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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discovering the Power of Stillness with Jeanine Thompson  [INTRODUCTION]   [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 399 of Live Happy Now. After a busy holiday season, we all could use a bit of stillness in our lives, and this week's guest is going to tell us how to find it. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Jeanine Thompson, a former clinical psychotherapist and Fortune 50 executive, whose new book, 911 From Your Soul, is all about how to learn to listen for what you need and discover your greatest potential. Today, she's here to talk about how important it is to learn to do nothing and listen to the lessons that are waiting for us in that stillness. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Jeanine, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:47] JT: I am so excited and delighted to be with you, Paula, and your listeners. [00:00:53] PF: We're delighted to have you. Our timing on this is so perfect. It's the beginning of the year. People are really being reflective and thinking about what they want to do differently, and your idea of stillness is so important. But it's a word that's become almost foreign in this busy world that we live in. I mean, we are always on. It's 24/7. So I guess before we talk about how to even accomplish that, can you tell us what you mean when you mention stillness? [00:01:22] JT: Yeah. So stillness, to me, means awareness, shifting our attention from our busy brain, our 70,000 thoughts a day that data says we have, shifting our awareness from our head into the inner intelligence, our inter Internet. Typically, I tell people place one hand on your heart center, one on your sacral or near your belly button, and just close your eyes. We follow a touch in the body. So it'll help you move from the hamster wheel into the eternal infinite wisdom that is just waiting to support and guide you. [00:02:08] PF: So is stillness a physical app? Or is it all in your brain? Or where does stillness take place? [00:02:17] JT: I think it's a multi-level experience, right? So I think that there is a physical shifting of attention from the busy brain to the core of your body. I think it's an energetic intention. I usually tell people, say the words I am still. Even if your brain keeps rattling on about what you got to do or what you didn't do sufficiently the hour before, there's an energetic intention to say I am still. When you connect with prana, that vital life force consciously moving in our body, you're making a spiritual connection to say, “I want to connect with the truth of who I am.” So it's this multi-level both practice and experience. [00:03:12] PF: It doesn't need to take a whole lot of time. It's something you can do real quickly. Like if there's anxiety, if there's something going on in your life, you can do these little quick hits to get your stillness. Is that correct? [00:03:24] JT: Yes. Thank you for saying that. That is the truth, and it's really important because I had a narrative. My narrative used to sound like there is no way I can be still. You don't understand how busy I am. You do not live inside this head. It never shuts up. I was in a plane 2 to 300,000 miles a year, a single mom. Stillness was unproductive. By the way, I can't do it. So we must have a narrative that says we just can't be still. Yet it's the most natural act. It's how we're born in stillness. It's actually the truth of our highest nature, peace, quiet, stillness. We just have been duped a little bit along the way. We got seduced by all the external expectations and invitations that constantly moving meant worthiness, meant productivity. So everybody can do it. I tell people, if you are like me, and you have a narrative that says you can't, just commit to 30 seconds. [00:04:35] PF: Oh, wow. We can do that. [00:04:37] JT: We can do that. Anybody can do that, right? 30 seconds to two minutes. Close your eyes. The brain data actually shows on brain imaging, if we don't take a break every hour, our stress levels are significantly higher. So just close your eyes. Feel the breath. Feel that hand on the belly expand and fall and expand and fall. So everyone can do it. If that busy brain of yours kicks up and says, “You must do this. Don't forget to do this.” I want you simply to say, “Noted.” Don't fight the thoughts. If we try and stop them or fight them, they get more persistent. So simply say, “Noted.” Retouch, hand on heart center, hand on belly, feel the breath again. So do that for sure in the morning, ideally before you even hop out of bed, if you can. Then ideally, we would say after every transition. So after we finish this meeting, I will go into breath, just as I began before you with breath. That's true for people at home. If you're working from home, between every kind of transition or shift, close your eyes and practice being still. [00:06:00] PF: And does that become a habit for you now? Because you've been practicing it, you teach it, and you definitely walk your talk. So is it something that comes naturally? Or do you have to remind yourself? [00:06:11] JT: No. Now, it's like brushing my teeth. I would never leave the house without brushing my teeth first. I don't begin my day without being still and getting centered in who I want to be and how I want to show up in the world that day. That's very different for me. I used to get up to my device. What emails did I need to answer? What does my day look like, kids needing love and attention as they woke up in the morning? I still will do all those things, but I do them differently. I make sure I can start my day in stillness and with consciously connecting within. [00:06:57] PF: What a huge difference that makes. I know that I've started a practice of not turning my phone on until after I am done with breakfast. You cannot imagine. Well, maybe you can. How crazy this makes some people. It's not that their need is so urgent that I address it. It's that they can't imagine like why are you not talking until eight in the morning. It makes a huge difference in the way my day feels as I enter it. [00:07:24] JT: Absolutely. Listen, we even know that I'm the beauty of the and girl. We know that from science. We know it from brain imaging. We know it from the High Performance Institute, that when you start with self, you connect with self first. You experience more satisfaction during the day, more calm during the day, better productivity. You're not reacting all day to someone else’s agenda. But then I would say, energetically, you will come to feel a sense of taking command. What really matters today? What are the real priorities? Calming the body, it's incredible. It really is life-changing, actually, that simple act of being with a breath and being still. [00:08:13] PF: Yeah. I want to talk in a moment about the benefits of practicing stillness. But I'm really interested in hearing how you discovered the importance of stillness because to your point, you were traveling. You were a busy professional. You're a single mom. I mean, it's like how did you go from that pace to becoming the go-to person on stillness? [00:08:34] JT: Yeah. Thankfully, it was through the intelligence of the universe. In all candor, I wouldn't have gotten there on my own. Had my other solutions, had always been on call almost 24/7 because I had an international role, had that continued to work for me in my life, I probably wouldn't have changed. I think that's true for your listeners too. Sometimes, we know something needs to be shifted. But honestly, until life starts to get really loud or like, “I'll get to it, but not today.” [00:09:06] PF: Right. [00:09:07] JT: Right? So the practice of stillness came through a time I was going through a 911 in my soul, from my soul. It was a time when the details of my life looked really good from the outside. People would just like, “Gosh, wow. Big job. She loves her kids. She's got a great relationship, really cool travel, the accoutrements of success.” Yet every day, I was successful yet unfulfilled. I had this little whisper that said, “Yoo-hoo, there's something more for you. There's something more through you.” Make a long story short, I ignored the whispers because it wasn't in line with my human plan. I wasn't to leave that job until my kids graduated, until I had reached a certain security. I had a human plan. Then there was the plan of my soul. Ultimately, my familiar solution just didn't work, and I was led to yoga and Reiki and energy work, which is hilarious because I was an evidence-based psychotherapist before I was a Fortune 50 executive. I thought it was woo-woo. I thought I did not have time for this. It taught me that I wasn't just a human being. I was actually this spiritual being traversing in a wonder suit of a body. [00:10:34] PF: I love that. [00:10:35] JT: It taught me that I was living my life through my false self, through a lens of not enough. Don't rest. It's not enough. There's always something to do. I needed to be more. So ultimately, it was through my life kind of falling apart on some levels, my familiar identity being shaken. When our familiar solutions are shaken, we’re invited, but it felt forced at the time to turn – [00:11:06] PF: Absolutely. [00:11:09] JT: To tune inward. I now realize that that yearning, that restlessness, those challenges weren't really a crisis at all. They were the greatest invitation of my life, masquerading in the details of discomfort. [00:11:28] PF: That's so important to hear because I think that happens to us a lot, where our plan is not working out according to plan, and we keep trying to force it. It’s difficult, and it's almost unnatural to us to sit back and say, “Okay, what is being taught to me? What am I supposed to do for next steps,” instead of, “What do I want to do as my next steps?” That's a change in thinking that takes some time. [00:11:55] JT: It's a huge change in thinking. I call it earth view and soul view. In our earth view, we say, “I got a problem. Fix it. I've got an issue. Find the solution.” Go external. Go to the experts. Go to your friends. Go to somebody. Got a problem. Fix it. The soul view says, “You already know the answer. Rest. Be in the discomfort. Talk to it. Say what do you got. What do you have to say? What do you want me to know?” It's about allowing. It's about resting in the stillness of your breath or resting in the stillness of a sunset or perhaps resting in the stillness of a freeing run, anything that softens that busy mind. When you rest in that stillness, the treasure trove of intelligence you actually are starts bubbling up and whispering. You'll start to get an inspired idea. You'll see number sequences. You'll see animals. You'll be in a store, and you'll overhear something, and you're like, “Ha, that's it.” All of a sudden, that shift from outward is my answer to tuning inward becomes your greatest lighthouse, your greatest guiding path to your highest life, honestly. [00:13:25] PF: Don't you think it’s interesting because we resist that? It's like I want the answers. I want the answers and the thing that will ultimately give us those answers. We intrinsically know that we can get the answers that way, but we push against it. It's like, “Nope, not going to sit down and be still with myself. I'm not going to listen to what's going on because I've got too much going on in my head.” So we resist it. [00:13:49] JT: We absolutely resist it until we can't. So that's what happened to me. There was a time where I actually had heard my truth. I heard the inner whispers. I heard I was to be like a matchmaker for the soul, helping people actually reunite with the part of themselves they've lost sight of. Most of my folks were over functioners. They were too much of a caretaker or a peacekeeper, lived for others, and they truly lost sight of themselves. They got to midlife and they're like, “Who am I? What made me come alive?” So avoidance numbing, external solutions, we'll all do them for a while. But I promise you, for all of the listeners, there will come a time where life is going to say there's a greater possibility for you. So I'm going to get a little noisy. I'm going to get a little uncomfortable. But ultimately, you long to meet you, and I'm going to help you remember the truth of who you are. [00:15:00] PF: That's so powerful. Can you talk about what the benefits are when we begin to practice stillness? Let's talk because there are so many. Your book is just such a magical guide to all the things that this can unlock. Let's talk about some of those benefits. [00:15:15] JT: So one of them is clarity. This is – It’s a noisy world. [00:15:20] PF: Yeah. And it’s getting noisier. [00:15:21] JT: It is. It’s exquisitely beautiful. There's so much beauty and love every day and a lot of heightened division, a lot of struggle. So there's a lot of and. I think one of the first benefits is clarity. No one else, and I don't care what their expertise is, I don't care who they are, will never know your unique truth. So one is discernment of personal truth. Secondly is access. We have this treasure trove. It is amazing jewels of the soul; kindness, compassion, love, infinite intelligence. Truly, this wisdom of all ages resides within us, and it connects us to – I would call it the field of all possibility. So it gives us an access that we cannot access in our normal 70,000 thoughts a day. Our mind is going to go to what's wrong. I got to fix it. I got to protect, right? That's our mind. Our soul says, “You are literally everything you seek. Rest, dear one, and I'll show you the way.” [00:16:34] PF: It’s beautiful. [00:16:35] JT: Alignment. When we pause, whether it's 30 seconds, 2 minutes, 15 minutes, whatever it is, we get to choose again. We can choose a higher quality thought. We can choose a higher quality action. Especially when we get triggered, most of it's automatic. 40 to 90 percent of what we do every day was repetition. It's behaviors that are habitual. So stillness helps us choose a better choice. Rest and renewal. I think the breath is a sanctuary. It's better than your best vacation. It is more peaceful than anywhere you've ever been. It can be a grand adventure. I mean, it is just this sanctuary of goodness, and we all need it. We're all actually trying too hard. If we'd allow just a little bit of faith and willingness, we can let go of the steering wheel. Or at least let go of their grip. [00:17:39] PF: We don't feel like we ever can. There are so many people who feel like, “If I take my hands off the wheel for a moment, this whole thing, and there's about 30 cars connected to it.” [00:17:48] JT: The house of cards. [00:17:49] PF: It’s going to crash. [00:17:51] JT: Oh, man. Do I have empathy of any one of you listening right now who is saying you don't understand. I can't do this, or it's all going to fall apart. I wish I could look you in the eyes and give you a giant hug and say, “I actually do understand. I don't understand your unique life circumstances. However, I really understand the reluctance and the fear of letting go because you're worried your life is going to crash.” So I totally understand that, and then I'm going to ask you to say, name five times because I bet she can. Name five times in your life where kind of the synchronicity happened. You met this person who opened up a door. You drove down the street, and you don't even remember stopping at the stop signs. Or you could’ve hit the car in front of you. By the grace of whatever you believe, the great mystery in life, the universe, you didn't hit that car. There have been so many times in our life. There's this brilliance that weaves together our life experiences. It's our training ground. It's our training ground to live our highest possibility, and it's a falsehood. I believed. I made myself sick in my 20s with ulcerative colitis. Because I was so perfectionistic, I thought he had to control everything. So it was a lot of lessons learned along the way that, actually, as powerful as I am, I am a co-creative agent, and there's also something else going on. There's a little something bigger than me going on here. Thank God, we never travel alone. [00:19:37] PF: Yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. What a powerful thing to recognize. You and I talked about this a little bit before we started recording that, that our age kind of factors into it. Because when we're younger, when we're in our youth, in our 20s, and even into our 30s, we can go on autopilot. There's so much that we can just like, “Here's our path. We know we're supposed to go to college, get these jobs, do this, start this family.” Then you hit this point where it's like, “Wait, I've been on this treadmill, and I didn't even mean to jump on this particular treadmill.” [00:20:11] JT: Yeah. You know what? Days turned into decades like in a blink of an eye. So I think for a lot of people in their 40s and beyond, there's this sense of urgency like, “Wow, I cannot believe how fast it's gone.” They want to make sure that they don't have regret, honestly, that they look back. I do a lot of hospice work from my – The last 30 years. I learned from my hospice patients, in particular, that they never wanted to look back and said, “Geez, I wish I would have worked a little more,” which they usually will say the moments that mattered most were the moments they connected with something meaningful for themselves, connected something meaningful, or shared a meaningful connection with someone else. It was truly the small things, the ordinary things that became extraordinary. [00:21:16] PF: When we start practicing stillness, intentionally practicing stillness, do we start finding that more? Do we start recognizing that? Is it already there, and we just recognize it more? What really happened? [00:21:28] JT: It's already there. It is in our truth. We really – Our pure essence is simply love, joy, peace, wisdom, compassion, those jewels of the soul. That's our true essence. The longer we were in earth school, I call this gig earth school, we got encumbered. We kind of got covered up. We were told by the outside world, “You are not enough. You don't dress right. You don't weigh the right thing. You don't have the right bank account. You don't have the right education. You don't have the right house.” If you turn on the news, it's some version of you are not enough. So our real work here in earth school is to uncover all of that gunk, all of those old messages, all of those old narratives. That's why it's so important to sink into the deeper truth and listen to what the highest self in you wants to whisper. [00:22:28] PF: I love that. So another thing that I want to make sure we touch on is you talk about stillness that can be active. So this is great news. There are some people who the idea of just sitting down and being still is actually kind of horrifying. [00:22:45] JT: Yes. We totally get that. [00:22:47] PF: So explain this. Tell us because you talk about it can be music, running, dancing, weightlifting. I mean, this is great news for a lot of people. [00:22:55] JT: So I'm the beauty of the and girl. There are quiet and there are active. So quiet might be with a breath, might be with a sunset, might be with a flickering candle, etc. Then there are more active pursuits if they get into a place of transcendence. What I mean by that is a lot of people will say when they go on a run, there's a certain point where their mind softens, and they just feel more free, right? In dance, there's a certain point. You're almost not listening to the music, and you're just moving, right? So the active pursuits are active pursuits that also allows for an emptying. So the hamster wheel is not spinning. You do you and commit to starting with 30 seconds to two minutes of just being with your breath. So let's do the beauty of the and. If you really want to be active in physical exercise, that's different than an active pursuit that softens the mind. Does that make sense? [00:23:59] PF: Oh, interesting. Yeah. [00:24:00] JT: Agree to learn to still again. See, it's a falsehood we've taught ourselves, just like I did. I can't do this. I can't sit still. I’ve got too much to do. It's not true. We've got to tell a new narrative. This might feel funky. It might feel a little weird. I might not even be still. I'm practicing stillness, and I'm not still. I'm a little antsy in my chair. My little head is racing away. That's okay. I promise you in time, if you just commit to learning to practice stillness with the breath and whatever way you want, in time, you will start to reclaim more of your natural true nature. [00:24:44] PF: What kind of changes do you see like the subtle? We talked about the benefits of it, but what kind of changes can people kind of look for that like, okay, this is adjusting me, and I'm thinking and living differently? [00:24:57] JT: I think that they'll come to what I call expanded solutions, kind of things that they had never thought of before. All of a sudden, they get an inspired idea that maybe takes them down a path they would have never have went to. So there's some inspired ideation that happens. There is a sense of empowerment. It's like, “Oh, my gosh. I always thought it was outside of me. And now, I recognize that it is within me.” There is – And this is a key. One of the things we're all searching for is what is sacred to us. What is precious to us? When we get to this stage in life, I have people ask the question. If you don't like the word sacred, use the word precious. What is sacred within me? Just rest with the answer. Either that day or that moment, you're going to start to notice maybe even something in a magazine or on a billboard or whatever. It’s like, “Wow. [inaudible 00:25:57]. I want to go play with that again.” When you start asking those questions, what’s sacred within me, around me, and beyond me, you are going to start to feel a spark of feeling a little more alive, more empowered, more of your natural true self. [00:26:18] PF: That is so wonderful. What do you hope that the people listening today who are hearing your voice, what do you want them to walk away from this with? [00:26:27] JT: Oh, my gosh. I want you to get so excited because there's somebody you have been longing your whole life to meet, and it's you. It's your true nature. It is that part of you that knows exactly where you're headed, what this year is about, what this life is about, how to surf through the seasons of life with more ease and more joy. So I'm excited for you to reconnect with the deeper truth of who you are. [00:27:02] PF: That's excellent. Jeanine, thank you, again, for sitting down with me today. You have so much to teach us. This was a wonderful experience, and I really appreciate your time today. [00:27:12] JT: Thank you. It's been a gift to be with you and gift to be with your listeners as well. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:23] PF: That was Jeanine Thompson, talking about how to discover stillness. If you'd like to learn more about Jeanine and her book, 911 From Your Soul, or follow her on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, we invite you to sign up for Jeanine’s free email course that will walk you through the steps to help you learn to listen and lean into the stillness. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Create Your Fun Habit With Mike Rucker  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 398 of Live Happy Now. It's a brand new year, and we're all thinking about creating new habits. So why not make yours a fun one? I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Mike Rucker, an esteemed organizational psychologist whose new book, The Fun Habit, looks at how the pursuit of joy and wonder can change your life. He's here to talk about how we can learn to prioritize fun, and how that can make us both happier and more productive. And as you'll learn, it can also improve the lives of those around us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:39] PF: Mike, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:43] MR: Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:44] PF: We've been talking about this for a while. We had to wait for your book to get out. Just talking before the show, there were so many delays because of COVID. So first of all, congratulations on release of The Fun Habit. [00:00:57] MR: Thank you so much. Yeah. It's been a long time coming, so I'm excited to be – [00:01:00] PF: Yeah, it has. It has. I feel like we've been talking about it for a couple years, at least. [00:01:04] MR: Yeah. The pub date’s gotten moved twice. Once, it was like a soft one. Then this last one, June to January, was a hard one. You know, like – [00:01:13] PF: But we’re here now. [00:01:15] MR: Yeah. That’s right. [00:01:16] PF: What a great way to – [00:01:16] MR: [inaudible 00:01:16] are, right? [00:01:17] PF: Yeah. What a way to kick off the year. It's so interesting because you have such a distinguished background, including being a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. So from the outside, we would expect that you'd have the whole happiness thing down. But as we learn in your book, that was not the case. So can you kick us off by talking about how you learned to recognize the distinction between happiness and having fun? [00:01:43] MR: Yeah. I'm still a believer in happiness, right? So I’ll explain that. But the backstory is I was a charter member. Positive psych could have been something prior to that organization coming together. Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow years before. 2009 is when that kind of came together. It was really Marty Cyclamen that kind of created the movement, him and Ed [inaudible 00:02:08]. I think authentic happiness had come out the year prior, and there was this need for it, right? The movement was doing something positive. Up until that point, clinical psychology was really just to treat deficits, and there are some amazing tools for folks that are living a life well to create things to make it better. So those tools were certainly fairly useful to me during that time, up until 2016. I still benefit from gratitude journaling, I still keep a mindfulness practice, and I still value happiness. What had gone awry was I had become overly concerned with my own happiness. So I'll explain that distinction, and that is really when something goes wrong. In my case, it was the death of my younger brother quite suddenly and just having to process that all at once. Then these two aren't related. But a couple months later, after years of being an endurance athlete, not professional or anything, but really just enjoying that and that way to mitigate, I've always had low level anxiety. I haven't needed medication. I've used fitness to mitigate anxiety. I identified as a runner, for sure, and I was told I had advanced osteoarthritis, probably due to an injury. It wasn't genetic. But it probably tore my labrum and just a 220-pound guy doing a couple Ironmans. [00:03:38] PF: Right. That'll start doing some [inaudible 00:03:39] there. [00:03:40] MR: Yeah. But because it happened at such a young age, I was told I shouldn't run again. So I lost my younger brother, found out that this identity I had as a runner was destroyed, and then this third thing happened. It wasn't really misfortune, but I just finished my doctor [inaudible 00:03:56] and graduated. My wife, who had supported me through those six years of academic work, we had two children during that process, so you can only imagine. [00:04:05] PF: Wow. That was home. [00:04:07] MR: Yeah, right. Again, over optimizing for a lot of stuff. She got an amazing opportunity, and this amazing opportunity manifested and wanted to have her back. But I was still going through a lot of stuff, and that essentially moved us away from our support network of family and friends. So I wanted to figure out how to will myself to be happy, and the more I was doing that paradoxically, I was becoming really unhappy. Because I am a researcher, I identified fairly quickly that something wrong was happening, and I was getting close to probably low-level clinical depression. But I understood that there was some sort of awareness that I was doing it to myself, and I don't know if I would call it serendipitous. It was just more happenstance and good timing. Emerging research was coming out that you're probably familiar with. A professor I liked a lot is Dr. Iris Mauss out of the University of California Berkeley. But her work has been replicated now that here in the Western world, folks like myself, how I found myself in 2016, that are kind of just always chasing happiness, have a pretty direct line to being pretty unhappy, paradoxically. So, wow, okay, so here's sort of empirical evidence to suggest what's happening to me. But if that's the case, what can I do? Because I really want to get back to being happy. Over time, it started to change my perception. Like, okay, life can suck sometimes, but I have more control over sort of shifting my life to the good side, rather than kind of wallowing in this act of rumination and introspection, which is essentially wasting energy, waiting for happiness to come, when I can kind of move in that direction and not necessarily chase it. Just live a joyful life that things that enrich me like pro-social behavior, hobbies that really connect me to things that I like, make me realize that it's not just about myself. Again, just understand that I do have some autonomy over my time. [00:06:09] PF: As adults, even though we all want to have fun, we don't make it a priority. So what in your research did you find is keeping us from doing that? [00:06:19] MR: A lot of it's rooted in the Puritan work ethic that's still pervasive here in the West. Quite literally, we think our self-worth comes from how we can contribute, right? What's unfortunate is there's been this kind of fast evolution from what Daniel Pink calls algorithmic work to heuristic work, whether – You could call that the knowledge economy, whatever you want. Unfortunately, in this new paradigm of work, we don't know where the goalposts are, right? Also, because of advances in technology, we're always kind of connected to our workplace and that – [00:06:54] PF: Yeah. Our workdays do not end, where like we just fall asleep. [00:06:57] MR: Yeah. I mean, from the moment we wake up till our head hits the pillow, there are a lot of people that are always on their phone. If they get a notification, they feel like it's a prime to have to answer it. Because of that, even when we think we're in a state of leisure or a state of our domestic duties like enjoying time with our wife or our kids, half the time, it's still an extension of work because if our phone buzzes, we pick it up. What we know is that, subconsciously, that essentially just becomes an extension of work. We've never created this transition ritual from work to leisure. So the rub there is that the same way that we champion people that lived in a state of sleep deprivation in the ‘90s, like – [00:07:44] PF: Oh, yeah. I remember that. [00:07:46] MR: Yeah. I fell victim to it. I never took down the post because I didn't want to be inauthentic. But if you search deep in my website, I think I was like, “Oh, Gary Vee is amazing.” And like, “Yeah.” [00:07:57] PF: If I can do four hours of sleep a week. [00:07:57] MR: That’s right. Yeah. So we now know that's asinine, right? Like the research is in. If you're not getting sleep, a year later, you're not even going to be able to work, right, because that is a direct line to all sorts of physiological and psychological ills. We're now finding that that is true. This is emerging research. So I like kind of being on the forefront of it. Emerging research is suggesting that when we're not engaged in leisure, so whatever that means, if we're really being honest, there's two to five hours a day that we could potentially recapture, depending on where we are in life. We're not doing that. What we're doing is essentially pacifying that time, a lot of times. If you don't believe me, just look at the health meter on your iPhone or your Android and see how much time you're on social media apps or some sort of mobile game. Ultimately, we know that those seem to be fun. But when we look back and ask ourselves, how did you spend that time? Tell me what you saw on social media between the hours of 4:00 and 6:00? Your phone says that you're on that. There will just be a shoulder shrug because that essentially displaced boredom or discomfort, or it wasn't something that really added to your betterment or attracted joy. [00:09:14] PF: How do you build in little pieces of fun? Because it's not like you have to take a vacation. It's not like you even need to take 30 minutes. You can do something in five minutes to add a little fun to your day, and that's going to really change your brain. Can you talk about how we work that in? [00:09:31] MR: You need to start by creating space, and then we're going to get into play model. So we'll discuss how to do that. But I think, first, you need to look at activities that aren't adding anything to your life, right? In the book, I call them the nothing, like this time that's just contributing. Because I think where positivity kind of got off the rails, now we term it toxic positivity, is that everything needs to be additive, right? So kind of falling back on my understanding of system design, it's just so hard for us to remove things, right? Because that's just – We inherently think that adding stuff on is always better. So we start by figuring out what are those moments that we can capture back. So a simple one could essentially just be your lunch hour, right? Like a lot of us will just kind of hang out. If we're working in a workspace, we'll just kind of hang out and let that hour pass. So I like this metal frame of like if you can't go on holiday, maybe you can take a whole hour, kind of playing into your point, right? [00:10:32] PF: That’s great. [00:10:33] MR: So can you schedule a time with a friend, if you're more of an introvert? Because fun doesn't have to be a high arousal activity. Like I love [inaudible 00:10:40] in this area, right? Like it could just be enjoying a book, but recapturing something so that you can enjoy yourself in a pleasant way, rather than just kind of trying to get through the next hour. So you're exactly right. Like, what are those opportunities, especially if you – A time for where you can add in elements. Now, I will be careful on that. I talked about this in the book that task switching is definitely another way to become unhappy, right? We know that if you're kind of just always moving around from task to task, even if they're pleasurable, the cognitive load of that can just zap your energy. We don't want to over optimize your life, but we do want to create the space so that you can exchange things that really aren't adding anything to your betterment, and figure out how you can have more joy in those spaces. [00:11:28] PF: Yeah. I think that could be a fun exercise in itself to kind of step back and say, “What is it that brings me fun? What are things that I want to do?” Because I think so many of us jump on this treadmill. If someone says, “What do you do for fun,” it’s deer in the headlights. They're like, “I don't know. I haven't had fun for a while.” So I think too there's that part, just that brainstorming of what brings me joy, what is fun for me. [00:11:55] MR: Yeah, exactly. You're spot on, and that's like another one of those interesting headwinds that I mentioned, like the resistance to that, because it does seem super silly, right? Like so many of us, I know how to have fun. Yeah, you know. But you need to remind yourself. [00:12:08] PF: But what do you do for it? Yeah. [00:12:10] MR: Yeah, that's right. So being premeditated and just making a simple list, one, it's fun if you approach the activity with curiosity, right? Like not to stay and like, “Ah, I can't believe I have to do this to have fun.” But like, “Hey, let me remind myself of what lights me up,” right? So that exercise of brainstorming can be fun in and of itself. Even if it's not fun, it's sort of a quick, necessary step because you want to remember. What are the things that really did bring you joy before you had all of this responsibility? Some might not suit you anymore. So you can get creative with this list and make it expansive. Then figure out what is it that you can incorporate and start figuring out, with the space that you created, what to do. [00:12:53] PF: One thing you mentioned in your book, and this can really help people out, it’s like what's your fun type. That’s great because you actually can go onto your website, and there's an assessment quiz, and it's very easy. It's not like you have to study for it. Then you figure out like, okay, this is your fun type. So maybe these are the kinds of things that you should look for when you're creating your little fun list. [00:13:15] MR: Yeah. I think that one was – I did graduate in sciences. I think everyone is all for fun types. It just kind of points to where you seem to really enjoy yourself. [00:13:25] PF: What’s your dominant? [00:13:26] MR: Yeah. But to your point, you could use kind of whimsical tools like that. Or you could identify, in the chapter on fun and friends, who are your fun friends and see if you can create more opportunities with them. Because, generally, if you've identified them as fun friends, they can be great mentors in getting you to have more fun, right? [00:13:46] PF: Absolutely. [00:13:46] MR: What are they doing? Because I do believe it becomes problematic if you're overly marketed things, or if you're mindlessly scrolling social media, and just kind of going, “Oh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that.” Because that's just incoming stimulus, right? It's not really an inward like, “Oh, I really identify with that.” Some people are mindful. Like if you're into crafting and you only follow crafters, like there's always the exceptions to the rule, right? But a lot of us are sort of – If we don't do it with our own interests at heart, we’re sort of like, “Oh, they're having so much fun.” Well, they are. But is that what you would find fun, like if you were really in their shoes? Do you really want to be on a yacht? Because the last time I remember, you would throw up every time you’re on a boat, right? So – [00:14:33] PF: That is a trap of social media because you're like, “Oh, that looks like so much fun.” But then, yes, when you break it down, it's like do you want to do that? It's like, “Oh, heck, no. No.” [00:14:40] MR: Well, and it’s curated, right? Like these are post photos of people that are trying to gain your attention. It's called the attention economy for a reason. But, ultimately, if you fall victim to that, and you think that that's real life, that can become problematic because, again, it goes back to what I fell victim to like, “Oh, my gosh. Happiness is here on Instagram, and I'm way back here in reality.” All of a sudden, that gap between normal reality and this fictional reality becomes like – You start to identify like, “Well, I'm not where I want to be,” and that can slowly become identifying as an unhappy person, which isn't necessarily true. It's the subjective reality you've created, and it's clear from the evidence that it's kind of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy. You now have these negative scripts that you're not even necessarily consciously aware of. They're leading you to believe that you're unhappy, when that's not necessarily true. [00:15:38] PF: That's why your play model is so fantastic. It's a great way to assess how we're spending our days. Can you talk about that? Explain what it is and how we can use it, so we can incorporate more fun into our lives. [00:15:50] MR: It’s essentially a sorting mechanism. So it helps you identify like things that really have gone off the rails, right? So play stands for pleasing, living, agonizing, and yielding. Pleasing activities are activities that are really easy to do, right? Like walking your dog, taking a nature walk, engaging in pro-social behavior with the friends that you enjoy. The living quadrant takes some energy, but ultimately leads to really engaging activities. So that can be mastering a new skill. That can be a vigorous hike, like if connecting to nature is your thing. That can be a spiritual practice because mindfulness becomes hard if you – So etc., etc. But things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do all the time because they do take some energy, people are now classifying that as type two fun. I think that's a playful term for it. [00:16:40] PF: That’s great. [00:16:42] MR: Agonizing are the things that we have to do. So, again, in the book, I make it clear that we can't engineer all of those out of our life. There are things that we need to do as humans that are hard. [00:16:52] PF: Like our taxes? [00:16:53] MR: Exactly, yeah. I mean, that's a common one, right? But a lot of times, when people look at like things that are really agonizing that happen week after week, there's generally ways to improve them. So looking at those critically and thinking what is it? If you get creative, things that kind of suck for you, you could potentially change them, either by changing the activity or outsourcing, if you're in a place that you could do that. The last one we've already kind of talked about, but it's the most nefarious, is the yielding, and that is things that don't bring us joy. But because they don't take much energy, we kind of do them mindlessly. Oftentimes, especially in this modern life we live, they're engineered to make us believe we’re enjoying our time, but they really don't. So social media is an obvious culprit. Again, I don't villainize watching TV. There are shows that I certainly like that are fun to watch because I'm watching them either with my kids or my partner. But what is a common routine for people is they’re so burnt out from work. They plop down on the couch and just turn on whatever is there. If I were to ask you the next week like, “Hey, I know you watched TV Wednesday from 7:00 to 9:00. What did you watch?” They’re like, “Ah, I don't know.” [00:18:06] PF: Then you're frustrated. When you're done watching television, you look back, and it's like, “I wasted this time. I could have done something.” Yet we haven't identified what we would have done. So we just keep doing. That's why we need our fun. We need to like figure out what we do for fun because we would have done something differently. [00:18:22] MR: That's exactly right, and that identifies another headwind. That is in those moments, it is hard for you to believe that you could go out and do something, right? So what I've seen, and this has to happen with multiple people that I've worked with, is that there's two things going on. One, for a lot of adults, for whatever reason, there's this notion that you can't do things on a school night. We've just been programmed to believe that we can't go out and have fun Monday through Thursday. That’s fundamentally not true, right? [00:18:52] PF: Right. [00:18:54] MR: Then the second headwind is, I'm just so tired. Like let's say dancing because, surprisingly, but in a fun way, like dancing seems to be one of those really fun activities that a clear majority like. I would say like 60 or 70 percent. We just don't do anymore, right? So, okay, try taking a dance class during that time, right? For the folks that really do want to reconnect with dancing. The first couple of weeks suck because you're still tired. You're still in that state like, “Oh, plopping down on the couch would be more comfortable.” Not necessarily more fun but it’s more comfortable. By the third week, it's such an invigorating activity that they realize, okay, now they're looking forward to it. And, two, they're a better person when they show up for work. Then three, oftentimes, once you get a taste for that, like, “Wait a second. I am a better version of myself. I'm also more productive,” then it turns into this upward spiral, and you start to figure out what are those boundaries. I was good at work. I'm going to stop now and go take time off the table for me. Now, it's not just a dance class. It’s a comedy club with a friend and it's – Again, all the things start to fall into place. It's just that initial nudge, like how can you break the inertia of this kind of habituated life that we lead. [00:20:13] PF: You bring up a really good point about our productivity at work. A lot of times, when we think of having fun, we don't think of it improving our productivity. If anything, we think, well, it's going to cut into my time, and I'm not going to be as productive. So how does it actually make us more productive? [00:20:30] MR: So the first is I always explain this with a simple math equation because I think it really highlights it, and it's easy for people to understand. When we're living the best version of our self – And this is clear, you can go to Google Scholar, and there's plenty of studies that back me up on this. When we're living with vitality and vigor, then we produce more, right? So think that if you're living a life where you're actually capitalizing on your leisure and feeling like you're fulfilled in all areas of your life, that you can produce two units of output per hour. So you're working a simple 40-hour work week, but you're – For each one of those, whatever you're doing, creating widgets, or making websites, or writing manuscripts, whatever it is, you're creating two units of that output. People that are working 60 hours a week, so they think they're working hard, but they're really just busy and aren't taking time to recharge their batteries, are working a lot longer. So that might feel good, but each one of those hours are only producing one unit of output. So the person in scenario A is producing 80 units of output and living a really fun life and just kind of happy with how everything is going. The person in scenario B is creating 60 units of output, thinks they're a hard worker, but isn't having fun at all, and is on a fast track to burnout. Again, that's not just an assertion. That's been backed up. So that's why I think, again, leisure and fun are going to – We're going to start to understand that making sure we protect that is as important as protecting sleep. Again, no one now is telling you not to sleep, right? Like even the most staunch supporters of healthy culture, right? [00:22:13] PF: So absolutely. [00:22:15] MR: The second is their amazing research coming out of social science, the person I really liked in this area, her name's Caitlin Woolley, is that when you make activities more fun at work, one, you just do more. Two, obviously, you enjoy going to work a lot more. So there's all sorts of creative ways to do that, and it can be as simple as if you really enjoy the people that you're with during that meeting that needs to take place, just taking it outside of the office, and doing it as a walking meeting to creating like gamified aspects of your work so that you enjoy it more. It's really going to be specific to how you engage in work, but there's all sorts of really neat ways to make your work more fun. So figuring out what that means to you, so you don't dread it that you're actually like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to do this activity because I've figured out a way.” Another great method is exploring it as an anthropologist like, “Wait, I've done this work the same way for five years. It’s so habituated and boring. That's probably why it's not fun. Could I do it in a totally different way?” Whatever that means to you. A lot of times, just that curiosity of approaching your work in a new fashion can be enough to make it fun. [00:23:26] PF: That's excellent. Mike, this book is so engaging. It gives us so many entry points to rediscovering fun in our lives. We're going to tell our listeners where they can find it, where they can find some of the great quizzes, so they can identify their fun type and learn more about themselves and having fun. But before we let you go tell us, why is it so important for us to get back to having fun and not put this off anymore? [00:23:49] MR: One, for our own wellbeing, right? There's a clear path to psychological and physiological benefits, especially as we start to age. Not only that, but we know from Bronnie Ware and others that when we index joyful memories throughout our life, we tend to really enjoy our later years because we have so much to look back on, and we generally have better social nets too, right? Because we've made friends through this amazing thing. We also know through social contagion theory that when we’re fun, we make everyone around us have more fun and live more joyful lives. So we're not just doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for the ones that we love. So even if we live this dutiful life, where I want to be selfless because that's not necessarily a poor trait, you could do it for the ones around you because when you're more joyful, you just spread that, right? So it's similar to kindness. Having fun is going to affect all those around you. Once you really master it as a method, you can start to contribute to the greater good as well. It’s not just about you, but it's really about the world at large and making the world a better place. [00:24:53] PF: I love that. That is a great place to wrap this up. Thank you so much for coming on the show, explaining it to us, and for writing such a wonderful, insightful, and necessary book. [00:25:05] MR: Thank you for those kind words, and thank you for having me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Mike Rucker, talking about his new book, The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. If you'd like to learn more about Mike and his book or follow him on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Choosing Your Word for the New Year With Matt Derrenbacher  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 397 of Live Happy Now. It's the very last episode of 2022, and that means it's a great time to talk about setting our intention for the New Year. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Matt Derrenbacher, a fifth year rabbinical student at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and a chaplain candidate for the US Air Force. Matt is here today to talk about how we can set an intention, not a resolution, for our New Year and how choosing one word to guide us through the year can serve as a touch point in the months to come. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PF: Matt, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] MD: Hey, thanks for having me. [00:00:46] PF: It is a pleasure. You know, I had an idea that I wanted to do something about choosing a word of the year because that's a practice I've had for several years now, and it's been very effective. So I turned to your wife, who is a frequent flyer on Live Happy Now, and she's our resident pet expert, Brittany Derrenbacher, and she said, unbeknownst to me, that this is something that you are very familiar with. I didn't know that choosing a word of the year, setting that intention, that that's actually a practice within the Jewish faith. [00:01:18] MD: Yeah, absolutely. Just a little bit of context, so there's also a Jewish New Year. There's a few Jewish New Years, but the big one is Rosh Hashanah, which is the start of the year. So Judaism is based on a lunar calendar, which means our dates kind of move around in the secular calendar because that one's based on the sun. So we just have the High Holy Days end of September, early October this year. So during that process, when we have the New Year, and then Yom Kippur, which is like the Day of Atonement, there's one word that is really central to the experience of the New Year, and that is the Hebrew word to teshuvah. It's generally translated as repentance. But that's a terrible translation, a terrible translation. [00:02:07] PF: Just for the record. [00:02:09] MD: Because it comes from the word shuv, which is to return. So the word that I've chosen for the past few years, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and through the whole period of Yom Kippur, and the High Holy Day period, is that to shuva, to return. It's really nice and sort of freeing to choose a word, rather than like set resolutions or all of these grand things because it's simple, right? So return, what can I do to return to myself, to return to what I want to be, to set new goals, return to my inner child, to all of these pathways of possibility? Because it's a word, we can keep returning. Yeah. We can return back to it. [00:03:00] PF: What is the purpose of choosing a word that you want to guide you through the New Year? [00:03:06] MD: So the purpose of choosing a word, rather than setting, I don't know, some grand sort of resolution is that a word can sort of serve as a mantra in a way, right? So we can continue to go back to this word, and it can look backwards. So when we return to ourselves, we're evaluating what has happened, we're returning, and then we're looking ahead to what we hope for the next few hours, few days, weeks, months, years, whatever it is. But it's freeing. It doesn't put us into a little box. It's an opportunity, rather than a constriction. [00:03:49] PF: Then unlike a resolution, you can't break it. Like you can't really fail at it the way you can with a resolution, and the failure rate on resolutions are like higher than new businesses. It's just like, man, what is it? Like six weeks into it that something like 80% or some astronomical number, these resolutions have already failed. It seems like with resolutions, once we've missed the boat, people tend to be like, “Oh, okay. I'll just give up and try again next year,” whereas having a word that you keep coming back to is completely different. Is that correct? [00:04:22] MD: Yeah, absolutely. Just a little more background, the Jewish understanding of time is very cyclical. Our lunar calendar is cyclical. We begin with the year, and then we re-begin with the beginning of the next year. We read the entire Torah, our sacred text, all the way through every single year, and we return back to the beginning. So the beginning of the cycle of Torah and the cycle of the New Year is this opportunity to engage in this act of creation because we as human beings have influence in our world. So we are actively creating the world that we're in and the world we want. So by choosing a word, we're able to continue to actively participate in that cycle, rather than sort of, well, I missed this resolution. So I’ll get it next year. It gives us something to keep evaluating and reevaluating and jumping back in. That’s important too because we may set some goal or intention for ourselves, and we may realize partway through, this isn't actually what I wanted, or this isn't actually how I want to interact with my world. So let me just recalibrate a little bit and just take another path. [00:05:37] PF: How does that help us stay motivated or reach a goal in a way? I kind of see it as if you have goals that you want to reach, and I'm not going to set a resolution because that's crazy. I can still set a goal, and then I use this word kind of as that motivation too. That is a practice or the mindset that I'm going to use to achieve what I want to achieve that year. [00:06:04] MD: Yeah, absolutely. Because a word serves more as an invitation. Let’s break it down a little. So if we think of a resolution, like here's a resolution that people across the world set every year, right? Like this year, I need to lose weight, and I need to be healthy. Okay, great. Now, instead of approaching it that way by just having a word as an invitation, we can sort of reframe that, right? So we can ask ourselves, instead of commanding ourselves, “I need to do this. I need to do this,” and putting that stress, that anxiety, and creating this sort of overwhelming weight that we're sort of carrying, until we just can't carry it anymore, and we chuck it off, and we say, “Hey. All right, that's it. I'm not doing that resolution this year.” It's an invitation, so we can say like, “Oh, imagine if this year, instead of all of the time I sat and binge-watched Netflix, imagine if I just broke that up a little bit and did maybe like 30 minutes of exercise and then two hours of Netflix?” It’s an invitation, right? So you're still interacting with that goal that you want to reach, but you're not sort of putting it in this little box that makes it seem almost overwhelming and impossible. [00:07:27] PF: I like it. I like seeing it that way, and it can help us reset throughout the year when we get off track. The very first time I did this practice of choosing a word, I was in Cincinnati, and I went to a church with a friend. They handed out these little white stones and a Sharpie, and they said, “You're going to choose your word and write on that stone.” So then the idea was like you can keep that stone in front of you, and it becomes a literal touchstone to what you want to accomplish or what you want your mindset to be. [00:07:58] MD: Yeah, absolutely. I love that because it takes this word and this intention, and it makes it a process of being instead of doing. [00:08:08] PF: Right, right. One thing that really surprised me was I didn't leave with a word on my stone that day. It's amazing when you sit down to do this. Now, let's see the – Okay, the other people in the church had a little advantage because they knew it was coming. I was a first time flyer at this service, and so I had no idea. They knew. I think they had been putting some thought into it. For myself, I really had to take it and think about, I mean, for a long time. So let's talk about that. How do you get down? When you want to choose your word that's going to guide you for a new year, what's kind of the process that someone can go through to think about what they want for that year? [00:08:48] MD: Yeah. That's a phenomenal question. I think that one of the best things we can do is just be intentional and honest with ourselves. So really thinking about and evaluating who we were as a person in the past year and how we feel about that, the things that we wish we could have done differently. Celebrate the things that we did do, that we're proud of, and then hold on to all of that, and sort of use that as the lens in which we view the New Year. [00:09:19] PF: That's really effective. [00:09:20] MD: Yeah, yeah. [00:09:22] PF: Because for myself, I know I will brainstorm. I still remember that very first stone, I wrote mindful. I decided like I'm going to be more mindful this year. [00:09:31] MD: Nice. [00:09:31] PF: And I've done different things since then in like a year of gratitude. What I've tried to do is every time I select a word, then I decide to put a practice around it. So not just saying I'm going to be more mindful, but it's like, okay, what am I going to do to put that into action? Because I think that's important too that you have that mindset, but then you also need to know what your action plan is that goes behind it. [00:09:57] MD: Absolutely, this idea of being mindful and stopping and listening. Once we sort of get that feeling, the beginning of that direction, then we can start the doing of creating ritual, of creating different ways to interact with the intention that we've set in a meaningful way that's renewing to us and helps us achieve some of those goals that we set based on the lens of this word that we've chosen. [00:10:25] PF: That's excellent. What's great about this too is there's like no right or wrong answer. I mean, you shouldn't use a word like annihilation or anything like that. But you can really – It’s like what word works for you and where you're at. I think something that surprised me is how easily those words – I already had my word for 2023 like in October, and it just struck me. I mean, it's not something I was going out like brainstorming what am I going to do. But it just dawned on me at one point like this is what I need to look for in 2023. This is what it needs to be about. So it does start becoming a habit where you incorporate that into your life, and you start figuring out ways to use it. In terms of reminding us what our word is, like I said that first year, I had it written on a white stone. I did that for a couple years after that, and then I've found other ways that I can symbolize it. Like when I did gratitude, there's a lot of things that say gratitude out there. It’s not hard to find it. So you can incorporate other visuals to remind you. What are some of the things that you could suggest to people so that it is, especially when they first start doing it, the first month or so, where it's like, “Oh, I got to remember to be mindful. I want to remember to incorporate this into my thinking today.” What are some ways that they can remind themselves? [00:11:46] MD: Yeah, absolutely. So in this way, the Jewish calendar is sort of an advantage because we have like the Jewish New Year in September, October. I mean, it moves around, depending on what cycle of the moon we're in in the year. But then we have a couple of months, and then we have the secular New Year. So there's a couple-of-month period where we can sort of we set an intention, start living out that intention, and then reevaluate, right? Because – [00:12:14] PF: But you get like a trial run is what you’re saying. [00:12:16] MD: Yeah, exactly, exactly. [00:12:18] PF: Like I need to see if this word really works for me. [00:12:23] MD: Yeah. But, no, I think that's perfect. So maybe in choosing a word, we also think about it as like a trial run because I know commitment can be scary for a lot of people, especially when it involves like personal self-growth and change and introspection. Looking at ourselves is one of the hardest things to do. So thinking of it like a trial run, okay, so my word is return or my word is listen, and I'm going to try to be more mindful and intentional about listening for the next month. How do I check that? Well, as I set my intention, I go to my calendar one month from today, just put in a little alert. How have I been listening? Then set the alert. Let it go. Because if we forget, if we sort of let it go, the alert pops up. We take that moment to recalibrate and say, “Hmm, I haven't really been listening. Why?” Then we can start over again, and maybe we need to choose a different word. But the idea is intentional growth within ourselves. So latching on to a new word or sort of reevaluating or thinking about why the word didn't work for us. Or if we get into a really nice groove, like we've doing a really good job of just stopping and listening and meditating. This is really working for me, cool. Then we're reenergized for the rest of the year or to our next checkpoint. [00:13:48] PF: I like that. I really, really like that. I love using technology as a tool to facilitate that because there's other things we can do. Some people might make a vision board out of it. Some people might journal. There's several things that we can do to kind of supplement it along the way and help build that up as an experience. [00:14:10] MD: Absolutely. So my word for this year, even though I sort of latched on to the idea of teshuvah, of returning to myself, I realized that the main thing that I wanted to focus on this year was listening. By setting that intention and then choosing that as the theme for my service, which was in December, there's a couple of months to really think about that and just exploring all of the incredible change and transformation that can come from just listening. [00:14:39] PF: That's powerful because we don't listen in. I mean, we have so much coming at us that it's hard to listen. It's hard to get still and explore a quiet place where we can listen. So that's very cool. What a great word. So how does it change our lives? Like what have you seen in your own life when you're able to focus on a word and give intention to a word, give intention to a year, and let that guide you throughout? [00:15:04] MD: I think the best thing about being able to choose a word and to just live very mindfully and intentionally is discovering all of the really small things that you'd miss otherwise. So in like this year, my word is listen. I'm going to go back to it. But really sitting and being intentional about not only how I'm feeling but how I feel sitting in this chair right now, sort of the light white noise of the fan that's going on right now. Our voices back and forth, the conversation and sort of the linguistic music that we're creating together, like a lot of these things we kind of just take for granted. Just taking one second to think about, all of the things that we take for granted going on around us can open up the entire world for us to just the sheer beauty of everything. [00:16:04] PF: That's fantastic. I love that. I love that. What a great way to just kind of sit and become more introspective, as we start the New Year. Thank you for sitting down, having this discussion. This was very insightful. [00:16:18] MD: Thanks. Thanks for having me. This is great. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:16:25] PF: That was Matt Derrenbacher, talking about setting intentions for the New Year. Speaking of that, I'm bringing in Casey Johnson, our Live Happy E-Commerce Marketing Manager. Casey, thanks for coming to the show. [00:16:36] CJ: Thanks for having me. It's always good to be back. [00:16:39] PF: It's always fun to have you on, and I want to talk to you because we have this New Year coming up. I don't know if you've heard of it, but I wanted to find out. Are you a resolutions gal or not? [00:16:50] CJ: I am, although I like to call them intention. So for me, intentions are like a constellation of purpose and values. So like resolutions and goals tend to be more focused on future outcomes, and intentions are more about how we want to show up in our lives in the present moment. So by shifting this mindset, it helps me channel my energy into what matters most. [00:17:16] PF: I like that. I like that a lot. That's a great approach to it because I’ve never been a resolutions person. I have been doing this, picking a word for the last at least five years. Maybe a little bit longer than that. That's what Matt and I talked about this week was choosing that word of the year. It's something you and I had kind of talked about a little bit, and I wondered what your thoughts were on that, if you were doing that or if you're like, “Paula, you're crazy,” or what are you thinking about that? [00:17:44] CJ: Well, to be honest, I haven't really done this before, but I am interested to try it out in the New Year. For me, by like choosing a word, it's kind of like a gentle reminder or like a mini affirmation. [00:17:55] PF: This will be great. We should check in at the end of the year, as we're looking toward 2024, and see how we did with it. [00:18:01] CJ: Yeah, let's do it. [00:18:02] PF: So what else? Like we have New Year starting before we wrap it up. What's going on in the Live Happy Store for the New Year? [00:18:09] CJ: Yeah. Right now, the Live Happy Store, we have the cutest journals, in my opinion. My favorite at the moment is the Stay Grateful Journal. Fun fact, research shows that by writing down your intentions or goals, it makes you 42% more likely to achieve them. [00:18:25] PF: That's very specific, Casey. [00:18:26] CJ: Very specific, 42%. [00:18:30] PF: I like that. That's very cool. We just send them to store.livehappy.com? [00:18:34] CJ: Yeah. Head over to store.livehappy.com to shop our happy journals and stationery. [00:18:39] PF: Awesome. That’s fantastic, Casey. Thank you for sitting down with me, and that is wall we have time for this week. So if you’d like to learn more about Matt or follow him on social media, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. Then don’t forget, while you’re there, to go to store.livehappy.com and check out the journals Casey was just talking about. Then we will meet you back here again next year for an all-new episode. So until then, this is Paula Felps and Casey Johnson, remind you to make everyday a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Journaling as a Therapy Practice With Lori Gottlieb  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 396 of Live Happy Now. If you're looking to make changes in your life, well, Maybe Yoxu Should Talk to Someone. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Lori Gottlieb, a psychotherapist, author, and podcast host, whose book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, became a runaway best seller and, as you're about to hear, is even being made into a television series. Now, Lori has developed a guided journal based on the immense feedback she received on her book. Just like therapy, this journal walks users through the transformation process one weekly session at a time. She's here to tell us how the book and journal came about and what she hopes to see happen as a result. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:47] PF: Lori, thank you so much for being on Live Happy Now. [00:00:50] LG: Oh, well, thank you so much for having me. [00:00:52] PF: It's such an honor. You are doing so many wonderful things, and I'm super excited about this interview. Obviously, we're here to talk about your journal, which is based on your book, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. So before we jump into the journal, let's make sure we talk about that original book, the OG that started this whole movement. [00:01:11] LG: Yeah. So Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is really an interesting book because it follows the lives of four of my patients, as I help them through their struggles as their therapist. Then there's a fifth patient in the book, and that is me, as I go through my own struggle at midlife, and I go to seek therapy with a therapist. So it's kind of looking at how we get through the difficulties and the challenges in our lives from both sides of the couch, as they say. But really, it's not so much about therapy, it's about the human condition, and it's about the universal challenges that we all go through. But it's also a very funny book, and there's a lot of humor in it because being human is sometimes ridiculous and funny, and all of that is in there. [00:01:58] PF: I think that's what's so important to know is it doesn't read like a therapy book. It’s a storybook. It's the story of humanity, and it's incredibly well written and so thoughtful and engaging. So people don't need to feel intimidated by this idea of eavesdropping on therapy. [00:02:17] LG: Right, right. It's kind of like what you don't get on social media. On social media, we get the curated version of people's lives. We get the highlight reels. What you get in this book is you get the things that everybody wants to be talking about, but they don't know how to bring up those topics or how to start talking about them. [00:02:35] PF: How did you choose who you would focus on because, obviously, you've seen a few patients in your time? How did you think like this is really what embodies what someone needs to learn and grow from? [00:02:47] LG: Well, what's interesting is that I think that every single person that I see in therapy, even if they come in with something that seems specific, is really universal. You find those commonalities. I feel like we're all more the same than we are different. Even at the beginning of the book, I say my greatest credential is that I'm a card carrying member of the human race. I know what it's like to be a person in the world. So it was hard to choose which stories to include because there were so many that I wanted to. But I wanted to choose people who seemed very different from one another on the surface, meaning you would say, “Oh, I don't relate to that person at all,” or, “I really relate to that person.” By the end, you say, “I see myself reflected in every single one of these people.” I think that that helps us out in the world when we feel like, “Oh, I don't know if I'm going to have anything in common with that person.” After reading this book, I think you see, “Oh, I'm going to find my shared humanity in pretty much everyone I meet.” [00:03:41] PF: Yeah. That's a beautiful way to look at it. Did you have any reluctance at all to share your own self and your own journey? I mean, that's really vulnerable. What was your thought process going into that? [00:03:52] LG: Well, absolutely. In fact, it's really interesting because – And I write about this in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. I was supposed to be writing a book about happiness, and the happiness book was making me depressed. I could not miss the irony in that, that I was trying to write a book about happiness, but it was making me miserable. It was very clinical. It was about all of these studies. I feel like as a therapist, what you see over time, the more people you see, is that happiness as the end goal is kind of a recipe for disaster. We all want to be happy. But happiness by finding connection and meaning, that's what we want. That's where we find our happiness. I decided I wanted to bring people into the therapy room because I feel like that is the key to what is going to help us find meaning and purpose and connection in life. I'm very privileged because I get to have these conversations with people. Most people never get to have these kinds of real, intimate, deep conversations with people in the numbers that I get to. So I feel like I get to see humanity from a very different perspective that I think a lot of us would benefit from. Originally, when I said I don't want to do the happiness book, I want to just bring people into the therapy room and let them be a fly on the wall, everyone said, “Oh, no one's going to read that.” The publishers said, “No one's going to read that book.” So I thought, well, that's okay because for the three people who read it, it will really change their lives. So I was really open about my part of the story because I thought, well, no one's going to read this. No one I know is going to read this. So it's okay. I don't care. It's not going to be embarrassing for me. Then, of course, now it's sold almost two million copies, and lots of people have read it. I'm glad that I didn't know how many people would read it because I think I would have had the instinct to kind of edit myself and kind of make myself look a little bit better, a little bit cleaner, a little bit more together. I just presented myself really authentically, and I think that's why so many people have read it because they relate to the authenticity. [00:05:49] PF: Yeah. I was going to ask if you thought that that was one of the reasons that it resonated so well is just because it is so honest. Like you said, it's not a Kardashian selfie. It's just a real photo of us as people. [00:06:02] LG: Right. It's really a snapshot of what we all go through at different times in our lives. I think it's about the triumphs as much as it is about the struggles. I think you root for every single person in the book because you're seeing yourself reflected in that you've either had that experience or you know someone who's had that experience. I think that one thing we've learned, especially through COVID, is just how important connection is, how important it is to feel like we are seen, heard, understood. I think that this book does that for so many people. [00:06:33] PF: Very well, very well. So you say you didn't expect it to take off. When it started taking off, what were you thinking? Obviously, this was a surprise, and that interests me that you said that because as authors, people, we go in thinking, “I'm going to sell a million copies.” They've got the sticky notes all over, like the affirmations, like, “We're going to do this,” and you're like totally the opposite, like, “That's all right.” So when it started taking off, what were you thinking? [00:07:00] LG: It was interesting because so many people wrote to me and told their personal stories. So many people were sharing things with me. All over social media, everyone was recommending it to everybody else, and people were talking about just how funny it is too. I think that we don't see the humor in our lives enough. That, of course, there are things that are painful and difficult and challenging. But I think that it helps us also to see the joy, and I think that that was part of it. That I was really glad that people could see the ways in which it showed the full spectrum of our lives. I think, especially as women, we don't focus a lot on our joy. We don't focus a lot on our desires. We don't focus on what we want, and we don't really get to say all the things that maybe we think we shouldn't be saying, and that all happens in this book. I think that, vicariously, a lot of people really enjoyed that and then maybe started doing that in their own lives. [00:07:57] PF: Yeah, yeah. Now, I understand that you’re talking about making a TV series about this. [00:08:01] LG: Yes, yes. [00:08:02] PF: How does that work? [00:08:04] LG: Well, I'm very excited about that because I think on TV and in movies, therapists have always been portrayed as either the brick wall who doesn't say anything, right? Nobody wants to go and talk to a brick wall. Or they've been portrayed as sort of the hot mess, the person who just doesn't have anything. They're breaking rules. They're being unethical. Their lives are falling apart. They're addicted to things. Whatever it is, they're really, really struggling. I'm just portraying a normal person who's going through normal stuff, and I think that's really refreshing that your therapist is just a human being. They're just like you. They're not a hot mess, and they're not this person who has everything figured out. They're just a person who is trained to help you through what you're going through. [00:08:48] PF: That's excellent. Well, so what was your inspiration then for creating a journal? I know that you created a workbook, and I'd like to talk about the difference between the workbook and the journal. But then what was it that made you decide like, “Hey, let's get this journal involved too.”? [00:09:02] LG: Right. The journal, it was actually created by popular demand, in the sense that everybody who read the books so many times, people would say, “I highlighted. I underlined. I have quotes from the book pinned on my bathroom mirror, on my desk, all those things.” I would love a place where I could kind of, in a guided way, focus on many of the themes and many of the things that resonated with me. That would be so helpful for me to have that in one place, and if there could be some structure to it. That's exactly what I did in the journal. I structured it like therapy sessions. So you go to therapy. We always say that insight is the booby prize of therapy, that you can have all the insight in the world. But if you don't make changes out in the world, the insight is useless. So someone might say to me, “Oh, I understand why I got into that fight with my spouse the other day, right?” I'll say, “Great. Did you do something different?” They'll say, “No, but I understood why.” I'll say, “Okay, that's a good first step. But now, you need to do something different.” I think what I want to do with the journal is I want to structure it like therapy, where you come in. You're thinking about something. You're given a prompt every week. Like what was kind of the moment that made you think about something differently? Then you have seven days. They have the days in between to kind of noodle on it, to kind of think about it, and every day to kind of expand upon that. What is the change? How do you think about it differently? What is this going to do moving forward to the next session? When I do it different ways, there are prompts. There are kindness check ins because especially as women, we can be incredibly self-critical and unkind to ourselves. There's a weekly wrap up. There's coloring pages because sometimes we think in visual images, as opposed to written words. What I like about a journal is that you get to see your progress. So a lot of times, in therapy, people will say, “I don't know that anything's changed in the last three months.” I know it has because I take notes after people’s sessions. But I have to remind them of that. When you have a journal, you can look back and say, “Look at where I was five months ago, and look at where I am now. Or look at this thing that was so difficult for me to do five months ago. And now, I'm getting better at setting that boundary. Now, I'm getting better at saying no. Now, I'm getting better at speaking up at the time, as opposed to waiting three weeks and then being resentful and exploding, right?” So these are the things. Or now, I understand more about the relationship with my child or the relationship with my parent that I didn't understand back then. So I think having a written record is really helpful for us to be able to reference. [00:11:40] PF: Yeah. The prompts are really good too. Can you talk a little bit about those, and what kind of thought process went into the order in which they're presented? [00:11:49] LG: The order was so important because I wanted each prompt to build on the one from before. So every week is very intentional in terms of the order. That's the structure that I wanted to give people. It's like here's the theme. Let's build on that theme. This will help be the building block to this next thing that we're going to explore the next week. It's very much structured with absolute intention. It took so long. I thought, “Oh, I know, all of the different prompts and quotes that everybody's responded to that have resonated most strongly. This isn't going to be so hard to put this together for people.” It was really hard because I gave so much thought to what is the exact order that this should be in to give people the experience that they're asking for. [00:12:33] PF: It is so well done, and it walks you through this process. The great thing is it's not dated, so they can jump in at any time and start doing this. [00:12:42] LG: Yes, yes. You can go at your own pace. You can come in any month that you want to come in. You can write as much or as little as you want. But I think the thing about journaling, and the reason that a lot of people feel like, “Oh, I'd really like to do that. But it might be too much for me to do,” is because they don't understand that it literally can be five minutes a day. That's it. So some people like to journal in the morning to kind of clear their heads before the day, and they find it really helpful because you wake up, and you have all these things on your mind. So if you just sit there for five minutes quietly, have your coffee, have your tea, just sit quietly for five minutes, and do the prompt, that's a great way to start the day. Other people like to do it right before they go to bed because they've got all the thoughts from the day. When you put your head on the pillow, you want to kind of release that. So a lot of people release it into the journal, and then they put their head on the pillow, and then they sleep well. [00:13:35] PF: As a therapist, as a practitioner, what kind of changes do you see in people when they start being intentional about their journaling and really start just putting their feelings down on the page? [00:13:47] LG: Well, one thing is they stop avoiding things. So we say avoidance as a way of coping without having to cope. [00:13:54] PF: I like that. [00:13:57] LG: I think when you actually write something down, it becomes real. Once it becomes real, you can deal with it. If you deny that something is happening like, “Yeah, maybe I'm sad, or maybe I'm anxious, or maybe I'm having trouble in this relationship, or maybe I'm drinking too much,” or whatever the thing is, you don't really have to deal with it, and it doesn't get better. It just keeps getting worse, and so nothing will change. If you want to make change, and there's a chapter in Maybe You Should Talk to Someone called How Humans Change, it goes through stages. One of the stages is that you have to acknowledge that the thing exists. So writing it down helps you in a non-scary way. I think sometimes, we're so afraid to just acknowledge that maybe this is a problem. Well, write it down, and it's not so scary. You see it on the page. You're like, “Okay, there it is. That's okay. That feels better. Now, it's out there. Now, I don't have to just sit with it in my body, where I feel it, and I just feel the anxiety all the time.” One thing is you avoid avoidance. The other thing, when you journal, is that you clarify your thoughts. So, often when the thoughts are just spinning around in our heads, we can't really make progress with them because they're just coming at us from all directions. There's no organization to them. So when you write it down, you clarify, oh, this is how I feel about that. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. So you start writing about it. By the end of the week, you're pretty clear. Oh. Now, I understand where I stand on that. Now, I know where I need to go with that. [00:15:28] PF: What I like about your journal is – Obviously, so many different kinds of journals, and some of them are just – There might be a writing prompt, and you just kind of go for pages. Or there's no guidance at all. It's just whatever you would like it to be. What I love about yours is the way that it does kind of bring it back, closes the session, and gives you something to think about, and then guides you into the next week. So how is this book in particular helpful for someone who say they don't want to seek therapy? They don't want a therapist. Talk about how this can really help maybe move them along in their process. [00:16:01] LG: Yeah. So one of the things that I tried to do with everything I put out there is give people the experience of healing, self-reflection, living better. So it really doesn't have to do so much with therapy. It's really about sometimes we are holding so much inside and just to have the outlet of, oh, there I am. I found myself on the page. I think, especially as women, and again, this is a generalization, but we have so much responsibility in terms of taking care of other people that sometimes we forget to take care of ourselves. I think the journal is a concrete way that you can take care of yourself. You can say, “Oh, wow. All this stuff has been – I've been holding it all inside, and this is a place for me to just spend a little time with myself, understand myself better, see what I need, see what I want and relax.” It can be really relaxing. Just pen to paper can be so relaxing. The fact that it's private, that it's just for you, is another thing. We don't have a lot of things that are just for us. Things are moving so quickly in the world. We have so much to do every day. This is a space that is just for you. [00:17:12] PF: So people don't need to have the book to go through the journal. That's really important too. [00:17:16] LG: They don't. No, they don't. It's a standalone. So if you've read the book, you'll recognize a lot of the prompts. But if you have not read the book, and you just want to start the journal, it's the same experience of just go right in there. The prompts will stand alone. [00:17:32] PF: Terrific. How is it different from the workbook because you also have a workbook that goes with it? Can you talk about that? [00:17:36] LG: I do. Yes. So the workbook, as the name implies, is actually a lot of work. [00:17:43] PF: So if you're lazy, if you're feeling lazy, don't get the workbook. [00:17:47] LG: The thing about the workbook, so I gave a TED talk, which is about how we're all unreliable narrators and how we walk around with these faulty narratives and how changing our stories can actually change our lives. We walk around with these stories like, “I'm unlovable, or I can't trust anyone, or nothing will ever work out for me, or nobody understands me,” or whatever our story is. These are old stories. These are stories that someone else told us about ourselves that are just not true. But we did not understand that. Now, here we are as adults, but we're still thinking that we don't believe those stories. Yet we do because we act them out in our relationships all the time. We act them out in terms of what we think we can have, what kind of life we can have, what kind of relationships we have, how we get along with people, professionally, what we can do. So the workbook takes you through the process of looking at the stories that you carry around and then editing those stories so that they're accurate, and then helping you to take action based on what you now know. It's great work. It's deep work. I'm getting so much good feedback about that. This is, again, for people. Maybe you don't have access to therapy. Maybe you don't have an interest in it. This is exactly what we would be doing in therapy. But again, you don't have to be interested in therapy. It's more about are you interested in kind of editing those stories that you're carrying around that maybe are keeping you stuck and holding you back. The workbook is a very in-depth structured way of going through that process. [00:19:22] PF: Excellent. I think it's so interesting, the way that you have unwittingly built this empire around your book, when you really thought nobody was even going to pay attention to it. What does it feel like now when you sit and you look at what all you've created, and there's more to come? How does that strike you? How does that land with you? [00:19:43] LG: Well, I think it's exactly why I wanted to write Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. I had a feeling that this is what people were really craving, especially in this world of social media, where people are not really connecting in those ways. People will post on social media something like, “I'm being really vulnerable here, and I I'm going to share this.” But it's with a lot of strangers and not face-to-face with someone that you're actually in a real life relationship with, right? So it's different from sitting next to somebody and saying, “I'm going to talk to you about this thing that feels very vulnerable to me.” Or I'm not really talking about something between us that's an issue in our relationship. How do we talk about that? I feel like people really want that and crave that, and that's why I also put out this podcast called Dear Therapist, where I have a fellow therapist – [00:20:32] PF: We got to talk about this. Yes. [00:20:34] LG: It's kind of like people, when they read, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, said, “I wish I could hear the sessions.” Guy and I, we decided that we would do sessions with people. We do these live sessions with people. What we do, though, is we want to show people – I think there's this big misconception about therapy that you go to therapy, you talk about your childhood for years, and you never leave. That's not what therapy is. It’s very active. [00:20:55] PF: Like a hostage crisis. [00:20:57] LG: Right? It's very active. It's very much about like, yes, we want to know how the past is keeping you stuck in the present or causing difficulty in the present. But then we want to focus on the present and the future for you. So we want to show people that even in one session, people can make really important changes in their life. So what we do is, at the end of the session, we give them advice because we both have advice columns. I have an advice column called Dear Therapist in the Atlantic. He has an advice column for Ted called Dear Guy. So we come together, and we do a session as therapists. Then at the end, we give them homework, and they have one week to complete the homework. Then they come back, and you hear it all in one episode. But they come back after one week, and they tell us how the advice went. Did they do the homework and what happened? Then we also follow up with them a year later so that you can hear, wow, how did their lives change. Not only in that week because there's such significant change in one week, which is always great to see. But then what's happened a year later? I think that so many people relate to that because so many people really do want to hear the stories because they see themselves in them, and they get really good advice for their own lives as well. [00:22:08] PF: Yeah. I think everyone's looking for that. We're looking for more direction. People are in a challenging spot in a post-COVID world and so much uncertainty, a lot of fear, a lot of trauma that's happened. So I think this is so very timely for us to be able to explore that. As we go into the New Year, it's a time when people are starting to think. We just tend to think more it’s a new beginning, and we tend to think differently. So why is that a great time to really sit down and start journaling? Two-part question, then how do you kind of set an intention for that year to know what direction to go with it? [00:22:43] LG: I think that when people make New Year's resolutions, the reason that they don't work, generally, is that people think that you just make a decision like Nike. Just do it. Then that's your decision, and that's going to last. It doesn't last because that's not how change works. There's different stages to change. There's pre-contemplation, where you don't even know that you're thinking about making a change. There's contemplation where you're contemplating it, but you're not really ready to do anything about it. There's preparation where you're preparing. You're like, “What do I need to do to make this change? Is it looking for a new job? Is it doing something different in my relationship? Is it I'm going to be healthier, and this is what I'm going to do?” Then there's action where you're actually taking the action to make the change, and people think that's where change ends. It is not. The next phase is the most important, which is maintenance. How do you maintain the change? The big misconception about maintenance is that it's not as if you slip back, and then you failed in making the change. Built into maintenance is that it's kind of like Chutes and Ladders. Remember that boring game? So it's like you're going to slip back because if change is unfamiliar, change is hard because we have to do something that is not familiar. The reason that people stay in like relationships too long or jobs too long or a bad situation too long is because it's familiar to us. Even if we're miserable, at least we know it. So when you make a change, you have to do something different. In maintenance, you're going to slip back to the familiar thing, and that's okay. We need to have self-compassion. We need to be kind to ourselves. Just because you have self-compassion doesn't mean that you're not accountable. So self-compassion comes with accountability. I always say to people, think of it like this. If your child comes home from school and says, “I did really badly on this test,” are you going to scream at them? Or are you going to say, “Let's look at what happened, and so that you can do something different next time. Did you not understand the material? Do you need to talk to the teacher? Do you need to study harder? Do you need to study more in advance? Is there a different way of studying? What can you do?” Then the kid will probably do better on the next test. If you just scream at them, they may or may not do better on the next test, but they're really not learning anything, and it's not going to last. So we need to be kind to ourselves and know that when you have compassion for yourself, you hold yourself accountable. They're not two mutually exclusive things. When you want to start a journal, a lot of people think, “Oh, I'm scared to start a journal because I may not keep up with it. I might not do it every day. I don't know if I have the self-discipline.” You can do it any way you want. It’s up to you how you do it and what you're going to get out of it. The great thing about starting the journal is know that you don't have to be hard on yourself. Use it as you want to use it. Try to find a consistent time because I think that helps people. Again, like some people like doing it in the morning. Some people like doing it at night. Just see how it helps you. The more that it helps you, the more you're going to want to do it. Main thing is, and these are built into the journal, again, there are these like self-compassion, check-ins and kindness check-ins, I think it will help you to be kinder to yourself overall. It’s not so much about whether you write every day because that's beside the point. It's about how you use the journal in a way that works for you. [00:25:56] PF: Well, excellent, Lori. I thank you so much for being on the show. I know this journal is going to be as life-changing for those who use it as the book has been, and I just really look forward to seeing what else you're going to come up with because I know that you've got so much more new as well. [00:26:13] LG: Oh, well. Thanks so much for the conversation. I really enjoyed it. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:20] PF: That was psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb, talking about her book and journal, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. If you'd like to learn more about Lori and her books, listen to her TED Talk, check out her podcast, or follow her on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Exploring the Emotion Wonderland With Nadine Levitt  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 394 of Live Happy Now. Navigating our emotions can be a challenge, and that's especially true for children. But this week's guest has turned even our most complicated emotions into a magical adventure. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm joined by Nadine Levitt, an author, educator, music artist, lawyer, and parent who wanted to change the way children learn about their emotions. So she created Emotion Wonderland, a magical place where all our emotions coexist, and we get to meet them, befriend them, and better understand them. This week, Nadine explains how she created the Emotion Wonderland, what she hopes children and parents will get from it, and talks about how approaching our emotions differently can change the way we process our feelings. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Nadine, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:57] NL: Thank you so much for having me. It's awesome to be here, so thank you. [00:01:00] PF: You have done something so incredible with your creation of Emotion Wonderland. So I guess can we start by talking a little bit about your background and how that led you into the world of emotional learning? You have interesting background. [00:01:16] NL: That's true. First of all, thank you for saying that. So my background, I'm in education. I've been in education for about 10 years, but I definitely did not come through to education in a very traditional trajectory. I wanted to be a singer, and my dad really made me get a law degree. He said, “Please, please, please. No matter what you do, just get something behind you.” To make money as an opera singer, which is what I love to do, you really have to be in that top one percent, and he clearly did not believe that I would make it there. So he was just trying to look out for me. But I then got sucked into sort of earning money and in the corporate world as a lawyer. For six years or so, I literally argued about cheese. I argued whether Camembert should be called Camembert or whether it was a geographical indication, like champagne or port. One day, I woke up and I was like, “Gosh, I am not saving the world. Like this is not what I had in mind for myself,” and I ended up sort of taking up other opportunities, and there were other adventures sort of waiting for me. I came to America, and I did go back to law for a little bit in order to get my green card. Then I quit that once I could and started singing again. I soon became a mum, and I think this is where everything sort of started focusing on education. Because now, I had these little beings, whom I wanted to help guide through that world of education and that world. I wanted to set them up to be successful little beings, and I really noticed how emotions played into people's success, whether it's academic success, professional success, or relationship success, confidence. All of these things really played into how nice a relationship you have with your emotions. How healthy is that relationship? How respectful is it? I have two kids. One of whom has really big emotions, a highly sensitive child. It was really because of my kids that I made My Mama Says, and I turned it into a whole suite of tools. I had a curriculum around it that was in schools for social and emotional learning. The reason that I made it, let me just backtrack a little bit, because I would have gladly taken other programs. But what I realized was that I didn't love the approach for most of the programs. So the programs were either really complicated to understand or just not empowering at all. One of the big problems that I had was that every program I saw would teach kids about emotions one at a time. So this is happy. This is sad. There’s a frown, right? It just was this caricature of what emotions really are, and it made no sense to me because, I mean, I can't name a single time when I felt one emotion alone. [00:04:09] PF: Right. That’s so insightful for you to pick up on that. I love that component of it. [00:04:15] NL: Yeah. It’s just like, well, if we're going to teach kids about how to identify their emotions and how to maybe start thinking about what those emotions are trying to tell us, then we've got to start looking past that loudest emotion and start thinking about it as more holistic. So there's many emotions, and together they bring a message for us. So we have to listen to all of the messages. That's why we created – First of all, it was My Mama Says, and then Emotion Wonderland is sort of the latest thing that we've created, our latest baby, so to speak. This is sort of a course, and there’s a quiz to start with, which is a really easy, free, and simple, fun way to start talking to kids about how they're feeling and start thinking about emotions coming in groups, not just one at a time. [00:05:04] PF: Let me ask you because Emotion Wonderland is a stunning place to visit. It is all these different characters. Can you talk about that? Like how did you come up with the idea of this is how to present them? Because there's several ways you could have gone to show these different emotions. Talk about the approach that you took and kind of how you came up with that. [00:05:26] NL: Each emotion is reflected as an animal of some kind, and the reason that I did that is it's much easier to think of a village of emotions that are inside of us all the time, kind of like Inside Out, except in Inside Out, they really have all of those emotions are controlling that little girl. I don't think that they control us, but they're inside us all the time. So it's much easier to objectively see a character and say, “Okay, the Sad Sullen Pup is visiting me right now.” Or, “The Goofy Goat is in town. He brought a whole lot of friends with him.” I did it really because it's just a little bit easier to talk about when it's not this color or this faceless sort of thing. I wanted it to reflect how they're friends, and there's many different – They pull different emotions with them, and so this concept that they could have a life of their own. We weren't tossing around whether we should make them not animals but just like little blobs type of thing. [00:06:28] PF: Little Minion type of things. [00:06:29] NL: Yeah, minions. But then we workshoped all of these curriculums with schools, and what we found was that the kids, they understood emotions easier with the animals and they – [00:06:40] PF: Oh, interesting. [00:06:41] NL: Yeah. Because they actually put those behaviors onto animals, and the other ones were a little bit harder to differentiate, if they're just a blob. It's harder to give it a personality and to really relate to it. [00:06:55] PF: So how many emotions do we have in total in the Emotion Wonderland? [00:06:59] NL: Well, obviously, we have thousands of emotions inside of us, so – [00:07:02] PF: You didn't hit them all. That’s the sequel, right? [00:07:03] NL: No. I definitely didn’t hit them all. So in our coloring book, for example, we actually give lots of room for kids to create their own characters and say, “Who's in your village,” and think about ones that might not have been listed in the village. But we have 30. So there was some amazing work done by Brene Brown about how many emotions the average adult can reference. I think it was four total, happy, glad, sad. But if you say to people, “How are you doing,” and how often do you hear people say, “Good, good.”? [00:07:35] PF: That's the pat answer. Yeah. Or fine. [00:07:38] NL: Yeah, yeah. Or when you think about how do I feel right now. I love to ask this question on any presentations that I give. I say just check in with yourself for a minute and see how you're feeling right now. Usually, on average, people write down one or two emotions. So we really wanted to start saying, okay, what else is there? Now, if you've got those two loudest ones, what other emotions are there for you? What's nice about the visual, the 30, is that we've balanced them out between very, very challenging emotions to really easy emotions. I don't believe in bad or good emotions because they actually all have that purpose. Sometimes, there's similar purpose. So for example, happiness and grief actually have a similar purpose. So happiness tells us what we're connecting with, right? But sometimes, it's really hard to see exactly what we're connecting with because we're just so busy caught up in the dopamine hits and joy – [00:08:33] PF: Of course. [00:08:34] NL: When we feel grief, we've lost what we're connecting with. But the important piece there is understanding what exactly do you miss so much, and how can you maybe fill that void and lead a more connected life so that if we’re really purposeful about it, grief usually is easier for us to take that time to become reflective and really purposefully think about what it is that we connect with. [00:09:00] PF: Oh, that's so insightful. As you worked with these different characters, how did you determine what animal you would use? I mean, like your yoga deck is just absolutely incredible, how you really explain this emotion and then this pose that they can do and why they're doing it. So how did you come up with all of that? [00:09:18] NL: Well, for the yoga cards, specifically, I actually worked with a yoga master who's amazing, just to make sure that I was honoring also the yoga side to it, and I wasn't sort of saying the wrong thing. Exactly, exactly. But the philosophy is that all of these emotions are important for us, and so we have to honor all of them. One of the things that we hear parents saying a lot is don't be so angry or don't just start your day so frustrated or grouchy or whatever it is. But the reality is that if we just say, “I'm feeling really grouchy right now, and what else am I feeling? I feel like maybe a little misunderstood, or I feel like I'm maybe a little bit shy.” So there's like all these things, and you can start to piece it together. Before you know it, the person is not feeling grouchy anymore. They've honored it. So the idea, really, with the yoga deck and with all the characters was really to start thinking about creating spaces for kids to understand like where do they live inside your village. Where do you feel it? How can we honor it, and how can we create space for that emotion to exist? A lot of it, they relate very specifically. So frustration, that's actually a Kriya that releases frustration interestingly, so this twist. Some of them are very purposefully done that way. Others were more based on the character. Brave, for example, or Sad Sullen Pup. Like what would sadness look like as a body shape? What's nice about the yoga cards, though, is that they don't just exist as yoga cards. So some friends of mine who have young kids have shared this with me. I get this response a lot that parents have put the cards all over the room. Then they say to their two or three-year-old, “Where's the Angry Hippo?” They go find, and they jump on the Angry Hippo. It’s so exciting for me because you're creating that emotional literacy at such a young age, where they can start to also read it and see it and recognize it and talk about it and, again, honor it. [00:11:24] PF: How’s that going to change their growing up experience? Because we didn't talk about emotions growing up. We didn't – As you said, it was like are you happy, mad, or something in between. So how is that going to change things for them? [00:11:37] NL: Well, I hope, I think emotional intelligence is really awareness and then learning new skills and practicing them. I have been pushed. Somebody pushed back. A psychologist once pushed back on a podcast to me and said that they didn't believe that emotional intelligence is learnable. It's something that we're just born with. I just really disagree with that. Because at the end of the day, I think it really is just that awareness. It's understanding how things work and understanding how tools can be helpful in regulating them. When I say regulating, I don't mean control them. I mean, how do we listen to them? Then once they've delivered their message, they go away anyway. If we know how they work, and we know that there are certain tools that create more space around it, so we don't feel overwhelmed with all these big emotions, challenging emotions sort of getting in our faces, and I think things like breath work or things like listening to music and things like that, I think you do become more emotionally intelligence. I think you can recognize that in yourself quicker, and you can have a much healthier relationship with your emotions. So I'm hopeful that these will be kids that will not be scared to talk about emotions, that will be able to tap in for themselves and say, “How am I feeling right now,” and really, I think, just honor their emotions that they're feeling. [00:13:03] PF: I think what's interesting about the timing, I've been doing some writing about Gen Z and how they are the most aware of the need for mental health, that is a huge value for them. So I believe that's going to continue. Now, you're reaching some young people who are the Alpha generation, that post Gen Z, who are also growing up in an environment where mental health is talked about, where it's more accepted for you to explore that. So I think this timing is absolutely incredible. Because as they're growing up in this age, where they are supposed to talk about emotions, you have given them all these tools for learning about emotions. [00:13:41] NL: I agree with that. I think, interestingly, I just read a consumer report that said it was 84% of employees. They feel more valued and connected with their job if their bosses care about their mental health. It's a money thing. It's good for the economy. It's good for people. It's good for relationships, I think, if we start to think about the types of innovation that we can also unlock with people being more comfortable and having a more stable mental health based on their emotional regulation and so forth. Anxiety and fear stops so much innovation and stops so much development. I think if we can have a relationship where we're not scared of fear, like we don't let it stop us from doing things, we listen to fear, and we say, “Hmm, thanks for showing up. I like the exhilaration that you're providing right now, right? I like that dance. Let's dance, and thanks for making me more aware and alert. I will be careful.” But it doesn't mean I'm not going to get up on that stage and sing. It just means I'm going to be aware and alert, and thank you for being here. I think most people who, if you're an adrenaline junkie or if you're somebody who just loves the adrenaline rush of things, which is how I used to feel about performing, it really is more about that fear because you have that little bit of fear. So fear in small doses is wonderful. Fear, when you have it in large doses, it can be completely debilitating. I just think about what kind of a world could we have if people understood fear a little bit better. On the flip side, what about anger? [00:15:24] PF: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Put that in perspective. It can be a game changer. [00:15:28] NL: Right. How much anger are we seeing in the world today? We’re seeing a lot of conflict right now. But imagine if we could approach some of that by honoring it and saying no change in history of – As far as we know it, there has never been any real change created without anger. Think about that. [00:15:49] PF: It’s true. That is – You have to get riled up to want to change. [00:15:53] NL: Exactly. It takes effort. So I think when people understand that part and they also say, “Well, how can I use this anger in a positive way?” Or if you're encountering anger, think about why and what could that mean and how quickly it can be diffused by just giving them the space to actually be heard and say – I noticed it just with my toddler, and I work with toddlers, or when I work with my kids. My kids are no longer toddlers. They're now 10 and 9. But I remember, they'd be, “I’m so frustrated.” I'd be like, “Okay. I can see that. You're really frustrated. But tell me, what else are you feeling,” and how quickly it would deescalate. [00:16:35] PF: One thing that did strike me as I was looking at all the tools that you've created, and I want to talk about the specifics of them. But even though this is designed for children, parents will receive such a tremendous benefit. You've got the magnetic board, where you put your emotions. Casey, our marketing manager, and I were joking. It's like, “I need that in my office.” It’s like, “It's not for the kids. I'm doing that for me.” So it's something that everyone who works with it is really getting the benefit from. [00:17:03] NL: Absolutely. We've done a lot of workshops for kids. But, of course, the parents are always there. I've had so many parents afterwards say, “Oh, my gosh. I needed this. Like I absolutely learned something. This is great.” The magnet ball that you were just talking about is very cool, actually. So, Ella, my daughter, often says to me – We actually carry one on the car now, and when she's having big feelings, she'll say, “Mom, where's the magnet board? I need the magnet board.” I'm like, “Okay, okay.” But she likes having the visual aspect of it like, “If I've got this, what are some of the other options of other emotions that I'm feeling,” and she likes the prompt of it. Sometimes – [00:17:38] PF: Explain to us what the magnet board is and how that works. [00:17:41] NL: Yeah. We all 30 characters as magnets, and then it's in a sort of travel-sized magnet board sort of box. It’s got a pen in it as well, a whiteboard pen, so that you can draw on one side, and the other side is an actual village. So the idea really was that you could put up teachers or anyone else. Parents can say, “Okay. When you're feeling confident, what else are you feeling?” Then they could find the other emotions and put those on the other side. But what it's turned into is really cool prompt for story writing and thinking about and really just engaging with these emotions and thinking about who would be friends with who, where would they live in the village, and so on, so forth. But I think having a visual prompt that you can start to say, “Well, when I feel this, I often feel these other emotions too.” When you think about – So one thing we do in our house is this mindful minute, and it's literally – It takes a minute, and you say, “How are you feeling today,” and you pick out the emotions that you're feeling. A magnet board is great for that because you can just literally pick it up and put it up. It's helpful because it's not just the one. It's many emotions, and sometimes they look conflicting. You might be happy and sad. So you can talk about that. So it's a great prompt. [00:18:58] PF: That's terrific and what a wonderful way for children to let their parents know how they're feeling, without having to – They can’t always voice it or don't feel like voicing it, but just being able to put it up there. That's an incredible gift. [00:19:12] NL: It's definitely less confrontational than sort of sitting in front of your child and saying, “So tell me, how are you feeling?” [00:19:16] PF: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Tell me about the plushies. How'd you come up with those, and how do you see them being used? [00:19:24] NL: So we have the Angry Hippo, and we have the Sad Sullen Pup. The idea is that those tend to be pretty challenging emotions for kids. When some of the kids that we were working with were really, really overwhelmed with some of these big, big emotions, it's really helpful to hold something and feel like you're not alone, especially because it was also quite – They’re very cute. So not to be scared of anger, that it's got a really positive side to it. But it really is helpful for those tactile kids in particular to hold something, whether it's, “I'm so sad and I'm not alone and I love this little being,” to also practicing empathy, right? So my example here is I have a lot of kids who say, “Ah, it makes me so sad for the Sad Sullen Pup because it's always sad.” I'm like, “Yeah. It's nice to have that empathy, that you feel that way.” Then we think about what are some of the positive things about sadness. What are some positive things that sadness brings you? What are some of the messages that sadness brings you? So there's lots of different reasons for it, but it really works for those tactile kids in particular because it just – When you're feeling homesick or when you're going somewhere, just to take care of something, whether it's anger, feeling angry or sad. It really is helpful to be the caretaker of those emotions. [00:20:46] PF: That's fantastic too. I think about children who have lost a parent, lost a sibling, have gone through something very, very tough and traumatic and don't yet have the words for it, to be able to have Sad Sullen Pup and be able to share that sadness. I think that's such an amazing way to be able to approach it. [00:21:08] NL: Mm-hmm, absolutely. [00:21:10] PF: So what else do we have? We've got the magnet board. We've got the plushies. We've got a couple of books that we haven't talked about. Let's talk about the books that you have because those are very cute. [00:21:20] NL: Yeah. It started with the books, actually. So the first book is called My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Village, and that introduces the concept that inside us live all of these different emotions, and they don't control us, and we don't control them. But if we listen to them, because they're messengers, then they'll go away. But with all of these emotions inside of us, then it means we'll never be alone because we have all of these feelings. So we're connected to something, and we're getting signs from something. Even when we are physically alone, we're connected to our emotions. The second book is My Mama Says Inside Me Lives a Superhero. This is sort of the follow up, and it's the idea that there are sort of a cause and effect, right? We have consequences to the things that we say and the things that we do and the things that we don't say and do. The superpower that we have is that we can make people feel things with our words, actions, and inactions. So it's a very fun kind of story about a mom saying you have a superpower, and the kid guessing like, “Does it mean that I can fly? Does it mean [inaudible 00:22:26] the sky? Does it mean I can do this?” [00:22:29] PF: I love that. [00:22:29] NL: Yeah. So it's like really cute characters of a snail that has super speed and a llama that can throw up protective orbs. We have a gorilla that can freeze things. We have – I can’t think. I can't remember now. Opossum that brings things back to life, I think. It's a very cute story, and it's this concept that we're teaching kids that their words, actions, and even inactions that may seem frivolous to them and was sort of just a passing comment can really, really hurt or can really, really hold somebody up and help people. So a smile can turn someone's day around or asking someone to play when they feel – It’s all on rhyme. It’s a cute story. [00:23:12] PF: You also have online resources. So there's things online, like is a wonderful starting point for parents to start exploring. Can you tell us, where do you advise that they start? [00:23:22] NL: So there's two places. One is go to emotionwonderland.com, and it really is this joyful, colorful place. [00:23:29] PF: It’s an adorable – I want to live there. Animate me, so I can just go live there, okay? [00:23:34] NL: Exactly, exactly. So it's a great place to start because you can see the video sort of that introduces the philosophy behind the program. It’s a free quiz, so you can come back to it as many times as you want, and it's for kids to really start thinking about how are they feeling. It’s based on which socks would you pick, which face are you most drawn to right now. So it's a really quick, simple, and fun quiz. Then you get your results, and the results – These are the top three emotions that you might be feeling right now, and here are some of the friends that often come with this emotion. Here's the purpose behind these emotions. It just starts a lot of conversations. That's a great place to start for sure. We have a course that we are on emotional intelligence, which takes kids through an exploration of this is what you think emotions might – A certain emotion might look like, and it might be the emoji, right, a smiley face. It was like, “But this is what it really looks like.” Then there's a video of all the different versions of happiness or excitement or whatever it is. The reason that I say that is because when you think about if I feel happiness and also excitement and also joy or a little bit of fear because I'm about to ride a roller coaster, it looks so different to happiness when you're in love and not built up on a couch and just grateful for life and calm, about to watch your favorite show. Those are both happiness. Very different looking and feeling. So the course really takes kids through the nuance of that. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What are the stories that we tell ourselves with this emotion? Because there's all these thoughts that we start to tell ourselves, and that really goes into sort of the pattern recognition of our brain. So if you ever are expecting a call from a spouse or something, and suddenly you don't, you immediately go to, “Oh, gosh. I hope they haven't had a car crash. They haven't had this,” da, da, da. Those thoughts start spiraling, right? Well, that's the same for kids, so realizing that certain thoughts come. The stories that we tell ourselves with certain emotions, some of them are helpful. Some of them are less helpful. So having the tools to fact check them is really important. It’s a short little course. We just did it for four different emotions. We do talk about their friends and things and their purpose, the sort of a nice way to arm your kids with emotional intelligence skills. On the My Mama Says website, which is M-A-M-A, My Mama Says, we also have a lot of free resources. So parent activities that you can use with your kids, and they're just fun games, ways to start talking about emotions because we really want this to be integrated. So it's not just I'm going to an hour workshop or I’m – [00:26:19] PF: Right. [00:26:20] NL: Right? [00:26:21] PF: Yeah. It becomes part of your life. It just is like – It’s play and it's fun and it's enjoyable. [00:26:25] NL: Yeah. So next time you listen to the radio or you're listening to a song, ask your kids like, “What emotions do you think are reflected in the song? What do you hear reflected and why?” Then how that changes the conversation in the car, you know? You can pick any emotion. What you think that would look like in body language or – [00:26:46] PF: Oh, interesting. [00:26:47] NL: Things like playing freeze tag, emotional freeze tag, or doing certain art. There's art games, and we've organized them into here are the activities that you can do in the car, here are the activities that you can do in the park, here are the activities you can do over a meal, with friends, so on so forth. So we've got them all in these different sectors, but it really came from all those workshops that we had with schools. [00:27:11] PF: I know that we're doing a fantastic promotion. You're part of our 12 Days of Christmas giveaway. So we're going to be sharing your Emotion Wonderland characters with some of our listeners. That's something they can sign up for, and we're going to tell them more about that in the outro. As we let you go, looking five years down the road, when you look at Emotion Wonderland, what do you see? [00:27:35] NL: I see it as a movement where people start to – It’s not just about me and our brand and our things. I think I would like to see a shift where people start to approach emotions from that group sort of perspective, and that it leverages play a little bit more. So I think having it be something that is just in your everyday integrated tool for people, that's really what I want. I want this to be a movement for a different way to think about emotions. [00:28:00] PF: Nadine, thank you for sitting down and talking about this. I know we'll talk again, but thank you. Best of success on this because this is just an incredible program that you've created. [00:28:10] NL: Thank you so much and happy holidays. I hope it's not too many big emotions. [00:28:16] PF: Only the good ones. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:28:20] PF: That was Nadine Levitt, talking about navigating our emotions. If you'd like to learn more about Nadine, get some free resources from the Emotion Wonderland or her My Mama Says website, follow her on social media, or find out more about her other offerings, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. If you aren't following us on Instagram, this is the time to start. Through December 13th, we are having the 12 Days of Giving, where we're giving away one great prize every day. On December 11th, you have the chance to win the free Sad Puppy plushie from the Emotion Wonderland. So follow us @mylivehappy to register to win one fabulous prize a day. That's @mylivehappy on Instagram. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Women Supporting Women With Caroline Miller  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 393 of Live Happy Now. December 1st marks Women Supporting Women Day, and this week's guest believes that's something we aren't doing nearly enough. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm joined by author, speaker, and coach Caroline Miller, who's concerned about women's failure to support one another led her to write the e-book, #IHaveYourBack, which is about creating mastermind success groups for women. This week, she's here to share what she's learned about why women don't support one another, explain what it's doing to our culture, and then tell us what we can do about it. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Caroline, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] CM: Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it so much. [00:00:48] PF: It has been a while since we've talked and had you on the show. But when I saw what you're working on, I knew we had to get you back on to talk about this. So tell me – First of all, before we jump in, why don't you tell us what it is that your new project is? [00:01:04] CM: Well, I have a new e-book out called #IHaveYourBack, mastermind success groups for women. It's available as an e-book download for purchase on my website. I decided to just self-publish because I had been obsessed for several years now with finding a solution to why we, as women, know but don't always talk about the women don't support each other and how we actually actively undermine each other. I finally got to the point where I was brave enough to not just write about it, but include an evidence-based solution because all I saw was the problem being made more beautiful. I wanted to put out something that was proactive that people could do something immediately about, and that's the project. [00:01:53] PF: Let's talk about what it was that you saw that made you say, “I have to write about this.” [00:02:01] CM: The fact that women were standing still and going backwards, in terms of female CEOs and fortune 50 or fortune 500 companies, the World Economic Bureau saying it's going to be even longer, 185 years that the women achieved pay parity, the Me To movement. Time's Up was all coming out. What I saw was a lot of demonization of men, but no one talking about the problem of women shooting at each other inside the tent. I thought, okay, yes, we have real problems with what men have historically done to women. The patriarchal culture is very dangerous and difficult. But it's not the only thing that women are up against, and I didn't understand or know why it's so dangerous to talk about this topic as a woman. I wanted to understand, first of all, is it just me knowing that this has happened to me and every woman I know, while we whisper about and talk about it? Or is it real? That's number one. I wanted to find that out from an evidence-based perspective. Number two, the thing was if I opened my mouth about this publicly, I want to put out a solution. So I had to name the problem. I had to put it in the context of the fact that, yes, men do need to pay a price for what they've done and continue to do to women. But that's not the whole shooting match because we're sliding backwards. Why? Why are women sliding backwards in terms of pay equity and reproductive rights and all these other things? Is it possible that women are also holding other women back? Can I talk about that? So that's what I took on board. As I said, I just hired two researchers. I went through thousands of pages of research. What I learned was sickening and upsetting but hopeful because I did come up with something that I believe can change women's lives. But you have to be thoughtful and strategic about how you do it and are prepared to talk about that, so yeah. [00:03:59] PF: Can you tell us some about what your research found, what you were finding? [00:04:05] CM: A bunch of things. I found that what – Scarcity theory. A lot of people just go, “Yeah, women don't support women in professional settings.” But that's just because there's only one seat at the table. Women have to guard their seats, just like Katie Couric saying, “I wasn't going to mentor Ashleigh Banfield. That's career suicide.” I think she said career suicide. So I found that, yes, there's a scarcity theory theory out there, but we continue to act as if it's true. So even when it's not true, if we continue to believe that there's only one seat at the table for a woman of power, we will continue to act as if there is no room for the rest of us. I'll tell you another thing, culturally. I remember watching a football game with my husband maybe a year ago, and I watched a kicker make a field goal, and the whole team celebrated, went out, hugged him. I turned to my husband and I said, “I can't think of a single time the bench is cleared theoretically in an analogy in any possible way for me because I did something well. It just hasn't happened for most women that the bench is clear when a woman supports another woman's individual success.” Women tend to be friends. What they don't do is believe and achieve together. So what I found were all these examples of sisterhood coming together to change communal causes, reproductive rights, the Jane movement, the domestic workers strike. This is why the sisterhood is considered so important and like that's the way it is. But what I can't find, what I couldn't find, were examples of women coming together to support each other's individual goals. Communally will come together and work for rights and this and that thing, but the minute you have women going for their own goals, if you bring them together to support each other, that's considered just like a unicorn. It's considered so unusual for women to support each other's individual goals that when it happens, it elicits this, “Oh, my God. Where are these people?” [00:06:18] PF: Yeah. You talk about this in your book. Like how do you then start turning this around? [00:06:23] CM: Okay. So here's what I really do believe is going to make a difference in is making a difference is if women get together in strategically formed mastermind groups, and there are a number of reasons why they have to be formed carefully. You can't just go to like a Sheryl Sandberg lean in group and be assigned a group of people. Too many women tell me they've been assigned to groups put together by organizations, and you have to pay for the privilege. They don't know anything about these women's backgrounds or character. How do you know who's in it? So what you have to do is you have to go straight with Shelly Gable’s research, active constructive responding. You have to pull together a mastermind group of women who have a demonstrated history of being curious and enthusiastic about another woman's individual goals and dreams. That's number one because she found that that's the Rorschach test. You want to know if someone's in your corner, float an idea or success or some dream of yours in front of them and just watch. How do they respond? Are they curious? Are they enthusiastic? Do they change the subject? Are they passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive? She found that those are all wrong ways to respond to another woman’s success or dreams. The only one right way that I think determines whether or not someone is invited to be in your mastermind group is active constructive responding. So that's number one. Women have to get together and be agentic. We have to talk in ways we haven't been encouraged to talk about, which is about our goals and dreams. We have to do it in groups where we're not interrupted, where we're not mansplained. Most women never even get their dreams and goals out of their mouths, let alone their ideas, because they're always interrupted. So if you're in a mastermind group that has guidelines, and that's what I published here. It's a 43-page e-book. I lay out the case, the evidence for why we're doing this consciously and unconsciously, and here's how you start a mastermind group. Here's how you do it. Step one, step two, step three. So that’s it. You find those people. You have guidelines about how long people talk. You state your goals and dreams. You have to create psychological safety. Then all these amazing things begin to happen when you have accountability to the right people in the right group for the right reasons. You find that there's more creative risk taking. You begin to believe in yourself because other people support your dreams. They believe in you. They see you the way you want to be seen, the Michelangelo effect. People sculpt you with their praise and their feedback because they see you the way you want to be seen. That's just some of the reasons why these groups work. [00:09:03] PF: Let's talk a little bit about how someone goes about putting this together. Someone's like, “Okay, yeah. I want that support from other women.” So where do you start looking at? You've told us what we don't want and kind of the people that we want. We can't really go around interviewing people and saying, “Hey, how about this? Are you going to fit in my group?” How do you get it started? [00:09:24] CM: Well, it doesn't have to be your friends. In fact, some of your friends will be very threatened if you dare to dream bigger than who you are at that moment or what you want life. So it has to be people who fit this criteria, active constructive responding. You can observe people how they talk about other people's successes. Take a look at your social media feed. How many people are actually trumpeting another woman's success? If this is someone you know or want to get to know better, maybe it's an acquaintance, ask them. Reach out and ask them if they want to be in your mastermind group. That's one way. So I would keep it small. My current mastermind group is four people. I think the biggest could be seven. So you can find them either through your social circle. Or let's say you have one person you know you want to be in the group. Ask them if they know someone who fits all these criteria. That's the first way. I go into the rest of it in the book. So that's where you start. But it has to be somebody who wants to become her very best self, who has, let's say, a future best self in mind. There are three ways that people live. They have an ought self, an actual self, and an ideal self. Most people, and I'm going to say a lot of women, live as an actual self, just the person they show up as or as the ought self, the person they think they should be, according to their relationships, the way they're raised, the culture they're in, whatever. But many people never shoot for that ideal self. You want somebody who wants to maximize their potential and do whatever it takes, have grit. I think the last time you interviewed me, it was about my book, Getting Grit. This takes grit. So you have to be able to have the grit to pursue that. It's so much easier when you have the wind at your back because other people are brainstorming with you, supporting you. So you start by creating that circle. I also want to say that it's really important, once these groups get going, that these benefits continue to go into what Barbara Frederickson talks about, the upward spiral. You begin to feel like you matter. All this new research on mattering and an organization, how many people actually feel like they matter in a group? Not a lot of women have an opportunity to feel like they matter in a group where other people have their backs. They do begin to feel like experts. We all longed to be experts. When you bring your expertise into a group, you have an opportunity to teach people something. You bring what it is you know about web design, or web hosting, or writing a book, or giving a speech. Those collective energies coming together allow every person in there to be an expert. That's another huge psychological boost. It's just massive, having the freedom to ask other people to give you their ideas, to support you. I've had female friends ask me to lead a round of applause when they take the stage because they're worried other people won't clap for them. It's often the people who should be leading the applause for you who are not. I think the thing I want to be sure I'm doing here is talking about the fact that I think we do these things not because we want to, but because we're acculturated to do this. We are supposed to believe that there are mean girls. That that’s just the way women are. I mean, and so when we believe this, we unconsciously behave this way. So I want to take some of us just off the guilty hook and say we don't always know why we do these things to each other. But I do think that there are too many women who also know better who don't make any effort to lead a round of applause, amplify another woman's success. [00:13:01] PF: Well, let me ask you the purpose of creating a group like under – There are several different reasons and several different flavors, if you will, of groups that you could create. What would be – To who's listening, like why would you want to – What would be your purpose in putting that together? [00:13:19] CM: Because not enough women voice their dreams period. Being be able to voice your dreams and your goals, and brainstorm your way with also goal setting theory behind the pursuit of these goals, you will maximize your chances of succeeding. So as everyone in the field knows, I wrote – Not everyone. A lot of people know I wrote the first book to connect the science of happiness with the science of goal success. That book was my capstone at creating your best life. It was reissued last year as kind of a global bestseller. But it was the first book to put science to goal setting. I think every woman should be in a group where people have her back, but she's pursuing goals with the evidence of goal setting theory behind how those goals, learning goals and performance goals, are set, pursued, and achieved. We have to make it possible from every angle for us to succeed. So this is not just about coming together to talk in a nice way about each other. This is a working group. This is your board of directors. But do not go into an organization and be assigned a group. That is a nonstarter, as far as I can tell because you have to know the character and the behavior of the people you're going to be essentially opening the kimono in front of. Too many women have been violated by other women who blossom about them, make fun of them, tear them down. I mean, this one woman said at some of the research I looked at that she had to choose between her sanity and her career because the more she succeeded at work, the more she was torn down by other women. So you have to be in that kind of group. Let me quickly say some of the – What I've heard as a criticism. People say, “Well, men take each other down. Men are critical of each other. Men bully each other.” Yes. Of course, that's true. However, men are socialized to be goal directed, and, and, this is more important, and they are not biologically wired to be in friendship dyads the way women are socialized and wired to be. This Tend-and-Befriend research from the year 2000 that came out of the UCLA nurses study found that women need other women. We often have best friends who are good for us, but generally we do not. So the Tend-And-Befriend research found that oxytocin is secreted when women get together, and they take care of each other, and they bond. Especially they nurture each other when they're down. So that's why this being thrown out of the tribe is so existentially hellish for women because it violates our chemical nature. So, yes, it happens to men, but women are relationship-oriented. Men are more transactional. So it's even more potent for us to be in the right group in the right ways at the right time, as much as possible. [00:16:17] PF: So by bringing this out and by, one, sharing the massive research that you've done on it and bringing it forefront to women, what do you hope to accomplish, and how do you hope this is going to change the way that we interact and support one another? [00:16:31] CM: I want every woman to have access to just the guidelines on how to support a mastermind group and all the reasons why we need to do it. Even Kristin Neff has said, her most recent book on radical self-compassion, she's like, “This is what women don't do for themselves. They're compassionate for the world, and they lack compassion for themselves to do this.” We all need to understand that it's a compassionate act for us to come together in support of our own dreams and goals. Especially when – Just go back to the diseases of despair. Women are dying in numbers disproportionately larger than men. As Case and Deaton, the economists, have found, often because they lack a sense of purpose, so alcoholism, eating disorders, depression, suicide, women are really paying the price more than men. So that's a piece of why I'm doing it. I want women to be armed with these tools. I want them to know why it matters, and I really want women to understand we're not doing this just because we're nasty people, meaning us tear other women down, or we're jealous of them, or we pass along gossip about them. I think we've all been conditioned equally poorly, some more than others, and we need to understand the conscious and unconscious reasons why we do it. But we all have learned to override yelling at our in-laws at Thanksgiving, hopefully. I mean, there's all kinds of wiring that we overcome in order to be socially appropriate, to be members of tribes. We can overcome this wiring and this conditioning if we want to. That's what I believe. [00:18:03] PF: I love it. You know I love that you've done this because I think it really does open our eyes toward our behaviors and the fact that we can change them. You give us a really great blueprint for making that change and starting our own little path to success into turning this ship around. As we let you go, what is the one thing that you hope everyone takes away from this conversation? [00:18:29] CM: When you hear of another woman’s success, whether you want to or not, pass it on in a positive way to somebody else. Override that instinct to be envious, which I have, which we all have. Share another woman's success on social media. Do it twice a week, and you're going to feel better, and the world's going to be better. [00:18:50] PF: I love that. I love that. Thank you for that. That is a terrific tip. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:18:59] PF: That was Caroline Miller, talking about the importance of women supporting women. If you'd like to learn more about Caroline and her research, follow her on social media, or find out where to download her e-book, #IHaveYourBack, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Just a reminder that today is the last day to take advantage of Live Happy’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday savings. Visit our store at store.livehappy.com and take 30% of everything in there. That’s store.livehappy.com, and no promo code is needed. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Setting Your Intention for Holiday Shopping with Tracy McCubbin  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 392 of Live Happy Now. As the holiday season begins, it's easy to get caught up in the frenzy of buying gifts. But this week's guest wants us to consider a different way. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I am joined by decluttering expert, Tracy McCubbin, who is asking us to take a step back and become more intentional with our holiday shopping. In this episode, she explains how we can approach the holidays differently to create more joy, focus on giving of ourselves rather than giving gifts, and how we can shift the focus from shopping to sharing the spirit of the season. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] PF: Tracy, welcome back to Live Happy Now. [00:00:44] TM: Thanks, Paula. I'm so happy to be had. I’m living so happy to be back. [00:00:49] PF: Hi. I'm happy to have you back. This is something you and I talked about the first time that we had a conversation because it became so apparent that we could use your expertise in this area. We're moving into the holiday season now. We've got Black Friday, two days after this podcast goes up, and it's a time when everybody – Their mind turns to shopping. It's like even the casual shoppers seem to turn into power shoppers. So I wanted to talk to you about some of the ways we can safeguard ourselves, our budgets, and the people who are receiving gifts from us, and make this less cluttery and more practical and fulfilling for us. [00:01:28] TM: I love this conversation. I'm so excited to be talking about this. So let's just start with what we should start every day with. But let's start with this around holiday shopping season. Let's talk about our intention, right? What’s our intention for buying gifts? Are we buying things because we feel guilty? Are we buying things because that's what we've always done? What's our intention? I like to, as a business owner, at the end of the year, some vendors that I work with, some clients that were big jobs, my team, I like to give holiday gifts because I want to thank them for their relationship. It's a way for me to acknowledge, and I'm very intentional about it. I buy things that can be consumed. I don't assume that I know anything about them. My staff, they want money. That's what they need. So I try and get a little something that we have at the party. Last year, I gave them all reusable knives and forks and a little kit. So we had a petite lunch on the job. [00:02:33] PF: Oh, that's so cool. [00:02:35] TM: Yeah. So it's about being intentional. As the sales start and Black Friday is the mother of all the sales. [00:02:45] PF: Got those running shoes on? [00:02:46] TM: Exactly. It's about starting with do you have a list. Are there things? Have you been waiting? Like our TV broke. We need a new TV. Have you been waiting for the Black Friday sales? That's great. You're intentional about it. You've done your research. You know what you want to buy. But if you just go into Black Friday and Cyber Monday and just, “It's a deal, it's a deal, it's a deal, it's a deal,” you're going to end up on the wrong side of buying. It’s about, before this holiday season starts, you getting intentional with why you're buying and your budget. What can you afford? Look, Paula, if you can't afford to buy something, it's not a gift to someone else. If buying that gift puts you in debt, you're not giving someone a gift. So really starting this holiday season out like, “Here's how much I have. These are who I want to buy for. This is what it looks like.” [00:03:45] PF: We do fall into that trap, and there’s several different entry points to this trap. One of them is people who say, “We have to buy for our entire family.” Have a friend who they get together, and it's all the nieces, the nephews, the in-laws. Those lists are ridiculous, and it's a financial hardship, and it takes away from maybe they would have gotten a nicer gift for their spouse or for one of their children, and it's like, “Well, I can't. I have this much money, and now it has to be spread between 30 people.” So – [00:04:16] TM: The thing about that too is those 30 people, like, look, take the little kids off the list, right? Because it's a different experience for them. But those 30 people, I can guarantee that 29 of them don't need what you're buying for them, right? Like I have friends who they've done it. They have a complicated extended family, their step parents and somebody raised in a house that was – It's like 40 people all variously related. This is the greatest thing. Every New Year's Day, they have their New Year's Day party together. They pull a name from a hat. The whole year, they only get presents for that one person. [00:04:54] PF: I love that. [00:04:55] TM: Every birthday. So one person takes care of one person. Like you said, they get nicer things. They get things they can use. Also, can we start normalizing that it's okay to ask people what they want? Like this idea that you're supposed to just figure it out, and you're supposed to have mental telepathy. When did that happen? [00:05:20] PF: Yeah. Because people end up buying something that they would like and think somehow this other person is going to like it. It's like, “Yeah, we don't.” [00:05:28] TM: Right. Look, there’s something. It's a tradition and Hanukkah and Christmas. Sort of doing that is fantastic, but let's go this year into being mindful. Is it just another toy that's going to get broken? Is it just another sweater? Are we just buying because somebody in our family said we had to? What about a family trip? What about – I mean, I think about grandparents. They don't need anything. They're at the last chapter of their life. I was lucky enough last Saturday to go – I have a friend in my life who's 94. I drove down, we had lunch with her, and it was just the best day. I thought holidays are coming up, and I was like, “Oh, no, no, no. This is what she wants, and this is what I want.” These are the gifts I'm going to give her. I'm going to give her the gift of my time and get the gift of her time, like to be able to spend this time with her. If there's someone – If you find yourself – Look, nothing makes me crazier than that like the gift to get the person who has everything. If they have everything, they don't need anything. [00:06:40] PF: They need nothing. [00:06:41] TM: I'm letting you off the hook and – [00:06:47] PF: Well, why do we start thinking that we need to do that? What happens in our brain that makes us go from rational budgeted people to, “I've got to get this. I've got to buy it.”? [00:06:59] TM: Today, they start playing that Mariah Carey Christmas song. It’s the season, and we're just trained, and we're marketed to, and we're – It's just the way that it's always been. But I'm saying we can mix it up. We can make it different, right? We can approach this a different way. Somebody just messaged me, and it cracked me up. They said every time their mother-in-law comes over to their house, she brings something she's decluttering, and she hides it in their house. They did it in a way that it's become this kind of fun game for the grandkids. They're like, “What did Nana leave?” Like they’ve got to try and find it. So is there a way that when you're talking with your family like, “Can we take a trip together? Can we all go in on something for the one person that really needs it?” It’s not about the volume. It's not about who's got the most presents under the tree. It's are you being intentional, and what's your intent in your buying, and understanding that you're being marketed to. You know that little thing like, “One for them, two for me.” Or it's on sale. It doesn't matter if it's on sale, if you don't need it. If you don't need it, and you're not going to use it, and you buy it on sale, you've still wasted money. [00:08:23] PF: You said something that I want to touch on again, and that was buying gifts for another family. I think that is some of the greatest joy you can find is when you adopt a family. Or like for us, it's been the last few years an older person because I've lost most of the old people in my life that I really cared about, and there's something very special about being able to give them things that they truly need and want. So talk about that, how we can go about doing that. [00:08:53] TM: Yeah. I think that's so – One of the great things about being of service, doing things for other people, is that, first of all, it doesn't take much. It's like if there's an elderly person that can't get out the way they used to, and you're already at the grocery store, and you call them and say, “Hey, can I pick you up?” They're like, “Oh, great, a few things.” You're already at the grocery store and what you're going to gain from that experience, well, you're going to feel the joy you feel, the self-respect you feel by helping someone else. I feel like we tend to lean into it in the holiday season, but we can do it all year. Like if it feels that good, we can do it all year. I think the interesting thing to point out here, Paula, is one of the biggest health – One of the hardest things on an elderly person's health is loneliness. So can you go and visit a neighbor? Can you make some cookies and sit down and have a chat? Like I said, I went to see my godmother, and we were going to only be there for an hour. We were there for four hours. It was a glorious afternoon. We sat outside, and we had lunch, and we drank iced tea and laughed and told stories. She's getting ready to go. It's going to be her time soon, and there were things I think she needed to say, and it was so lovely to be able to be there for that. So if you can take this time, if the gift giving and getting isn't fulfilling, like you said, can you do something else with your time? [00:10:30] PF: That is such great advice. Another thing that you touched on is experiences. We're also big on that, like doing an experience for the family instead of gifts, going on a trip, or maybe depending on what your budget is. Maybe it's a day at Six Flags or the zoo or something like that. Talk about how that can be such an ongoing gift. [00:10:54] TM: The thing that's – I mean, look. You and I have talked about like what we went through in the pandemic and our loss of connection with our tribe, with our people. We don't need more stuff now. We need to reconnect. We need to see people, and those experiences do that, right? To say like, “Oh, well. We all went apple picking for the day.” Or, “Somebody really wanted to try this restaurant. So we all chipped in, and we always went and shared a meal.” That's the stuff that you're going to remember. Because I'll bet if you look back on the holidays past, I don't think you can remember what anybody gave you. [00:11:30] PF: You remember what somebody else got that you wanted but – [00:11:33] TM: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So swapping that out for experiences and understanding that what those experiences do is they create the memories. They create the memories, and they reinforce the connection. That's what we're looking for, right? That's what we want. We want to be connected to our people. So I invite people to do it differently, and there's going to be somebody who's going to gripe. There's going to be somebody who's like, “We've always done it this way. We can't.” But maybe slowly, when they understand and they sort of see it another way, you can get everybody on board. [00:12:11] PF: That was going to be my next question. Because as you said, not everyone's going to go, “Oh, my God, Tracy. Great idea. Let's do it.” So if you're the lone voice, how do you, one, bring it into the conversation, and how do you sell this to them? They're being marketed to 24/7. How do you market our ideas? [00:12:32] TM: I think you – Let’s say there's sort of 12 people in your family that you do this. I think, first of all, to quote Brene Brown, “Clear is kind.” Talk about it like, “Hey. This year, we've had a lot of expenses. We just feel like we can't buy presents in the same way that we have in the past. We really want to do something with our family. Who's on board for this?” Then if someone puts up resistance like, “What's that about,” because, usually, the person who puts up the resistance, it's not that they necessarily – It’s, like you said, that they want to really shop for themselves. They want the experience of the shopping. Also, maybe they really need stuff. Maybe they're not being truthful. Maybe they’re like, “No, I need gifts this year because we're having a tough time.” But I think if we can take this idea that it's all supposed to be a big surprise. If I see one more car commercial with the giant bow on it, and the husband or wife is like, “How did you know,” it’s like that does not happen. First of all, I think about it too. If my husband to be bought me a car, I would be like, “Wait, what? That’s – [00:13:49] PF: How much did – Why did we not talk? Do we not talk about purchases over $1,000 anymore? [00:13:54] TM: Exactly. That there's so much stuff with that. So I think it's starting not going in and being a bull in a china shop and “We're doing it this way.” But saying, “Hey, this is what I've been thinking. This is what I've been feeling. Here's where we're at financially.” Because the other thing that that does is that that normalizes a conversation about our finances, right? We're so embarrassed to say, “I can't afford that.” But maybe you're just being truthful, right? You can't afford everything. Why do you pretend that you can? I think it's having – Thanksgiving is coming up, so you could – That you’d sort of say to people like, “Hey, maybe we do it differently this year.” [00:14:37] PF: Right, right. Thanksgiving is the ideal place to kind of broach that conversation and kind of get the ball moving in a different direction. With adults, it's one conversation, but what about with kids? Because, especially like tweens, teenagers, where they're like, oh, man, they want the shiniest new gadget, and they want things, and there's so much pressure now to have all those things. So how do you pick up that conversation with them, and how do you approach them differently than you do, say, other adults in your life? [00:15:09] TM: Yeah. Honestly, I think that it's never too soon to talk about finances. It's never too soon to say – You don't want to burden your kids with your finances, but there's nothing wrong with a conversation of like, “This is what we have to spend on Christmas. This is what we budgeted. It is not an endless, bottomless well of spending. This is what we have. So can you rank what you want in order?” If there's something that they want that doesn't fit in the budget, can you say, “Great, do you want to work this off? Like can we do a trade? Can you learn that X amount of times of mowing the lawn gets you those new air pods?” I think it's a very, very healthy conversation, and studies have shown that the sooner kids have financial literacy, the more successful they are in the future. If your kid doesn't see you overcharging and getting all this credit card debt to give them the perfect Christmas, they're not going to understand the cause and effect of putting things on a card. But if you can say like, “We have $500 a person or $250 a person to spend on Christmas, how would you like that?” They get the idea of budgeting. So I think that there's a very, very positive way to have the conversation and use it as a teachable moment. [00:16:33] PF: That is so good because I remember many years ago going Christmas shopping with a friend, and she was joking but yet entirely serious that she hadn't paid off last year's Christmas presents, and here we are shopping. It was surprising to me because it's like I didn't take it that seriously. [00:16:51] TM: Then she's putting herself in a financially difficult position to look good for other people, right? To look like she's being generous, but she's hurting herself. I would venture a guess that if the people in her life that she was buying gifts for knew how hard it was for her, they'd be like, “Don't buy me anything. Don't do that. You don't have to do that.” So really, get honest about how much you have to spend. That's why as the sales start, if there are things that you've had your eye on, and they go on sale, and it's a smart decision, fantastic. But if you're buying just because it's shiny and, like you said, it's, “Oh. Well, everybody's getting the Cabbage Patch doll,” or whatever the new toys. I just dated myself, Paula, to be talking about that. [00:17:38] PF: I remember those fights over the Cabbage Patch dolls. [00:17:42] TM: The new toy that everybody's got to have and the kids got to show up in school with. Of course, for the teenagers and the tweens, that's what's happening. That's what's happening in their development and their social group. But is there some things that they can work off like, “Well, you want this. So it costs X. So here's how you get it, babysit for the neighbor or take somebody's trash cans in.” You can help them figure out what something costs and what they have to do to get it. I think it's a very – I think that's the best gift you can give a child is financial – [00:18:15] PF: Yeah. That's a whole another gift that keeps on giving. Then you hit the end of the shopping season, and people are like – Things they were laughing about at the beginning of the shopping season now become viable gifts. It's like, “Ah, a Chia Pet.” Or it’s like, “Who does not need the desktop basketball set,” right? [00:18:35] TM: Yeah, and if you find yourself just buying because you have to buy. I had a dear friend of mine last year send a beautiful Christmas card. In it, she said, “I am purchasing no gifts this year. I have given money in everybody's name to plant a tree in Northern California, where the trees had burned down.” I was like, “Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for doing that. I don't need anything. That is great.” So some of those, like something that you know will make the world a better place may be the best use for your money, as opposed to a Chia Pet or a desktop basketball – [00:19:15] PF: I love that because, yeah, having something done in your name is a huge gift. I think people that haven't experienced that kind of underestimate how good it feels for the recipient to be like, “Oh, my gosh. You did that for me.” When my mom was in her last days, so the last few Christmases we had with her, she didn't need anything. Everything's downsizing. Go to assisted living and then nursing home. So I started doing the Heifer International with her, and it's like it became this thing because it's like, “Oh, I got you a goat this year, Mom, and look –” It was a cool thing. Like she appreciated it and it was – I don't know. It just seemed special, more – I can't remember any gifts that I gave her up until that point in her life. [00:20:00] TM: For her and also think about her in that position, right? She's winding down. She can't do what she used to. But she basically used her gift to help someone else. I mean, the Heifer International project is unbelievable, right? Because it's like you give one person a goat, and then they have goats, and then they give their goats on. It just goes forward. So for your mom to still be able to contribute and help people must have made her feel fantastic. [00:20:28] PF: Yeah. And it was a really special time for us. It was a great moment that we shared and, again, hard to explain if you haven't actually done that and experienced it. So what if you are the recipient, if you are the victim of a heavy shopper? How do we kindly send a message that, “No. Honestly, I don't need anything. I don't want anything.”? How do we send that message? [00:20:51] TM: I think you start early. I don't think you blind side somebody. I don't think you wait until the morning when everyone's wrapping presents. You just start – You know who those people are in your life. I think you start saying now like, “Hey, I just want to give you a heads up. I really don't want anything for the holidays. I am downsizing. I am X, Y, and Z. I really don't want anything. What I would love is to go to a movie and lunch with you. What I'd love is to do X, Y, and Z with you,” and offer them an alternative. Some of them we're not going to be able to help. I mean, I would say maybe you want to buy them my book, Make Space for Happiness,” so they kind of look at what they're doing. But I think it's about not being angry with them and getting as far ahead of it as you can like, “I don't need anything. I don't. I don't. I don't want anything. I don't need anything. I want to spend time with you. Can we make that our gift?” [00:21:49] PF: I love that. That is such great advice. I think everybody can change their whole holiday season by doing that because it just kind of makes you take a breath and refocus on, and you don't have to buy wrapping paper. [00:22:02] TM: Yeah, exactly. [inaudible 00:22:05] benefit. That's the other thing. When it's an experience like that, both of you win. You get to spend time with that person that you love. Paula, instead of looking at it like, “I’m not getting – I’m not buying anybody some presents,” it’s like we're getting to do this thing that we love, that we love to do together. I think that's really the trick. I'm focusing on the positive side of it. It's about being intentional. I think that's the interesting thing, right? Be intentional about how you decorate your house. Be intentional with the gifts you buy. Be intentional about what kind of holiday season you want to create. Do you want it to just be about the stuff? Or do you want it to be about reconnecting with the people that we may have lost touch with over the last couple of years? [00:22:55] PF: I love that. That's so important. That's such a great message. That is a perfect place to wrap it up. Maybe we'll get together after the first year and talk about what to do with all the stuff we got that – [00:23:05] TM: Yeah, yeah. January is Get Organized Month. Let's talk about it in January. I got lots of tips, lots of tips here over that unwanted holiday stuff. [00:23:14] PF: All right. We will talk again. But, Tracy, thank you. Thank you for your insight and your guidance and for talking with us today. [00:23:21] TM: Thanks, Paula. Great to see you, as always. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:28] PF: That was decluttering expert Tracy McCubbin, talking about how to step back and become more intentional with our shopping this holiday season. If you’d like to learn more about Tracy and her work, follow her on social media, or buy her book, Make Space for Happiness, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. If you'd like to pick up some intentional gifts designed to spread joy all year long, the Live Happy Store is having its annual Black Friday sale. If you visit us at store.livehappy.com, you'll find lots of great joyful merchandise that you can share with others this season. 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]