consent to pet someone's dog because not everybody likes to be pet. Not every dog likes to have that engagement. But stopping someone and asking if you can pet their dog and having that interaction. Maybe stopping by a friend or family member's house and getting greeted by the dog or even being at an event or a gathering where dogs are allowed. This is the interaction that the study's talking about is that 5 to 20-minute period that can make you more relaxed and happier in that space. [00:10:39] PF: They said that it aids in releasing oxytocin, which is that love hormone, which think about that. If you go out, and you're in a grumpy mood, and you get to run into a pet, and it releases that love hormone, I mean, it might change the way that you're dealing with the next person you encounter. [00:10:54] BD: Yes. It's that cellular chemical change that I was talking about. That evidence shows that it will lower cortisol, the stress hormone, and it will increase all the feel good stuff. So we see that increase in oxytocin, which is the feel-good bonding hormone, really. So you have that bonding moment happening. What's awesome is that the dog we're petting also gets that exchange, so it's reciprocal. [00:11:18] PF: Yes. Everybody benefits from it. You've done so much work with people and with animals. I think that you've had experience of seeing how animals have done exactly what we're talking about, which is sharing joy by just letting people be with them. [00:11:35] BD: Yes. I love sharing stories of animals doing incredible work in very unassuming ways. I think through thousands of years of domestication, dogs have really developed a wondrous ability to read us as humans. They can connect to human beings from the heart without words, which I think is so beautiful. A friend of mine, [inaudible 00:11:57], she does really beautiful community work here. She creates a space called [inaudible 00:12:02], where people can gather and heal through music, poetry, food, group connection. She also does a lot of work with small groups. But really, and this is no shade to [inaudible 00:12:12], I share the story with you because of her dog. She has an emotional support dog named Arlo, who wanders around greeting and spending time with everyone. He is this beautiful, gentle, scruffy, majestic, golden healer. I love that. [00:12:30] PF: I love the fact that he's a healer. [00:12:32] BD: He's a golden healer. He’s so loved and cherished by everyone. He means so much, and he seems to know exactly who needs a kiss, who needs a quick touch, or who might need a good cuddle session, even acting as a weighted blanket for some people who need some extra soothing and processing time. So it's really amazing to watch him just live his best life while enriching and healing the lives of others as he does it. I think every person in the room who interacts with him are experiencing all the benefits that we just talked about. I think Arlo is really a perfect example of a dog who can just heal others by being himself. I think this is a gift that dogs possess that we can all learn a lot from. [00:13:18] PF: That is so amazing. There was also something in the story where it talked about how it aids children. Like children that were able to interact with animals had better cognitive function after that. That kind of blew me away because, yes, the well-being make you happy. That's very clear, and that's easy to understand. But my gosh, the fact that it can also change the way that your brain is functioning, do you have any insight into why that is because they didn't really talk – they just said it did that. They didn't say why. [00:13:47] BD: What I think they were getting at in the study is that dogs induce a very calming effect. So it's like a chill pill for kids and not just kids but for adults, giving our nervous systems permission to relax and really come back online, which can then bring you cognitively back online. So I kind of just look at that moment as like this chill pill moment for kids, right? [00:14:07] PF: I love that. So what we're saying here is that every parent whose child is running crazy should go get a pet. Is that what? [00:14:16] BD: Parents are going to love us for saying that. [00:14:18] PF: Yes. I had a situation, as I mentioned. I mentioned the kitties, the little spay-neuter thing I had going on. We'd get got some strays. We were trying to adopt them out. I had a single mom come out and meet one of the kitties and was like, “I really think this will be good for my little girl.” Oh, my gosh. It was like instant love, these two. The look on this little girl's face, I'm still in love with just that look that they had. She and this little stray cat bonded almost immediately. The mom has for this past week been sending me photos of the two of them together, and it's just so touching. She said like she has never seen her daughter that enamored and that happy. It’s like I just think about what that's doing, this relationship that it's creating, and this joy that it's bringing to her life and how that's got to be affecting her in other areas of her daily being. [00:15:09] BD: Yes. It’s also teaching that child the kind of simple pause, the taking a moment and really just being in that moment. Animals always uniquely teach us that if we're open to it. [00:15:21] PF: Yes. Animals are really good for mindfulness. You know what? That is another thing that you and I had talked about at one point because there was a study about phubbing your pets. Then if anyone doesn't know, phubbing is phone snubbing. Our animals can tell. They actually get hurt when we are ignoring them and looking at our phones. So if we can use our walks or our play time with those animals and to really be in the moment, to really be noticing what's going on around us and really put the phone away, it makes a big difference for both of us. [00:15:58] BD: Right. I think we can apply this phrase that the Gottman Institute uses about relationships. It's called bid for affection. I think we can use that in regards to animals too because that is their bid for affection. That's their bid for, “Hey, Mom. Hey, Dad. Love me. See me. Spend this time with me.” When we actively avoid that snub, whatever you want to call it, phub, that is received in the same way in animals as it is with humans, which is, “Oh, I'm not being paid attention to. That doesn't feel good.” [00:16:32] PF: Yes. When I was still in Nashville, I'd see this a lot where someone's walking their dog. They're looking at their phone. The dog wants to stop and sniff and enjoy the moment. They just are kind of pulling him along like, “Got to go.” They’re not even looking up. I was always like, “Man, that's such a lost moment because you don't know when you're going to have your last walk with that animal.” Nothing's guaranteed, and that's such a precious time that you can spend with your animal. It’s so good for you to put your phone down and not be looking at that. Even if it wasn't good for the animal for you to be giving him that undivided attention, it's good for you to get away from that. [00:17:07] BD: Yes. Again, animals are our teachers. If we are open to receiving those messages and being present for them, we can learn so much. [00:17:14] PF: I love that. This is going to be a fun journey. I'm really excited to see where this goes, what some of the things are that we learn and the guests that you bring on because I know you have a lot to teach us. The animals have a lot to teach us, and you have a lot of great people that you're tapping into who can tell us how we can access that. [00:17:31] BD: I can't wait. This season's going to be incredible, and I can't wait for everyone to just learn right along with me. [OUTRO] [00:17:40] PF: That was our very first episode of Happiness Unleashed with Brittany Derrenbacher. Brittany will be back here next month to talk about how pets bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our best teachers. Until then, for everyone at Live Happy, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]