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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Exploring Nature to Improve Mental Health With Mya-Rose Craig [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 411 of Live Happy Now. We know that getting out in nature is good for us. But this week's guest understands it better than most. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm sitting down with Mya-Rose Craig, a 20-year-old birdwatcher, environmentalist, and diversity activist. Mya-Rose Craig formed the Black2Nature organization at the age of just 14 to engage other teenagers of color with nature. She has already been awarded an honorary doctorate by Bristol University for her pioneering work in this area, and her memoir, Birdgirl: Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future, looks at the power of nature in birds, as well as the important role they have played in dealing with her mother's mental illness. She's here today to share her compelling story about what she's learned from nature. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:55] PF: Mya-Rose Craig, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] MRC: Hi, there. Thank you for having me. [00:01:01] PF: You have written a fantastic book that we're going to talk about today that’s so unique, and I think it's something our listeners are just going to love hearing about. I think, I want to start, your memoir is named Birdgirl. So, can we start by talking about how you earn that nickname? [00:01:18] MRC: Yeah, I think the funny thing, because I started calling myself Birdgirl when I was about 11. Oh, no, possibly slightly younger. And at the time, it was because I had just set up a blog because that was in 2013. That was the thing that people did when they wanted to socialize. I wanted to meet other kids my age that were into like birdwatching and nature because it was a bit nerdy and known at my school. I was sort of having a thing, and I came across this like very cheesy, like sixties, seventies superhero that was in like an old cartoon called Birdgirl. The whole thing with the silly superpowers and the crazy outfit. I was just like, “That's such a cool name.” I thought it sounded really cool for the name of a blog. I think like going back if you told, like, 10, 11-year-old me that at the age of 20, lots of people know me by Birdgirl and not my real name. I think she would have been very surprised by it. Considering as a kid, I made a pretty good decision. [00:02:22] PF: Yes, you could have done a lot worse with the nicknames, when you think back to that at that age. So, you're known as Birdgirl. Obviously, birds became a huge part of your life and your interest in birdwatching really started with your father. Can you talk about how that came about and how you found such a deep connection with nature? [00:02:42] MRC: Yes. I think this is the reason I find it really difficult to explain where birdwatching came for me because I've always been very, very passionate about birds and nature and the outdoors. And especially, when I was younger, it was considered quite a weird hobby for a teenage girl to have, basically. It was just really hard to explain. But you're right, it did all come from my dad, and that he has also been obsessed with birds since he was very, very young. And then he met my mom, and she was a city girl and she went – you can be a bird watcher if you want. But I want nothing to do with that. I'm never going to be doing that with you. But eventually, over the course of a few months, and I talked about this in the book, he sort of slowly dragged her into it until she had her sort of eureka moment where she went like, “Wait, I love birds as well.” So that meant like, by the time I was born, I had two parents who were crazy obsessed with birds and birdwatching and an older sister who was really into birdwatching. I don't know what they would have done if I hadn't also fallen into the trap. But I did, thankfully, and I just spent my whole childhood being taken around outdoors. For me, it was never like a light bulb moment where I realized I love birds in the outdoors because I always have, but more like as I got older, the slow realization that everyone else wasn't also obsessed with birds. That was, I think, as a kid quite weird for me to wrap my head around. [00:04:07] PF: Yeah, I guess if you've grown up in an environment where that's what you know, and everybody is into it, then you meet people who aren't and say, “Well, what is wrong with you guys?” [00:04:17] MRC: Exactly. It seemed very strange to me at the time. [00:04:19] PF: Well, it wasn't just the birds that you connected with. You found this really deep connection with all of nature. And how did that kind of unfold? Starts with the birds, but then you took it next level. [00:04:32] MRC: Yeah, I mean, I think it was a few different things coming together. Again, it did start from the birds, and I feel really lucky looking back on childhood. A lot of my key memories are sort of my parents just letting me run free and sort of woods and fields and rock climbing at the beach and things like that. So, I always just loved being outdoors. But I think it was sort of that combined with as I got a bit older, and you start going to like secondary school or high school or whatever, and you stopped being stressed about life, and for me, it was nature that I always used to turn to. I talk a lot in the book about struggling a lot in terms of my mom being very unwell. She was struggling with very severe mental illness, and it was sort of nature and the outdoors that I would turn to sort of be my version of self-care or mindfulness, I guess. And I think, because of that, it wasn't just a place that I love being, it sort of became something more than that, for me, I guess. [00:05:28] PF: What really struck me is just the fact that you recognize that, because there are a lot of adults don't recognize just how valuable that time in nature is, and how much it gives back to them. So, do you recall there ever being a time when you started consciously realizing that was what you needed? Or was it always something that was just innate, that I've got to get back to nature to kind of get grounded? [00:05:52] MRC: I think a bit of both, and I think when I was younger, my dad knew that very consciously, and so as a family, we'd spend a lot of time outdoors. It was only as I got a bit older, and I was a teenager, and I started sort of going like, “Birdwatching is really uncool.” But I sort of was having to make this decision about how much time I actually wanted to spend outdoors. I kind of didn't – I was sort of torn in some ways. I was like, “Oh, this is so weird and so nerdy, and I don't want people to spot me out birdwatching, and stuff like that.” But the other part of me and the part of that one, I guess, was the one that felt this very deep need to spend time outdoors. And I think especially the period, which again, I do talk about in the book, like after my mom was sectioned, she became very unwell for a period and my parents had already booked this birdwatching holiday away to Ecuador. And they sort of had this moment where they sat down and they had to go, “Is this a wise thing to do to be going on holiday right now? To be going into the middle of the jungle right now?” They sort of went like, “Yes.” It was just this amazing three-week experience where we were sort of away from everything that was sort of stressing us out for the most part. I think, I know, because I was sort of taught at a very young age that going outside is what has helped sort of as an adult, that's what I've turned to. [00:07:15] PF: You didn't wait till adulthood to do that. Because you were 14 when you founded Black2Nature. Can you, first of all, tell us about that organization? Because, okay, when I was 14, I was doing nothing like that. I was doing no good for the world. So, can you explain what that organization does? Tell us how that all came about and what made you want to start that. [00:07:36] MRC: Yes. I think Black2Nature is my charity, that at the time, it all felt very reasonable. And then, I look back, and I'm like, “That's crazy. I was 13, 14 years old.” It felt very necessary to me and it came out the fact that like I said, I spent a lot of time in the countryside and nature and outdoors growing up, and I'm also half Bangladeshi. So, I'm not white. My mom's not white. My sister isn't either. I never saw anyone who looked like me or my family outdoors. There was just a complete lack of diversity and engagement and just in a very basic way, as a kid, that made me really sad. Because I wanted other children to be getting those opportunities that I had. Also, in terms of sort of the conversation with my Asian part of the family, that attitude was always very much like, “Oh, that's very much like a white hobby”, basically, and I always thought that was so stupid. So, I reached an age, and when I was about 13, I also found out that in the US, you have all these summer camps over the summer for basically like every hobby under the sun, including, I found out, nature and bird camps. We don't have that in the UK and sort of eventually, I decided I was just going to organize one for myself for the weekend and I would invite other kids and it was really popular and loads of people signed up. And then, I realized that the only other people apart from me who had signed up, were all like, white teenage boys, like middle-class teenage boys. I think because it was something that I had organized, it felt much more personal and much close to home, I suppose. I sort of went, “I'm going to go and find some kids from the city where I'm from, and I will bring them on this camp, and I will let them engage with nature. I will make them like nature.” But at the time, I already had a bit of a profile online. I remember people kept on going like, “Oh, there are just certain groups of people who you can't engage with the outdoors.” I was like, “But that's stupid.” Because I know from my own family that that's not true. Very long story short, the camp was really successful. These kids had a really good time. They engaged with nature, they had never really left the city before and they loved it. Suddenly, I had all these big organizations writing to me going like, “What was the secret? How can we hear from you?” I was like, “I'm 13. I feel like if I can figure it out, you can figure it out.” But eventually, I decided what I would do, instead of giving them advice, was I would bring them all into one place, and I would get actual experts from the Black and Asian communities to come and talk to them. And my parents were just sort of like, “Mya, that's a conference.” I was like, “Right. Okay, I'm organizing a conference.” It was so successful, it was so good. I sent all these organizations off with like, a list of things to do. And like 14-year-old me was so pleased, I was like, “I fixed it. I've solved the issue.” And then obviously, nothing happened, and it was about six months after that conference that I was like, “This wasn't like a one-off thing. This is becoming a project.” I ended up setting up my charity, Black2Nature, and we still run lots and lots of events with kids, sort of taking them out into nature, or doing camps, or tree planting days, and stuff like that, spending a lot of time actually talking about mental health and mental wellbeing. We also do a lot of campaigning in the environmental sector, in the nature sector, trying to make a bit more diverse, and essentially a bit less racist. It's one of those things that I'm sort of looking back. That's kind of crazy. [00:11:06] PF: It's amazing that you're able to put that together even more amazing that it continues today. Can you talk about some of the changes that you see in people who go to the camps, and are able to participate? [00:11:18] MRC: Yes, absolutely. Sorry, this is one of my favorite things. Obviously, there is a lot of campaigning and stuff, but I love actually working with the kids, and especially at the start when we had less of like a reputation locally, we'd have so many kids turn up. I mean, actually, on the very first camp, I ran with these kids. I remember the boys turned up and they were like, “I don't want to be him. My mom made me come. This is going to be so boring. This can be awful.” I was just like, “What have I done? I've invited these kids out here, and they're going to hate me by the end of this weekend.” But it was like, actually, so many of them, I'm essentially just watching kids and teenagers fall in love with nature all the time. There's always a different thing. It's always a different aspect of it that interests people, but there are just so many, just like little moments that really stick with me. I think one of my favorites was we were out looking for a nightjar, which is like a nocturnal bird. The sun had just set and the stars had just come out. Instead of looking at the bird, this group of boys were looking up at the sky. They sort of called me over and they're like, “What's that? Is that a satellite?” I looked up and I was like, “No, that's a planet. That's Mars.” They literally thought I was joking. They thought I was tricking them because they didn't realize that you can see the planets with your bare eyes from Earth, and they may just get all the telescopes. We went back to camp, and they're looking at the stars. It's just little things like that, where you can sort of see kids sort of falling in love with the place that they live and the planet they live on, and it's really beautiful. [00:12:47] PF: Especially now because we are so connected to digital devices, it's so much harder to get kids away from that. It's hard to get adults away from them, too. So, how does that camp really help them kind of reset? [00:13:00] MRC: It's always fun when we get to a location, we set up the tents and the kids suddenly realize there's no phone reception and there’s no Wi-Fi, and they realized they’re in like two to five days of no internet. I like that zone. I'm sure everyone is, slightly too addicted to your phone and it is difficult. But I think it just feels so good. I mentioned earlier, we also spend a lot of time talking about mental health and well-being and stuff like that. Part of that is because ethnic minority communities in the UK are very disproportionately affected by mental illness. One of the things I do is essentially talk to kids about how they can look after themselves, especially with younger kids, it's literally just on the level of like, if you're feeling sad or angry or upset, just go to the local park and chill out with some trees and some grass and you will feel better. So, there's that kind of thing. But also it is like teaching, especially the older kids the benefit of even if it's just a day trip, going and doing something, and sort of being surrounded by nature and not being on your phone and just actually how good it feels. Because maybe the first day for the kids is really difficult. But by day four, maybe we've driven them up to the main road so they can send a few messages, so they'll go completely insane. But they realized that it feels quite nice sometimes. [00:14:19] PF: I'll be right back with more of my interview with Mya-Rose Craig. But while we're talking about nature, I wanted to share a great way that you can enjoy nature anytime and anyplace. [MESSAGE] [00:14:30] PF: When you can't actually get outside, I've found that listening to sounds of nature is the next best thing. So, I was really excited to discover the Water and Nature Sounds Meditation for Women Podcast by the Women's Meditation Network. I kind of feel like I found my own private Shangri-La in my headphones. You can choose your natural getaway whether you want the sounds of birds, water on the beach, or even the sound of just a gentle crackling fire. With almost 500 episodes to choose from, you can find the hour-long nature break you're looking for. And trust me, you'll feel many of the same relaxing mental and physical benefits as if you just spent an hour in the great outdoors. These amazing meditations can help you find your happy place, no matter where you are. Check it out for yourself, follow the Water and Nature Sounds Meditation for Women by the Women's Meditation Network for free, wherever you listen to podcasts. Or visit the womensmeditationnetwork.com. Now, let's hear more about what nature does for us from this week's guest, Mya-Rose Craig. [INTERIVEW CONTINUED] [00:15:33] PF: There's so much science behind what you're saying, have you studied the science, like a biophilia? Or is this just something that you have learned along the way and know intuitively what it is doing for mental health? [00:15:45] MRC: I think a lot of it, especially when I started because it was like, seven years ago that I started doing this campaigning. It was just, for me, very much a gut feeling. Like, I feel like as animals, because I think we forget sometimes that human beings are animals. I just knew, good for us to be outside. I think since then, so much more research has come out in the UK, medical services have started literally prescribing going outside to people, and things like that. So, much more stuff has come out. But for me, it's always been very intuitive. I think one of the really interesting moments actually was the original lockdown in the UK. There was a really difficult moment where the decision was made to essentially lock up all of the urban green spaces. So suddenly, there were no parks in the cities. There was nowhere for people to go. I think for a lot of people, there was a realization of, even though they wouldn't consider themselves like outdoorsy people, and they wouldn't consider themselves the kind of people who want to go like hiking or birdwatching at the weekend, suddenly, there was a sort of very deep-rooted desire for them to be able to be outside. So, you saw loads more people go into the countryside, and that has actually sort of continued post-COVID, which I think has been really interesting and really exciting. [00:17:01] PF: I think the fact that we had it taken away really made people, like many things, appreciate that a lot more, appreciate being able to be out in nature. As we've talked, you've already referenced mental illness. And throughout the book, your mom's bipolar disorder really plays a key role in the whole story that you tell. It struck me because for one, it’s approached so well and I wondered how difficult it was to write about that part of the story. Could you tell your story without including that? [00:17:36] MRC: That's such a good question. Because when I was first coming up with this book, I suppose, and sort of sketching out the chapters, I had no intention of talking about my mom's mental illness. I had no intention of sort of delving into family, in the way I ended up doing. And I was sort of looking at it, and I realized the story literally didn't make sense without it. It's essentially the story of two parents and a kid traveling and looking at lots of birds, which I do personally, love the idea of. I suppose the trigger of all of that was missing. So, I had this moment where I realized it was going to be included, and I remember going and talking to my mom and saying like, “Would you be comfortable with that?” And I was feeling very apprehensive. Weirdly, she was more down for it than I was, and she was more down for sort of very explicitly laying out as well. So, we had lots of conversations about it and as a family. I think, it sort of went from this terrifying thing. There are lots of things I hadn't really thought about or revisited for years, to sort of becoming a very cathartic experience. I remember first talking to my editor, actually, and she sort of made reference to sort of how in the last chapter in the epilogue, I sort of needed to, and they lived happily ever after sort of way to tie it up. I went like, “But no, that's not how mental illness works.” I think in the end, it's sort of much more like, “We're okay. It's not perfect, but we're dealing.” I think that's much more true to life and much more true to how it is to live with someone who was struggling with mental illness. Also, one of the really lovely things about writing it is, like I said, there were lots of things I hadn't thought about since I was 10, or 11 years old and I ended up just having a much deeper understanding of what my mom and my dad actually was struggling with and what they've gone through, and sort of having a much broader picture of it all, I suppose. So, I'm just basically, I was terrified but I'm so glad I did it. And I hope as well, sort of telling all the good bits and bad bits are helpful to people out there. I think someone said to me, recently, like, out of me and my parents, none of us sort of come across as perfect people. At any point, we all have our bad moments. But I think, again, that is very true to life. [00:19:54] PF: Yes. How long did it take you to write the book? [00:19:58] MRC:  Basically, I took a year off before uni, which happened to be COVID year. I was intending to be birdwatching during my gap year. And instead, I sat at my desk writing. I think it took me about a year total. But I think, because of COVID, it was a much faster process because I was – [00:20:15] PF: Fewer distractions, for sure. [00:20:18] MRC: Yes, like, I couldn't leave my house, and I was getting very bored of looking at the birds that were just in my garden. So, I think, sitting down and remembering all of the stuff that I'd already seen around the world, and sort of revisiting all of these birds was just, yes, so good for me. I loved it. Actually, it was amazing. [00:20:35] PF: Can you talk about how the time that you spent traveling helped you and your father better deal with your mom's mental illness? Did it make it easier being on travels, than if you had stayed home and tried to manage it? [00:20:50] MRC: I suppose there's a few different layers to it. I guess, for me, the main reason it was so helpful when I was younger, in particular, was because by the time we started traveling together, my mom had been really unwell for a few years by that point, essentially, from the end of what I described as our big year, which sort of this year where we're running around trying to see as many birds as possible. She became very depressed at the end there and essentially spent the next three, sorry, two years or so being very unwell. So, I had lost a lot of my relationship with her, and so on a very basic level, sort of dragging her out of her depression, and spending like a very solid period of time together was just amazing. We both talked about how we were essentially using this to rebuild our relationship in circumstances that were much easier than it otherwise would have been. As I got older, even though I then did have that relationship with her, these moments when we're traveling were just so important in terms of sort of maintaining and building that, and birdwatching sort of very intense as well, like you are with everyone all the times. There really was no escaping. It was great. I think, for my dad, like, he's always birdwatching as a tool, just – I don't know, he's the kind of person who starts climbing up the walls when he isn't able to go outside every single day. So, I think for him, it was the combination of birds and essentially running away from all our problems, that was really helpful. Because we acknowledge, that's what it was, we were running away from everything. And when we had to go home again, it was really difficult every time. But I think that was him having an awareness of what worked for our family as well, because we'd spent so much time when I was younger, together as a unit birdwatching. That was the thing that we needed to return to, I suppose? And I can imagine, birdwatching probably wouldn't do that for a lot of people, because you are up at dawn every day and its late nights. That's very difficult. I'm so glad that my parents were able to recognize, I guess, that that's what we needed because it was very rogue. I'm not sure any doctors would have been very happy about us taking her out of the country for three weeks. [00:22:54] PF: Yes. It really is an amazing story and you tell it very well. It's so interesting to me how you have become an advocate for mental illness through this. You're an advocate for nature and the environment. Did you ever expect that you were going to be such an advocate and activist for these different areas? [00:23:14] MRC: No, not really. I always find that strange when this kind of stuff happens. I've been doing a lot of environmental campaigning for a long time now, essentially, since I set up that blog I mentioned earlier, Birdgirl, nine years ago. But yeah, like 10 years, oh, my God, 10 years ago. [00:23:31] PF: It goes fast. [00:23:33] MRC: There was never an expectation of gaining a platform or people listening to me there. That was more just a very opinionated 11-year-old, having lots of strong feelings about lots of things going on in the world. It turned out, people were interested in that. And that became campaigning and activism. I think from, when I was a little kid, I was always slightly too opinionated. So, it made sense. But I think, in some ways, I suppose having entered the space around mental health and mental illness has actually been just like a very healing thing for me on a very personal level. I think, the relationship between people who are dealing with these things, and the people who are looking after them, their carers, it's one of those things that maybe isn't talked about enough and it is a really difficult relationship. I guess, I feel very honored that I'm able to speak for people and hopefully give representation again, of the good and the bad, because that's life, and help people come to terms with things maybe going on in their own lives. For me, I think destigmatization is always just so important. That's how people end up getting help and realizing it's not the end of the world, they can still live their life. [00:24:52] PF: Absolutely. So, what is it that you really hope to see come from publishing this book? And as people read it and again, you touch on so many different ways that we can benefit from nature, what do you hope happens? [00:25:05] MRC: I mean, the original, when I was first thinking of the book, I wanted to write a book about birds for people who weren't into birds. It was essentially, like I said earlier, I've spent, like, my whole life being asked the question of, but why birds? Like why birdwatching? I wanted someone to be able to read the book, and even if they don't magically become a passionate bird watcher themselves to read it and go, like, “I get it. I understand.” And hopefully, maybe to fall in love with birds and nature a bit themselves. So, I think that was always the main goal for me. But I think, contributing to sort of opening up these conversations around mental health and mental illness, and the ways that that impacts people and families and communities and stuff like that, I think, just feels incredibly special to me. But I think, also, one of the things I spend a lot of time telling like people now is just how easy it is, try and work to make things better. I talked to so many people my age who feel so pessimistic and so despondent about the future and feel like they can't do anything, and it's like, yes, maybe things like climate change, and destruction of biodiversity and things like that, they are really really big issues. But I think, realizing that doing something is better than doing nothing and it does make a difference, and it does make you feel better, and it builds communities of people who become stronger together, and all of that sort of thing as well. I think, if people could see that from my own experience, that would be really special. [00:26:44] PF: Yes, you certainly lead by example and you've shown that what one person can accomplish, it's going to be really exciting. I mean, you've done this in the first 20 years or so. I'm really excited to see what you have in store for the next 20. I thank you for coming on the show and for talking about your book, and we're going to tell our listeners, how they can find the book, where they can buy it, and how they can find out more about you and follow you. But thank you for the good that you're putting out in the world because you're on an incredible mission. [00:27:12] MRC: Thank you so much. It's been really lovely speaking with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:19] PF: That was Mya-Rose Craig, talking about the power of nature in her memoir, Birdgirl: Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future. If you'd like to learn more about Mya-Rose, buy her book or follow her on social media. Just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for all new episodes. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: What We Learned from the World Happiness Report with Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 410 of Live Happy Now. Is it just my imagination? Or is the world getting happier? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm sitting down with Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, to talk about how we're doing when it comes to happiness. Every year on the International Day of Happiness, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases its World Happiness Report. Deb's here to talk with me about some of her takeaways from this year's report and why it appears that our happiness is improving. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Deb, thank you for taking time from down under to come on and talk to me about the World Happiness Report. [00:00:44] DB: I am actually excited to be able to do this. This comes out every year on the International Day of Happiness. I had a weird experience this year, Paula. [00:00:52] PF: I love this. [00:00:52] DB: I got on an airplane. I got on an airplane on the 19th of March, and I got off the airplane on the 21st of March because of the timezone changes. So I actually missed the entire International Day of Happiness because I was on a flight to Australia this year. So this is my way of celebrating. [00:01:07] PF: That’s so funny. Yes. Because we were talking about that I was in Dallas with the rest of the Live Happy team, and we were talking about the irony of Deb Heisz missing the Day of Happiness, not just not being able to participate. I mean, completely missing that day. [00:01:23] DB: I had no International Day of Happiness. So talking to you today about the World Happiness Report is my way of celebrating the International Day of Happiness. I'm super excited about it. [00:01:32] PF: This report we really waited for every year. It's something that, I guess, we're a little bit of happiness geeks, and it's very exciting to us to be able to sit down, see what's going on. This year's report, it's the 11th year of the report. It's really showing that even though we had some really tough years, the last three years have been tough on us. But around the world, people are showing a remarkable amount of resilience. I think what struck me so much of the news, and we've had so many discussions about it too, is about how anxiety and depression have really increased during the pandemic and since then. So honestly, I was surprised to see how well we're doing. I wanted to get your takeaway on that. [00:02:14] DB: So, Paula, I do think that there is an increase in anxiety and depression. I think, well, number one, we hear a lot about it because the news focuses on it. News is always negative, always the negative outcomes of things. But I also think if you look at various groups, the lack of social interaction, we know how important relationships are to overall happiness, the Harvard study that's been going on where they talked about how relationships are really the most important thing. But when people are isolated and they aren't able to get together, of course, it fed their anxiety and depression. If you look at young people, people who missed their high school graduations or their proms or had to start university classes in their house and their mom's office because universities weren't doing in-person classes, of course, there's more anxiety and depression, and the world's changed a little bit. But we have to remind ourselves that isn't really what the Happiness Report is about. It isn't really what happiness overall is about. It's about overall well-being. Particularly, the Happiness Report is about population’s well-being. There's a lot of things that changed during the pandemic, that I'm not surprised that we're resilient. People went to the office less. People spent less time in traffic as a result. [00:03:25] PF: That will cheer you up right there. [00:03:27] DB: Absolutely. There are definitely some positive outcomes. But, really, when we're talking about happiness, we aren’t talking about this essentially an absence of anxiety and depression. We're talking about overall well-being. Are you living the life you're meant to live? Of course, we hope that comes with less of those negative things. Really, when you're talking about it as a population or as about a community, it's very different than on an individual basis. So I don't find those two things to be in contrast. [00:03:54] PF: Can you talk about that a little bit more? Because the happiness that people think about, typically, is a lot different than what we often talk about when we are talking about well-being. [00:04:05] DB: So I think a lot of people are short-term outcome-based in a lot of things. They think about, “Oh, if I get that, I'm going to be happy,” or, “When that happens, I'm going to be happy.” Then they define happiness. It’s things like, “I went to that concert last night, and I got to see Taylor Swift, and that was my lifelong dream, and I'm so happy.” That’s fleeting because the next day you go back to the office, you go back to the classroom, and you're right back in whatever your life was like. That gave you a momentary pleasure. You know what they call hedonic happiness, really, where you have this momentary pleasure that brings you excitement and elevates your oxytocin and you feel good about it. That's not what we talk about when we talk about happiness. The type of happiness we talk about is typically called eudaimonic happiness. Not typically called, but I know people that study it that know those big words. [00:04:57] PF: Those science-brained people. [00:04:59] DB: Yes, those science-brained. Not us right-brained creative types, but those science-brained types. Yes. So what they're really talking about is are you living a happy life. Does your life have the meaning that you expect? Are you congruent in what you're doing? Or is your overall well-being happy? That's really what they're talking about. They're not talking about this fleeting emotion. We don't tend to talk about that because that's momentary. What you really want is a life that you feel like is well-lived. The best way I’ve heard this described is – well, I'm going to use two definitions. Number one is the definition that I've heard Shawn Achor use, and I think he's gotten this from Martin Seligman. But what we're talking about is the happiness that you feel when you're striving towards your potential, which, to me, describes fulfillment. Then the other way I've heard it described is when you get to the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, “Did I live a happy life?” That's the life we're talking about. That's what we mean by happiness. [00:06:00] PF: Right, right. Not that day in, day out because we all have up and down. We have good days and bad days, and it doesn't mean we're unhappy if we're having a bad day. [00:06:10] DB: Well, bad things happen to all of us. I mean, no one goes through life without bad things happening to them. No one expects you to be happy in the traditional way you think about it, the hedonic way you think about it, when you're attending a funeral, right? [00:06:22] PF: Right, right. [00:06:24] DB: We all have negative things that happen. We all lose. Well, those of us who are dog lovers, we all lose pets. We all have challenges in our lives. Some are huge, and some are not huge. But it doesn't mean you're happy in the hedonic sense every day. But it means that you're living the life you're supposed to live. [00:06:43] PF: Right. Do you think the pandemic actually helped us become more aware of that? Because I hear people expressing gratitude more and being more aware of just the fact like, “Oh, my gosh. I can get out, and I can be around people, and I can do all these things.” So do you think that has helped made us more content? [00:07:01] DB: I have an interesting way I've started thinking about the pandemic, and I'm going to use the words the great timeout, right? [00:07:08] PF: Oh, I don’t know that. You should trademark that. [00:07:11] DB: Maybe I should. Maybe we should cut it from the podcast, so I can trademark it later. The pandemic was the great timeout. You know I'm a sports fanatic, right? [00:07:21] PF: Yes. [00:07:22] DB: But I have my children playing sports. So they're very into ice hockey. Well, my older two are. So the coaches emphasize that ice hockey is kind of a year-round sport. But one of their coaches emphasizes, “I want you not to do anything hockey-related for two weeks. It's the great timeout so that you can evaluate what it is that you need to work on, what it is that you want to change.” I think if you look at the pandemic as this great timeout, it allowed people to re-examine how they had been spending their time, reexamine what they had been doing with their time. Yes, they were missing a lot of those things. But I think there's a lot of those things they weren't missing. It allowed them to look at what impact they were having what they really wanted out of life in a way that for generations probably had not presented itself. [00:08:19] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Deborah Heisz about the World Happiness Report. But right now, it's time to bring back Kate Vastano to talk about the adventures of Kittles. Kate, welcome back. [00:08:31] KV: Thank you, Paula. [00:08:32] PF: Well, as we told listeners last week, we hook Kittles up with a gorgeous cat tree from Mau Pets. So how's he like it? [00:08:39] KV: He absolutely loves it. We've had other cat trees before where he's kind of lost interest after a couple days, wasn’t super into them. He loves snuggling in the thing, and it is his favorite. [00:08:51] PF: I love hearing that. So what do you love most about it? [00:08:54] KV: Oh, I love, first of all, the design. But I also love that it's made from sustainably sourced wood and has natural wood branches. So it doesn't look manufactured. It doesn't look like something you'd buy at like a generic pet store. Plus, all the parts are replaceable. So if something happens, it's easy to swap them out. As you know, I have three kids, two large dogs, and a cat. So our house is crazy sometimes, and I know it's a matter of time before something gets broken. Or a kid climbs into it and breaks it. I love that there's a replacement aspect to it as well. It's not one of those ugly-looking ones that you want to tuck away somewhere. It literally looks like something you'd find in a museum. It's so beautiful and modern-looking. [00:09:33] PF: If you're ready to upgrade your pet’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's M-A-Upets.com and use the code Live Happy Now to get a five percent discount. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Deborah Heisz. There's one chapter that we both really like. Not that we didn't like the rest of the report but chapter four. Just to be clear, chapter four talked about altruism and how practicing kindness not only has it increased. But we've done just become more aware of the need for it. Obviously, that's something we at Live Happy have been talking about our entire existence, volunteering, donating to charities, helping others, and how good it is for you. Now, this behavior has increased. Do you feel like that is tied back to the fact that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years? [00:10:25] DB: Yes and no. I don't know that it's that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years, as much as it was, I think, when we started to recognize the need to give back in ourselves. Because we talk a lot about gratitude, about being thankful. Well, when somebody does something for you, and you're grateful. But part of that is the joy of giving. It really is people that rediscovered, okay, they had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of – I think. This is what I believe. They had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of extra free time. They wanted to do something to improve the world. The way they do that is by giving back. You see this a lot in young people, their overarching drive to make the world a better place. I think more people, because of the pandemic, they created an awareness in them that they needed to be doing something. Or they felt like they should be doing something. We don't want to ‘should’ all over everybody. You've heard that phrase before. But they wanted to do something to make the world better because it did create a lot of anxiety. It did create a lot of uncertainty about the future. I think in that uncertainty, a lot of people found solace and a place of belonging in giving back to the world around them. I also think, in some ways, it really highlighted need in a way that when you're in the car an extra two hours a day, you might have missed a little bit. [00:11:48] PF: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Of course, we don't have crystal balls. But do you think this pro-social behavior is going to continue increasing? Is this something that we overall are learning? Hey, not only is this good for my fellow man. It's good for me. What are your thoughts on that? [00:12:06] DB: I think a lot of this – I have kids, right? So Generation Z and beyond. I really think that that generation is more pro giving back, more pro-environmentalism, more aware of the economic disparity and resolving that for people. I think that they are more – so I think that because that generation will lead in the future, which always happens. The younger generation ends up leading. I think it will be there. Or more immediately, I think that people have gotten a great benefit from doing more for their fellow man. I mean, we talk about this all the time. You said we've talked about this from the beginning of Live Happy. Yes, the person you did something for is appreciative, and you've done something to share with somebody. But when you go do something like donate blood, which is on the up, by the way, more people are donating blood and things like that, you don't get an immediate impact on who did you help, right? But it helps you. You get an oxytocin boost. You get a sense of accomplishment. You get something out of doing that charitable activity, whatever it is, even if you don't interact with the person who ultimately benefits. So, yes, handing somebody Christmas presents at Christmas time, which is a big deal in the United States. We do all these Christmas tree angel drives, and you can meet at a church, and you get to and stuff out there or Thanksgiving dinners and things like that. I volunteered at a lot of turkey dinner giveaways, that sort of thing. Yes, it's great to be able to give something to somebody and see them, their thankfulness. But a lot of the giving we're doing, you don't ever meet the beneficiary. But you get the positive impact of it. I think as people recognize that it makes them feel good, we're going to continue to see more of that. [00:13:55] PF: I love that because you know I've talked about that, like I said, for years about how – if people would catch on to how good it feels to make others’ lives better, people would really be jumping on that bandwagon. Something that I found surprising in this report, I guess I had never even thought about it. But it said that science shows that even watching someone perform an altruistic act, watching them do something for someone else can boost your happiness. Then it'll encourage them to do their own act of kindness. I didn't even think about that. So from a science standpoint, you are great at the science of this. It's like why. Why does just watching someone do something for someone else give us that same hit? [00:14:39] DB: Well, I'd like to equate it with this is an unscientific answer, Paula. But I like – [00:14:43] PF: Are you going to say it's like a contact high because we can't use that? [00:14:46] DB: Well, yes, a little bit. But I'm going to say it's kind of like when you go see that movie. Or take movies out of it since most people don't have long-form attention spans anymore. How many news reports do you see that show people giving back and doing good in the world? People want to believe there's good in the world. It makes them feel good to see other people doing good. I had something happen to me yesterday. I got out of a cab and left my phone. I'm in the hotel lobby, trying to check in, when I realized my phone's gone. I go into an immediate panic. While the hotel desk was trying to figure out which cab I got out of, the cab driver comes back around the block, has a passenger in the car, gets out of the cab, runs into the lobby, and hands me my phone, and leaves. You could kind of see like the hotel desk was like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he did that. That's so great.” They felt good about the fact that he did that, right? [00:15:37] PF: Yes. [00:15:37] DB: I felt good about the fact that he did that. Of course, I was the beneficiary in that regard. But we feel good when we see other people doing good. It reaffirms there's good in the world, and it creates a positive outlook for us is what I think. I don’t know. [00:15:51] PF: That makes sense. [00:15:52] DB: How many movies have you watched where somebody did something great, and you're like, “Wow, that's amazing.”? It just gives you that good, elated feeling and seeing other people good. But the other thing I do think it does do is it motivates you to recreate that good feeling by doing something yourself. If they did that, what can I do? I think that that is a benefit of things that we do like our Happy Acts campaign. That’s the goal with other people out there doing good things so that people see it. [00:16:22] PF: So there's so much in this report that we could dig into. We could just do like a whole year-long series based on it, but we're not going to. I wanted to find out what you thought the most interesting takeaway was from this volume. [00:16:37] DB: I think a lot of people will be shocked. My most interesting takeaway, and I think from talking about it with you, it's probably yours as well, that happiness in the Ukraine actually went up. Isn't that crazy? [00:16:51] PF: Yes. When I saw that, honestly, I went to the charts. I kept going back because I'm like, “I cannot be reading this right.” [00:16:59] DB: Right. [00:17:00] PF: It was. [00:17:01] DB: It’s startling. Ukraine actually moved up a few spots. I don't want to believe it's because the rest of the world moved down. You could take that negative approach to it. [00:17:09] PF: Everyone else is just sadder. [00:17:13] DB: But that's really not what the report showed. What they attributed it to was really interesting. It's that even though they're in a war-torn region, and certainly that would have an effect on overall well-being, specifically, in the people who live in the areas that are where the conflict is. Our news makes us think the entire country is completely in conflict all the time, and it's not. But what they’ve – yes, it's horrible than it's tragic. It's a horrible thing going on, and people are certainly negatively impacted. But why they are overall up, the report attributed really to the fact that they are united in a common goal at this point, which is really interesting that, once again, we're talking about population well-being, not individual well-being. But it really is interesting how that feeling of being united has put them in a higher position. I correlate this back to why do the Scandinavian countries typically dominate the top of this report. It's always been because there are homogeneous populations that look at the world the same way. So there's very little social conflict in those regions. In Ukraine, there's a ton of conflict but not among the Ukrainians because they're very united in their outlook right now. So I found that really interesting. [00:18:28] PF: Yes. The other thing about Ukraine because I went – I'm just geeky enough to go look at the actual little graphs in the report, and it showed that one of the areas where like they had dipped down prior to last year, they had dipped down in their confidence in their government. We know that's one of the measures that the council uses when they're doing the report is like your faith and your confidence in your government. Well, in the past year, their confidence in their leadership has escalated. So you think that's got to affect their happiness as well. [00:19:01] DB: It does, and it's interesting. I think it's interesting to point out that when we're looking at the Happiness Report, we are looking at the well-being of the overall society. Certainly, confidence in your government, your feeling of security that nothing is going to surprise you from your government. A lot of that is important. They do look at that, so yes. But that is interesting, and it's particularly interesting in our country, the United States. I know that people outside the United States listen to this podcast. I've met a few of them this week in Australia, and it's wonderful. Conflict that we see in our government, I think, and I think it shows in those geeky graphs you're talking about, negatively impacts overall well-being in the United States, the fact that we don't trust our government right now. We're very untrusting of where it's going. That shows up in these reports, and it's something that we struggle with because it's in our face every day. It's on the news every day. You and I have talked about this before. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you can’t deny that there's a huge gulf and there’s polar opposites going on right now. That does impact where the US ranks on this report. [00:20:10] PF: So do you think we as a country can become happy if we don't heal that divide? [00:20:15] DB: I think that there's a lot of factors that contribute to it. I also – I'm Pollyanna optimist. You should know that by now. [00:20:22] PF: I like the way the rainbow sprouts over your head every once in a while. [00:20:25] DB: It does. It does. But I think that like everything else, I think that we will come back together at some point in time. I don't think it's unhealable. I think that you do see some steps towards healing all the time. It's just not overwhelmingly obvious to everybody. But there are things that people agree on that are better. But there's also a lot of conflict. I think that overall, it will always impact our sense of well-being as a nation, until we can get some of that resolved. I don't see how it wouldn't. But I do think that family conflict and more immediate conflict has a more significant impact on us as individuals. So it's one of those things that we're going to struggle with. When you have free thought and free speech, sometimes you really didn't want to hear what the other person thought. [00:21:12] PF: Yes. We’re finding that out a lot. [00:21:14] DB: Yes. It is challenging. But what's interesting is despite that, the US has moved up a spot, again, for the second year in a row. [00:21:22] PF: Yes, we're climbing that ladder. We're going to be in the top 10 like in three years. [00:21:26] DB: If we keep going that direction, which I think the first time I looked, we started at 17th. So we're getting there. [00:21:33] PF: This is great. I wish you had been in Dallas for International Day of Happiness. We could have celebrated it together. But we'll get it next year. [00:21:40] DB: So there’s more on the World Happiness Report we probably need to discuss in future podcasts. We have to geek out every now and then on the science. I'm always excited to be able to do that with you. So thank you for everything you do for us. [00:21:51] PF: Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me and thank you for geeking out with me today. [00:21:56] DB: All right. You take care, Paula. [00:21:58] PF: You too. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:22:02] PF: That was Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, talking about the 2023 World Happiness Report. If you'd like to read more stories related to the report or read the report itself, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. As we wrap up the month of March, we'd like to thank everyone who was part of our annual Happy Acts campaign. Just because the campaign is ending, it doesn't mean that your daily acts of happiness have to end. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired with ideas to make your world a little bit happier every day. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: How Pets Improve Your Brain Health as You Age With Brittany Derrenbacher [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 409 of Live Happy Now. We know that pets and happiness go hand in hand or maybe hand in paw. But did you know that your pet could also be improving your brain health as you age? I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm once again talking with Brittany Derrenbacher, a mental health counselor and certified grief and pet loss specialist to talk about how pets can change the way we age. Today, Brittany explains what pets can do to keep our brains and bodies healthy, as well as how we can use our pets to create happiness for the older people in our lives. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] PF: Brittany, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:44] BD: Hi. It’s so good to be back. [00:00:46] PF: We have so much to talk about today because brain health, super important for our happiness and our well-being. Now, there's a new study that talks about how pets affect that. But before we get into the pet portion of that, I wanted to find out from you. Can you talk about what the connection is between brain health and cognition and our happiness and well-being? [00:01:08] BD: Yes. So it's kind of like the neuroscience of happiness. I feel like happiness is – it's so difficult to define and measure because it is subjective, right? [00:01:21] PF: Right. [00:01:22] BD: But what I will say on a personal level is that we feel joy in our bodies because of the release of dopamine and serotonin and those two types of neurotransmitters in the brain. Both of those chemicals are heavily associated with happiness. So our brain health, just by virtue of that, is usually linked to our mental health and well-being. That's our happiness. [00:01:48] PF: There you go. What are some of the things that are scientifically proven to improve our brain health and help with our cognition? [00:01:57] BD: Yes. There's a handful of things. A recent study on older adults identified particular habits that are shown to improve cognition in humans and basically slow down the rate of memory decline. Some of those habits are exercising. I feel like these are going to be really self-explanatory, and we will go into those more in-depth. But basically exercising, socializing, healthy eating, no smoking and drinking, brain exercises, things like that, just to name a few. But essentially, what we're saying here is that intellectual engagement, social interaction, physical activity, and having a sense of purpose in our lives slow risk factors for cognitive decline and things like Alzheimer's and dementia. [00:02:47] PF: Interesting. Again, we talk so much here on the show about nature and biophilia. Does that help our brain cognition as well? I mean, I know it makes us feel good, and it really helps us mentally. But does it help with our actual cognition? [00:03:02] BD: I would imagine that it does just by virtue of when we're out in nature, we are living in our conscious mind, rather than our subconscious. So we're really bringing that mindfulness intentionality. We're basically bringing our brain back online. So we're – [00:03:18] PF: I love the way you put it. [00:03:19] BD: Yes. We're actively bringing it back online and bringing it out of autopilot. So there's a lot of power in that. It's building new neural pathways, just by going out into the woods and being more present. [00:03:32] PF: Yes, especially if you get lost in the woods, and you're being chased by someone. [00:03:35] BD: You got to use that big brain. [00:03:39] PF: You got to run. So pets help us in so many ways. When you look at the things that you just mentioned about exercise, well, obviously, they can't help us with not smoking or drinking. But there are several points that they could help us with. Can you explain some of the ways that they're encouraging better physical and mental health for us? [00:03:58] BD: Yes. In one of our last conversations together, we talked about the power of pets in our lives. Not only is pet owning scientifically shown to improve our well-being, our socialization, and decrease stress. Now, through research and data, we can see how pet owning has brain-boosting benefits as well. So this conversation that we're having today really allows us to dig a little bit deeper into those layers and consider the long-term benefits of being a pet owner. I say long term because I feel like a lot of the studies that we're going to be talking about today really explain that it has to be consistent years of pet owning, right? You can't just go out tomorrow and adopt a dog and in a couple of weeks, show all of the benefits, right? So this really has to – [00:04:45] PF: Just like any other health habit, right? [00:04:47] BD: Yes, yes. So this is really a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. I do think it's important to acknowledge that this is about long-term benefits of being a pet owner. It's also like a PSA like, “Go out and get you your animal,” [inaudible 00:04:58], right? What really stood out to me is just how many of the healthy brain habits mentioned earlier are covered by being a pet owner, so exercising, socialization, stress reduction, brain exercises, routine. This really suggests that our relationships with our animals, our companionships with our pets itself can increase connectivity in the brain and become a protective agent against aging. I feel like that's pretty amazing. [00:05:33] PF: Yes. So as if pets aren't doing enough for us. Now, they're slowing down our aging process. So that's – oh, my God. That's amazing. So I wanted to ask you. You mentioned stress reduction. How do pets help reduce our stress? Because sometimes, they are stressors, like when my two guys are like fighting or something like that. But how do they help us? [00:05:54] BD: Yes. First and most importantly, owning pets reduces anxiety and combats feelings of loneliness. So our pets tend to help us self-soothe. They stabilize our nervous systems. That activates oxytocin in our bodies and reduces cortisol level in our brain. So that's what I mean by the stress reduction. So, yes, our animals can stress this out. But our relationship with our animals is so reciprocal that like we're talking about something a little bit bigger here. That this activation of the oxytocin in our bodies consistently and the consistent reduction in cortisol levels in our brains. This is alone known to improve our cognitive health as human beings because chronic stress and anxiety has such negative effects on our brain health. That’s what I see in my field in mental health is that long-term kind of chronic stress that has really built up in our bodies and have a negative effect on our brain health. [00:06:54] PF: That's incredible. One thing you and I had talked about was the study that was recently published in the Journal of Aging and Health, and it specifically focused on people over the age of 65. It was pretty narrow in its focus because not only was it people over the age of 65. It really looked at their cognitive scores and word recall. It showed that people who had pets and had had that pet for more than five years, to your point, it's an ongoing thing. If they'd had a pet for more than five years, they had much higher scores. One thing the study did not show was the cause and effect. So I get so much about what you're saying was stress reduction and helping in that way. Do you have any insight into why that would help with the word recall and that cognition in our brains? [00:07:42] BD: Yes. I want to focus a little bit on the word recall because I think that goes under the category of brain exercise and routine. Pet ownership is so good for working our verbal memory, our memorization in general, orientation to time in place because we're consistently learning how to adapt with our animals and build these kind of new neural pathways through training, right? Through just by virtue of having to take care of them, remembering to feed them, to walk them, to groom them. We have to constantly engage in critical thinking, planning for the future, practicing self-regulation. With patients, you were talking about that, right? With our pets, like for example, I want you to think about how much you have to remember to care for your pets. How much planning and preparation you have to go through just to prepare for a storm. [00:08:39] PF: Yes. In particular, storms take a lot of prep at this house. [00:08:44] BD: Yes. Do you want to talk about that? What do you have to do to prepare for that? [00:08:45] PF: I would love to. We went through it last night. Yes. When we know that a storm is coming in and we don't know, obviously, how bad it's going to be. So it's like we've got to make sure that we've got Josie’s is hemp treat that's going to help calm her down. We make sure that her thunder shirt is nearby. It even affects how we schedule things. If we have a thunderstorm predicted, we might have to change our plans because she really is terrified. You know Josie. You've seen the level of trauma that it creates for her. Last night, we had storms, and we tried something new. We went down into the basement, which is not as horrific as it sounds. It's a finished basement. But we just wanted something that would reduce the sound of thunder because the thunder started. She was shaking. We had her in the thunder shirt. Everyone's huddled together, and it wasn't working. So we go down to the basement. We turned on the television, put on some music that was not going to be jarring for her, and just really did a lot of things to – we were using a lot of brainpower trying to figure out what else we could do to make this situation better, and it did work. Ultimately, it was one of our better storm knights. But, yes, it takes a lot of thought and, as you said, preparation. [00:09:54] BD: That in and of itself is critical thinking. It's memory. It's routine. A huge part of cognitive health in human beings is our structure, is our routine, is our memory. So feeding, exercising, caring for our pets can really help us kind of establish this routine, which it’s just grounding, focusing. It's achieving its purpose. So just these two things alone, the brain exercise and the routine, check so many boxes. [00:10:26] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher about how pets can help us age better. But right now, I'm bringing in my friend, Kate Vastano. We recently hooked up Kate and her cat, Kittles, with an amazing cat tree from Mau Pets. Now, we're introducing the adventures of Kittles to find out how it's going. Kate, how are you doing today? [00:10:46] KV: I'm doing great, Paula. Happy to be here with you. [00:10:46] PF: Well, last week, Kittles got the most amazing cat tree. I mean, I was so impressed by the design of this. I actually thought about going out and getting a cat of my own. [00:10:57] KV: Right. The one I got, it's called the Cento, and it is gorgeous. It basically looks like a piece of art, and I'm so happy that I finally found a cat tree that actually makes my home look better inside instead of being an eyesore. It is so modern-looking. It's not an ugly cat tree, which is refreshing. [00:11:15] PF: Yes, it is. It is really, really beautiful. One thing I thought was really cool about it is that every purchase also gives back because five percent of the proceeds are donated to animal welfare and environmental conservation. For every product purchased, Mau Pets plants one new tree. [00:11:31] KV: It’s so beautifully made, Paula. I will never put another ugly cat tree in my house again. It’s just gorgeous. [00:11:38] PF: If you want to upgrade your kitty’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's maupets.com to check out their amazing selection of stylish, contemporary cat furniture. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher, as she dives into how pets help improve our cognition as we age. [00:11:56] BD: I'd like to dive into this idea of routine a little bit too and kind of go back to that study about folks that are over the age of 65. I’d like to use my grandma as an example because she's now currently in a memory care facility for Alzheimer's dementia. But about 15 years ago, when she was diagnosed, we knew as a family pretty immediately that we wanted her to have her sense of purpose and routine and structure and stay in her home as long as possible. I can tribute her ability to be able to stay in her home as long as she did because of her cat, Tigger. He was such a huge part of her routine. She might forget my name, and she might forget how to work the coffeemaker that day, but she was not going to forget how to take care of him. [00:12:45] PF: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. [00:12:47] BD: I truly like – I associate that time that she was able to really stay in her home for as long as she was with that routine that she had with her cat. [00:12:56] PF: That's such an important point because, obviously, you are involved in rescue. You've seen these situations where people are reluctant to adopt another pet because they're of a certain age. To me, that's kind of crushing because, oh, man, they can do so much for you. They would be so helpful. I understand that concern. So can you address it? Because you've dealt with it from both sides, both adopting the pet and then seeing a pet that outlives its owner. So can you speak to that point? [00:13:27] BD: Yes. I think in rescue work and something that I hope that it's not unique that just our rescue does, I hope that other rescues embrace this as well, is that we never turned an elderly applicant down. We would work with them to make sure that they had a support system and that they did have a plan. I feel like having an honest conversation about that is the best way to go into it. Like, “Okay. What would your plan be if you passed? Who would take care of your pet?” So having open conversations like that. But also, like we never ever, ever shamed any families that came forward with animals because of having a family member pass away. An elderly family member passed away or, say, a parent. But the reason that we truly believe that these elderly applicants should not be turned away is because they're the best pet owners. They're the ones that are really focusing all of their time and energy on these pets and giving them everything that they can. Also, it's reciprocal. We know that these animals and these dogs that they adopt are going to add years onto their life. So as long as we can really work with them to have a plan and make sure that like that animal is going to be taken care of or returned to us, we would never turn them away. [00:14:44] PF: Yes. It gives so much just in terms of the socialization because as we age, people are less mobile. They're less able to get out and socialize. Loneliness is a huge problem among older people. Can you talk about that and how the pets can help with that? [00:14:59] BD: Yes. Exercising and socialization is a huge part of this conversation. Exercise is the most underrated antidepressant and it's free, right? [00:15:09] PF: You don't even have to join a gym. Come on. [00:15:10] BD: Yes, it's free. Physical exercise is it increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain. It’s also directly linked to synaptic integrity and especially in older adults. So that strength of communication between our neurons in our body. So if you think about it, you're out walking your dog every day. This is good, consistent exercise. It's movement outdoors. But it also encourages us to meet other people, right? As a dog owner, you stop. You chat with other people. You run into people at the dog park. You're constantly kind of meeting other people. Other pets can really be a part of this conversation too because pet shops, right? You're meeting people, training classes. You're meeting people. Online groups are huge for pet owners. So this is really good socialization for older folks. Dog agility. We've talked about this before. My mom owns a training and agility facility here in Louisville, and a huge part of the population there is older ladies. [00:16:12] PF: Really? [00:16:13] BD: Yes. They’re there with their dogs. They're working on all of the things that we're talking about; exercise, socialization, the brain games really, the constant movement, the stress reduction. They're doing all of those things, just by attending an agility class with their dogs. [00:16:29] PF: So what about someone who has a cat? Cats are – they're active in their own way. How does someone get the benefit of exercise? Obviously, the socialization comes because of the cuddling with your cat. But how do they incorporate exercise into cat ownership? [00:16:46] BD: Yes. Cats are still mobile creatures. You can get up. You can move around. You can be on the floor with them. You can be sitting with them and moving around. I love seeing those little catnip toys and all the – [00:16:58] PF: Ah, the little ones with the stuff on. Yes. [00:17:01] BD: There are games that you can play with your cats. It's not just dogs that have puzzle games. It can be reciprocal with your cats too. Cats love to play games. They're very engaging creatures. I know we have a lot of assumptions, and there's a lot of stereotypes with cats. But cats come second on the list in these research studies for really improving cognition in humans. So – [00:17:22] PF: We have a relative, and she was wonderful with cats. She always had a lot of cats, rescued all these cats. In the last few years, as they died, she did not get any more because she knew that she was getting older. She's now in hospice care. One thing that's been very hard on her is not having animals around. Unfortunately, she's in a facility where you can take your pets. I thought this was amazing because we were in Cincinnati to visit her, and we took our dogs in there. The dogs got up on the bed. She's able to love on them. We talked to her a week or so ago, and she was saying that, yes, they still talk about when Rocco and Josie came to visit. It was such a big thing for them. They've also even had people bring cats in to visit. Talk about it from that perspective. If you know an older person who doesn't have a pet who is no – and loves them. Let's make sure they love the pet. But if you have an older person in your life who doesn't have access to a pet, how important is that to be able to provide that experience for them? [00:18:24] BD: Oh, huge. We've talked about this too on some of our past episodes that there are service animals for everything. That is literally their purpose is to go and bring joy to other people and provide comfort. I hope that it becomes more routine to establish these type of connections in these places. Not only do we, like with Luna Bell’s, love to do that with our animals, taking them into senior living facilities and things like that. I just think it's such a beautiful reciprocal thing to have happen to be giving to someone while also be giving to yourself and be giving to your pet. It's kind of this beautiful, powerful, energetic exchange that's happening. [00:19:05] PF: Yes. What does the pet get out of it? Because I know Rocco and Josie had a great time visiting there because they got so much attention. It took so long to get to her room because every person stopped and wanted to pet the dogs and see the dogs. What does that do for the pets? [00:19:20] BD: That's confidence building, right? [00:19:22] PF: Ah, okay. [00:19:23] BD: Yes. That’s socialization too. That's just expanding joy for them. It's putting them to work. They love that. They love having purpose. So we've talked about that a lot in this episode too. It's not just important for human beings to have purpose. Our animals need to have purpose too. So I think for them to go into these places and to feel joy and build confidence and connection and both give and receive, that's just so powerful for them. It's huge. [00:19:50] PF: So even as an owner, you might decide like this is really something I want to continue doing with the pet and be able to become a service animal that they can visit and see people. How does that increase that bond between you and your pet when you do something like that? [00:20:06] BD: I don't know. I just feel like we're essentially doing some multi-focused empowerment work here by doing that, helping others while helping ourselves while helping our animals. It just builds this beautiful connection of both giving and receiving. I just think there's just such a unique power in that that we don't get in other relationships. [00:20:24] PF: Yes. Yes, that's so true. We know now from the studies and from what you were just telling us that pets are so good for us. Can you talk about how we can leverage that benefit? [00:20:35] BD: Yes. I think that our lifestyle factors plays such a huge role in our brain health. So having this conversation really, it helps us realize, I think, that why wouldn't we be pet owners? Why wouldn't we actively be wanting to pursue these lifestyle shifts to create a better holistic lifestyle for us? I think that genetics do have a role in determining our health and longevity, obviously. But we do have more control over our future than we previously thought. So implementing healthy lifestyle habits can have a major impact. I think pet owning proves time and time again that it checks all these boxes. We talk about intentionality a lot when we're together, and we talk about the human bond a lot, obviously. But I think just the power of knowing that taking care of our pets can so positively change not only the way that we think about ourselves but our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, our emotional health. There are so many benefits just from being a pet owner. So it's a constant return in our investment. For a lot of people, the most reciprocal relationship that they will ever know in their life is with their pet. So our relationships with our pets are just consistently filling up our cups and allowing us to experience this love and this bond that really is amazing for our mental health. It fosters resilience, and it empowers us to really thrive and live our best life physically and mentally, cognitively. [00:22:14] PF: Yes. That makes sense because I know when you and I talked about grief, and sometimes people have this after the loss of a pet, they kind of feel guilty because it affected them more than, say, the loss of a parent or the loss of a human in their life. One thing that we talked about is like that pet never judged you. Well, maybe if it was a cat, they did. But like they didn't openly judge you. It didn't cause you harm the way the humans that we love and who love us sometimes do it. [00:22:45] BD: Yes. It’s so much more powerful than we give it credit for in our society. I think it's definitely shifting. These conversations contribute to that shift. But owning an animal, being a pet owner, having the bond with our pets, like this deep bond that is really changing over time so beautifully, it affects us in so many powerful ways. I love like this idea that – I don't know. It's like owning pets is really the holistic health care that we need. [00:23:24] PF: It really is. That's a great way to look at it. It's the month of March. It's our happiness month. You're one of our happy activists. So we're really excited about that, and we thank you for that. But there are also several holidays in March to celebrate our animals. There’s National Puppy Day. There’s Cuddly Kitten Day. There's National Terrier Day, which I know you and I think is a very holy day. There's Respect Your Cat Day. Yeah. I know that's actually a thing. What is your favorite way to celebrate your pets and why? [00:23:54] BD: I love this question. I think my favorite way to celebrate my pets, my dogs is by experiencing life with them, living in the here and now, not taking life so seriously, embracing childlike joy, just literally being with them. Because I think our animals are our best teachers when it comes to joy and loving presence. When we actually stop to lean into that, it can be such a beautiful thing. [00:24:27] PF: I love that. Brittany, thank you for once again coming on and talking about this. We're going to tell people as always how they can find you, how they can learn more about all the work that you're doing, and follow you on all the channels. But thank you so much for sitting down with me today and talking. [00:24:43] BD: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:48] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher, talking about how pets improve mental cognition across our lifetime. If you'd like to learn more about Brittany and the work she's doing or follow her on social media, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast app. Just a reminder that we are still celebrating the month of March with our Happy Acts campaign. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired by a different happy act every day. While you're there, be sure and visit the Live Happy Store to find the perfect shirt that shows the world how you live happy. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Bounce Back from Burnout With Dr. Mary Sanders [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 408 of Live Happy Now. Do you ever feel like you've hit a point of burnout that nobody else can fully understand? Well, today's guest knows exactly what you're going through and what to do about it. I'm your host Paula Felps. And today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Mary Sanders, who specializes in energetic healing with an emphasis on positive psychology. Dr. Mary is on a mission to empower women over the age of 40 to bounce back physically, emotionally and energetically from the stresses of balancing work and life. Today, she talks with me about how burnout affects women? What warning signs we need to be aware of that indicate we might be burning out? On what steps we can take to reclaim ourselves from burnout? Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Mary, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] Dr. MS: Thank you, Paula. It's my honor, sincerely, to be a guest of yours. I am so looking forward to today's conversation because I have a feeling that you and I are going to tap into some really interesting topics. [00:01:10] PF: We are. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation too. Because, oh, my gosh, there's so many things that you and I could talk about. And I guess that's why you have a podcast because you have so many things that you can teach us. But today, I really wanted to focus on the topic of burnout because that's something that you address, something that you handle. And I know that burnout can mean different things to different people. So just make sure we're on the same page, can you talk about the clinical definition when you are describing burnout? [00:01:42] Dr. MS: Sure. Sure. It's a great place to start. From a scientific perspective, I follow Maslach's Burnout Inventory. And this researcher has done a phenomenal job breaking down burnout in into essentially three different categories. And the first category is what we are most familiar with, and that's called emotional exhaustion. You hear people – you hear women specifically saying, "I'm so tired of being tired. I am just – I feel like I have no get up and go." That's the physical exhaustion. The second component to burnout, clinically speaking, is cynicism, where somebody is experiencing a distrusting feeling. Or they're, overall, just feeling really pessimistic about what is happening within the traditional work environment. That's another category for burnout. Then the last category is all of revolving around the professional efficacy. And what I mean by that, Paula, is are the women working for organizations in which they feel valued for their skills, and their strengths and how they contribute to the overall success of the corporation? When you look at this – and I know, Paula, there are many, many listeners that are saying, "Yeah, but I'm not in the corporate world. How can I still experience burnout?" You absolutely can. Ladies, we are the primary caretakers of our entire families, whether that'd be our aging parents, or whether that be our children, or our spouses. It is very easy to experience burnout on a personal level as well as professionally. But characteristically, people identify burnout as being something related to the work environment. Those three categories that I just talked about can be measured independently. Meaning that you can be experiencing the physical signs where somebody is completely exhausted. They have reoccurring illnesses. Their central nervous system is not firing up. Their immune system is compromised. Maybe they're experiencing blood sugar issues. All of those physical symptoms are associated with the first category, being the physical exhaustion. When you take the survey, if you're reading high within this one category, then we know how to address those issues. We know to bring it right back to the physical body. You may be a person who is rating really high on the cynicism and the pessimism. And so, then maybe we need to be working on the mindset. Maybe it's something that we need to be working on finding more pleasure, joy and happiness within your life to decrease the level of pessimism that you're carrying on a daily basis. Then that's another category. Third category is the professional efficacy. If we know that somebody's reading really high or really low within this category, then maybe we're addressing, "Hey, if you don't feel valued as a team member, maybe we just need to find a different department within our organization that you align with. Maybe we need to find you a different team in which you feel like you can show up in your strength N." That's why I always use the Maslach Inventory to kind of get a baseline, "Where are you? How can we be of assistance?" [00:05:07] PF: That's important. Because I think a lot of times when we feel burned out, we don't even have the skills to say in what area I feel burned out. It's exhausting. And if you're burned out at work, it's pretty impossible to be there for your family. It's just this big overall feeling. Can you talk about how big, how prevalent a problem burnout is right now? And have you seen it since the pandemic? How has it changed? [00:05:31] Dr. MS: Huge, Paula. Huge. Right now, with the pandemic and going through what we're calling globally the great resignation, people are now awake. They're saying, "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Time out. Time out. You mean I don't have to do a nine-to-five job every day? You mean I don't have to do my commute every day? You mean I don't have to do face-to-face engagements anymore? Plus, I didn't really like that. Maybe I want to do something different with my life of all." Because there's a greater purpose that they want to align with. Absolutely. The trend right now is that over 50 – and again, depending upon the statistics that you look at, 50% to 60% of people at this given point in time are going to say, "Yep, I feel like I am burnt out on some level." And if they're not currently in that position, they can honestly say, "You know what? I resonate with that because I have been through burnout." And Paula, when I went through burnout – and, again, my greatest – the peak of my burnout was 15 years ago. And I'll be honest with you. I was so embarrassed that I was experiencing burnout that I didn't want to share it with anyone. [00:06:42] PF: You have an interesting story. Let's talk a little bit. I was remiss in not asking sooner. This is something you know firsthand. Tell us your journey into burnout and why you're so passionate about helping others with it. [00:06:55] Dr. MS: Yeah. And you know what, Paula? I'll share my story for the sake of it being received in a light that I have learned a lot of information from going through this life experience. I do believe that we have divine timing. And I do believe that I received these lessons at the time that I did in my professional career in order to really motivate me to shift and to pivot. I'm going to share the story. And goodness gracious. I was a practicing chiropractor. And to make a long story short, I had a large practice, a central practice. And then I also had a satellite office. I was managing not only my current patient load. I was also managing various different doctors and a big staff. I went into chiropractic because I knew that I wanted to have my hands-on people. I believed in the healing modality of the physical adjustment. I believe that the body had the innate ability to heal itself. And because I had such a strong philosophy, and a good set of hands and a lot of perseverance and resilience, I created a successful practice. It looked beautiful on the outside. Aesthetically, it was gorgeous. But what was happening underneath the surface that people didn't realize is that I was thinking miserable. I was so unhappy. I literally put myself in a complete adrenal exhaustion. The one thing that I I did for my stress management at that time was exercise. I could no longer exercise. What I could do was wake up. I could get down to my office. Treat the number of patients that I had for that day. Come home and fall asleep. That's all the energy that I had. And that's not a life. There was no work-life balance. There was no vitality. There was no spark in my world. It was really dull. And so, I used food. I used alcohol. I used sleep. I used all the coping mechanisms of avoidance. I withdrew from my family and my friends. I isolated myself even more. And I know this doesn't paint a pretty picture. But that was my world. And my husband sat me down, and I was notorious for starting a conversation over the dinner table and then forgetting that I was having a conversation and stop and just like space out for a moment because I couldn't really complete a sentence, complete a complete thought. And he looked at me and he was like, "Mary, how long are you going to do this?" And I'm like, "What do you mean how long am I going to do this?" And he's like, "Well, if you don't make a change, you're physically going to go down a downward spiral. You're going to get worse. You're going to create some kind of a life-threatening illness. If adrenal exhaustion is not enough for you, then the universe is going to create something more." And he's like, "Furthermore, I don't know if our relationship is going to survive." And so, I was like, "Okay, you have my attention. I'm listening. What do I need to do?" And he said, "I have a question for you." And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Do you think that you could leave all of this?" I'm like, "What? What do you mean leave it?" And he's like, "Do you think that we could leave everything that we have created and move to the other side of the world?" And I said, "Oh, no. No. No, that's not happening." Because, I mean, really, I have put all of my blood, sweat and equity into growing this practice. I was miserable but I didn't want to leave it, right? Time passed and my husband acquired a position in Ho Chi Minh City and he says, "Are you on board?" And I said, "Okay." We sold the practices. We sold the home. We sold everything that we had. And I ended up on the other – waking up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on the other side of the world, wondering, "Paula, who am I? What am I here to do? What's my purpose in life?" And I went through these huge identity crises and tremendous amount of depression. I did what any logical person would do. I ran away from my husband in Ho Chi Minh City and I ran down to Bali, Indonesia and I finished up my yoga teacher certification. [00:11:04] PF: Oh, that's fantastic. [00:11:05] Dr. MS: I know. I know. But for the first time, Paula, I was able to think for the first time in my life. I had time on my hand. I learned to meditate. And let me tell you something, I was like, "Wow. Wow. Let me wrap my head around this." I know the human body incredibly well from the neck on down. Obviously, as a chiropractor, I was very familiar with the neurology. And then I'm like, "Okay, something really magical is happening with the space between my ears, the space within my head. What's happening mentally as the result of doing meditation?" The curiosity got the best of me, and that's when I went and studied with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar because I wanted – [00:11:47] PF: We love him. [00:11:47] Dr. MS: Yeah, I know. And he has such a beautiful way of just breaking down the neuroscience behind meditation. Now I had the experience of what meditation was doing. And then I also had the intellectual knowledge. And so, then, as fate had it at that time, my husband and I decided to create a non-profit organization in order to support teachers and the tools of positive psychology so that they can embody them and role model them into the classroom. We left Ho Chi Minh City. Went to Bogota, Colombia. And that non-profit organization went gangbusters. We thought we were producing a product for the United States. And then, once again, I'm finding myself in kind of a stressful situation. How fast can I produce? As fast as I was producing, it was being translated into Spanish and then it would put into the classrooms in not only Colombia, but in Peru as well. I was like, "Okay. Okay. Okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me wrap my head around this." So then, I'm now running the same neurological pattern that I was running when I was in my business. I haven't learned a darn thing. Even though I'm meditating and taking good care of myself, something's happening here energetically. We left our Bogota, Colombia. Went to Bali, Indonesia and spent a year. And it was kind of a sabbatical. And so, again, here I am doing yoga and meditating every day, eating vegan. I was just really just wanted to clean up and I wanted to get online energetically. And then that's when I started my training at the Academy of Intuition Medicine. I was like, "Okay. Well, I got the body. I got the mind. And now I need to understand the energetics." And so, here we are combined now – Paula, I literally could not have planned the sequence of events that I just outlined for you. It had to happen because I had to go through burnout and I had to blow up my world in order to hit rock bottom in order to come out in a full holistic 360 perspective as to how the human body and the spirit operates as one. [00:13:57] PF: What happens to women who don't have the resources you do? Who don't have a husband that pulls him out and says, "Hey, you've got to save yourself?" What do you see when women – we'll just use women because I know they seem to be more prone to burnout. What do you see with the women who come to your practice who are just past what you had gone through? [00:14:20] Dr. MS: I believe that every woman that is listening to this audio right now, this beautiful podcast, who is somewhat aligned with the idea of burnout. Chances are there's a high probability. I'm talking about 90%, 95%, 98% of these women have received signals. [00:14:38] PF: Do we recognize those signs? [00:14:40] Dr. MS: Yeah. And I can talk about these signs. And that was the second part of your question. And I alluded to some of the physical signs. We know that you can literally have a hormonal shift within your body physically as the result of long-term stress. And that comes from the adrenal glands, which are small little glands that sit on top of the kidneys. And the adrenal glands are responsible for producing – when you really truly are in a fight or flight demand, they are responsible for producing epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, DHEA to name a few. And when we are under long-term chronic stress, those hormones create – they get produced on a continuous basis and they create what is called a negative feedback cycle that travels through the entire endocrine system. And the endocrine system is essentially the system that governs all of the hormones that you produce. I'm talking about serotonin and melatonin. How are you sleeping? You know? [00:15:50] PF: Yeah, because that's one of the first things people lose, right? I know so many women who say, "I cannot get to sleep. I'm exhausted. And I go to bed and I cannot sleep." [00:15:59] Dr. MS: Or they pass out before their head hits the pillow, right? And then three o'clock in the morning, like clockwork, they wake up possibly due to a sugar burn off from the wine that they drank the night before or some kind of sugar imbalance. I believe that the hormones and the physical body talk to us in beautiful and mysterious ways. Maybe their metabolism slows down because their thyroid is not working. Maybe they're starting to feel sluggish and that they're having weight gain. Maybe the pancreas is out of balance and they're starting to see blood sugar issues. Maybe the hormones that they're producing – and it's a precarious time for women as they are going through perimenopause, and menopause and post-menopause. But you add those changes hormonally and couple it with the chronic stress, then you're really feeling a little whack-a-doodle, Paula. Just your body talks to you in so many beautiful ways. And those are the signs and the symptoms that I'm inviting the women listening to really pay attention to. [00:17:06] PF: Isn't it often the case you might go to your doctor and they say, "Well, it is just hormones." Because that often happen. Women, they're not being listened to by their doctors. They're told, "Well, it's just hormonal. You can't really do anything about it." Or they give them a prescription for something that's going to help them sleep or help them not be depressed. And then they're sent on their way. [00:17:26] Dr. MS: We live in a society, Paula, that we have been taught from our mother's generation that when we go to a physician, that they are empowered to tell us what to do and they are empowered to tell us what's happening within our body. And I'm here to say that, I'm sorry, there's no other physician that lives outside of your body that can possibly feel as to what's going on in internally for you. Really, the power needed to be given back to the women to be able to understand that there needs to be an integrative approach. Very rarely is a low back pain just a low back pain. There's going to be a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, chemical foundation to that low back pain. And very few physicians have the knowledge skill set to treat from an integrative standpoint nor do they have the time. I really encourage women to take that power back and to really say, "Timeout. Timeout. I know that my weight gain could be hormonal. Yes, I think that there is a chemical portion to the hormones. But I'm telling you that I live in my body and these are other symptoms that I'm experiencing simultaneously. And, oh, by the way, do you have a referral for a good psychotherapist? Or do you have a referral for a good nutritionist or somebody that can talk about the elements of food?" I believe that we as women got to really empower ourselves. I keep coming back to that word empowerment. When we are, unfortunately – and I'm going to go into another branch of what possibly might be showing up as signs and symptoms for women. And maybe you might understand a little bit more clearly why the challenges for women to advocate for themselves, is that when somebody is going through a burnout, I don't care if it's professional or personal, it really messes with their sense of self-worth. [00:19:26] PF: Nobody brings that up. [00:19:28] Dr. MS: Oh, my goodness. Self-worth, there's a component of learned helplessness. Thank you, Dr. Seligman, for educating us on learned helplessness. There is a lack of motivation. People just energetically and emotionally just feel flatlined. Okay? And this creates a trigger, an emotional trigger, which is very similar to a trauma response within the body. All of this, neurologically speaking, there's an imbalance as to the get up and go kind of sympathetic dominance. And then there's a lack of function within the parasympathetics to auto-regulate the central nervous system from the emotional standpoint. We absolutely are not thinking clearly. And now here I am saying we need to be empowered to ask for what it is that we need. It's hard to do that if you're not thinking clearly. Behaviorally, you're like isolating yourself. You're withdrawing yourself. You're not reaching out to your girlfriends and your support team. You don't have your cheer squad on your side. I see how it happens. I understand and I have so much empathy for people that are going through burnout. [00:20:44] PF: And you take an integrative approach. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Before we do it, what is someone to do when they know intrinsically there is so much more going on? And they go to a doctor and the doctor says, "It's just you're stressed. Or it's emotional. Or it's hormones." Where do they then go? [00:21:01] Dr. MS: Yeah, that's a legitimate question. Quite honestly, Paula, that's why I have created my signature program. Because there are very few people that are truly taking an integrative approach. And I believe, and I know and I'm thankful that there are integrative physicians that can address the bulk of the problems. But most of the integrative physicians are not taking in the energetic and the spiritual component. I do think that there are people that can help serve, support and help facilitate the healing journey. But from my perspective it really does require an integrative approach. [00:21:37] PF: Yeah. Tell us what you mean by an integrative approach and then what that looks like? [00:21:44] Dr. MS: Yeah. In my world, an integrative approach is incorporating the mind, the body and the spirit. When I'm talking about the mind, I'm talking about mindset behavioral and conditions, limiting belief patterns, tapping into the subconscious through meditation. That is the mind. The body, we're all very familiar with the body. And so, sometimes that's the chemical component of the body. Is it something structural that is happening? Oftentimes, I have women go through a functional blood chemistry analysis. From a functional standpoint, we look at the biomarkers, we look at the indicators and we look and compare highs, and lows, and medians and average. And then we compare whether it'd be three months, or six months, or year down the road. And then we look at your pre and post blood markers to see where normal is for you. [00:22:46] PF: Yeah, it's so important to point out. It is. Each person is different. And you have to find out what's right for you. [00:22:52] Dr. MS: Long gone are the days where medicine is cookie cutter. I believe that the next evolution of medicine, literally from the integrative standpoint, is to transition into energy medicine. The energy medicine that I'm alluding to takes into consideration that, within all of us, there is an electromagnetic current. And surrounding our physical body is also an electromagnetic current. And we're going to call that the subtle energetic body. It's known to some people as the aura or is known to others as the bio field. And so, essentially, this energy that surrounds this is like the layers of the onion. It's intended to be protective. Protective of the energy that come at us within our environment. I mean, energetically, we have so much information coming at us at all times, it's hard to live in a dense boundary type of way to reflect all of these energies either way. I'm talking about 5G energies. I'm talking about energies from other people. I'm talking about frequencies, X-ray frequencies. You name it, those energies are coming into our bio field once it enters into our bio field. Depending upon the direction, it will enter into an energy center, also known as a chakra, within our energy body. And these chakras have themes. They have life themes. They have emotional themes. They have nerve plexuses that are associated with them. They also have an endocrine gland that is associated with them. You can see where, energetically, if we're not protecting the field coming into our physical body, it then can turn into an emotional disturbance, or a physical disturbance, or an endocrine disturbance. That integrative approach, the mind, body and spirit gets to address all three of those systems simultaneously. And to provide you, the consumer, with the tools, the resources so that you can empower yourself to do your own personal healing. You start to look inward for support instead of outward. [00:25:20] PF: That's so powerful because that's not a prescription you're going to get from your doctor. And you are just really big proponent of meditation. You talked about that earlier. How big a role does meditation play in all of those things, in the mind, the body, all of it? [00:25:36] Dr. MS: Paula, I can almost feel some of the ladies listening to the podcast cringe. I can feel their toes curl, "There's that meditation. That word meditation. I've tried it. It doesn't work for me. I simply just cannot relax my mind. I have too much going on in my world. How can I possibly take the time to meditate?" And I am an advocate. I do believe in a formal sitting practice. But I also believe that mindfulness can be bought into various different daily tasks, such as washing your dishes at night, loading your dishwasher, making your bed, or gardening, or taking the dog out for a walk. I'm not saying that those activities are not grounding. But what I'm looking to do in meditation is to shift the various different brain waves so that you can then start to access the subconscious. So that you can leave the space of the ego and transcend into the place where the ego does not exist. Because I believe, Paula, that as women, as human living or spirits living in a human body, I believe that all of us have the capacity to receive information above and beyond our traditional five senses. Information that is valuable to our own personal healing. And meditation opens up those channels for receiving information. [00:27:01] PF: And then once we start receiving that information, we're going to act on it, how does it start changing the way we look at life? Changing the decisions we make? Tell us that bridge between I'm burned out, and I started meditating and now things are clear. What is that link that takes us there? [00:27:21] Dr. MS: Sure. Well, first and foremost, I'm going to openly admit that just because you're burned out and you start meditating doesn't mean that there's going to be an overnight shift. It's not a quick pill. It's not a pill. It's not a quick fix. This is something that takes time, and repetition and commitment to really see the benefits. But in my own personal experience, I started meditating receiving information intuitively. I didn't trust it. I still didn't trust the information. I just kind of ignored it. You ignore it once. Yeah, yeah. You ignore it twice, oh, maybe there's something to this. You ignore it the third time and you're like, "What am I doing? I clearly am receiving signals about what path, or direction, or decisions I should be making. And I'm not even following the own internal advice and wisdom that's coming from within." I think that most women have to go through that distrust period before they completely can surrender. And what I have heard over and over, Paula, is women saying, Oh, my God, Mary, you wouldn't believe it. I have boundaries now. I feel full of myself. And not from a really standoff-ish place. I'm coming from it from a really heart-centered, heartfelt way." It's like these transitions that women are learning to say, "No. No. Thank you. Let me think about. It I'll get back to you. I'll circle back with you." Once women can understand that they have this power, this life force energy surging through their physical body and their energetic body, they blossom. Blossom into something magnificent. [00:29:03] PF: If women are listening to this and they're saying, "Okay, I know I'm burned out. This all makes sense. But I don't know where to start." Where do they start? I know you offer some great resources on your site. You've got a wonderful podcast that people can tune in and listen to. But what is the next step? After listening to our conversation today, what is their next step? [00:29:23] Dr. MS: Ask for help. [00:29:25] PF: And who do you ask? [00:29:26] Dr. MS: Well, I would love to be a resource. I would be honored to be a resource. If I find that I am not the right match or intuitively that the woman is like, "Okay, you're nice. But you're not giving me exactly what I need." Then I'm going to help find that person that provides you with exactly what you need. One of the things that I really do enjoy about being a podcast host in the field of energy medicine is that it is developing and widening of my referral base. I've got a lot of cool friends and a lot of cool places. [00:29:59] PF: That's terrific. As we wrap up today, what is the one thing that you hope everybody that hears you today will take away from our conversation? [00:30:08] Dr. MS: I really want people to embrace the fact that they're not alone. And that there are people that are experiencing burnout all – it can be a different facet of burnout. But they're not alone. That nothing is permanent. And it that if you are experiencing burnout, whether it'd be depression, anxiety, physical discomfort, know that all of those symptoms are transient. They too shall pass. [00:30:35] PF: That's excellent. I thank you so much for being with me today. We could talk for hours. But I appreciate this conversation and everything that you're doing to help get us through these phases and these difficult times in our lives. [00:30:47] Dr. MS: Thank you again, Paula. Sincerely, it is my honor to be here today. Thank you, listeners. [OUTRO] [00:30:57] PF: That was Dr. Mary Sanders, talking about how women can manage burnout. If you'd like to learn more about Mary, download her free Boost Your Energy Guide, listen to our podcast or learn more about what tools she offers, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. And just a reminder that the International Day of Happiness is just around the corner and we would love you to celebrate it with us. You can do that by hosting a happiness wall in your home, office, church or school on March 20th. And if you'd like to learn more, just visit our website, that's livehappy.com, and click on the happy X tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Celebrate the Women in Your Life with Linda Allen [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 407 of Live Happy Now. We're celebrating International Women's Day this week, and it seems like a great time to talk about how we as women can support one another. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today we're talking about how we can use this occasion to remind ourselves to celebrate the women in our lives. International Women's Day celebrates the diversity and achievement of women, gender parity, and inclusion, and that begins with how we as women support one another. Today, I'm being joined by Linda Allen, a Texas business woman who has realized that the best way for her to leave a lasting mark on the world is simply to touch one life at a time. She's here to talk about why it's important for us to truly focus on making sure that the other women in our lives feel seen and how she does that in the workplace and in the world. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:59] PF: Linda, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:01:02] LA: Well, thanks for inviting me. [00:01:05] PF: One reason that I wanted to talk to you is a few months ago, we had a guest on, and she talked a lot about how women really don't have each other's backs and what a big problem it is like not just in careers but in social settings. Honestly, as I was having that conversation, I was thinking about you because you are the antithesis of that, and you're very good at making women feel seen. You make everybody feel seen, but you're very good about acknowledging women and promoting and supporting them. So that's where I really wanted to start is how do you see the world. Do you think that women really are bad about having each other's backs? Or is that your experience? [00:01:44] LA: Trust me. I've had my experiences with maybe the backstabbing or the snide comments. But I don't see it that way, that it's all women are out to get women. Who isn't a little bit jealous? Who isn't a little bit competitive? But that's not the way I see it. I don't see that way at all. I see it as women, we like each other for the most part. I think we're very curious about each other. But sometimes, we don't want to ask questions or we don't want to be supportive because we don't know what to say or how to say it. How will that woman accept it? So that's the way I see it. Maybe I'm a little Pollyanna, but that's okay. I like the way I live. [00:02:23] PF: Yeah. This is – We've got International Women's Day coming up this week, and that's all about inclusivity, equitability, equality. We want that gender parity, and it's important to talk about how we need to start by getting support from other women because it's not that the men – I mean, it's not just that the men need to recognize our value. We as women need to recognize our value and one another's value in our lives. [00:02:50] LA: No. That’s so great. I don't know about you, but I think of a woman's support, for me, is more important than a man’s support. I'm not talking about it in a personal way but in a professional way. Because women, we identify with each other. We know what makes us tick, sometimes what makes us not tick. So when I get a compliment from a female or a supporting comment, that's bigger to me than a man's comment or compliment. [00:03:23] PF: Yeah. That makes sense. [00:03:25] LA: Because I think we know we tick. For a female too, I think about – we struggle. And I don’t wanna put all women in one bucket here. But women are trying to wear a lot of hats. We're trying to be everything to everybody, including to ourselves, and that's a lot of hats. Most men don't try to wear all the hats that we do. We only have one head, but we try, what, like eight hats on at a time? Well, that's ridiculous. Who are we fooling? And it's going to be hard to keep them all on the head at one time. But it's a struggle, and I don't know why women feel like they've got to be superheroes at all times. But, hey, that's the way we're wound, and we are what we are. [00:04:07] PF: Well, is that why you're so diligent about making women around you feel seen? That is just your nature? Where did that come from, and why is that so important to you? [00:04:18] LA: Paula, as much as I hate to admit this, I don't think I've always been this way. But let me tell you how I think I got here. When I was much younger, I always had this idea in life that I wanted to be famous. I didn't know how I was going to be famous, but I wanted to leave this gigantic mark, that when I walk off the face of this earth, I wanted to leave the big mark. So my first career, I was in broadcasting. The reason I wanted to do that was because everybody would know me. Linda Allen's on the air. Linda Allen, Linda Allen. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be relevant. I wanted to be a part of history. I got into that business, and it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I don't think I was going to leave my mark in that business. So I said, “Okay, what am I going to do to leave my mark?” So I got into corporate America, which was great but something that’s not going to make you famous, leaving that big mark. No matter what big job title I could grow into, I feel good about getting the new job. But then after that, I'd be like, “Did I really make a difference? Am I a part of somebody's story in life?” [inaudible 00:05:25] really. So then I jumped out, and I left corporate America, and I said, “Okay, maybe I can make my story. Maybe I could leave my mark by owning my own business.” So I jumped out. I opened my own business after being in corporate America for a long time, which was a little bit scary. What I've quickly discovered is, don't get me wrong, I do well in my business. So I really feel like where I can leave a mark and be a part of somebody's big life story was with my team members. When you own a small business, you get to know your staff, your team members very well. I really was feeling like I was making a difference in their lives. They would fall into a hole, sometimes. I was able to help them recover because you're never going to be able to climb out of a hole. You need somebody to help you get out of that hole. I was able to help my team members not just be the best at their job, but to help them to make good money, to feel good about themselves, which ultimately helped them be the best mamas if they were females, the best daddies if they’re dads, husbands, spouses, wives. I thought, “Wow, this is where I can really leave a mark in this world and be relevant in life.” So I've been in this business for almost 14 years. I really think, Paula, that's where I made this transition to find. I mean, I'm in the insurance business, and don't get me wrong. That's not a very sexy business. Okay, fine. But it's needed. [00:07:04] PF: But we all need it. [00:07:06] LA: Glad to do it. But that's not going to leave the big mark. But where I leave a mark is with the people that I touch. My staff is a big piece for me. Then if I got – Just I realized I could see the difference I can make in their lives. I started doing with other people. I mean, I would meet people, whether it be come to my house. I'm in a lot of organizations, and I would find ways to build them up. Not just try like, “Oh, your hair looks cute today.” Oh, that’s nice to hear. Don't get me wrong. But I would look for things that I felt I could say or do or contribute to them that I knew would make them feel better that day or perform better, to help them to see their value. Man, I'm going to tell you how I go to bed at night, and I sleep well because I feel like I am truly relevant in this world, and it is the coolest feeling. [00:08:01] PF: What differences do you see in women when you do make them feel seen, when you acknowledge their accomplishments and just the simple fact that they show up on a tough day when they've been up all night with their kids? What difference does it make for them and the way that they move through the world? [00:08:19] LA: I can speak, first of all, to the people that work with me and for me. They come to work some days, and you could just tell they don't want to be here. [00:08:28] PF: We've all had those days, haven’t we? [00:08:30] LA: I mean, sometimes, they look like they don't need to be here either. I love my team. Just by either acknowledging something that's going well, something that can help them with, as little as an extra spring in their step. As cliché as that may sound, it's noticeable. I'll hear them get – As the day goes by, their chatter builds up. The excitement in their voices is better. So I know when they leave here because I'm only eight hours of their day. They got a lot more hours, and they're going to do things and see people. It's going to help them to be possibly better with all their contacts that they make throughout the day. [00:09:13] PF: How does that change them, as they walk out into the world? Have you seen differences in people in terms of like how they start dealing with customers, with their family, things like that? [00:09:24] LA: Oh, 100%. My motto in the office is when you look good, you feel good. When you feel good, you do good. I learned that from a great mentor early, early on in my professional career, and I have made that my mantra and everybody that's ever worked for me. They hear it, they have to live it with me, and it shows. It absolutely shows. The energy is good. I always tell my folks here. I said, “Guys.” I said, “You know, you're going to spend a lot of time in this office and a lot of times with these people that we all work with, me and the customers. You got to make it your best, and you got to attack it as if you own it, just like I do.” It's really cool to watch the way my staff operates because they feel that sense of pride and ownership in the business, in the customers, and the success we have. It’s hard to leave that at the door, which is a cool thing. So they take it out with them. They achieve bigger things at home. They take on board positions with their booster club. They take on new positions in their churches. It's really cool how that just follows them out here when they leave here. [00:10:39] PF: I remember several years ago talking with a researcher named Shane Lopez, and he was talking about work and was saying that if you don't get things to line up for you at work, it's pretty tough to get things to line up outside of work because work is such a consuming big part of your day. So your ability to create an experience where they feel supported, they feel encouraged, they feel happy to be there is changing their life once they leave that office. It's also changing the lives of their kids and family once they get home. I mean, have you ever really sat down and thought about that kind of ripple effect that it has, simply by going to the office with the intention of making everyone feel welcomed and happy and encouraged? [00:11:25] LA: It is amazing when you think about how it multiplies? Absolutely, yes. Because I know if they leave here, and they've had a good day, and they feel valued, and they feel good about themselves, that their kids will have a better night, their spouses, their friends, their other family members. It’s crazy. So I don't touch just nine people. I'm touching nine times eight, probably, and that's powerful. That's just in one day. [00:11:50] PF: That's an incredible reach. I wish more people would stop and think about it that way, where this one interaction is going to change these multiple lives today, and you can get up and do the same thing again tomorrow. That's so much power that we have. [00:12:04] LA: It is. It's really kind of scary sometimes, and then what's sad is we don't actually use that power to build people up. [00:12:11] PF: Right. You had a Facebook post a few months back, and it stopped me in my tracks. It was so powerful, and it was about an encounter that you had with a homeless woman as you were leaving a store. I wondered. It really struck me in such a profound way. Would you talk about that? Would you tell us what that experience was and the outcome of that? Because I thought this was an incredible example of really your kindness and uplifting someone else. [00:12:37] LA: I have to give you a free story because I didn't put this on Facebook. I wasn't having the best day. I was already irritated with the store I was at. Things weren't going the way I thought they should go. So then I walk out to the store, and I say hi to most everybody because that's just what I do. [00:12:57] PF: Right, it is. [00:12:59] LA: When you're in other countries, they think you're a fool, but that's okay. I don't care. So I say hello to this lady, and she didn't have any shoes on. She's pushing a cart. So you could kind of probably determine what her lifestyle is. She looks at me and she says, “I'm better than you,” and she calls me a name, and it wasn't a very nice name. At that very minute, Paula, I was like, I wanted to call her a name back because I thought that was absolutely unnecessary. I'm being nice. I’ve been [inaudible 00:13:32]. But I said, “Nope, that's not the way I roll.” So I just asked her. I said, “So why did you call me a name?” She said to me, “Nobody is ever, ever nice to me.” I said, “So what is it that you need?” I will tell you my first thought. She's going to say, “I need some money. I need food.” You could tell she paused for a minute, and she goes, “You know, I'm homeless. If you couldn't already tell, I'm probably crazy. But I'm happy.” She said, “I just want to be at peace. I want people to leave me alone.” I asked her. I said, “So would you make me a deal? Just make me a simple deal, if I ever, ever see you again.” I think she hangs out in the area that I live in. I said, “Would you just say hello to me next time and not call me a name, and I will show you appreciation and value?” She looked at me, and she reached over, and I'm like, “Oh, here it comes. It wasn’t about to happen.” She gave me a hug. I was a little bit surprised. Then she just walked away. You know what? I thought a lot about her, and it was profound to me as well because I thought, “Oh, my gosh. Did I just put myself in terrible danger right there at the moment?” I cared about making a connection with this woman. But I really thought a lot about her, and I thought she's no different than me, in the sense that we all just want to feel appreciated in some way, and we want to be at peace. That is huge in life. I can't think of anybody, whether you're a female or a male or whatever. Who doesn't want to feel appreciated and be at peace? It was such a cool moment for me. I mean, even when I was talking on Facebook, I teared up because I can't believe that just happened. But it felt so good that I felt like she walked away feeling a little bit better about herself. I thought, wow, what a difference I could have made in her life. I'm just so glad I stopped and even said hello to her and took the time to do it. So I think that's a lot of it. We don't take the time, in most cases, to build people up, to say hello, to acknowledge what their needs are. We just are too busy with our own space. [00:15:47] PF: How do we really start adjusting our mindset to be more about supporting other people, even if it's strangers, even if it's women that we don't know? [00:15:57] LA: I think for me, and I'm a really big believer on a couple of golden rule type things, you get what you give. As I just said, how many people – We all want to feel valued. We all want peace. If we give that off to other people, if we give that feeling, those emotions to other people, we have a greater chance that we're going to get that in return. So that's part of the way I think we can be more, I guess, present, if we think about what it is that you want because karma will tell you, if you get it, you're going to get it back. [00:16:37] PF: So be careful what you give away. [00:16:38] LA: Exactly. So I live like that. I feel like if I give you something, I may get it back. Maybe it's a feeling. Maybe it's a thing. To me, that has made such a difference of getting this mindset really, I guess, kind of locked in for me. [00:16:58] PF: Let me ask you. I know when you start practicing gratitude, your mind then gets used to looking for things to be grateful for. There are so many cases where when you start focusing on something, your mind automatically does that. Do you find that is true with you now, where you are constantly looking for the good in someone? [00:17:15] LA: You know, I do. I absolutely do. Sometimes, you got to look. I mean, sometimes, you have to really be more mindful of what people are doing. But that's a big part is get out of your head and look out of what's going on around you. [00:17:30] PF: Are there any daily practices that you use to keep your positive mindset? I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen you without a smile on your face. You are always so positive and so filled with joy. So are there practices that you do on a daily basis to keep yourself in that mindset? [00:17:48] LA: I pause and just reflect on the day before. I am a very spiritual person, so I do believe that good things come to those who do good things. So that definitely drives me as well. [00:18:00] PF: I love it. Linda, you are a delight, as always, to talk to you. I appreciate you coming on the show and just chatting with me for a while. [00:18:08] LA: You are so welcome. And you as well are a delight, so it was my honor to be in your presence. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:18:19] PF: That was Linda Allen, talking about International Women's Day and how we can support and encourage the women in our lives. Now, International Women's Day isn't the only thing that we're celebrating in March. This is also our month for celebrating happiness with simple daily actions that we call Happy Acts. Visit our website or follow us on social media to discover new happy acts that you can do every day to make your world a happier place. Of course, we'd love to have you celebrate the International Day of Happiness with us on March 20th by hosting a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school. To find out more, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the Happy Acts 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 a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Connecting to Nature Through Yoga With Rebecca Wildbear [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 405 of Live Happy Now. Today, we're going to take a walk on the wild side. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Rebecca Wildbear to talk about connecting with nature through a program she developed called Wild Yoga. We know that being in nature is good for us, but Rebecca takes it to the next level and shows us how we can deepen our connection with the earth to better understand ourselves. Her new book, Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth, takes a deeper dive into how we can connect with the earth and what it will do for us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:44] PF: Rebecca, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] RW: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me. [00:00:50] PF: This is a perfect time to talk to you. People don't know we're recording this on the book launch day, so that's kind of exciting. It gives a great feel. This overall is really fascinating because I'm familiar with a lot of types of yoga. This was the first time I had heard of Wild Yoga and discovered this is something you developed. So let's start back at the beginning. Can you tell me what Wild Yoga is and how you created it? [00:01:16] RW: Yeah. Thanks for asking. It's the kind of yoga that involves loving ourselves, stretching our consciousness, connecting to the earth body as much as we might connect to our own bodies, delving into the mystery, listening to dreams, letting our yoga kind of take us back to the larger meaning of yoga, which is about our relationship to ourselves and our relationship to the whole world. So oftentimes, yoga is synonymous with asana, which is the physical postures and practices, which Wild Yoga definitely includes. But it also has the larger expanse that I think is rooted more in the depth of the original meaning of yoga, to route us in relationship with the depths in our bodies and our souls and also with the wild earth around us as part of our own body. [00:02:06] PF: So is it more of a meditative yoga or a physical yoga, or what can participants expect from it? [00:02:12] RW: Well, it has an asana practice that like doing a physical asana practice is part of it, and it includes a lot of imagery and poetry and metaphor to connect us to our bodies and nature. Kind of some of my yoga classes feel like a little bit like a journey, and sometimes they have different themes like connecting to our wild natures, connecting to our wholeness, connecting to our soul, courting our muse through movement. You can see in my yoga practice the poses have descriptions, which include imaginative practices, as well as the physical postures. Then there's a whole philosophy with teachings and stories just about motivated to bring us into relationship with our bodies, not only on the yoga mat, but all the time to promote a deep kind of listening to our body as an intelligent source that we can learn from. Also really opening us up to a broader spans of all intelligences including listening to the intelligence of nature and the earth and trees and listening to the intelligence of our dreams, listening to our souls, connecting to the sacred and the spirit, connecting to our muse, and sourcing all of that and how we relate and act into the world. I say that I use a term often, living amused directed life or living an earth-centered life, those kinds of things so that our life purpose and meaning expands beyond just our own individual selves and egos. [00:03:34] PF: How big a role does that nature connection play in self-discovery? Because we've gotten really away from nature, and I want to dive into that with you. But can you address how important it is to connect with nature in order to connect better with ourselves? [00:03:49] RW: Yeah. I mean, I think it's absolutely essential, and I think people might have noticed that if you've spent any time in nature or if you spent long times in nature, obviously, a lot of people seem to love nature connection. Like if you've noticed, if you go sit by the ocean for the day, or if you go out into the woods for the day, how it affects your body naturally, like you feel better inside yourself. You oftentimes can feel more like yourself. I always say the natural world is inherently itself. It has no confusion. A tree is a tree. It knows it's a tree, and it's a tree. Everything in nature is so much itself. Human beings, we have the thinking mind, which can often get us lost in this self and this self and that self, divided perspectives. It seems to me like being in nature, at least it’s been my experience with myself and others, brings us back into a connected place with ourselves because we're in good company. We're in an intelligent company. We're sitting with beings that are fully themselves and can engage fully with everything else around. So a lot of the practices that I offer in Wild Yoga are rooted in having a conversation with nature, beyond even just as a healing source and even a part of ourselves, but as an animate world, which is what most of our ancestors believed the earth to be, something that we can relate to and talk to and that has feelings and perspectives. So I take people back into that relationship as part of Wild Yoga. [00:05:17] PF: How surprised are they by maybe the emotions that come up, the relationship they start feeling with the earth? Because I love how you're really taking us back to something very primal, something we have gotten so far away from. So I'm just wondering, as people go on this journey, how do they respond to it? [00:05:35] RW: Well, my sense is they love it. I mean, it's surprising. Like you don't often know. You can't anticipate what exactly is going to happen if you go out and have a conversation with nature. Sometimes, if you haven't had done it before, it can be frustrating because there's like, “Oh, gosh. I’m trying to have a conversation, and nothing's happening.” But it takes kind of a patience and persistence. When people stick with it, they become so surprised and enlivened by the stories and connections that happen for them that they have, like who shows up to talk, what they say, what they learned, the new perspectives that come through. [00:06:12] PF: So let's talk about that. What does someone do when you say, “We're going to go out. We're going to talk to nature,” just as if you're walking beside me out there? What am I going to do? [00:06:21] RW: Well, a lot of it involves bringing like your child's self back in, the one who knew how to play and particularly the one that knew how to imagine. Imagination is a really big key in being able to talk and listen to the earth. It’s hard to communicate that idea at first because people in our culture have often been taught that imagination is kids’ stuff, and it's not real. When you're done with kindergarten, you just kind of move on to like what you know and what you can think. When I work with people, we really come back to play. We come back into the imagination and understand that the imagination is a really important way of knowing, maybe even more important than thinking. So even if you're not sure about it like, “Well, gosh. Is the world really alive? Can I really talk to trees,” what if you could just play and imagine that was the case? What might happen? That's often how I invite people into having a conversation with nature is not trying to think too much about like, “Oh, is it real, and did the tree really say that,” and letting them play with it. You can always decide later what you think of it. But right now, just be in it and play and go out. It involves a lot of attending to the natural world too, getting out of your thinking mind, getting out of your figuring out planning mind, which is very hard for people. A lot of times, when people go into the wilderness, especially for short times, it's almost like they never arrived in the wilderness. They might be sitting there, but their head is elsewhere. So you really have to come in and be present. It's so beautiful that it's a wonderful thing to be able to do and to get to do is to even just be present with the beauty and the magnificence of the life in the wild world around us. Then when you're pulled into that sense of looking at the relationships trees have with ants and wind have with leaves and soil has with roots, we're already pulled into the other. Then we can lean in with our own imaginations and join the conversation and see where our curiosities might be, where our passions might be. Introduce ourselves and then listen. There's all sorts of ways nature responds. It could be in synchronicities. It could be in encounters that come, weather changes. It could be in images that just arise inside of us, dream images or other images, memories that come up. It could be even in words that just arise into our mind that we know we didn't think of because they're just so different than anything we would think is they’re surprising. [00:08:47] PF: How difficult is it for some people to disconnect like that? Because we've become so connected to our devices. We've become so chained to our constant always on world. I recall a few years ago, we went to King Pacific Island up in Canada, and they told us we had to get on this whole puddle jumper, and they said, “Okay. As of now, you will no longer have phones. So for the next 10 days, it's going to be quiet.” One guy, you would have thought they had just told him, “We were going to cut your arm off.” I mean, it was like, “No, this can't happen.” So do you see that? Do you see where people are like, “I got to connect with nature, but I still need to be connected with the world.” [00:09:26] RW: That's definitely a way a lot of people think. I guide programs where I invite people to be in nature, and we highly recommend that they don't bring cell phones or other connective devices that they're offline for those days. In some ways, that's the best shot that we have a really did kind of listening. Sometimes, even going out for a couple hours, people want to bring their devices. Or even if it's only a couple of hours, sometimes it can be hard to disconnect your mind and really land in nature. When you know that you're off of those devices for a period of time, when you've committed it, when you've set a boundary, then there's a lot more possibilities for listening that can emerge. [00:10:04] PF: Is there a process that you see unfold regularly and people, as they start leaving that connection with electronics and the busy world behind, and they start getting into nature? Is there a certain step-by-step thing you see, “Ah, there you go. Next, this will happen.”? [00:10:20] RW: Well, gosh, it's all so very different. People are very different. So some people who get offline and go out to nature, there can be almost like an immediate connection, and it can be easy. It's almost like something in them was waiting for something like this to be able to happen, and things just start happening really automatically, and they're at home. Maybe they're remembering childhood or past connections to nature that were significant, and they're establishing new connections while they're out there. Then sometimes, if people come and they're just arriving, it can feel like a little bit of a slow start like, “Oh, gosh. I'm thinking about back home, or I can't connect to here. It seems like maybe I'm not doing it right, or nothing's happening.” Those kinds of like more fear-based thoughts. People can go and have a very deep conversation for several days. Then sometimes, they hit something that is like a material that feels scary or uncomfortable from the past or difficult feelings coming up. Then at that point, they might have been very open for days, but then other parts of themselves come to shut down. But I would say the one thing that I see across the board is nature in general, overall, most of the time, it has a very loving and nurturing quality. So I wrote about this in my book in chapter five, receiving the love of trees. But in general, whether it's trees or other places in the natural world, the natural world is very loving. We humans crave love and to be held. There's usually never enough, a sense of that, never quite enough. So going to nature is often a place that we feel renewed and loved and held. [00:12:02] PF: You talk about something I had not heard of before, and that is earth grief. That was very interesting to me. I wondered if you would explain the premise of earth grief, what it is, what it feels like, and what we need to do with that. [00:12:17] RW: Great. Yeah, that's a wonderful thing. Thanks for inviting that. In many ways, there's a sense in earth grief that feelings that are uncomfortable or unpleasant might arise in us. Grief can show up in many different forms, whether it's depression, or apathy, or lethargy, or just kind of feeling dull or feeling rage, or just despair or grief, crying. It can show up in all sorts of emotions. A lot of times, when humans have difficult emotions, we go to, “Oh, my gosh. I shouldn't be feeling like this. How can I fix it? How can I make myself feel better? It must be something I'm doing wrong in my life. Maybe I got to change something, so I can feel better.” But the idea of earth grief says that there are things happening on the planet right now that are just so sad and hard to be with that we might be actually having feelings come up that are difficult, and they might not totally even be just our feelings. They might be from the heart of the earth. It might be that if we're very connected to the earth and especially if we might be near places that we love that might be being harmed or destroyed, that there can be feelings that come up in us. Sometimes, we might not even know what that connection is. We just have these feelings, and we can't quite tell what it is, and it's important to be with that. But that it's important to attend these feelings that related to earth grief and to see what they are because they actually can be like portals themselves, transporting us into new imaginal or visionary possibilities. They also can awaken our hearts and change our actions in the world and change what we do. I just heard a story of somebody who was able to protect a land that they love because they were very connected to it. Sometimes, that can be the result. If we're actually feeling sad about ecological devastation and the harms that we see, the violence that we see to the earth is bothering us, it can motivate our actions. Those actions can change the state of what happens for the earth in particular places and then cumulatively. [00:14:18] PF: A lot of people feel like there's so much going on, so much destruction, both the people and the earth. There's a lot of bad stuff going on right now. But they also feel like there's really nothing that I can do that's going to stop that, that's going to change that. How does starting to connect with nature through the Wild Yoga, through really communing in nature, how does that change how you view what your role is and your ability to do something about it? [00:14:44] RW: Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. I think having a relationship with the earth, just listening and talking to nature and feeling with nature, brings us back into our inherent connection with earth's body and also what I would call right relation with earth of the world around us, where what happens to the earth impacts us, and we see and sense that our health and our wellbeing are not disconnected from the planet. They're actually very connected. I might try very hard to attend to my individual health and wellbeing, and there's definitely things that I can do as individual to improve my individual wellbeing. But there's also sort of a stopping point, like my individual health by itself is only going to be so well if the planetary and the others around me are being harmed. I will be limited. I can't be healthy if they're unhealthy on some level. I can't be as healthy as I would be if they were healthy. So we're linked in what happens to the planet happens to us. Feeling is a very big part of turning ourselves into having this right relationship, where we are related. Just like if our relatives are sick, that hurts our feelings. If our friends are hurt, we feel that too. The earth is our friend and our relative, and so what happens to it impacts us. So it brings us back into right relationship. It can be overwhelming and hard to feel. But that right relationship can take us places we can't even envision right now. There's a lot of reaction to the state of the planet, which is very understandable. That can lead to giving up. I always joke that the mainstream culture seems to have gone from, “There's nothing wrong. I don't have to do anything,” to, “Oh, my God. It's too big and too bad now. I can't do anything. It won’t matter.” [00:16:22] PF: It’s too late. Yeah. [00:16:24] RW: Both of those lead to inaction, both of those philosophies, which are seemingly opposite, but they're all related to. Really, we don't know the outcome. The future is uncertain. We do know what's going on now and that humans, overall, aren't in right relationship with the earth. We can change that. I mean, that is possible to change. Humans have been in right relationship with the earth before. It might be a huge change, and I think it will be. But it's still possible to change ourselves individually, to collectively join with other people and bring ourselves back. Is it too late? Maybe it's too late. I don't know. I'm not here to predict the future, and I don't necessarily think that trying to figure that out and decide my actions based on outcome is the relevant action. It's more about the relationship now. If I have a relationship now with the earth and that motivates what I do and how I respond, then the future will unfold as it unfolds. I imagine approaching the world that way. It will be a better unfolding than it will be if we're not in right relationship. [00:17:30] PF: Absolutely. So how often should people be out in nature? Is that something you think should happen daily, multiple times a day? [00:17:38] RW: Well, as much as possible. That would be great. I mean, it's nice. It depends where you live. Some people I work with live in cities and have very little nature contact. So we do a lot of imaginal connections to nature or connecting to the nature in city or the connecting to the nature beneath the city where nature once lived, connecting to the river or the trees that live in the city, or connecting in your imagination to wild places you've ever been. Fortunately, a lot of people in the United States still have a lot of access to wild places. If you can have access to outside and wild places, definitely. If you can go out every day and sit with trees, sit next to the river, why not? They're one of the wisest and most healing energies you could deal with. So I think regular immersion in nature or outside where you live would be the best, definitely. [00:18:33] PF: So is there like a minimal amount of time before you start feeling the effects of it? Or can just a few minutes of walking in nature have a difference? What's the prescription here, doctor? [00:18:46] RW: Well, I think a little bit of time in nature can go a long way. I mean, for me, even just going outside and taking a walk for 30 minutes or an hour, and if you can bring your attention, really bring your attention to the others around you. It’s a big shift. I take breaks often throughout the day, go outside, and look around, connect to who is around me. Also, it's great if you can take extended periods of time in nature. I take those two, were some of the year you're planning times where maybe for a weekend or a week you can be camping or out in nature more, where you can actually spend a lot of times listening. [00:19:29] PF: How do you see that changing people as they come back, when they do take those breaks, when they do get away? What’s their reentry back into city life? [00:19:36] RW: Well, I think there can be a renewal and a new perspective. When I take people out into the wilderness on journeys for a week or more, there's been a time of deep listening while they were out there, a time of actually going out in the land and having conversations and listening. So when they go back, they have, you could say, new instructions from their conversation with nature. Or they have had visions while they were out there with nature. They were given guidance. So when they go back, they route their lives in a new way, redirecting towards the new enlivened connection and the instructions and visions that they received. [00:20:17] PF: That's excellent. We mentioned earlier, it's the book launch of Wild Yoga. It's almost 300 pages. It is so comprehensive. How did you go about putting all of this together? Because it was really mind-blowing to see how much you've been able to include in that book and really takes us completely through it. [00:20:37] RW: Yeah. There's a lot of breadth and material. I mean, I probably could write a whole book sometimes on one of the chapters, instead of just [inaudible 00:20:42]. Maybe one day I will, but I wanted to include a book that included a lot of perspectives because one of the things that I see that can happen sometimes in spiritual platforms and personal growth platforms, yoga platforms, is that there's a limitation. Like just do this little thing and only this, and then it misses the comprehensive possibility. So I included everything to just show that there are so many. There's such a broad perspective of possibilities and practices to bring us into right relationship with the wild dimension of life, with dreams, with our nature conversations, with the spirit and the soul, with darkness, the dark night of the soul, with playing our part in the symphony. What is our individual role, and what is it to connect to the whole? With the idea in the last chapter of beloved world, that service is also a big part of personal growth that personal growth isn't necessarily for me to just go and receive. It is a big part of that because nature and dreams, they give us so much. So I do receive so much. That receptivity is also meant to be an offering to the world service and that helps bring the circle complete when we offer back in service what we were given. [00:22:00] PF: That's excellent. Look down the road five years from now. What do you hope Wild Yoga has accomplished in the world? [00:22:07] RW: I think some of the things I hope would be a greater listening. Listening is like one of the main words I associate with the whole book, that we're listening to these greater intelligences, rather than just our own human mind and ego. That we're listening to nature, muses, dreams. That that listening also takes us into a way of being, in a way of living and acting that communal and tender and vulnerable and that also protects our land base. In our reconnecting to the land base of the earth, that builds a natural instinct to protect also, and that that possibility expands. That through doing Wild Yoga and connecting to ourselves and being bold, personally and imaginally and connecting to our visions, that can also lead to actions that protect land and species, more ecosystems, restore ecosystems, so that the earth can also be in a better state for the future generations of all species. [00:23:01] PF: I love it. Rebecca, thank you for your time today. This was a wonderful conversation. You're doing some marvelous things. We're going to tell people how they can find you, how they can find your book, how they can find your website, and even go on one of your experiences. I just – I wish you the best of success on this because it's such important work that you're doing. [00:23:19] RW: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:25] PF: That was Rebecca Wildbear, talking about how to connect with nature through Wild Yoga. If you'd like to learn more about Rebecca, watch a video of a Wild Yoga practice, buy her book, or follow her on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. March is just around the corner, which means it's time for our annual Happy Acts Campaign. Throughout the month of March, we're offering a full calendar of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. Of course, we want you to share your happy acts with us on social media. Visit the Happy Acts section of our website at livehappy.com to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. That is all we have time for today. We will meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Playing It Forward with The Accidentals   [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What’s up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note, where I sit down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts. Sav Buist and Katie Larson were shy high school students when a music education presentation changed the way they saw their future. A decade later, they front a trio called The Accidentals, and have earned glowing album reviews, while packing venues with their live shows. But because they've never forgotten how that high school presentation changed their lives, they also host and lead workshops around the country to inspire young musicians to find their voice and use music to improve their mental health. They're here today to talk about all those things and how they are changing young lives one song at a time. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:53] PF: Sav and Katie, thank you so much for coming On a Positive Note. [00:00:57] SB: Thanks for having us. We're excited. [00:00:59] PF: You have such a fascinating backstory of the way that you got into music as your lifelong career. Can you talk about how you met and how that grew into your career? [00:01:12] KL: Yes. Sav and I met, what, 11 years ago now. [00:01:16] SB: Oh, goodness. [00:01:17] KL: It’s been a lifetime, and we were both really shy high school students interested in music. The thing that brought us together was our high school orchestra program in Traverse City, Michigan. Our public school had a great strings program, but most importantly a conductor who was really interested in alternative styles and opportunities for young musicians. So Sav and I were in a quartet together at one point, but we also were in the alternative styles for strings club, which was this really dorky group where we'd get together after school and play sheet music arrangements of Coldplay and Led Zeppelin on our cello and violin. So we do our little pop and rock music and and folk tunes and jazz tunes, and make our own arrangements sometimes too. There is a duo called The Moxie Strings, who came in to teach a workshop on improv. That also kind of opened our eyes to musical opportunities, and there's not just one way to carve your path in the music industry. Like you can be in a band. You can write music. You can produce and record and tour and teach. So that really inspired us. From the beginning, Sav and I just started playing tunes together around our hometown in Traverse City, Michigan, and writing music, and recording, and touring. 10 years, 11 years later, we're in Nashville, Tennessee and still playing music full time. We see each other like every day. Yeah, so still making music. [00:02:56] PF: That's terrific. So prior to having that experience with Moxie Strings, did you see yourself having a career in music? Or did you know how much that you could do with it? [00:03:05] SB: We did not I don't think. I mean, we definitely knew music was always going to be a part of our lives, but I don't think those dreams would have come to you as much fruition have we not had role models not just in The Moxie Strings, but in the Michigan music community as well. Both sets of our parents are musicians. So that kind of told us it was possible for sure, and they were super supportive once we decided that's what we wanted to do. I definitely had like all kinds of passions, and Kate does too. What's nice about the career that we have is that we've been able to get to a point where we can pursue all those passions and have music as a full-time job, which is pretty amazing. We're really, really lucky to be able to do that. [00:03:48] PF: One of the things that's so impressive is how big you are on music education and giving back to youth. Do you think that was inspired by the experience you had as high school students? [00:03:58] SB: Oh, definitely. Yeah. Because we wouldn't be a band had it not been for our high school orchestra program, like a public music program. That's the thing is that Kate and I were also introduced to sort of unorthodox instruments from the time we were 11 because there was like a local public music program that helped kids come up from like age 11 to the end of high school, just playing instruments, saxophone or violin or cello or any of those instruments. Not every public school has one of those programs. Or sometimes, they'll have an orchestra but not a band or a band but not an orchestra. I even heard one instance where the school no longer had a budget for musical instruments, and so they threw them away. So there are some really – I mean, we can acknowledge that we're really lucky to have grown up in that program because we literally wouldn't be a band without it, and we wouldn't have been shown these instruments and gotten the chance to do something really new on them. But also, it's important to us that every kid has the opportunity to try something new and to find a way to like vocalize or, I guess, verbalize their emotions through music. [00:05:08] PF: That’s a great point I wanted to bring up because when someone who's not musically inclined or doesn't put a value on it the way that we do, they hear music education, and they think, well, they're taking band classes, and they don't really think about all the things that you learn through music education. Can you talk about what students are getting emotionally when they start going through a music education program? [00:05:31] SB: Totally. We like to joke that music is cheaper than therapy. That's like how we opened – [00:05:37] PF: [inaudible 00:05:37]? [00:05:38] SB: Yeah. We're [inaudible 00:05:38] because it's true, though. Like we use music and writing lyrics or sometimes even just writing instrumental pieces as outlet because we're both really introverted. Especially back in high school and middle school, we were really, really shy and didn't make friends easily and playing music in an orchestra for kids who don't want to play a sport. It’s really nice to have that community, and you can start forming friendships, without even talking that much. Because music is sort of its own language, and it sometimes can do all the talking for you. So, yeah, that’s really important for us. Go ahead, Kate. [00:06:12] KL: Yeah. I was so bad at sports. I tried every single one. I think what it came down to, for me, I'm definitely a perfectionist. I'm competitive with myself, but I don't do well in other competitive settings. Whenever we play sports in gym class, I would just feel like, “Let me get out of here.” I think it took like extra math classes to get out of gym once. [00:06:37] PF: That's hardcore. [00:06:39] KL: What I liked about music was I was having a hard time like solidifying an identity in school. When I picked up the cello, like it just felt like something that I instantly bonded with, and it was a portal to songwriting. Like I can strum chords on the cello. I could write music on the cello. I could play my favorite songs. I could – It was almost like meditating, practicing sometimes. So that was really good for me personally. But like Sav said too, when you're playing in an ensemble, like you're learning all sorts of teamwork skills. You're learning listening skills. A lot of improv is really 90% listening and then, I don't know, 10% being fearless and jumping right in, which I took jazz band for two years at our public school, and that taught me like just keep going. Even if the tune is flying by, if you get lost, like just keep going. Just so many skills. We both were in the pit for our musical theater production. Later, we went to an art school called Interlochen, and we took like choir classes and poetry classes, and learned how to incorporate things like history and current events and art into our songwriting and music. So there's a lot of education where music is like a really good portal. [00:08:03] PF: Then how did you start becoming involved in music education? Because it's a lot of work just to be a recording artist to be writing songs, to be touring, doing all that. Then you've added this whole other dimension to it. How did that start? [00:08:17] SB: Well, it's actually kind of been around for a while for us, simply because like when we're touring, oftentimes, we'll be in a town for like maybe six or seven hours, mostly at the venue. But there's like a little bit of time before that, where we can probably go into like a elementary school or a high school and do a workshop. Oftentimes, we'll just ask teachers like, “Hey, what's your curriculum currently like right now? Like what are you guys struggling with?” They’ll be like, “Oh, we need kids to like find an emotional outlet, or we need them to like learn how to take chances and be fearless.” We'll go in and kind of structure workshop around that. But that's something that's always been really consistent with who we are, and we've kind of had that almost since the beginning of the band. [00:08:59] KL: Yeah. I think almost there's certain benefits of going into schools, while you're still 17, 18, 19 years old. I think when we were first doing that, a lot of the first opportunities were us just coming in and playing songs and doing a Q&A or just talking to other students about what we did because we were basically their age or a few years older. [00:09:23] PF: Right. And they're going to listen to you. [00:09:26] KL: Yeah. I noticed. So we've definitely like shifted our approach. Now, I'm 26, and Sav is 27, and we've evolved and adjusted but definitely feel a distance growing every year from us when we go into the schools. So the very early stuff, I mean, it was us just talking and performing. It was a lot less formal. It doesn't always need to be really structured, I think. [00:09:53] PF: That's great. Then is that the Play It Forward, Again and Again initiative? [00:09:57] KL: So Play it Forward, it kind of combines two different things that we were passionate about, and we finally got nonprofit status in 2020. That was one of the benefits of – [00:10:06] PF: Congratulations. [00:10:07] KL: Being off the road is that we were able to get the paperwork done for that. But really what we've been working on prior to that was one part is getting instruments in the hands of young students and also mentorship. Because we've seen so many students who've had to give up playing like viola or another instrument because it's too expensive. So before the nonprofit, we would do fundraising campaigns. Like one time, we did a kick starter for a young girl. I mean, it was instantly funded by – [00:10:39] PF: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. [00:10:41] KL: And she got an instrument right away. So part of Play It Forward, Again and Again is based on that. Another part is to get more musicians and more bands into schools to do performances and workshops, sort of like what The Moxie Strings did for us and what we've been trying to do for students who were on the road on tour. [00:11:03] PF: How hard has it been to get other musicians involved? [00:11:07] KL: There's definitely a different approach. You kind of have to get your feet wet in it because I think a lot of time, touring musicians, we get into like our flow. We do like a show every night for a similar audience. Then when you get in front of a school, like a group of students at any age range, it's like a totally different experience. Like a group of five year olds, they're going to be honest with you. If you're not entertaining, you'll know. But in a way, that's like the most pure form, I think, because they're not there to judge your technique or to think about your – Overthink the lyrics or anything. They're there to have a very pure musical inspirational experience. So anyone that we've talked to who has gone into a school, like they've gotten out of it with like just such an appreciation for music. [00:11:59] PF: What do you consider a success when you're walking out of a classroom situation? [00:12:04] SB: Honestly, I think it's just successful if somebody takes away even a little piece from it, which oftentimes one of the songwriting workshops that we do is we like pass out a bunch of books, and then we'll ask students to pick a sentence out of every book. Then we'll go over to the wall to like a whiteboard, and they'll read off the sentences. We'll write them down, and then we'll show how you can change a couple of words and start to put together an actual verse, even from widely different material. I think we used like an RV Cookbook once. [00:12:33] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:12:35] SB: We've used like all kinds of crazy books, and we always get something out of it. Then we'll ask students to finish the songs. Oftentimes, we'll get like these songs through our email that are like completely finished, like either lyrics. Or they'll like pick up some chords and start putting it to that. That, to me, is like peak success from a songwriting workshop or from a workshop in general is just seeing them be excited about it and take it home and like apply their own creativity towards finishing it. Because just knowing that somebody believes you can do it, I think, is a huge aspect of actually finishing something. Not everybody believes that they have the ability to do something. There are lots of times where we go to a town, especially like a smaller town, and we'll teach a workshop, and the kids will be like, “Yeah, that was great. But I don't think I could ever do that.” So we've really had to restructure to make it like, “No, this is something everyone can do,” and made it really inclusive because that's what art is supposed to be, and that's what art is to us. [00:13:32] PF: In doing that, you're completely changing the way they're thinking about it, right? [00:13:36] SB: I hope so. [00:13:36] PF: Now, they're going to – Their mind is going to start seeking that out like, “What could I do with that? What can I do with that phrase?” You're like really opening up the way that they think about how they discover their creativity. [00:13:47] SB: Yeah. Like there's a song we have. A friend of mine, a childhood friend, passed away really suddenly, and I didn't have any closure. So I was trying to figure out how to write it down because that's sometimes the first step towards acknowledging and healing. I was having a hard time describing what grief actually felt like, and so I started looking around at household objects. The line ended up being “Grief’s a sheet of tin foil that I crush inside of me.” So I tell kids about that line because it's like you might think it's stupid on paper when you first look at it, but somebody is knowing exactly what you're talking about in that moment. Most importantly, you know exactly what you're talking about. That's helping sort of unravel some of these things that are super hard to find the words for. Sometimes, it's easier to sing it. I'm really interested in neurobiology too, not to go on a big rant. But like there's some really interesting stuff about music that pulls people who are having sort of debilitating memory issues. It's almost like an entirely different aspect of memory that music is attached to, and I think it also is attached to an entirely different aspect of emotions, where sometimes it's easier to express how you feel through music rather than having like a full hard conversation. [00:14:57] PF: Absolutely. Right now, with kids having gone through such a difficult last three years, and they're not able to process – Adults aren't able to process what all has happened and how it's affected us. So do you see that coming out through music? Do you see them being able to manage their emotions better and deal with what they've been through? [00:15:17] SB: I hope so. I think it's important that we try. It's important that we keep workshops like this going and initiatives like this happening and not to bring it back to public music programs. But I really think that's a huge aspect too is accessibility and belief and having the right tools is important. [00:15:35] KL: Yeah. We just did a collaboration with a youth studio orchestra in Cleveland called the Kaboom Collective. [00:15:42] PF: That was my next question, so good. I'm so glad you brought this up. [00:15:46] KL: I think that was a really good example because we had to stop touring in 2020, like everyone else did, and we were doing upwards of 200 or 250 shows. That tour with the Kaboom Collective was really one of the first big tours we did back and, exactly what you're saying, was the experience of a lot of students, who they were between the age of 15 and 25, and a lot of them had missed out on their high school graduation, prom, like – [00:16:17] PF: Turning 21. [00:16:18] KL: Yeah. Senior trips, college, like freshman year. These are all things that they kind of had to experience in isolation. I know for sure like a few of them were having maybe a difficult relationship with music at the time and nothing quite like being on a stage. We had one show on tour that was in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the Frederick Meijer Gardens Amphitheater and performing in front of 4,000 people live and feeling that energy. I thought that was really cool to talk to the students after that show and see a lot of them say like, “Wow, I didn't know this was part of music. I didn't know this connection was part of music.” That was a really good feeling. [00:17:06] PF: Tell us a little bit more about that collaboration because you had the album with them. What was that like, both for you and for the students, to have this entire experience together? Honestly, you could have done it yourselves. For you to bring along a student orchestra was just incredible, and what a ride that you gave them. [00:17:26] SB: Well, what's funny is I think we really couldn't have done it because they did all the arrangements. The students did. Again, they're like 15 to 25-year-olds, who took the initiative to like completely figure out our songs and then the emotion behind the songs and what it should be and how they could amplify that beat arrangements, which is a super amazing skill set to have at 15 years old. To have your name on a record at 15, to have like your name in an old music guide, it's just ridiculous to like be able to actually do that. I mean it in the best way. It's completely amazing. So I wish like I had done this when I was their age. [00:18:05] PF: I know. It's like you wish you had been there for you when you were that age, right?   [00:18:08] SB: Yeah. But like, tangentially, we're so honored to just be able to work with them because it really was like kind of a treat for us, as much as it was for them. Touring together, yeah, the logistics of taking like 40 students on the road with like all their instruments, including like upright basses and tubas and everything we had, that was quite a process. It took like a whole amazing team of people to put it together, including our manager, Aryn Madigan. But, yeah, it was just a wild time. So we're really excited that it happened and panned out. We learned a lot, just by being around them. They're all like so nerdy. They knew like every classical piece that you could name. Then also, we're like listening to these cool punk indie bands, and it gave us a lot of not to say like hope for the next generation because there's always something good in every generation to find. But it's really amazing to hang with the future of music and to kind of see where that's headed. Both of us were just really excited about it. [00:19:12] PF: That’s terrific because your music is – It's not just about the music. You are about spreading joy, and you are really working to make this world a better place. Why is that so important? [00:19:24] KL: It helped us. I think that's a big piece of why we keep doing it. I mean – [00:19:31] SB: Yeah. It’s a selfish aspect of our – [00:19:36] KL: I mean, music is not always – It's like a long-term relationship. I mean, it's a way to express creativity. It's something that, I don't know, we live and breathe, and it sounds kind of cliché. But we see it impact people day-to-day. We also have that experience with people who are not musicians. We have like a page on patreon.com, where people support us, and we do just random things. Like we do a tour blog every week, but we also interact with our patrons on Zoom, doing like book club, and we review favorite albums that everyone submits. Having that relationship, we see and we hear stories from our patrons about like how music totally changed their lives, even if they're not a musician, and just like listening to music or seeing a show how maybe changed the relationship with their parents or their children or relationship with themselves. So I think that those little things inspire us because some days, you go online, and you're like, “Why am I making music? TikTok is – I just spent like three hours on TikTok and like five people viewed this thing.” You know what I mean? But then when you hear a story like that where you see the impact, then it's like, “Hey, we should keep doing this.” [00:21:04] PF: Yeah, because you're making such a difference. Now, you're in Nashville, which is where I'm located too, and it's such a great songwriting community, such a nurturing community. Has that changed your relationship with the music? Has it changed your songwriting? What has it done to be here? [00:21:21] SB: Yeah. So what's funny is that we have kind of shifted to another side project. So we have The Accidentals generic rock band, and then we have Kaboom Collective and like collaborations and workshops and use music initiatives like that. Then on top of that, we have a co-writing project, where it's a series of EPs that we write and record. We write them with people who inspired us to become writers. So these people include Tom Paxton, Gary Byrd, Georgia Middleman, Maia Sharp, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gretchen Peters, Mary Gautheir, Jaimee Harris. Like the list kind of goes on and on. But we basically write songs of these people, and then we compile those songs into EPs that we self-record and engineer right here in my very messy studio, Crooked Moon Studios. Yeah, so that's been going on for the past couple of years. It kind of started right before the pandemic hit, and one of our first co-writes that really kicked off the idea of putting them into a record was with Kim Richey, and it was over Zoom. We just love the song so much, and we love the idea of writing over Zoom so much during a time of isolation, we'd say, to keep it going. So a lot of the songs were written in isolation. Now that we live in Nashville, luckily, we can actually be in the same room with the people who inspired us to become songwriters in the first place, as we write the songs together. So it's just a really amazing experience. I like to joke that co-writing in Nashville is like the equivalent of getting a cup of coffee everywhere else. Or it's like the first thing that comes up half the time is like, “Oh, yeah. I've heard about you. We should write a song together.” It's happened so much while we – Since we moved here. That's been a really great aspect, and we've also done a ton of session work this year. Kate and I, we played violin, cello, viola, and upright bass. We essentially serve as our own quartet or orchestra if we're doubling parts. So we've done a ton of session work this year. We've gone to a lot of studios. We've recorded a lot remotely here at Crooked Moon Studios, which is our studio here in Nashville. Yeah, it's just been a really awesome time living in Nashville and getting to actually hang with the people who inspire us. [00:23:23] PF: That is terrific. So looking down the road because even though you've been doing this for 10 years, you're young, and you've got a lot of highway ahead of you. What is that future going to look like? What is your legacy that you want to leave behind, as you do so much good with the next generation? [00:23:42] SB: Man, I think we just want to leave something behind that continues to sort of unite people's emotional platform. Not everybody knows how to find what works for them emotionally. I think like leaving songs behind shows that – It sounds like cliché, but like you're not going through something alone. People have experienced the same kinds of grief or the same kinds of pain. Just having a song that speaks to you sometimes helps unravel that not. So I think that's why we write songs. That's why we put music. But it just does a lot of the really difficult work of sort of untangling what's hard to verbalize, and it’s like an initial step to healing. That’s like sort of the intangible part of what we want to leave behind. I think our idea of like physical success is just to be able to do this for a living and to continue to record or continue to write, continue to do workshops, and continue to put out albums of music that speaks to us, whether we've written that collaboratively, or we've written that therapeutically for ourselves. [00:24:43] PF: That is terrific. Katie, do you have anything to add to that? [00:24:46] KL: Like Sav said, that hopefully some of these students that we're teaching when we're retired, and Sav is like studying wolves in Alaska or something, and I'm like on a goat farm. Hopefully, like the animal life that there'll be more music and people stepping in our shoes and continuing to try to make the world a better place. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Sav Buist and Katie Larson of The Accidentals, telling us how they're inspiring the next generation of musicians while living their dream. If you'd like to learn more about The Accidentals, check out their music, or follow them on social media, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Cultivate a Compassionate Relationship With Michelle Becker [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 404 of Live Happy Now. It's Valentine's Day. And as the rest of the world focuses on romantic notions, we're going to get real. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm sitting down with marriage and family therapist, Michelle Becker, to talk about how we can become more compassionate in our relationships. Michelle developed the Compassion for Couples program, is co-founder of the teacher-training program at the Center for Mindful Self-Compassion, and a senior teacher of compassion cultivation training. She also hosts the Well Connected Podcast, and is author of Compassion for Couples: Building the Skills of Loving Connection. Today, she shares with us some of the key ways that practicing compassion can transform our relationships, and then she gives us some tips for getting started. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:56] PF: Michelle, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] MB: Thank you. Happy to be here, Paula. Thanks for inviting me. [00:01:01] PF: Well, it's Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day. [00:01:04] MB: Thank you. You too. [0:01:06] PF: Yeah. This is a time when we are absolutely inundated with all these images of romantic love and grand gestures, and that's why I wanted to talk to you because it's not always that way. I wanted to talk to you about the side that gets overlooked, and that's this more mature part of the relationship, this later phase of love. So to kick it off, can you talk about how this stage, this later stage of romance and love, is so much different than the love we have who are falling in love? [00:01:34] MB: Yeah. I think it might help actually to talk about what happens when we fall in love and then how we progress to that mature love. So in this falling in love phase, we are actually dosed with chemicals like oxytocin. What happens is that prevents us. We have this sort of, not all of us, but often this sense of being on cloud nine like, “Oh, he's so wonderful. She's so wonderful. They're so wonderful,” right? Like, “This is the thing that has made my life happy and complete. My happiness rests with them,” right? The thing is that this hormone cocktail prevents us from seeing any qualities in our future partners that we don't like. We're just blinded to it for a while. But the cocktail wears off. When the cocktail wears off, the curtain lifts. Suddenly, we can see that this person actually has qualities we don't care for and habits we don't care for. It could be small, little irritating things like they don't put the cap back on the toothpaste or they don't pick their socks up or whatever it might be, right? It's kind of an uncomfortable thing to realize, “Oh, no,” because we've tied all our happiness to this idea that there's this other person out here that completes us, that is the source, the root of our happiness. Now, to find out that they're just a human being and they have qualities we don't like can be really painful. Psychologist Rick Hanson talks about the negativity bias. He says we're like Velcro for negative emotions and Teflon for positive emotions. So once we start to notice negatives, we can really fixate on those negatives. The positives that we were so happy about just a little while ago, we're not so much noticing anymore, right? We're used to those. These new negatives we see, really we fixate on. Barbara Fredrickson, a positive emotions expert, she talks about how when we're in a state of positive emotions, it broadens our field of vision. We see lots. But when we're in a state of negative emotion, our whole field of vision narrows down to that one thing. So in this kind of second phase, we can get really fixated on all the problems in our relationship and especially all the problems with our partner. [00:03:53] PF: So as a couples counselor, as a therapist, do you see relationships that could be very good and solid that they come to you, and it's simply that they are focusing on the wrong thing? [00:04:04] MB: Yeah, all the time. Most people come into couple’s therapy because they think there's something wrong with their partner, and they would like me to fix their partner, right? That's really why they come in. What they learn actually is that focusing on their partner in that way isn't actually helpful. It kind of feeds this negative relational downward spiral. But when we pause and start to learn to take care of ourselves, so this is where self-compassion comes in, and it can be very helpful. When we learn that we can meet our own needs and we're not so dependent on our partner meeting our needs. In other words, we can be a full human being fully ourselves, accept ourselves, our good qualities and our growing edges. That kind of takes a lot of the pressure off the relationship. Then when we start to view our partner in that same way, when we start to look at our partner as a whole human being that has both qualities that we admire, that we're fond of, that we love, and also qualities that they struggle with where they're like a complete human being. Nobody's perfect, right? We start to understand that when they do things that bother us, it's not because they don't love us, which is usually the sense we make of it. It's because they're in pain in some sort of way, right? That actually kind of softens our hearts. Then we can show up for our part – Instead of getting into feeling offended and defensive and whatever the other reactivity habits might be, we can start to see, oh, I don't have to take that personally. That isn't actually about me. Gosh, they must be having a hard time right now. It really changes everything. So in this mature love, which was the question you asked me, in the mature love phase, it's really characterized by a deep love but also acceptance, acceptance of ourselves and our partners as we are. It doesn't mean we don't have qualities we still need to work on and we still need to change. It just means that we don't have to get rid of the things we don't like about each other to love each other, to care about each other, to show up. [00:06:16] PF: That's terrific. So oftentimes, and I know this has happened in my own relationship, we all feel very aggravated with the other person, and it's really me. It's like I'm having a bad day. That same thing would not have bothered me on a normal day or if I wasn't hormonal or whatever that case may be. So how often is that the case that it's really not what the other person is doing? It's just how you're feeling and how you're responding to it. [00:06:43] MB: I love that you said that, Paula, because that's exactly what I'm talking about that when our partner is not skillful, they snap at us, for example, as you're saying. Even if they snap at us and say it's our fault or you're such a or you never or you whatever, it isn't really about us. It really is an indicator that our partner right now has some pain going on underneath that that's causing them to snap. Just like you're saying that they're having a bad day, that they're stressed out, that they learned that they have a health problem or someone they love has a health problem, that something's going on at work, that they didn't get enough sleep last night. As human beings, we're subject to all these different causes and conditions for how we are right now. Really, I'm just excited that you're owning that and naming that. What I want you to know is this is just how we're wired as human beings. It's not just you. It's all of us. [00:07:38] PF: When we're on the receiving end of that, though, it's difficult to sit back and say, “Oh. Well, they're just having a bad day.” It's easy to fire right back. So how do we change the way that we receive that? [00:07:52] MB: Well, let me first say that we don't have to accept bad behavior. It is okay and even important to set limits if somebody is doing something harmful. But when we don't take it personally, when we realize, oh, this isn't actually about me, even when my partner’s aiming it at me. When we realize that we can settle a little bit and then we can become curious about what's going on in them. Let me give you an example. Your partner comes home late from work, and this is a habit, and you're having a particularly bad day. You really were counting on them being home on time, and they come in the door, and you snap at them, right? So your partner, they can snap back at you, in which case, you're off to the races. Things are going to get worse, right? But what if your partner instead said, “Hey, Paula. You know what? I gather you're probably pretty stressed right now. But please don't snap at me. What happened in your day today? I really want to be there for you. Can you tell me what's going on?” [00:08:51] PF: That just completely disarms you. It’s – [00:08:54] MB: Yeah. Changes everything, right? But we have to first catch it ourselves. We have to practice catching. When our reactivity arises, it’s our threat defense system that gets activated when somebody attacks us. When our reactivity arises, we have to notice, “Ah, I'm getting angry. Why am I angry? I wasn't angry a minute ago,” right? “Oh, it's not actually my anger. It's my partner's. Oh, why are they angry? Ah, because something painful just happened to them, or they're in the midst of some pain,” right? The more we practice it, the quicker it happens in the moment for us. The quicker we can be with not catching the anger, but instead noticing that's not mine. That's theirs, and probably there's something painful underneath. [00:09:39] PF: I love that because that's an incredible skill, and it's not just relegated to your romantic relationship. That's great with your children and your parents, your entire siblings. I mean, everything. [00:09:48] MB: Your coworkers, everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. [00:09:52] PF: Yeah. That alone is just a workshop you need to offer us too – [00:09:59] MB: Yeah. It turns is out that people's behavior is actually theirs. It's not about us, right? [00:10:05] PF: That’s so hard to learn. So you have a new book coming out, which I'm really excited about, Compassion for Couples, and you go into using compassion for yourself and for your relationship. I really want to get into this, but very curious to find out how you became so interested in studying compassion, as it relates to relationships. [00:10:27] MB: Well, I started actually with a curiosity about relationships. So they've kind of always been my thing. So when I went to grad school, I chose to be a marriage and family therapist because that was the one that worked with relationships or was specialized in relationships. Then as part of that, I took some continuing education, and I learned about mindfulness. I was like, “Oh, there's a name for that. That was the state I was in when I had been practicing yoga, right? Oh, there's a name for that. It's called mindfulness.” Then  as part of that, I learned about compassion, and I learned that compassion is actually a skill that can be trained. So it's true that we're born with varying degrees of compassion. But all of us, no matter how much or little we're born with, can learn more compassion. So I was on a mindfulness retreat when self-compassion just kind of spontaneously arose for me. So I was opening to the pain in my life, and this sense of someone, which was myself, caring about me arose, right? That there was a sense that I could comfort myself, I could soothe myself, I could protect and stand up for myself. It was really very much a big change for me, and I began to – Well, shortly after that, I found the Mindful Self-Compassion Program. Chris Germer and Kristin Neff’s program, and they invited me to start teaching self-compassion. I thought this is really the thing that changes everything. Then when we co-developed a teacher training along with Steve Hickman for how to teach this program, and on one of those trainings, people were asking me, “Well, how would you use this with couples?” I went, “Oh. Well, in session one, I would do this. And then session two.” So I developed a program, Compassion for Couples, and that's what I do. I teach couples how to relate to themselves and to each other with more compassion. Because when we have compassion in our primary relationships, when we have that safety net underneath us, that soft place to land, not only does it change our relationships, but it really changes us. We now can go out into the world with more courage because when we fail, which is part of life, there's a way to be held, to recover, to be okay. It ripples out, and it gives us the courage to be more fully ourselves and live our lives more fully. [00:12:47] PF: That's really powerful. We know what compassion is. We know what it means. But how do we practice it? Especially, how do we start practicing self-compassion? Because I believe you say that's where it starts. We practice compassion for ourselves first and then for others. [00:13:02] MB: In relationships, so the research is that most people are much more compassionate toward others than they are toward themselves, that we're kind of trained in that way. Be kind to other people, right? But a lot of us are not trained to be kind to ourselves. So we have this capacity, and it's a matter of just learning to include ourselves in our circle of compassion. So we learn to show up by – One of the ways that we can harness our power for compassion is to – When we realize that we're suffering in some way, struggling, we're having a hard time, to actually pause and notice, “Oh, I'm having a hard time right now.” Often, we don't notice. We just find ourselves three episodes in binge-watching Netflix or whatever our go-to balm is, salve is, right? We have to notice that we're suffering. Then we recognize that suffering is part of being human. This is a shared human condition. Then we might ask ourselves what we need. What do I need right now? For many of us in the beginning, we don't have the answer to that. So we can kind of trick ourselves into finding the answer by asking ourselves, “Okay. If my good friend that I really care about had the same problem as me, what would I say to them?” Ah, now we know what we need, right? Then we can turn it around and say that to ourselves. I'm here for you. It's okay. It isn't your fault. We'll get through this. Whatever it is we might need to hear. [00:14:34] PF: So do you advise to have a daily self-compassion practice? Or how do they start implementing this and making it a daily part of who they are? [00:14:43] MB: Well, so in terms of learning self-compassion, I think the Mindful Self-Compassion Program is excellent, and I recommend that because it teaches a lot of practices. We teach some of them also in the Compassion for Couples program, and I've got some of them, many of them actually, in my book as well. But there are two kinds of practices. There's formal practice, which is where we set aside time just to do that. We're not doing something else at the same time. There are practices of following our breath. There are practices of saying kind phrases to ourselves, things like that. That's a good baseline to have and to practice every day. But not everybody can or will set aside the time to practice like that. So luckily, there's also informal practice. In informal practices, how we integrate that as we go about our day, how we integrate. So the self-compassion break, it might be an example of that. We can practice that actually both ways. We can pause, do nothing else. We can say this is a moment of suffering. Acknowledge that we're having a hard time right now. That suffering is part of any life. This is how it feels, for example, when couples are disagreeing. It's painful, right? Or this is how it feels when we feel unloved, whatever it is, that this is just part of being a human being in a relationship. Then we can offer some kindness to ourselves. I see you. I care about you, right? So we can do that in a formal way, setting aside time. But we can also do that, in the middle of a conversation with our partner, right? On the go. So our partner’s doing something that we don't like. We're feeling abandoned, whatever it might be. We can just notice to ourselves, “Oh, wow. This is really hard. This is really painful. Okay, this is part of being in a relationship.” Then we can say something kind to ourselves. I'll get through this. We'll get through this. We can always work it out in the end, whatever it might be, right? You don't have to say it out loud. You don't have to close your eyes. You don't have to do anything else. It doesn't have to take a long time. It can be three short statements. [00:16:49] PF: What I liked when you said that, you put your hand on your heart as you said that, and that's something I've learned. Like Shauna Shapiro was a guest a couple years ago. She really taught me that. Then we had Jeanine Thompson recently, who talked about that same thing of putting your hand on your heart as you make a statement like that. Tell me why that is important. [00:17:09] MB: So I love that you're saying this. Dacher Keltner and his team, Greater Good, did some research into what is compassionate, what cultures around the world find compassionate, what's the common theme. They found three things, and one of them was a kind touch. As human beings, we are wired. Our physiology is wired to be comforted and soothed by kind touch. So if you think about it, a baby is crying, and you pick them up and cuddle them in a certain kind of way. That's part of what helps them settle. The cool thing is we don't need somebody else to activate our physiology. We can activate our own physiology. So often, there's a spot on the body. You're right. For me, it's my heart. For many of us, it's our heart. But it's not the heart for everybody. Some people, it's putting your hands on your cheeks, or it's stroking the forearm, holding your own hand, all sorts of different places. But people can experiment with that, putting their hands in different places and seeing what effect it has on their bodies, right? What feels comforting and soothing? Isn’t that a cool thing? We can activate our own physiology. [00:18:18] PF: I like that. [00:18:19] MB: Yeah, me too. [00:18:21] PF: Once we've practiced some self-compassion, and we've gotten more used to implementing it into our lives, how is that going to change our compassion for our partner? Because as you said, a lot of people come in that's like change that person because he's the problem. So how will we then start using compassion toward our partner? [00:18:40] MB: So I love that you've said it that way, Paula. Change that person because he's the problem. When we are in our threat defense system, if something has come up, and we're distressed, we think the other person needs to change so that we can feel better. Change that person. He is the problem. Then I'll feel better. That's the hope, right? But, wow, does it change everything when we realize I have the capacity to feel better, whether or not this person changes, whether or not this person does something different. I have the capacity to feel better. That's self-compassion. We can tend to ourselves in that kind of way. We can give ourselves what we need. We don't always have to get it from our partner. That's hugely empowering when we figure that out. Then we can use that to settle our own physiology. So now, we can still go back to our partner and say, “I need something different. It was really painful when you did this,” whatever it might be. But now, we're saying it with calmer physiology and with some love in our hearts. Our partners can usually hear us better when we're coming from that place than they can when we're coming from the threat defense system, and we're attacking. [00:19:56] PF: Yeah. That makes perfect sense. I wanted to talk to you because in the foreword of your book, Chris Germer writes about the traps that couples fall into and how difficult it can be to get out of them. I wondered if you could give us an example of one or two of the most common traps that you see and then how we use compassion to get out of those, instead of use our old ways. [00:20:19] MB: Yeah. So I'm not sure which traps he's referring to. But what I think of when I think of these traps is I think of our physiology, just how we're wired for survival. Paul Gilbert has done a lot of work on this. I really love his work. But he talks about that we have these different emotion regulation systems. The primary one, the one that is dominant when we're stressed, is the threat defense system. People are familiar with that because it's fight, flight, freeze. That's where that lives, right? I looked at, okay, so what happens in relationships when we're in fight, flight, freeze? Well, fight turns into either blaming our partners or defensiveness. Flight turns into avoidance, right? We kind of disappear, back off. I don't want to get into it. Which is actually we're trying to protect the relationship often by doing that, right? Protect ourselves, protect our partners, protect the relationship. Freeze often turns into a kind of surrender, a kind of placating? Yes, dear. Sure, honey. Whatever you want. We don't agree necessarily, but we think that we're going to tell them what we think they want to hear so that they settled, so that they calm down, right? Those are the things that really get us stuck in our relationship. It's really good for our physical survival. It's really bad for our relationships and our emotional lives, right? Because fighting doesn't help anything. Abandoning your partner doesn't help anything. Really, we do hate to be placated, right? [00:21:47] PF: Right. [00:21:48] MB: What we can do instead, and this is where self-compassion is so helpful, is we can notice our own distress. We can show up for ourselves, give ourselves what we need, whether that's taking a break. But in a kind way, checking out, telling our partners, “Hey, you know what? This isn't going well. I'm a little bit activated here. I'm going to take a break and tend to myself, but I'll be back.” We always have to reassure. I care about you. I’m coming back, right? Because then our physiology has settled once we've taken care of ourselves. Now, we can actually see the other person. Before that, we don't really accurately see the other person. We have our story, and we think that's it. Toxic certainty and let me just tell you, right? When we've settled our bodies, when we've opened our hearts a little bit, our minds are open. Now, we can approach with a little more humility, a little more curiosity. I know my experience. I hope you want to hear about that. I'd like to hear about your experience too. Turns out often we weren't right. Something else was going on for our partner that we didn't understand. [00:22:56] PF: Can you talk about some of the things, some of the changes that you've seen in couples who start using this? Because I know like I've got friends, and you and I talked before we started recording. The pandemic was tough on relationships, and there are a lot of people I know who are really just kind of hanging in there and wondering if they really want to. It’s a difficult time for a lot of people. So would you share with that kind of how it can change relationships? [00:23:24] MB: It changes relationships. So many things jumped to my mind. So it's hard for me to kind of accurately describe all, but I'll tell you a couple things that come to mind. One is we treat our partners generally the way we want to be treated. So use my relationship, for example. When I am distressed, when I've had some relationship thing happen, I really don't want to be touched. I want to be heard. Once I'm heard, I relaxed a little bit. Okay, now you can touch me. My partner does not want words, does not want to talk about it. He wants to be touched. He wants to be held, to be comforted, to be reassured in that kind of way. Then maybe we'll be able to talk about it. So when there's some disagreement, and I show up and say, “Let's talk about it,” that's not really going to be skillful for him, right, if he's upset. So that's one of the things is actually learning. For me, learning, oh, when he's upset, don't ask him to talk about it. That's not how he's wired. Offer him a pat on the back, a hug, something like that. He'll feel comforted, reassured. Okay, now maybe we can talk about it, right? So that's one of the things is actually starting to see each other. When we see each other, when we really begin to understand each other, we have a lot more options about how to be skillful with each other in relationships. So that's one of the ways that it changes. Also, learning things like these emotion regulation systems. One is the threat defense system. One is the care system where compassion lives. But there's another one, the drive system, which is about getting things done, achieving, wanting, pursuing, achieving, consuming. Very often, especially men, but not limited to men, have been socialized to solve the problem. Fix the problem, right? So their partner shows up and says, “I'm really having a hard time. Maybe it's at work. Something else is going on with the kids, whatever. I'm really having a hard time.” I would say husband in this case, but please know it's not gendered. The husband says, “Well, you need to talk to your boss about,” blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever it is, right? The wife just sort of collapses because that's not what she wanted. What she wanted was just a kind, caring presence. What she wanted was for him just to say, “That really sucks. I'm so sorry that's happening for you. How are you,” right? So one of the things in this Compassion for Couples program, in the last program that I taught, especially the men were like blown away. [00:26:05] PF: They know they're not supposed to fix it. [00:26:07] MB: No. They didn't know there was another option. I really did not know there was another option. So when they were like, as we practice communication, and we practice just that compassionate listening, how to actually just stay present while your partner's talking, I mean, really, they went on and on. Their minds were blown. They're like, “That's all I have to do. That’s it? That’s what she wants?” There just are a whole bunch of different ways that it shows up, and even people who have come into the program with really good solid relationships tell me afterwards that they came closer. They were able to develop more intimacy with their partner and in a way that felt safe. Because that's the thing is we sometimes keep a little distance because we don't feel completely safe. So when we have the confidence that our partners will meet us with compassion, we feel safer. We're a little safer to come close. [00:26:07] PF: That's great. As we started the show, we talked about that romantic love and how we just see these great things. Once we start seeing our partner through the lens of compassion, and we start developing these skills, how does it take us back to that? How does it remind us of some of those reasons that we fell in love and why we're here to begin with? [00:27:24] MB: It does because we actually can see them more clearly again. So we see the undesirable qualities, but we're not focused just on those. We see the parts we love about them as well. Because we are showing up in the relationship with more kindness, with more compassion, with more acceptance, they can show us more of who they are. Honestly, sometimes, it's really we're just in awe of like this actual human being with these qualities, right? Because we can see them more clearly, they feel safer coming toward us, if that makes sense. [00:28:02] PF: Yeah, it does. Michelle, thank you for this time today. This is so insightful. We're going to tell the listeners how they can find your book, how they can find you, learn more about it. But I truly appreciate your time today. [00:28:14] MB: Thank you, Paula. Appreciate that. Lovely to be with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:28:22] PF: That was Michelle Becker, talking about how to improve your relationships using compassion. If you'd like to learn more about Michelle, download a free chapter of her book, sign up for her upcoming Compassion for Couples workshop, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. With March just a couple of weeks away, we here at Live Happy are starting to think about our annual Happy Acts campaign, and we'd love for you to do the same. Throughout March, we're offering a full calendar of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. I'd like to encourage you to visit the Happy Acts section of our website to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the Happy Acts 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 a happy one. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:15:59] PF: That was Live Happy Marketing Manager Casey Johnson, talking about the Live Happy gratitude challenge and all the great things we have going on here at Live Happy. To learn more about the challenge, just visit our website at livehappy.com. If you'd like to check out our new merch or by one of our old favorites, you can get 10% off storewide just by entering the code grateful 10 when you shop at store.livehappy.com. That's grateful 10 when you shop at store.livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]