Search Results for: technology

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Commit to a Summer of Fun with Mike Rucker, PhD [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:01] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 473 of Live Happy Now. Summer officially begins on June 20th and that’s the perfect time to launch Live Happy’s Summer of Fun. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I’m joined by Mike Rucker, an organizational psychologist, charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association, and author of The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. We’ve teamed up with Mike to offer a free, eight-week email course that will set you on track to have a fun-filled summer, and today, he explains why fun is so important, how to make more room for it in your life, and what to expect when you commit to having a summer of fun. Let’s have a listen.   [INTERVIEW] [0:00:49.3] PF: Mike, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [0:00:51.5] MR: Oh, my goodness, I love being here, so thanks for having me. [0:00:54.5] PF: Well, you’re so great to talk to you because you’re one of the few people that I know who studies fun, and what a great career pursuit that is, you know? It’s like, I’m going to study fun. So, I wanted to find out, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this question, like, what made you realize the importance of prioritizing fun? [0:01:16.1] MR: Yeah. So, my story really is being an early part of the International Positive Psychology Association, when that started in 2000, right? Cheek sent me, “Hi, I’m Martin Seligman.” You know, brought all these folks together, was lucky enough to be, you know, one of those early folks, and rightfully, we’re all looking at happiness, right? Because that – at the start, I think, as an ideal, trying to figure out how we can make the world, you know, happier, was a good goal. We ultimately called it thriving because we added elements of subjective well-being, right? You know like academics, we have to make everything [crosstalk 0:01:53.7]. I’m working on this on the academics now with regards to fun and I feel like in the book, The Fun Habit, I made fun fairly easy. You know, we’ll just get real quick to my definition, it’s essentially anything you find pleasurable and then I’ll circle back to your question. But now, because we can bring it down to levels, right? We’re now talking about fun in different context and I find that fascinating because again, you know, academics picking up where I left off now, you know, fun has 30 different subcategories and I think that’s great but you know, because fun in the broad context can, you know, you can start to make it too ambiguous where people are like, “You know, what does that mean for me?” And the good news is, you get to define it and we’ll get into that as we talk but what happened with happiness is that unfortunately, and we kind of have a term for it now. So, and I’m sure you’ve had podcasts about it, the term being toxic positivity, we turn happiness into an ideal. So, instead of valuing happiness, where there’s no problem with that, right? Wanting people to be happy, wanting your family to be happy, wanting to be happy, that’s not problematic. But it’s when we turn folks into being concerned about, “How can I optimize for happiness?” paradoxically, what we did was created some of the most unhappy people and I happen to be one of them, I talk about that a little bit because I was literally looking for correlations and always ruminating on you know, how I could become happier. When that happens, what we now know is you create a gap between where happiness lives because it’s always out there in the future and where your feet are. And so, the short answer to your question is, fun as a construct, is really rooted in mindfully being attentive to the pleasurable things that you do but then, also, understanding that you have the agency and the autonomy to bias your life towards those. [0:03:45.8] PF: So, why is it more helpful to pursue fun that to pursue happiness? You kind of touched on that. [0:03:52.2] MR: Yeah. So, happiness is really this lagging indicator, right? When we are asked, “Are you happy?” It is an act of retrospection, right? We have to think in the rear-view mirror, like, “Am I happy? Hmm, that’s interesting” right? So, we start comparing ourselves to our neighbors, we think about our life circumstance, which can oftentimes be ephemeral, right? We might have won the lottery, so in that moment, we’re really happy, right? But then, we ask you six months from now because some of that money has gone and you’ve kind of fallen off a cliff, right? Where fun is just something we have access to in any moment and so sometimes, it’s referred to as contentment but when you focus away from happiness, right? So that there’s something to be built further, it’s this end goal or there’s something to be achieved and then all of a sudden, happiness will occur. The fun, which can really happen in any moment, so you know, it’s this product of enjoyment and the things that we do. Once we sort of focus on that, then we do pay attention to where our feet are, like, “Wow, I’m not enjoying what I’m doing, let me change, maybe the environment or the people that I’m with or the activity that I’m doing.” We can do that in the moment and the beauty of it is once we start to index these micro-joys in our life that corpus of micro joy starts to remind us that we’re happy. So, happiness is this beautiful byproduct, and we start to become less concerned with being happy because we know that joy is right in front of us by deliberate design that we don’t have to wait around for it to happen. [0:05:30.1] PF: You know, and as kids, we pursue fun, like, that’s just our natural state. We’re looking for fun things to do and we find them and somewhere along the way, we get serious and that wears off. Is it hard for people to learn to seek out fun again? [0:05:48.2] MR: It’s not hard, that’s the beauty. I think once you kind of wake up to it, it’s clear that when you just do a couple of exercises, like the ones that we’re going to do this summer, and you become mindful that, “Wow if I enjoy myself.” I colorfully call this building my fun cup, right? “That the rest of my life is better.” And so, if there are any science nerds listening, I’ll only give a couple quick science lessons. The principle here is the hedonic flexibility principle and as I was creating the book, it was the big lightbulb, right? And so, similar to what we learned about sleep in the 90s, you know, in the 90s, we’re all wearing sleep depravation as a badge of honor, right? Because it’s how you hustle, that’s how you became more productive, right? Like, you know, winners became winners, you know, after the kids went to bed. We now know that’s an asinine assertion, folks that are in a sleep deficit are some of the least productive folks, and we’re now learning the same about leisure. Folks that don’t live a balanced life, that aren’t finding joy or at least, simple pleasures in the things that they do are also falling victim to burnout, and so under that guise, right? Fixing that becomes important and so, once you kind of understand that, once you sprinkle in some of these fun things. And just like sleep, it’s not about, you know, finding whimsy in a hundred and six to eight hours, right? Like, I’m not prescribing 12 hours of sleep. It’s that most of us aren’t having any fun at all and so, we need to figure out how to create that balance by deliberate design, and as I alluded to, it’s really easy. What I found is folks that do it well are the ones that are going to do the exercises we’re going to get into this summer. Just being deliberate, you know? What is it that I, you know, find enjoyable? Reframing what fun means to you. You know, for some folks, they’ll say, “I’m just not a fun person.” And then when I dig deeper, it’s because they believe that what’s marketed to us, right? This high arousal, “I must be at a rock concert with all my friends drinking because that’s you know, what fun is.” Or at least, that’s what Instagram tells me. No, it could be a low arousal activity where the most amazing summer for you is some alone time at the pool, engrossed in a good book that if I ask you in a couple of weeks, you know, “What was it about?” You could tell me in rich detail because that’s how meaningful it was for you and so, figuring out what those things are, and if they’re not in your schedule, being deliberate about scheduling them in, we’re almost halfway there already. [0:08:22.0] PF: Oh, that’s terrific and you know, you and I have been talking about doing this for over a year, we wanted to do a summer of fun. We talked about that and summer is marketed as being so much fun but the reality is, it’s not as lighthearted as we want to think. It’s like, crazy busy, there’s so much pressure, so many things that we have to get done, and it’s compacted into like this three-month period. Why is that a great time to start doing these exercises and make them habits? [0:08:49.5] MR: Yeah, so, I think it’s access would be the biggest one, right? I mean, there is a lot of different reasons but I have this tool called “SAVOR” and it’s essentially just an acronym and so, the “O” in SAVOR stands for “Options.” When we have better options, we tend to have more fun, and the summer just provides so many options, right? I mean, even for small communities like my own, there are things that are available to us for free that we can engage in and discover which you know, and we’re learning how to do that and that becomes a proxy for actually getting it done. You know, we’re kind of in the winter months, and no one’s leaving their homes, it’s so easy to just essentially be in the groove that we’re habituated life and let that time pass us by but the extended daylight that summer provides, the fact that folks tend to have a little bit more autonomy and agency and then again, just access to activities, quite frankly, sometimes, for us, it can be a nostalgia because as you mentioned, as kids, a lot of fun in the summer, and so wanting to get back there, using that as a lure to be like, “You know what? Summers are meant for fun.” All of these can encompass, you know, good tailwinds for getting us started. [0:10:05.8] PF: And you’ve created for us, we’ve partnered with you to do – provide this eight-week email course for free and I absolutely love it. I’m so excited to share it with everybody. Can you kind of talk us through just really, briefly touch on these eight steps and what they’re going to learn along the way? [SPONSOR MESSAGE] [0:10:22.6] PF: We’ll be right back with Mike, but part of having fun this summer, includes, getting better sleep. I’ve become such a big fan of cozier sheets for a lot of reasons, but as the temperatures rise, I found one more reason to make them the only sheet I want to sleep on. Thanks to their cutting-edge temperature-regulating technology, Cozy Earth bedding lets me stay cool and comfortable, even on the hottest nights. That means, I can wake up refreshed and ready for the day, and here’s the best part, our exclusive offer for listeners like you, gets you a 30% discount and a free item, using code “Cozy Happy” at cozyearth.com/livehappynow. I bet you’ll love the unbeatable combination of softness and durability as much as I do. So, invest in your sleep health this summer and stay cool, backed by Cozy Earth’s 109-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. Visit cozyearth.com/livehappynow today to unlock this special offer and optimize your sleep for better health, and after placing your order, be sure to select, “Podcast” in the survey, and then select, “Live Happy Now” in the drop-down menu that follows, and now, let’s find out Mike Rucker’s eight steps to having a summer of fun. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [0:11:37.3] MR: Yeah, so, the first thing is really just being aware of what you find fun, right? For adults, oftentimes, we do need to reconnect to, “What is it that I want to integrate?” And the issue there is, especially folks that find themselves in that sort of inverse euchre of happiness that so many of us talk about, right? And for folks that aren’t, you know, familiar with that, essentially what we know is that because between, you know, let’s say, 25 and 65, let’s cast a wide net, with some of the [inaudible 0:12:04.5] time for us, right? And we’re not in school anymore so we kind of lost some of the agency and autonomy we had there and so, we need to deliberately integrate some fun into our schedule, and so that’s the first step. Like, “What is it that I want to do?” Because if we allow, you know, FOMO and kind of the rhythms of our family to dictate everything, then oftentimes, we can feel very passive in that. We want to feel active, and then it’s pre-committing to those things. So, really early on in this course, we’re going to pick a few things that we want to do and make sure they happen and that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to pay for them in advance. We’re going to learn, you know, some simple tactics to just make sure that we’re actually doing the stuff that we want to do this summer, and then the rest of the course is just an ode to things that can kind of amplify our fun. So, are there opportunities in your schedule to at least get out in nature to some degree? Are you connecting with the people that you love? Because, even if you’re an introvert, right? At least, having some prosocial interaction is what we know great and set, latency, enjoyable experiences, and then it’s, how do you invite yourself to the local culture because like I said, summertime is really great because there are all these opportunities to enjoy your township or the county that you live in. And yet oftentimes, if we don’t go looking for it, we don’t know it’s there and then one of the last modules is about kindness because I think kindness really does pair with fun. We’ll get in, for the folks that want it, I’ll send links to the studies but really doing that in a joyful way, like, “How can we play with kindness in a sort of fun way to end this strong?” And then the last module would be, how can we use all of these tools that we learned over the duration of the course to kind of move into fall and continue to benefit from what we’ve learned over the summer? [0:13:58.0] PF: It’s such a great set of action steps and I was curious how you developed this process because it’s very thoughtful, very measured. You know, it’s so easy to do and I’m like, how did you come up with all of this? [0:14:12.9] MR: Well, an ode to one of my collaborators, Haley, who is a diehard introvert and so we would go back and forth because as she was helping me put together – she’s been my blog editor too for like, 10 years and so the kernel of the idea really started with her because she was like, “Okay, you know, you’ve over-emphasized” on sort of higher all activities in certain content that I put out and you know, I am doing this with my friend. And I am doing this with my friend and so I started to pick up on that. I was like, “Wait a sec, are you guys doing this in a systematic way?” And she’s like, “Yeah, we kind of, I’ve pre-commended to this and we made sure you know, that we do X, Y, and Z.” And you know, for folks that are listening, you might know that movie Tag about adults that have kind of committed, you know, enjoying each other’s company every year. And so, as we were putting this together, we realized that folks that either had some sort of program were a lot more successful than folks that did it in an ambiguous way. So, the short answer is this is really just a reboot of the year of fun, which was a program, you know, to stretch it out an entire 12 months but because the summer you know, is so ripe with opportunity for fun and then as you know serendipitously, right? As we were putting this together, the New York Times reached out, you know, because they were like, “Let’s invite our readers to fun.” It was all, I think, the universe saying like, let’s – with November coming up, no matter what your slant is I think we’re all kind of bracing for you know, fall, maybe not being as enjoyable as we would like and so, having this opportunity to you know, make sure that we maximize our enjoyment with both what we want to do but then also sharing that with our loved ones became important. [0:16:02.2] PF: Yeah, I love the way that all came together. [0:16:05.0] MR: Another thing that I think we’re really awakening to is that fun is one of the most useful aspects for engaging in all of these lifestyle changes that we’d talked about for what? The last 50 years? [0:16:16.2] PF: Get up, move around, healthy behavior, yep. [0:16:19.3] MR: But instead, we’ve been talking about want for the last quarter of a century, right? Like, you know we get fixated on the World Health Organization and I am guilty of this too, like I have to get that 115 minutes of exercise and yet, we never stop to ask, “Are the things I’m doing for exercise enjoyable? Am I drawn to them? Do I find them pleasurable?” Now, studies are finding that if we ask that question first, that is actually the most successful moderator with regards to anything that we can do with health interventions. And so, that one is just serendipitous for me, you know, the fact that I have looked at enjoyment for so long and oh, it just happens to be the most useful tool when it comes to you getting people to engage in healthy behaviors. That’s been such a pleasant surprise for me. [0:17:04.2] PF: That’s awesome and so what do you hope that people will get out of doing the summer fun eight-week email course? [0:17:11.2] MR: Well, obviously, I hope they have a lot more fun. [0:17:13.2] PF: Yeah. [0:17:13.9] MR: And like I said, you know, these tactics aren’t going to be earth-shattering and luckily, we’ve made them very bite-sized, right? So, this isn’t going to take much time for people to get through but the nice thing is these simple and not just really can right that ship. If you feel you know, life has gotten a little bit mundane, you know, you feel a little bit stuck, all the you know, adult life is about habituated behavior. You know, we’re going to kind of unroot that and hopefully, sprinkle on some of those micro joys during your summer. So, a few more smiles and a few more hugs, and a few more belly laughs. [0:17:47.4] PF: Something we can all benefit from. [0:17:49.8] MR: Exactly. [0:17:50.7] PF: So, fun is one of those things that doesn’t seem like, A, that anybody would be opposed to it or that there should really be any stumbling blocks to having fun but I am sure there are things that keep people from having fun. What are they, what keeps people from practicing fun? [0:18:06.6] MR: You know, there is so many that it’s going to be different for each person but certainly, we’re time [importer 0:18:14.2] right? So, it really does require a little bit of deliberate design and so we’ll get into that. For some, it is a sense of guilt. A lot of folks and there’s gender slang to this, you know, it is certainly excuse the female but they feel like they find joy in serving, right? It’s called the sandwich generation, right? So, they want to take care of their kids in a very loving way, they have aging parents that they want to make sure they’re okay and they feel like if they take time off the table, and when I say that, I am not just talking about females. Again, it’s just we know that there is a bias towards that data that they tend to be the family caregiver, right? That if they are engaging in some sort of self-care that they can’t fully be in it because they feel guilty because it is taking time away. And what we’ll learn in the course is that that’s anything but, that to be the best version of yourself so that you can be the most productive and have the vigor and vitality to be that good person when you are doing these things, those require just a little bit of time for you to enjoy life because when you don’t, what happens is you ultimately end up getting depleted and even the best of us, right? So, the last chapter in the book, I look at folks that have essentially dedicated their whole lives to serving others with regards to nonprofit and when they’re completely selfless, eventually, they won’t have anything left in the tank to get and so, when you think about it as being the long game, then fun in that sense really does become important and so once you learned that, I think it’s easy to then recalibrate. Like, “Wait a second, this isn’t a guilty pleasure, right?” Which is such a horrible word anyways, this is really something that is going to impact me in a positive way where I can bring that to the folks that I love, and then if you want to get even geekier about it, that’s actually contagious. When you are happy about what you are doing, you tend to set ripples, you know, both at work and at home that will then catch on with the folks around you. And oftentimes, you can create positive upward momentum in really easy ways, you know, just by doing a few things that you have to look forward to and like to go one level deeper, the reason is, is that we know that folks that don’t have something to look forward to even if it is just an hour out of the 168 that you have in a week, if you have like a really tough three or four days and we all have them and there’s nothing in your schedule that you’re like, well, at least, you know, something as simple as, “I might go have ice cream with my best friend.” If you don’t have that to look forward to, then you really lack one of the significant tools of resilience because like you just – then what your brain starts to feel is, “This crappy day is just going to be on repeat” right? But again, just some small form of simple pleasure to kind of root yourself like, “Okay, I’m in it right now but I know that something down the pipe is going to be fun and I’ll get there soon enough” is all it takes. [0:21:21.8] PF: We’re big on that on our house, making sure we have at least one fun thing going on. Like there’s got to be something on that calendar that we’re going to do that we’re really looking forward to and it does make a difference. [0:21:34.7] MR: Yeah. I mean, you already know because you’ve been living it for a while but I think you know, for a lot of busy adults we just forget, right? That we have some of that control. A study that I bring up all the time and I think you had him on the podcast because she has an amazing book herself called the Happier Hour. So, you know, her vacation mindset study, she didn’t do anything but just remind folks that they have agency and autonomy as they go in. And just remind yourself that this is meant to be a reprieve and you know, all of the positive benefits. Essentially, what they found was they saw some of these benefits you would get from an actual vacation just having a vacation mindset going into your weekend and so it’s this small sort of reframes, you know, what I call story editing, that can be really powerful but yet, so accessible to almost all of us. [0:22:24.8] PF: One thing has struck me as I was going through the emails and what you have planned for this course is this would be a great thing to do with an accountability partner because it’s like, you sign up for it and it’s like, this is going to be fun but as you said, we have to commit to that time and it can be easy to let it slip away. So, how do we do that, how will that help if we get somebody to do this course with us? [0:22:48.0] MR: Well, it will help on multiple levels, right? So, one, especially if you want to do some fun things with you know, a good friend, then that social contract is precommitment and so you’re going to get those things done, right? I mean, you started talking about it, it’s much more likely that happen. I would say that that’s the biggest benefit but then also, you can share ideas, right? Oftentimes, brainstorming is really enriched when you can say, you know, and I’ve actually seen this, which to me, it’s a little bit foreign. So, like I love when it works but I don’t quite understand why some people need to do this. A good friend of mine who I don’t think, I’ll just say his first name so I don’t out him but I literally had a conversation with a good friend a week ago who wanted to read, go through the play model because he felt that his life had gotten habituated. And he asked his wife, “Where do you see me light up? Like, where do I have fun? Because I’ve kind of lost that scent, you know?” Life is so busy because they have two small kids, like, “When can you just tell like, I’m in my moment.” And she gave him those clues because he couldn’t find themselves and she was spot on, and so sure enough, he implemented that in and I just checked in with them and yeah, you know, they were working. And so, for some folks, you know, that type of communication with a good friend that can kind of gut check you and go, “Really?” You know? Like – because sometimes too, you know, I think we talked about this last time, you can trick yourself. I mean, at the lowest level, it’s social media use, right? Often times, we’re just escaping frustration and boredom so we can trick ourselves into thinking like, what we’re doing is enjoyable when it’s not really. It’s just something that we’re doing to pass by the time and get away from the garbage. So, being a little bit more proactive, what, in geeky behavioral science we call, active leisure can be helpful too and so, having an accountability partner like, “Is that really fun or should we go do this because it’s a little bit more challenging?” And I think, will lead to kind of a richer experience, it can be helpful. [0:24:52.8] PF: That’s awesome. So, I’m really looking forward to seeing what people say about this, what kind of experiences they have. What I’d like to do is have you back at the end of the summer and we’ll talk about this. We’ll get feedback you heard, what we’ve gotten back from it, and really, you know, I’m going to walk through this experience too and really talk about how it changed and then how we can take that into the fall and winter months because, as you noted, it might be one to buckle up for. [0:25:19.7] MR: Well, and we call it the fun habit for a reason, right? Might as well turn it into a habit so that you know, this is again, the long game, right? Not just something that is episodically done and then moved on from – we’re not meant to just have fun this summer. [0:25:33.0] PF: All right, well, we’ll do it all year long. Mike, thank you so much for sitting down, I’m so excited to share this email course with our listeners and I will see you back here in a couple of months and we’ll talk about it again. [0:25:43.5] MR: Yeah, I can’t wait. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:49.2] PF: To sign up for the Live Happy Summer Fun with Mike Rucker, just visit us at LiveHappy.com and click on this podcast episode. We’ll also tell you how to find Mike’s book, The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life, or follow him on social media, and while you're there, you can also sign up for our weekly Live Happy Newsletter. Every week, we drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info and even a happy song of the week. That’s 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 everyday a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming Loneliness With Dr. Jeremy Nobel [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 472 of Live Happy Now. Loneliness is one of the major challenges facing our society today. Since this is Loneliness Awareness Week, it's a great time to look at what's behind this loneliness epidemic. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm sitting down with physician, teacher, innovator, and author, Dr. Jeremy Nobel. founder of The Foundation for Art & Healing, and the Project UnLonely initiative. Jeremy, who is also on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has published the book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. He's here to talk about what loneliness is doing to us and what we should be doing about it. Let's have a listen. [NTERVIEW]   [0:00:50] PF: Dr Nobel, thank you so much for joining us on Live Happy Now. [0:00:54] JN: My pleasure to be with you. [0:00:56] PF: It's so important to talk to you any time of the year, but right now, we really are excited to talk to you, because we have Loneliness Awareness Week. Boy, loneliness is such a huge, huge issue for so many people today. I was curious, first of all, where did your interest in not just studying loneliness, but resolving the crisis begin? [0:01:16] JN: Well, actually, it really began in an interesting way after 9/11, but I didn't know that I was really focused on loneliness. I was actually very interested in the trauma of 9/11, as an experience for many people, particularly children. That's what got me started, and I started The Foundation for Art & Healing, 501(c)3 nonprofit. The idea was to promote creative expression as a path to health and wellbeing. Really focusing on the power of the arts to really help us make sense of the world in positive, healthy, stress-reducing, trauma recovery-oriented ways. As we started doing this work with the arts, we quickly found that many people with trauma and dealing with that stress were also quite lonely. They told us that the work we were doing with the arts to engage, and activate, and have kind of exciting conversations, storytelling, and so on, made them feel less lonely and more connected. That really got our attention, and that's what launched Project UnLonely. [0:02:19] PF: What is the connection between trauma and loneliness? [0:02:22] JN: When you're traumatized, so what is trauma? It's a painful, hurtful injury or experience. As you can imagine, when you have something painful, and even if it's something just like touching a hot stove, if you remember all those stories. You learn not to touch hot stoves, you back away from the threat of a hot stove. Many times, trauma is associated with engagement with other people. So, this could be everything from military trauma, to domestic violence, to the repeated marginalization of racism. This is all painful, and so, we withdraw. Almost anything that leads to trauma, in a way, does set you up for a kind of isolation, a kind of loneliness. That relationship is pretty clear. The real challenge, we'll talk more about it, is how do you move from that loneliness towards a sense of connection. [0:03:15] PF: Now, your organization started in 2016 and there was no clue at that point that the loneliness crisis was going to get so bad. In fact, as you mentioned in your book, 2020 was going to be a bang-up year for your organization. You had so much research that you were going to present, and so many speaking engagements, and then that all disappeared. Thank you, COVID. So, has your approach to loneliness changed at all since 2020, and how have you seen loneliness change in society? [0:03:47] JN: All great questions. First, just for clarity, Project UnLonely isn't its own organization. It actually is a project, it's the signature initiative of The Foundation for Art & Healing, which is the organization. Although we formally launched Project on lonely in 2016, we actually started doing the work to understand loneliness and how the arts connect well before that, around 2011 or 2012. Then, the question is, how did the pandemic change the approach to loneliness? I think what it did, in general, was shine a spotlight on it. As you mentioned, we had loneliness well before the pandemic, but somehow, it became part of all of our consciousness in a very different way. As you mentioned, I start my book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. Very first page with how dramatically my world got upended in March 2020. Plans, relationships, teaching, travel, all of this just went on hold as we all tried to navigate this new reality, which forced us to have a kind of isolation to protect us and our neighbors from the virus. While isolation is different than loneliness, it's highly associated with it. So, many people experience loneliness in a way they had not before. [0:05:09] PF: I want to touch on that, what you just said, because we do equate isolation with loneliness. We have had an aunt who spent a lot of time alone, and she told me she's like, "I have never been lonely." Even though she was isolated, she didn't feel lonely. What is the difference between isolation and loneliness? Because you can be in a crowd of people and still feel lonely. [0:05:30] JN: Exactly. One of the real goals of my book is to demystify loneliness and humanize it. The first really important lesson, if you will, is that being alone is not the same thing as being lonely. Being alone is objective. It's the absence of social connection. This can be, if you're in a rural setting, or even isolated in an apartment in an urban setting, where, let's say, you've got a disability, you can't leave easily, or you're fearful about going outside. So then, you are alone. But being alone can be such a positive experience of thoughtful reflection, consideration, the bigger world picture, contemplation. We have a high-class word for it. We sometimes call it solitude, and we do need solitude, but that's different than being lonely. Here's what loneliness is. It's subjective, it's a feeling, it's a mood state. It's the difference between the social connections with other people that we would like to have and what we feel we do have. That gap is what we experience as loneliness. As you pointed out, you actually can be lonely in a crowd. It has nothing to do with whether there are other people around you. It's whether you have the social connections you want. If you're with other people, but don't feel connected to them, you feel lonely. That introduces what I found, a really important observation, and I think, maybe your community will also, is that they're different types of loneliness. [0:07:10] PF: I'm so glad you brought that up, because you talk about three types of loneliness. I was like, I thought there was just loneliness. Can you dig into that and tell us about that? [0:07:17] JN: Right. Well, I thought so too, until we actually started going out and talking about it. So, very simply, there's psychological loneliness, which is, "Do I have a friend? Is there someone I can tell my troubles to?" That's what many people think of when they think of loneliness. But then, there's also the loneliness of systematic exclusion. We call that societal loneliness, because of race, or gender, or disability. Do people evaluate you in that very superficial characteristic and treat you differently, and, in a sense, withdraw from you in a systematic way? That's very different than not having a friend. You could have plenty of friends, but if you feel, for instance, are in a racist workplace and it's not safe to be in certain conversations, you're going to experience loneliness in even though you might have friends. The third type of loneliness, which I am very interested in, and it's been around thousands of years, is where do I relate to the bigger world, the narrative of human experience. People with a religious orientation often call kind of the religious world, God, the universe. But you don't have to be religious to have a sense of curiosity about how your life fits into the bigger story. What was here on the planet before I arrived? What will be here after I depart? Does my life have meaning, consequence? If you don't have solid grounding and answers to those questions, you can feel quite lonely. I think that's the loneliness that's affecting a lot of what we know is the loneliest demographic, 18 to 28 years old. They have plenty of friends, they're connected on social media, but they're wondering, "What am I doing? What's my future? Does my life have meaning? Do I matter?" That could be quite distressing, and it's its own form of loneliness. [0:09:13] PF: Is the way that you address those different forms of loneliness, does that differ? [0:09:20] JN: Absolutely. As someone who in the public health world, and through Project UnLonely, we're trying to design interventions that are powerful for people, as you might imagine. If the loneliness is the loneliness of uncertainty about your meaning in the world, that's very different than the loneliness of not having someone to talk to. So, if you think, "Okay. What do I need to feel less lonely?" One of the first important questions to ask yourself is, what type of loneliness am I experiencing? In my book, I provide different questions we can ask, but they're kind of what you might think. Do I enjoy relationships with others where I can have a chance to have authentic conversations? Or, are those missing from my life? If they're missing from my life, how might I pursue having more of them? So, we lay out some of the strategies for that also. If your feeling of loneliness is uncertainty about your own positioning in the universe, of meaning, and is there purpose. Then, you might want to ask yourself more about how you want to relate to that, how you feel you can be more meaningful, and part of the bigger story. There's some strategies I talked about in the book for that too. [0:10:33] PF: How did you come up with these different strategies? Obviously, you're a fabulous researcher. How did you come to understand those different types of loneliness, and this is what would resolve them? [0:10:45] JN: It's a really great question. The way, again, research works, science works, it's driven by one thing. By the way, it's the same thing that drives the arts, and that's curiosity. As we started going out, and doing programs, and having conversations with hundreds of people about their loneliness and what their experience was, we began to see patterns and trends. It's also important to know that of these three types of loneliness, you could have one type, two types, or three types altogether. That was the first thing, was the observation, awareness. In terms of what works to impact it, some of that is based on psychology research in laboratory settings. We can study what seems to activate people, to embolden them, to be able to connect with others, and tolerate what I sometimes call discomfort of disclosure. Because if you reveal something authentic about yourself, and then someone says, "Sorry, you're too boring. I don't want to have a conversation with you."   [0:11:48] PF: Or, "That's just too much for me."   [0:11:50] JN: Exactly. Or, "I can't handle that." Then, you might feel rejected, abandoned, critiqued, and that hurts. So then, you're reluctant to do that. People, in a way, they connect with others, have to learn to tolerate the fact that you're not always 100% successful, and to keep going just like – you have to explore, and try different things, and see what works for you personally. [0:12:16] PF: That makes so much sense. There was a report that caught everyone's attention. I think it was within the last year, and it's really quoted quite a bit, and that is that loneliness is more dangerous than smoking. We hear that a lot, but we don't hear the reasoning behind that. Could you explain to us why it's so harmful, and also, physically, what loneliness does to us? [0:12:41] JN: Absolutely. That work, that sound bite about being smoking. It can be as dangerous as smoking – loneliness can be as dangerous as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Why is that? Because at its chronic extreme stages, loneliness actually changes how the brain functions, and it also increases inflammation, a real driver for illness, and it impairs immune system function. So, many of these excess deaths that lead to a 30% increase risk of a shorter lifespan are not because of suicides or overdose, drug overdoses. You could imagine loneliness could cause those, and it does. Those are factored out of these scientific analyzes. Most of the deaths are cardiovascular, it's heart attack, it's stroke, sometimes it's cancer death, or metabolic death. Disease and illness related to diabetes. It's important to know that loneliness unchecked, unattended to, when it spirals out of control can be very, very hard on our physical systems too, not just our mental attitudes. [BREAK] [0:13:50] PF: We'll be right back with Dr. Jeremy Nobel, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about how you can beat the heat and get better sleep this summer. I've become such a big fan of Cozy Earth sheets for a lot of reasons. But as the temperatures rise, I've found one more reason to make them the only sheets I want to sleep on. Thanks to their cutting-edge temperature regulating technology, Cozy Earth's bedding lets me stay cool and comfortable, even on the hottest days and nights. That means, I can wake up refreshed and ready for the day. Here's the best part, our exclusive offer for listeners like you gets you a 30% discount and a free item when you use COZY HAPPY at cozyearth.com/livehappynow. These sheets also offer the unbeatable combination of softness and durability, giving you an incredible, comfortable sleep experience. So, invest in your sleep health this summer and stay cool backed by Cozy Earth's 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty. Visit cozyearth.com/livehappynow, and use the code COZY HAPPY to unlock this special offer and optimize your sleep for better health. After placing your order, be sure to select podcast in the survey, and then select Live Happy Now in the drop-down menu that follows. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Dr. Jeremy Nobel. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES]   [0:15:10] PF: I recall, even, probably about 20 years ago, having a friend who was going through a divorce and she said, "I'm lonely." It struck me, because I think, that was the first time it actually had somebody say that to me, like it was almost a shameful thing to say, "I'm lonely." What was that mindset and does any of that still remain? [0:15:32] JN: We started Project UnLonely with three goals, Paula. One was to increase awareness of loneliness, and how toxic it can be for your health. The second, which is what we're going to talk about, is to reduce the stigma that surrounds it. The third is to put these powerful imagination, creativity-fueled programs out in the community, so people can be better engaged. But let's talk more about stigma. Many people feel that if they're lonely, it's their fault, that there's something about them, that they're broken, they're flawed, they're incomplete, they're inadequate. This is all just a social personal construction. That's what they believe. The only good news about that is that, anything that's socially and culturally constructed can be culturally reconstructed. So, I think we have an enormous opportunity. I first heard this idea from John Cacioppo, University of Chicago, who died, unfortunately. Shortly before the pandemic, it's a real pioneer in understanding loneliness, and how it impacts not just our brains, but our behaviors. He said, "Why don't we think about loneliness as a signal that there's something we need, a biologic signal? Just like thirst is a signal, we need hydration. Loneliness is a signal that every one of us needs some degree of human connection." Obviously, most people don't feel embarrassed or guilty about thirsty. Why do we feel embarrassed about being lonely? It goes back to this cultural assumption, in our cultural kind of matrix of, kind of how we put things together. People, as I said, feel that they're flawed. What if we can shift that to just say, "Hey, it's just a signal. What do I need now?" Human connection. "How do I find it? What type of loneliness do I have?" Then, you follow the reasonable paths to get better connected, either psychologically, or societally. or spiritually. [0:17:30] PF: As people become more willing to explore that, how is that going to open up the world a little bit better? You reference Gen Z and how they are incredibly lonely despite being connected. How, as we change this conversation, do you see the world is going to open up? [0:17:48] JN: All right. Here's an experiment I do when I do public speaking now. I ask people, raise your hand if you know someone who is seriously and significantly lonely. Not if you're lonely, but if you know someone. Hundred percent of the hands go up. Then, I say, "How many people have you heard say out loud, 'I'm lonely.'"? Only 50% of the hands go up. If this were even five years ago, only 10% of the hands will go up. So, we're making progress. We have a long way to go, but we're making progress. So, that's encouraging. I think a lot of it is the younger demographic that I mentioned, the loneliest demographic, 18 to 28 do seem willing to talk about their mental health and so on, and take the risk of being judged, criticized, excluded. I admire that courage. What we're trying to do with project and lonely is to actually also give them workshops. and programs that they can participate in, that are delivered not by us. We develop our programs and then they're delivered by colleges, by libraries, by faith-based groups, by community centers. Because as our surgeon general calls for in the report, you mentioned, we need to create a culture of connection, where it's not viewed as an illness or a flaw, loneliness. The connection is valued as something we celebrate at a personal level. We do it with friends, with family. We actively look for opportunities to get together and have the, sometimes just very simple conversations that can still be quite meaningful. They don't have to be deep, heart-to-heart disclosure conversation every time. It can be, "Hey, what's lighting you up these days?" "Let me tell you." "Oh." It's so important, these casual networks of human exchange, and not just social media, memes, and likes, and follows around short videos, but actual conversations in real life. [0:19:54] PF: Can just the acknowledgement, even to ourselves that we're lonely. Does that start changing things for us? [0:20:01] JN: I think it does if it isn't also associated with guilt and self-blame. So, to say, "I'm lonely because I'm a loser, and I've always been a loser", is not a very helpful step forward. But to say, "I'm lonely." But loneliness, and I truly believe this is the world's most human feeling, the need for other people. It's a signal that there's something I need. How do I follow that signal and lead myself forward to a path of personal discovery? Because I think if we're not comfortable knowing who we are, it's hard to have authentic conversations, and friendships with others. But then, how do I feel part of a bigger world where, "Yes, I exist as a person, but I'm part of a much bigger story." That often makes people feel better and feel connected. [0:20:48] PF: We all feel lonely time to time. But how does someone know if it's a problem, if it's chronic loneliness, versus just something we're going through right now? [0:20:58] JN: That's a really great question. I think part of that is really to pay a lot of attention to how you're doing, feeling in kind of navigating the world. In the book, I call this the pyramid of vulnerability. Imagine a pyramid with three layers. The bottom layer is where we all are all the time. Every human being, as I said, can feel lonely from time to time, so that's us. At that bottom layer, we should be trying to do things to build our social resilience, our social connection levels. But yet, no matter who you are in your life and all of our lives, we will be faced with challenges that really do increase our risk of loneliness. That moves us to the middle tier. So, that could be loss of a loved one, the breakup of relationship, a new serious illness, whatever it is, loss of a job, concern about some future event like the national elections. That starts a kind of risk for a spiral, where you start to withdraw. That's when it's most critical to say, "Okay. Am I starting to feel more anxious? Am I having trouble sleeping? Am I having trouble concentrating? Maybe it's because I'm lonely." Ask yourself that. Then, if you are, to go through this exploration, well, what type of loneliness is it. Then, follow the strategies to get connected. Because if you can interact at that middle tier of vulnerability, and then reduce the risk to spiral down into a good direction towards the base, you avoid spiraling up into the highest tier of loneliness. That's where loneliness becomes a serious medical issue, where it is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day, where you have a 30% increased risk of heart attack. or stroke. or death from either. But we don't have to get to that level if we can engage earlier and kind of reestablish balance, and a sense of comfort and connection, calm it down, so we're back down to the bottom tier. Does that make sense? [0:23:04] PF: It does. I wondered as you were talking, because once you reach that top level, it seems like it's going to be most difficult to pull yourself out. What then should those around you – because if I'm your friend and I see this, it's probably going to take some sort of intervention or outreach from me. Because once you hit that top, you're a goner, but you're in deep. [0:23:27] JN: You are in deep, and that's when you're really most in need. As you point out, it's often where you are least able to navigate your way out of it completely on your own. That's where one of the things we can do in building a culture of connection, is to kind of keep an eye out on our friends, family, even neighbors, and not be their therapist, not be their parent, but be their friend. Bear in mind how even a simple kind word, when you're passing by somebody on the street can totally change their day, can totally change their sense of optimism, of positive possibility, curiosity for that day. Stabilize them from what otherwise could be very difficult thoughts, sometimes thoughts of self-harm, and just kind of remind them that, "Hey, there's some positive things going on in the world. I'm out here too, and you're not alone, you're not broken, and you're not defective." It doesn't require a therapist to have these daily reminders that we're all human, we're all connected. We all feel lonely from time to time, but we can be part of a larger and connected story. I think the arts and imagination, obviously, can give us kind of fun ways to tell that story of being connected, and then share those stories with others. [0:24:42] PF: Yes. I love that your solution goes to the arts. Can you talk about the role that creative and artistic expression plays in combating loneliness? Then, give us some ideas for how people can use that in their own lives? [0:24:56] JN: Absolutely. I think, first of all, it's now really clear that arts and creative expression change the brain. When we change the brain, we change our minds. We change our minds, we change behaviors. Here's how arts change the brain. One major way the arts and all the arts, by the way work. So not just the traditional arts like music, visual art, language arts like poetry, movement arts like dance, but culinary arts, cooking. The creative assembly of food ingredients, the taste, the smell, the sensation in your mouth as you eat fun food. So, that's a creative form. Textile arts, these have been around for centuries. Knitting, crocheting, quilting, these are wonderful creative activities. Then, gardening. Just bringing four things from nature, what a friend of mine calls the world's slowest performance art form.   [0:25:54] PF: I love that.   [0:25:56] JN: These are how the arts can change us. They reduce cortisol levels, the stress hormone that puts us on edge, drives fight or flight, which means we're always hyper vigilant. That does increase inflammation. It's what alters the immune system. But the arts also increase levels of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, the so-called feel-good hormones. Then, very importantly, the arts also change how we make sense of the social world. What otherwise we might see as threats, like somebody walking towards us through the arts, particularly the ones that increase our sense of compassion, empathy, that person can look like an opportunity, someone I can have a conversation with. That's kind of the cascade of how changes in the brain from the arts, then literally change our levels of optimism, possibility. Sometimes, this is all in the positive psychology realm, as you know. But then, most importantly, it changes how we behave. We're willing to smile at a stranger, we're willing to take the risk of even a little piece of casual conversation in the grocery store. Then, if you take that risk and people respond, it starts moving your brain and mind in a more positive way, and the positive spiral happens. This is why the arts, I think, can be such a catalyst for connection. [0:27:17] PF: I absolutely love that. Big question is, where do people start? [0:27:22] JN: I think, if it's around the arts, I think it comes back to curiosity. Explore the world in some creative form that you enjoy. If you don't know what you enjoy, yet, try different things. Try drawing, try just kind of move with colored markers on white paper, and just say, "How am I feeling today? We have prompts and activities for this on our website. Imagine a time in your life that was meaningful to you. Then. don't draw the experience. Let yourself feel the feelings associated with that time, and then try to draw the feelings using color and shade. There's no wrong answer to these exercises. So. you get it all out on the page. Then, in many of our workshops, what we do is, we do this as a group. We make the art on our own, but then we pair up and we tell our personal stories. That's the second really powerful things the arts do. They invite and allow us to share our stories. Because almost every creative form, whether it's a casserole, a chocolate chip cookie, or a Picasso painting is a form of a story. It's a narrative, we're trying to express something. So, the arts enable that. Then, the last thing the arts do, and I particularly feel this with certain kinds of music, is they kind of transform us to a kind of awe and wonder about the world. I feel this in poetry also. I'm a poet, and reading a poem by who might no longer even be alive with us can still make me feel like I'm a small but important part of a very big and very wonderful story. [0:29:03] PF: That's fantastic. Now, we're going to tell the listeners how they can find your website, how they can find your book. As you said, you have resources on the website so they can start doing some of these exercises. Your book has prompts and walks us through this. What is it that you want everyone listening to know and understand about loneliness? [0:29:23] JN: Let me go back to some of the things we talked about. By the way, thank you for helping get the word out. The other thing we have that's a lot of fun for people who aren't immediately willing to, "Oh, I'm going to make some art." Is, we use the power of the arts in the form of short films. We're now working with Steve Buscemi, the celebrated actor and filmmaker. He's an ambassador for what we call Project UnLonely Films. You come to our website and there's a whole portfolio of short films that look at loneliness and some of the major social territories in which they exist. So, trauma, aging, illness, difference, the modern world. You get to explore loneliness through the lens, literally, of someone who's making a film on it. Then, if you watch it with a few other people, you can just say, "Hey, what did we just watch?" and have a conversation. Don't overlook the opportunity. Come to our site, watch some of our films, sign up for our newsletter, so we'll send you a little link every week or two with a film and some conversation starters. So, there are lots of ways we can move from being a little bit cautious in a defensive crouch, which we're all in post-pandemic, to something a little bit more open-hearted, a little bit more open-minded. [0:30:40] PF: That is fantastic. The work you're doing is amazing. It's very necessary, and I truly believe it's going to help move that needle on loneliness in our society. So, I thank you for the work you're doing, first of all. Then, secondly, I really appreciate your time. It was an honor to sit down with you and talk about this. I know our listeners have gotten a lot out of this conversation. [0:31:00] JN: Thank you. It's my absolute pleasure, and even this conversation makes me feel more connected. So, thank you for that, too, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:31:08] PF: That was Dr. Jeremy Nobel, talking about loneliness. If you'd like to learn more about Jeremy, check out his book, Project UnLonely: Healing Our Crisis of Disconnection. Visit his website for resources or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every week, we'll drop a little bit of joy into your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. 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: What’s Driving Gen Z’s Anxiety (and What to Do About It) With Dr. Lauren Cook [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 471 of Live Happy Now. Younger generations are experiencing stress and anxiety differently than previous generations. That's something we're making part of the ongoing conversation here at Live Happy. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm joined by author and clinical psychologist, Dr. Lauren Cook. Her latest book, Generation Anxiety looks at why Millennials and Gen Z are so anxious and how that's affecting them. She's here today to talk about some of the things that are driving that anxiety, and importantly, offers insight into what we can do to help change this downward spiral, and what that will mean for future generations. Let's have a listen. [EPISODE]   [0:00:46] PF: Lauren, welcome back to Live Happy Now.   [0:00:48] LC: It's so good to see you again, Paula.   [0:00:51] PF: I'm really excited to sit down have this conversation with you because you're doing some incredible work with Gen Z and Millennials. As you know, you and I have talked about this. Live Happy Now is really concerned about the mental health of Gen Z. We're really committed to keeping that dialogue open. So, your book does an excellent, incredible job of looking at, not just Gen Z, but Millennials. I wanted to kick it off, I wanted to know if you could talk about why both of those generations are so anxiety-ridden. [0:01:23] LC: Yes. We are really seeing an increase in anxiety both in prevalence, meaning more and more people and severity. Intensity of symptoms is increasing as well. So, we're seeing it horizontally, longitudinally, all the ways. Anxiety is absolutely increasing for folks. I think it's happening both personally, but also very much communally. When you look at what's happened in our country in the last two decades, in particular, it's been one thing after another. There's a really interesting survey that asked people, "What's been the most significant effect generationally that's happened to you in your lifetime?" You, as Baby Boomers, you asked the great generation who experienced the depression, World War Two, Gen X. They all say – you can probably guess what it is. The number one significant event in their lifetime and Millennials will say this as well.   [0:02:18] PF: 9/11.   [0:02:18] LC: September 11th. There you go. However, if you look at what's happened in Gen Z's lifetime, we've got the Trump election, Black Lives Matter, George Floyd's murder, climate change events, the Me Too movement. I mean, I could keep going for quite a while about the long laundry list of things. I don't say that to be political. These are historical events that are happening. It is really affecting young adults to be living in this world where they're just inundated by chaotic and distressing news. And, you also have what's happening personally in their lives as well, with social media, academic pressure. These two generations, even though they're the most educated, are the most financially worse off than their previous generations. That's really frustrating, to feel like you're told this myth of like, "Work hard and you will be able to succeed." They're working really hard, and it's very hard to succeed, to own a house, all these different things. That breaks the person down over time. [0:03:24] PF: Can you talk about how they're different from previous generations? Because I want to dive into that a little bit, because I've heard people who seem to not really understand. They think like, basically, we're all the same. We were just born at different times. So, can you correct that way of thinking? [0:03:42] LC: Yes. Social media, it sounds almost like low hanging fruit at this point. But it really, I think, has made a difference for Millennials and Gen Z. They grew up at this time when – especially Millennials like myself, social media was just coming on the scene. We didn't know what was happening. Gen Z, in particular, have been the guinea pigs of social media, of having technology, getting a cell phone when they're 10 years old, right? We didn't necessarily know what effects this was going to have on the brain. But now, we're seeing this play out, where we're seeing social anxiety increased. So many young adults, they don't know how to answer the phone, they don't know how to have a conversation with a stranger. They also feel really unsafe in this world. The Stress in America survey asked young adults, "What are you afraid of?" Seventy-five percent said their greatest fear is gun violence. For this generation, to wake up and they see movie theaters, concerts, schools, places of worship, no place is safe. Now, everybody looks around their shoulder every time they go out. Am I safe? Is something going to happen to me? Is something going to happen to my loved one? We could have a whole conversation about separation anxiety, Paula, and how this generation really experiences it. Because our world just feels incredibly unsafe to these young adults. When you look at what has happened, I think it's understandable why. [0:05:10] PF: Does the fact that parents are also then trying to protect those children? We're doing it from a good place, but doesn't that also increase those feelings of the world's not safe and I should be afraid? [0:05:22] LC: Exactly, exactly. It's a really fine line, between wanting to protect our kids. And at the same time, not over protecting where our kids are learning this message, "I can't do anything in my life." I cite this in Generation Anxiety, my book, a really interesting study. That when parents give this message to their kids, that the world is unsafe, people are going to hurt you, we do see that there are increases in depression and anxiety for kids. When parents have a more optimistic outlook, go out there. live your life, yes, bad, scary things can happen. But statistically, the chances of that are pretty slim. Go out there and experience your life. Those kids are less likely to be anxious and depressed. Even though we turn on the news, and we hear these difficult things. We also have to remind ourselves, okay, what is the chance of that happening to me when I go to a movie theater, when I go to a concert, and not keeping ourselves in such a small box at the same time? [0:06:23] PF: You know, that's something Deb Heisz, CEO for Live Happy and I have talked about. We've talked about it on the air that when you're constantly watching the news, you do start seeing the world as unsafe, and very scary place. I think it is important for parents to be mindful of what children are being exposed to, in the home in terms of what kind of news, what kind of television is on at any given time, because that is having a deep, deep effect on them. [0:06:52] LC: It is. It is. There's really great conversations happening right now about parental attachment, and really taking time to be with our kids, to be present with our kids. I'm a new mom myself. My son turns one this Sunday. [0:07:07] PF: Well, congratulations, first of all. [0:07:09] LC: Thank you. I'm super excited about it. But we don't even, I think realize at this point how much we use our phones. I catch myself doing it where, "Oh, let me just answer a few emails. Let me get to a few text messages." Meanwhile, my son is right there by me playing, and he's, I'm sure, perceiving me being sucked into a phone. That's something Gen Z has experienced too. Even though I don't think it's intentional, we just haven't had as much face-to-face interaction with each other because we're face-to-facing with our phone. [0:07:44] PF: From a parent's standpoint, if you have someone who is part of Gen Z, what are some things in terms of that mindset of safety? Because, again, we want to keep our children safe, we want to be there. But how do we do that, and advise them without terrifying them? Because the world, we can make it pretty terrifying if we really talk about it. [0:08:06] LC: We definitely can. I approach things with this mentality, I call them powered acceptance. First piece is, we have to accept what's going on in our world. If our kids ask about it, we can't lie to them. We need to be honest about what's happening, and we need to really have a sense of what's going on in our world. If we don't know what the problems are, how do we fix them? But we also have to be empowered, we have to take action. This is the thing; anxiety makes people want to avoid. It makes people want to run away and say, "I don't want to get on that plane. I don't want to go to that show. I don't want to ask that new person to be my friend because it makes me feel anxious." Anxiety just grows bigger and bigger and bigger. So, we have to be empowered and start to kind of push the boundaries of what our anxiety is wanting to make us do. We have to take action to see, "Oh, I can ask somebody to hang out, even though that makes me feel anxious." Or, "I can go to that concert because I love Taylor Swift. Sure, something scary could happen, I will deal with that." At the end of the day, anxiety is about not wanting to face the reality of that things end, that things change, that we can experience pain. These are not necessarily warm, fuzzy ideas, right? But if we actually teach ourselves and our kids that we can sit with distress, we can sit with discomfort. The world opens up to us in a whole new way and we no longer have to be in fear of pain. [0:09:40] PF: How do you start sharing that message? Because that's huge, to be able to sit with discomfort, especially in a time when there are a million distractions that we can have at our fingertips. First of all, how do we as the adults in the room, how do we learn how to do that, and then, how do you pass that along? [0:10:03] LC: We have to model it ourselves. We have to show our kids that we're okay handling discomfort. They are watching us so closely to notice when we avoid when we lean in. Sure, sometimes we do need to take a step back and rest. It's not always about powering and pushing through. It's just as important to show our kids how we can set healthy boundaries, how we can say no sometimes. But our kids also need to see us getting a little bit uncomfy, even if it's something like giving a speech at work, or having a tough conversation with our partner, but in a healthy, appropriate way. These are all modeling examples that our kids are really taking in. Aat the same time, I think when we can show our kids and encourage them to lean into their discomfort, and cheer them on for that, that's so, so helpful. Because I do see a lot of parents enable their kid's anxiety, they feel like it's an act of love to let them get out of things. But if we can show them, hey, you can actually go to that soccer game when you felt really nervous about it rather than stay home. We're teaching our kids their resilience in those moments. [0:11:14] PF: I love that. I absolutely love that. What are some of the signs that we should be looking for that someone is struggling with anxiety? Because we can kind of tell internally, when we've got it going on ourselves, but we might not always see it in someone else. [0:11:28] LC: I'm really glad you asked that, Paula. There's a few things to really make note of. If you notice any sleep difficulties, that's a classic one of someone who's having trouble falling or staying asleep. If you notice somebody's having difficulty concentrating. Sometimes that can get a little confusing with ADHD, but that's also a sign of anxiety. If somebody feels or notices that they're really keyed up or on edge, it's like a hamster on a wheel, go, go, go. Here's one that people often miss, irritability. We think irritability is its own thing, but irritability is actually often a sign of anxiety and depression. So, if you notice somebody's getting snappy or quiet, that's something to pay attention to. Again, any kind of avoided behavior, if you notice your kiddo or yourself, "Oh, we used to always go out to dinner together, and now my kid doesn't want to go out for a meal." Or, "I'm noticing my kiddo doesn't want to go on car rides, or plane rides." All these different things where avoidance could be really coming into play, that's a hallmark of anxiety. [0:12:32] PF: So then, once you start seeing it, and not just as a parent, because I'm not a parent, but I have a lot of young people in my life. You're in it, it's a different situation, because there's a lot of things you cannot do. So, what is it? If you see anxiety, if you start recognizing, "Hey, this person might be struggling with anxiety." What are some things that you should start doing to reach out to them? [0:12:59] LC: Self-disclosure here is really powerful. Anxiety is something that, just about everybody has some touchpoint with. Self-disclosing when you yourself have felt anxious and humanizing yourself in that way is so relieving to someone with anxiety. Because the thing, and I see this with so many of my clients, they don't want anyone to know they're anxious. They think it's so embarrassing, and it's like, welcome to the human club. If we can make it okay to be anxious, ironically, that's actually when anxiety starts to go down. But people get so much anxiety about hiding their anxiety. "I don't want anyone to notice." It really magnifies it for them. So, if you yourself, show your humaneness of like, "Oh my gosh, I felt really anxious about this or really worried about this, how do you feel about it?" It really opens that door for someone to share what's behind their own curtain. [0:13:57] PF: Then, once they start sharing that, and once they kind of start unpacking the cause of their anxiety, where do you go from there? I mean, one thing is, I'm reading your book. Just the depth and the breadth of how far-reaching anxiety can be, and how deeply emotional river that runs through it is, it made it a bigger issue than I even really had looked at it from. So, once someone shares with you, then what do you do? Other than say, "Call Dr. Lauren Cook." [0:14:28] LC: Thank you, Paula. Well, I'd like to take a holistic approach. That's something I really hope comes across in the book to move beyond just a westernized model of care. I am all for therapy, I'm all for medication. I'm a psychologist, so I'm very much for those things. However, I also believe there's a lot of different things that can work for people with anxiety and anxiety is such a physical experience. I mean, especially when you look at the gut brain access connection, and how much of our anxiety really can settle into our gut and our stomach. We've got to look at all of those different things. The food, the drinks we put into our bodies. Amazing book on this is Dr. Uma Naidoo's This is Your Brain on Food, and really getting curious about what we're eating is either inflaming or healing our gut. Quick tip, everybody listening, please get your bloodwork done. Because people can spend thousands of dollars on therapy, when something is going off in your chemistry. Your vitamin D levels are low, magnesium, B12. If those things are out of whack, doesn't matter how much cognitive therapy you do, you're going to feel anxious, my friend. It's important to do the due diligence of looking at yourself holistically, not just from the neck up, but really looking at our entire physical body for overall healing. [0:15:54] PF: I love that you brought that up. Because for myself, I'm very big on what I eat. I know that everything has – there's a cause and effect. So, being very careful about avoiding preservatives, and dyes, and sugars, and things like that. I see that as an area where that does get overlooked, because so much of what we have on our shelves today is – well, it's not food, actually. It's just chemicals in a really nice package. So, I'm super happy to see you bringing that up. Do you see that when people change some of the things that they're eating, they start having a different experience with anxiety? [0:16:33] LC: Big time. big time. Yes. It's everything from cutting back on preservatives, cutting back on sugar. That's hard for me, because I'm such a sweet tooth myself. Alcohol is a big one. A lot of my college-aged clients will tell you, "Oh, I have anxiety" on the next day. They get bad anxiety with the hangover. So, a lot of them are starting to get sober curious, as we say, and starting to play with, "Okay. What happens when I'm not drinking for a while?" Because, even if someone's drinking every other day, their sleep patterns never have a chance to equilibrate. Sleep is a huge part in anxiety and treatment. So, this is all wrapped up in itself. Even hydration, staying hydrated with water. We see when the brain is not getting enough water, things spiral quickly. So, absolutely, I think that's something that has been missed in the narrative, because it seems so simple. We're told from a young age, eat your fruits and veggies, blah, blah. It has a real effect on brain health. [0:17:39] PF: That is great. I hope more people will jump on that and look at what they're putting in and what that's doing to their bodies. I know Dr. Drew Ramsey, is someone we've had on the show before. When someone comes in with depression, the first thing he does is look at what they're eating. Before he tries medication, he will have them change their diet, and most times, medication is not needed. That just really supports the kind of work that you're doing too. [0:18:07] LC: That's incredible. I believe it. [0:18:10] PF: So, as I said, your book really outlines just how massive this issue is right now. Do you see this as a solvable problem? Because it is huge. It's kind of like, can we have world peace? I feel like this is somewhere out there with it. [0:18:25] LC: I did have a stint in beauty pageant days. So perhaps, this is my world peace moment. I don't know. I am forever an optimist. I love Seligman's work on positive psychology, and the effects of optimism. I do believe that things can get better. I always have that hope. I'm also a realist, though, and the book is not about trying to make anxiety go away. It's about learning how to live with anxiety. I think that's something people get a little bit lost on. They feel like they're a failure if they can't get their anxiety to stop. The reality is, sometimes your anxiety may be here to stay. But the more you fight it, the more the beast is going to grow bigger in you. But if you embrace what I call your inner sea otter, lay back in your waters, and say, "All right, I'm anxious. So, what?" It really starts to lose its power. I've seen that in my own life. I'm very open about my own lived experience with anxiety and emetophobia in particular, which is a phobia of vomit, really fun. But I'm very open about how I've lived with that and have worked hard to not let it stop me living the life that I want to live. [0:19:40] PF: Yes. What's interesting in your book, you also explained where that came from. I found that very, very fascinating. I'm not going to tell the listeners how because now they have to go find your book and look it up.   [0:19:51] LC: Tease.   [0:19:52] PF: It is. That actually played into another question that I had for you, which is about generational trauma and epigenetics is such a huge area of study. I think it's been disregarded a lot in the past, where we don't look at the effect of what happened with our parents and our grandparents, and how that anxiety and other types of traumas get passed along. Can you talk just a little bit about what role that intergenerational trauma plays and how we kind of can use that and correct the trajectory of that trauma? [0:20:27] LC: I'm really happy that you reference that, because I think we can get very quickly into the blame game of, "What's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong?" It is generational buildup, it's like emotional tartar that has been passed down. One study, I found this so fascinating in the research for the book about Holocaust survivors, how it was actually their grandchildren that had more anxiety than the Holocaust survivors themselves. Really seeing how this generational trauma gets passed down. Now, I also found research though that it can be changed as well, in a better way as too, that diet, nutrition, what people eat can really make a positive impact for people. But it makes us really think about. "Wow, the choices I'm making for myself now, it doesn't just affect me. It affects my kids and even my grandkids." You even look at studies with smoking, and how that impacts people for generations to come. This is something I think we can get more curious about. I think we were really just at the tip of the iceberg with epigenetics research. I'm staying closely aware of it, because I think we're only going to see more and more. This is where I do have an optimistic lens here, that we can make better choices that are going to be good for more generations to come. [0:21:51] PF: If we don't figure this out, what are the consequences for future generations? Knowing what we just said, that it's passed down. If we cannot start correcting the true trajectory of happiness for Gen Z now, what is the consequence? [0:22:09] LC: Unfortunately, I think it means we're only going to see more anxiety, more depression, and potentially even more suicidality. That's something that I think is very important for us to talk about, as well, that we lose on average 12 people a day to suicide between the ages of just 15 to 24. That's one every two hours. That's incredibly concerning to me. This is something we're all going to have to collectively get on board with, especially when it comes to climate change for example. There is more and more research about kids who grow up in environments where there's a lot of smog in the air, that we're seeing increases in anxiety and depression for those folks. How do you tackle that? That is going to be more than just food and drink. That is something we are all going to have to really get on board with. I think part of it is really tapping into our empathy for the human experience. My husband and I were just talking about this the other day about how we live in such an individualistic society. You see cars cut in front of each other, people cut each other in line. We're so much thinking about what's fastest and easiest for me. I think we really have to get into our empathy of, how might someone else be experiencing this, what is it like for the life of someone else, and how can I make changes in my life? Not just to self-serve me, but to serve someone else. We know that is so good for our brain, ultimately, to tap into altruism and generosity, but it's a practice. I think as we become more isolated, we have become more individualistic and selfish, so we've got to really start pushing up against that. [0:23:57] PF: I agree. I know during the pandemic; they saw empathy decline greatly. We weren't face-to-face, we were in our little silos, and bubbles, and didn't interact. I don't know what current research shows if we're bouncing back from that at all. But what is your recommendation? Okay, doctor, what's your prescription for us? Where do we start and how do we start changing things for Gen Z and for subsequent generations? [0:24:26] LC: I think this is one of the greatest strengths of Gen Z. They really care about other people, even though they may be more socially anxious around other people. They do really have compassion for one another. You see that when they have these protests on gun violence, when you see them protesting what's happening in Gaza. They're doing it because they're thinking about somebody who's thousands of miles away. So, that ability to empathize with another person's experience in that lens, I think is really inspiring. I think it's something that we all need to get called back into, of realizing a lot of us got a lucky draw, honestly, to be born where we may live, have the families that we may live. I think sometimes, we can think like, "Well, I earned all this." Sure, we all work very hard, and at the same time, realizing when we wake up, I could have just as easily been that person down the road or that person in another country. How can I have empathy for that experience, even though it may not be my own lived experience that's uncomfortable? But the more we build our distress tolerance skills of being willing to sit with discomfort, I think the better off we'll be. Lastly, I'll say, giving ourselves the permission to hold the dialectic, because I see people get a little bit all or nothing with this of like, "Well, if I sit with the sadness of what's happening in the world, I'm never going to be happy." But really, we can expand it where our human emotions can hold great capacity to say, "I feel the pain of the world, I acknowledge it, I feel it, and I still can give myself permission to enjoy and savor the life that I have at the same time." Both can exist. [0:26:17] PF: I love that. it also can just be a way to encourage us to do something for others. Being able to sit with that and say, "Alright. What can I change? I cannot change what's going on across in another country. But I can change what the experience is for my neighbor, or for this person down the street. or for the homeless person on the corner." [0:26:38] LC: Yes. I really do believe that the tiniest little things make a positive impact. If we would just smile at each other, the world, would feel that change. So, I'm always encouraging my clients and young adults that I work with, lift your head up from the phone, share eye contact with someone, feel another person's humanity, things will start to feel a lot different. [0:27:06] PF: That is excellent advice right there. That's what we all need to be doing. This is fantastic. I know your book gives so much information, so much insight. It's obviously a labor of love and research, and very, very well done. I'm excited to tell our listeners about it. I think we might be having something from you on the website coming up. We'll keep talking because Gen Z is front and center in our minds right now, and we want to keep this conversation going, and I appreciate you sitting down and being a part of it. [0:27:39] LC: Paula, the feeling is mutual. Thank you so much for caring about this and bringing a microphone to it. I'm grateful for you. [0:27:47] PF: All right. Well, Lauren, until next time. Thank you so much.   [0:27:51] LC: Thanks, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:27:55] PF: That was Dr. Lauren Cook, talking about anxiety and Gen Z. If you'd like to learn more about Lauren, check out her book, Generation Anxiety or follow her on social media. Just visit us at livehappy.com, and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, you'll also find an article from Dr. Lauren, explaining why the world looks so different for Gen Z and how that's affecting them. We hope you enjoy this episode of Live Happy Now. If you aren't already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think of the show. 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 a Healthy Relationship with Social Media With Giselle Ugarte [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 470 of Live Happy Now. As we wrap up Mental Health Awareness Month, it's a great time to talk about something that many experts believe is contributing to the problem. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm joined by coach, speaker, and influencer, Giselle Ugarte, who helps people learn how to build their confidence, reframe their relationship with social media, and show up more authentically at work and in their personal lives. Giselle has seen firsthand how learning to use social media more mindfully can help deepen relationships and improve self-confidence, and she's here to tell us how we can make the most of those social media moments. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:46] PF: Giselle, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:49] GU: Hello. I'm so happy to be here. [0:00:51] PF: Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited to talk to you. We want to talk about mental health and social media, and that is a huge topic. We could talk all month about it. [0:00:59] GU: No kidding. That’s my department. [0:01:00] PF: Oh, my gosh. [0:01:01] GU: I'm glad to be here to talk about it. [0:01:03] PF: Yeah. So, to start the conversation, I really wanted to talk about how oftentimes, when we have this discussion about social media and mental health, we're talking about younger users. It's not just kids that it's affecting, it's affecting older adults as well, right? [0:01:18] GU: It's affecting all of us, honestly, because even if it isn't social media, you know, social media is a reflection of the way that we use technology, and even the way that we have notifications running so much of our lives. Where we worry so much about today's kids, the reality is, is that the kids are also reflecting the habits and also, the insecurities of adults. We're hearing a lot of commentary right now about how this is the most anxious generation, I would also then challenge to take a look at some of our older generations as well in the ways in which we might be addicted to work, or perhaps, validation, or people pleasing. I really just think that social media is a mirror, or perhaps, amplification of some of what actually and already has been happening for decades long before social media existed. The difference is that now we can carry it in our pockets and take it home with us even when we are all alone. There are some benefits of that too, because there's also the side of, well, but wait a minute, with social media, we never actually have to be alone. It's actually removing a lot of stigmas and we talk about Mental Health Awareness Month. I know that for me personally, someone who has dealt with anxiety and spells of deep depression and even PTSD, I've changed my relationship with alcohol over time. For me, social media has actually been where I've gone to for conversation, for confidence as I learned to embrace my body and what healthy looks like to me. Social media has been where I've been able to create conversations with people who I perhaps never would have met in real life. Or maybe it was chit chat at a party, but we started following each other and realized that we were both on this same path of wanting to better ourselves. Social media was where we were able to find that community. I'm really excited to go into this conversation and explore different angles. Most importantly, to discover where we are in control and how we can better have a better relationship with social media every day, no matter how old you are. [0:03:18] PF: Right. I think some of the people that have the healthiest relationship with it are the elderly. I have an aunt who's 87, and she uses Facebook. Now, granted, she's not what I would call tech savvy. But if it weren't for Facebook, then we would not be in touch. She's not someone that's going to pick up a phone. We're not going to be in touch. And we have a very large extended family. Because of that, she doesn't have children of her own, but she is in touch with all her nieces and nephews and reach out. She's going through a lot of health challenges right now. She is getting the support that she simply could not have if it weren't for social media. [0:03:55] GU: I like to say that if you're not taking your online relationships offline, then you're seriously missing out. Absolutely, it is one of those things where we're able to keep in touch with people who, maybe we wouldn't otherwise. I would also say, and that brings up a really awesome point too, is that sometimes I have friends who will say, “Well, if I didn't have social media, then my family would never see my kids, or they'd never keep in touch with us.” To which I go, “Wait, hold on a second. Have we now gotten to a point to where social media is the only way that you're keeping in touch with your family, versus now we have things like group text and FaceTime where we actually need to take that relationship to another level?” [0:04:39] PF: So, are you indicating this might be a problem? [0:04:42] GU: Well, no. I'm not. But we all have to really take a look at our online habits and why do we do the things that we do. You mentioned you have this friend who had health challenges. How awesome how, for example, you have people who might be having health challenges, or God forbid, they go through something really tragic, they can use social media as a way to update a lot of people that otherwise, energetically, they might not be able to, or physically able to do so. Or you're able to maybe donate to someone who is seriously in need and going through something really, really difficult and you're able to have that support, maybe even from people who you haven't talked to in a really long time. With every ounce of negative, there's positive with positive, there are more ways to do good and in person, but I simply want people to be more intentional about all of their habits online and especially off. [0:05:33] PF: I love the positive things that can come out of it. I love seeing the fundraisers that take place and just the sense of community that you can create when you are intentional about it. We know that it's also doing a lot of things to knock people's self-confidence. That's something that you've addressed very well. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what kind of impact it can have on your self-confidence. [0:05:57] GU: Absolutely. Well, I want to go back even 10 or 20 years ago. We can go back even further than that. I know that right now, we're getting a lot of that conversation around the millennials and then Gen Xers who are saying that social media is horrible for confidence. To that, I say, hold on a second. Let's go back to a time when our only media was TV and magazines. There was one standard of beauty. She was one color and one size. She was usually a size zero, or double zero and her legs were a million miles long. Maybe you would see her in that magazine and perhaps, that's what she looked like naturally, or maybe they did start to doctor some of those images. You wouldn't even necessarily know, because the FTC was not what it is today. Now you log into social media, you can see beauty in every single shape and color and size and age and level of success in a way that we never have been before. That's where I want to challenge anyone who says, “Hold on. Social media is killing my confidence,” to go, what are you looking at? Because now, you have choices. Before, we didn't have choices. We only had a certain amount of channels and whatever magazines that you were subscribed to. You get to decide who you follow. Now our feeds are a direct reflection of us. If what you're seeing is making you feel bad about yourself for any way, then you really need to either get your head right, or get your feed right. Typically, I then hear the argument, “Oh, but comparison is the thief of joy.” Comparison is only the thief of joy when you're coming at it from a place of lack, when you yourself are unhappy. That's where I really want to challenge you. Again, get your head right, get your feed right. Start your day rooted and gratitude with what you are thankful for, with what you are proud of, with ways that you do see yourself as beautiful. Because otherwise, yeah, everything you see, you're going to project your insecurities on that. I want you to follow people who look exactly like you. I want you to follow people who look nothing like you. I want you to follow people who give you aspirational and inspirational goals and motivate you without making you feel less than. If everything is making you feel less than, then maybe it is time to perhaps pause, or close the apps, or unfollow, or mute, or maybe even block for a moment because that does happen. But the conversation is so much bigger than just a social media feed. It's also, when you're dropping the kids off at school and you're seeing all of the other parents around you. It's also, when you're opening up your phone and you don't like what you see, or you're looking in the mirror and you don't like what you see. To which I say, it's time to own it or change it. Own it. Or if you don't like what you see, then change it. Even if you decide to change it, you still have to own it in some way, shape, or form. What I instead see people have happened is they end up turning on filters, for example, or multiple filters, for example, and they say, “Oh. Well, I'm just putting makeup on with this filter. Oh, I'm just giving myself some a tan.” Well, hold on a second. Why does that filter make your face look like a totally different shape? Why is it putting somebody else's eyes on top of your eyes? Why have you just aged 20 years less? Why do your pores not exist? All of a sudden, what you're doing is on your phone, you're creating this image that isn't actually real. It's no wonder that when you look in the mirror, you hate what you see. [0:09:30] PF: Yeah. Can we talk about this a little bit more? Because I recently went through this. I saw a friend. I was just like, “Oh, my God. She looks amazing.” I was talking – we used to live in Dallas, this woman lives in Dallas. I was talking to some other friends in Dallas, I'm like, “She looks so great. What is she doing?” They're like, “Filters, Paula. It's a filter.” I was like, “Oh, man.” What does that do to our psychology and our psyche when we are presenting ourselves one way, but that's not who we really are? How does that affect us? [0:10:03] GU: Absolutely. What it’s doing is it’s telling your brain that you don't think that you're good enough. For me personally, I believe things like makeup and fashion are actually a form of self-expression. Sometimes they can be disguises and armor, and that's fine, but the difference between a filter and say, filler, the injectable, is the filler goes with you, the filter does not. [0:10:27] PF: Right. [0:10:28] GU: My conversation and my expertise is purely around the use of technology and social media. The conversation around plastic surgery and makeup, that's something different entirely. Again, the difference is the filler will go with you. The filter does not. When you then look in the mirror at night, or when you look in somebody else's camera, or when your child takes a photo of you and you don't like what you see, a lot of that is because what you are lying to yourself doing. What I find to be so interesting is that a lot of my clients, I have a rule, no filters. No filters on Zoom. No filters on social media. To remove that filter. What's so interesting is how every single person, every single time, well, first of all, there's the resistance, which if it's not that deep, Giselle, if it's not that serious, Giselle, then why is it so hard for you to do? Why is it so hard? Once they actually remove it, what's so wild is the way that they begin to realize other ways that they've been creating filters in their life. Because you might even be thinking, “Well, Giselle, I don't even use filter,” which congratulations, you are miles and light years ahead in the confidence game. Where might you be hiding, or where might you perhaps be creating that highlight reel? Because I believe that there is this highlight reel of perfection that we are seeing, but oftentimes, the ones who are only seeing the highlight reel, you're also the one who's creating it, too. I believe that your highlight reel is actually comprised of the highs and the lows of the in-between moments. You can have your best day and your worst day on the same day. It's so important that we recognize that what we're seeing is just a fraction of someone's life. I hate when people say, social media is fake. Are there people online who are fake? Yes. Are there people who are in real life fake? Also, yes. The question is, is it actually fake, or is it just that you are creating a judgment on a single second of time? In that single second of time, it's possible that that family was happy and smiling and in the next second, it's possible that they were fighting. We've all had those days and those vacations where you were at screaming each other the whole time. Does that mean that you don't love each other? No. If somebody posts a picture of their happy family and then announces the next week that they're getting a divorce, does that mean that they were being fake? Or was she just doing her best on that particular day? You can have your best day and your worst day on the same day. That's part of the mental health acceptance that I want people to understand is that no, social media isn't fake. I actually think we were talking about, what does your mind tell yourself? When we say things like that, we're actually canceling ourselves out for achieving that thing ourselves. We're believing that, “Oh, that type of happiness can't be achieved. Oh, that type of family can't be achieved. Oh, that type of success can't be achieved,” because of the ways that we're knocking it from someone else, or we're trying to chip it away somehow. I wouldn't even realize the ways in which that too is also her bringing out confidence by saying, “Oh, you don't deserve that. Oh, you'll never have that.” Versus, “You know what? Good for her. You know what? Good for him.” [MESSAGE] [0:13:43] PF: We'll be right back with Giselle Ugarte. But right now, let's take a quick break to talk about clothing from Franne Golde. If you're hitting the road this summer, you'll want to check out this amazing line of wrinkle-free staples that you can dress up or down depending on the occasion. They're the perfect traveling companion, because they're flattering, comfortable, and were created by a Grammy-winning musician who knows the importance of looking good on the road. See for yourself at frannegolde.com/podcast and you can get 20% off your first order of $75 or more when you use the code HAPPY. That's F-R-A-N-N-E-G-O-L-D-E.com/podcast for 20% off your order of $75 or more with the code HAPPY. Now, let's get back to my talk with Giselle to learn more about how we can use social media more intentionally to improve our mental health. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [0:14:39] PF: If you start creating a practice where you do that, or you intentionally tell yourself, “I'm going to congratulate in my head, each person who celebrates something on Facebook.” Will that make a difference? Or you're saying like, you're cheering them on, whereas before, you might have been sitting there judging a little bit. [0:14:58] GU: I honestly believe it does, and I love how you said practice. Or maybe you didn't say it, but I heard it. But we do have to practice being happy for other people. I do believe that when we do that, it will come back in a form of gratitude for ourselves. It might feel sweet irony, a little fake and uncomfortable when you're forcing yourself to do that, but you're doing it for the goodness of your mind and perhaps, to melt away at your cold heart. It's gotten bitter over the years. Because let's just think about that for a moment. If you can't be happy for someone on their happiest day, whether it's their wedding, or their kid’s graduation, or they just got a new job, or they just bought a new house, or they moved, and your first instinct is, “Oh, must be nice. Oh, well, that's great that her husband got that or, oh, well, yeah, it must be easy for her to lose the weight.” Let's think about, hold on, where is that coming from? Where is the projected self-loathing frankly coming from? Where you decided to rule yourself out from that, or you became so bitter and nasty? We wouldn't want someone to be like that towards us on our day. Why are we doing that to them? Yes. Rather than just liking or continuing to scroll, something that I have also noticed with my clients is I always give them an assignment to turn passive scrolling into an actively engaged activity. Again, whenever we're scrolling, sometimes we're scrolling to numb, or we're scrolling because we want to be numb. We're just scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, not even paying attention, no concept of time. Maybe every now and then, we'll hit a like, or we'll double tap. I will give my clients the assignment of every time you open up the refrigerator, that is your social media, I want you to engage. If you see something, maybe it's someone you know, maybe they just accomplished something, or maybe they did something really difficult, or they shared something very vulnerable, rather than just to double tap something, write something, comment to them. Not just a little emoji, or a heart, but acknowledge it in a meaningful way. “Oh, my gosh, that's so exciting. I know how hard you have been working on that marathon. Oh, my gosh, you finally did it. I remember you talking about this years ago. Now you're finally learning how to ballroom dance. That's so awesome.” One more way that I've noticed my clients who were anxiously sometimes opening up that empty refrigerator that can be social media sometimes, all of a sudden going, “I think I got my fix.” They're not opening it up as often, because they were able to feel as if they did something productive. Whereas before, sometimes we open it up mindlessly hoping for that dopamine hit. Instead, they created their own dopamine hit by finding gratitude and happiness and celebration for someone, or something else. Then they end up putting their phone away. It makes sense if you think about it, don't you think? [0:18:13] PF: I love that. I love it, because we've all had that practice where we're like, just scrolling through there. It's like, there's nothing here. We hit refresh. Hoping better things will show up in our feed. If you think about it, these are people sharing their stories, however genuine or heartfelt they might be at that time. All we're doing is like, “Eh, that's not quite enough to keep me engaged.” Which is pretty crappy, because if they called you and said, “Hey, this happened,” you wouldn't be just like, “Mm. Call me back when you have something better.” [0:18:42] GU: Right. Or you would just ignore them completely from answering the phone. [0:18:47] PF: Right. I love that. What other tips do you have for being more mindful as you use social media, instead of being used by it? [0:18:54] GU: I love that you said that, because it's a phrase that I use very often, which is, is social media running you, or are you running your social media? The number one thing that I tell all of my clients is turn off your notifications, all of them, the likes, the comments, the DMs. The only time that I ever have notifications on for social media is if I'm specifically waiting for a message from someone who maybe doesn't have my phone number. It might be Facebook Marketplace, for example, or it might be my primary inbox on Instagram. It will be temporary. Only when that person really needs to get a hold of me, and they don't have my phone number. Otherwise, everything is turned completely off. When I'm checking my notifications, it's because I'm in control of it. I sometimes even take it a step further from my clients and I say, no email on your phone. No email on your phone, which sounds terrifying for so many people. What that ends up doing is oftentimes, whenever we get that email notification, even if it's from work, all of a sudden, that becomes the most important thing. [0:20:00] PF: Right. [0:20:01] GU: You will interrupt, disrupt whatever conversation, dinner, errand, or other important tasks that you were doing. It ends up actually taking up a lot of time for where you thought it only took five or 15 seconds, it maybe took 15 minutes. Or you ended up having to start that task that you were working on over again, or start that conversation over again. What ends up happening is if you take your email off of your phone, when you do your email at your desk, at your computer, you become more intentional and focused. Then you put your phone on do not disturb with the notifications turned off, and you have that time specifically to respond to whatever requests and clients that you need to get to as many times a day as you need. Hopefully, it's no more than maybe two to four times a day, versus every single 15 minutes of every single hour of every single day. [0:20:47] PF: Yeah. You start feeling yanked around. It's just like, I'm doing this, but then I just get pulled over here. One thing I've started doing is I don't even turn my phone on until after I eat breakfast, which a lot happens from the time I get up until after I eat breakfast. it was very difficult at first, because it's always like, “Okay, what work? What do my clients have? What do I need to do?” To be able to just breathe and say, nothing that that has to be done in the next two hours. It doesn't have to be done before 8.30 AM. Just enjoy life a little bit. [0:21:20] GU: That's absolutely one way to do it and determining what actually needs notifications, what actually needs sounds, what actually needs the flags and then visuals. I mean, some of you just have that default, everything has notification. When was the last time you really took the time to go, “What notifications are turned on? Which ones can I turn off?” Because I am someone who I do check my phone first thing in the morning. For me, it's a healthy experience. I have a healthy relationship with my phone. I want to make sure everyone is good. That doesn't mean that I'm then replying back to everybody. It does give me a sanity to be able to just unlock my phone, is everything good? No one's on fire. No one's in the hospital. Great. Now I can begin. Or I might use that as my inspiration and motivation, because when I do open up my feed, I see people who inspire me. I see things that motivate me, or I have my affirmation or my Bible versus that get me going on that particular day. I am in control of it. It's not in control of me. notifications, that is the biggest one. I even find sometimes that people feel they're going through withdrawals. Where because their phone isn't buzzing constantly, they then are flipping their phone over constantly. [0:22:32] PF: Really? [0:22:33] GU: Yes. That's where we sometimes have to take it a step further and go, okay, well, do we then have to have the phone in a different room? Because if you can't go to the bathroom, or sit in an elevator, or wait in a line without looking at your phone, we might need to check ourselves with where is that coming from? Where it's coming from is typically, validation, need for validation, or it might be an unhealthy relationship that you have with your job, or your boss, or your superiors, or your clients where you have no boundaries, whatsoever. That's also where we run into lack of confidence, because you are then running in this people pleasing loop, where you're constantly seeking the attention of other people, and/or how often have we gotten to the end of the day and it feels like we haven't done anything, because the whole day has been reactive. You're answering the email, answering the phone, answering the client, and never did you prioritize what you needed to do for yourself. That's also where I established a practice of making sure that somewhere in your day, you do have calendared in a phone-free section of time. Also, in your day, you do have calendared in the three most important things that you need to do today. You're three non-negotiables that you need to do today. Because where a lack of confidence also comes from is a lack of productivity, or feeling lazy, or feeling like you amount to nothing, or can't do very much. Even if you are going through a season of burnout, for you, the three most productive things that you might do might be going for a walk, might be taking a nap, might be writing in your journal. That might also be your unplugged moment of meditation. Having time that's carved out specifically and only for you, and not tied to your electronics. Those are little ways that if we keep those commitments to ourselves, we can also build off of confidence and also get rid of some of those addictions that we didn't even realize, “Oh, my gosh. Not only is my social media running me, but I am a slave to it. I didn't even realize.” [0:24:45] PF: Right. [0:24:46] GU: My gosh. If that's you, you can also set screen limits on your phone. That's where you can put time limits for your screen time, or time limits for specific apps. I have a social media screen time limit, so I actually just clump all of my social media apps together in that. Then I'll have the phone say, “Hey, you've hit your limit, or you have 15 minutes left.” Will I extend it? Yeah, I will sometimes. I totally will. At least I'm then becoming more aware versus not having anything at all. Or sometimes I might have it password protected if I need to, or if I'm feeling easily distracted. That's one more way that I'm able to stay focused and still make sure that I have control over my apps. Those are a few ways to get started, but I'm sure we could go on and on and on, but those are at least a couple places to keep going. [0:25:35] PF: That is such great advice. I wondered, you've worked with so many people. What changes have you seen in their wellbeing, in their – I know you're not a mental health professional, but you do see people and deal with their mental health struggles. What changes do you see in their wellbeing and mental health when they start implementing these practices? [0:25:56] GU: Yeah, and that's the thing too, is that I'm a certified high-performance coach. I work on confidence and clarity and time management and energy. At the root of it, it's a lot of those things. I see that people are better at managing their time, because of some of the simple ways in which they end up not having that same relationship with technology. I see confidence soar. Even taking it to the next level, one little productive thing that you can do is change your profile picture to your face and make sure that that face actually looks like you. When you have a face attached to your name, it makes your social media that much more personal. Also, when you can finally embrace what you look like now, versus maybe a headshot that you took before the pandemic, where we've all aged 20 years since. Things like that, it brings that relationship back. When we're engaging more, or even sharing more of ourselves, we see confidence go up, because you feel confident in your voice and that what you have to say matters. I actually see a lot of my clients feeling more comfortable, public speaking, or engaging in conversations, because of how they're active on social media. Setting boundaries. When we set screen time limits, or when we delete emails from our phone, or set our phone to do not disturb, or maybe we let our clients know that, “Hey, I don't take work calls after three,” those are things that we're doing as technological habits. I also see that crossover into other habits and boundaries and relationships as well. It's tiny little micro ways that we don't even realize we're taking our power back, that it starts showing up in every single area of your life. That's why I get really passionate about it, because where we can be so quick to blame social media and us as the victim, the reality is, is that you have a lot more power than you think. As soon as you start to slowly take that power back, it really does snowball into something so bigger, and you start to see the ways in which it's showing up in other areas, too. [0:27:53] PF: I love it. Giselle, that is a great way to wrap this up. You have so much to teach us. We are going to tell our listeners how they can find you. See, continue teaching us and we can keep learning from you. Thank you. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking to me about this today. [0:28:08] GU: Thank you. I love talking about it. My messaging, my inboxes are always open. If you found this conversation helpful, please, I would love to hear from you. Don't be passive. Send me a message, letting me know what you love most about this conversation. [0:28:22] PF: Thank you so much. [0:28:23] GU: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:28:28] PF: That was Giselle Ugarte, talking about how to use social media to support our mental health. If you'd like to learn more about Giselle and the work she's doing, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now, and if you aren't already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think of the show. 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: Changing the Conversation on Mental Illness with Patrick J. Kennedy [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 469 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and today's guest reminds us that we can't just be aware of the problem. We need to take action. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm joined by mental health advocate Patrick J. Kennedy, whose new book, Profiles in Mental Health Courage, shares the dramatic stories of people who are living with mental illness. Because of his own challenges with mental illness and addiction, the former congressman is on a mission to change how we view mental illness in this country and, importantly, change the way we treat it. His bold plan for the future of mental health includes bipartisan action to identify, treat, and manage conditions earlier to enrich the lives of all those affected. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Patrick, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:56] PK: Paula, it's good to be with you. [00:00:58] PF: Well, this is Mental Health Awareness Month, a fantastic time to talk to you. I'm so impressed because you have been very open with your own mental health and addiction struggles. So I wondered what led you to initially disclose all that. [00:01:12] PK: Well, I didn't really have a choice. Being a Kennedy and in the public eye, I tried to keep my addiction secret as all of us try to do because of the shame and stigma. But I had a roommate in drug rehab who sold his story of being in rehab with me, with a Kennedy, back when I was starting my political career. Of course, I thought my political career would be short-lived after that disclosure. But I was fortunate to represent a district in Rhode Island. My constituency, the only thing they disliked more than drug addicts were people who ratted on drug addicts. I survived that election, and then I went on to Congress. Because I had been outed, I was able to put my name on mental health bills, whereas my colleagues might have been more reticent because it was already out. I wasn't afraid like most of my colleagues would have been to be asked, “Well, why is this something you're signing on to? Does it perhaps maybe – do you have a mental illness or addiction?” Of course, most of my political colleagues don't want to go down that rabbit hole. But I had already been out it, so it was less of a risk for me, obviously. [00:02:30] PF: Being part of such a high-profile family, obviously, that was why your roommate from rehab wanted to sell the story because it had a net worth to it. But what was that like then for the extended family? Because most families – I'm not a scientist. I won't say all, but I would say most families have an issue of mental illness and addiction somewhere in their family. But they work very hard to keep that quiet. For it to come out in such a public family, how did that play out? [00:03:00] PK: Well, power of the silence and the stigma is so overwhelming. My family was well-known to suffer from addiction. They say addiction, alcoholism runs in families. In my family, it galloped. It was just serious, and everyone knew it but us. There was – if you went through the Kennedy section of the bookstore, two-thirds of the books would have been covering the various “scandals” that my family, my father, my mother had been through because of a direct result of their alcoholism. Yes, the problem with me coming out is that it kind of added to that narrative. I felt shamed by it because I grew up with a mother who was shamed because of her alcoholism. I would literally try to hide her when my friends’ parents would come over to pick up my friends from our house. I'd be trying to hide my mother because I didn't want any of them to see her inebriated in the middle of the day. I used to watch Saturday Night Live, and they'd do skits about my dad. I mean, it was really powerfully painful. I mean, being open about it now is kind of a way I fight against that shame which still exists. I can't help but cringe when I have to talk about this to some extent. But I find that it's therapeutic because this is a brain illness. No one wakes up, Paula, and tries to shame themselves, their family. Put their own physical lives at risk, become potentially at risk for being arrested. People don't choose to live on the streets. They don't choose to have untreated mental illness and end up in our criminal justice system. I mean, we still have not turned the corner to really understanding that these “behaviors” of people with brain illnesses are symptoms, and they're not reflections on a person's moral character. Now, being in recovery myself, I have a moral responsibility to do everything I can to keep myself from falling back into addiction. I attend 12-step meetings. I have addiction-certified psychiatrist. I worked the program, as they say. I have a moral obligation because if I drink or drug, I put not only my own life at risk. I put others at risk. I had three DWIs, and I'm – by God's grace, no one was injured. But I can't take that chance again and none the least of which I just don't want to go down that path again. I'm so grateful I have the life that I have today. [00:05:55] PF: Do you think it's more impactful because you are in a position of being able to – people will listen to you. You're in a higher-level position. Do you think it makes it more impactful, your story is more impactful, and that it feels more universal to others if you can be open about it? [00:06:12] PK: Well, when I came back from one of the DWIs and I had to go to rehab, I was asked to come and meet with so many of my congressional colleagues in Congress who I thought wanted to talk to me about legislation. Of course, I'd show up with my staff because the staff do majority of the work in Congress. My colleagues would always say, “Could you and I just talk?” Then they would tell me their own stories. [00:06:39] PF: Oh, wow. [00:06:39] PK: It occurred to me that I was the only person they knew in Congress that has a drug addiction and alcoholism. What was amazing to me is because of the anonymity and the shame of these illnesses, they knew no one else that they were working with who also shared their own illness except for me. I met with colleagues who none of them knew each other had these illnesses, and they would walk around in the halls of Congress not knowing they were walking by someone who had similar life experiences they had and were suffering from similar struggles. I wrote this Profiles in Mental Health Courage because it's still a big deal for people to share their stories. As I said, I didn't choose to do this, but these people who are in my new book, they chose to use their real names and their real stories to try to break the stigma. Unlike a lot of these self-disclosures, these people really told it all. Today, you hear a lot of people say, “Oh, I have a diagnosis,” or, “I'm in recovery.” But they don't really describe what it's like to live with these illnesses. Yet in this book, these 12 people really tell their full experience. It's a very diverse group of people who have different illnesses. I hope it's going to be helpful to people who may think of themselves as being unique and all alone. In 12-step recovery, we have some big book, and we get to read about others who also like us have had these experiences suffering from alcoholism and addiction. I have found those so comforting reading these stories because then I realized I'm not alone. Yet most Americans don't often benefit from that experience of being in recovery and having all of those tools easily accessible, especially hearing that they're not alone and what they're going through is really quite common. That was kind of the point for me to try to interview these people and have them share their full stories. [00:08:53] PF: It is so thoughtfully written. One thing that really struck me is how it shows just the universality of mental illness, of addiction. It's indiscriminate. It can take out anyone from any walk of life, any profession, vocation. How did you identify who to write about? It sounds like it wasn't very difficult to get them to open up and tell their stories, which was amazing to me because they are so personal. [00:09:21] PK: They opened up to me because, frankly, I was able to ask them to do it for our country. It’s not me, but I have this great last name. When my uncle challenged the country to ask not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country, that kind of feeling is alive when I talk to people. They want to be part of something bigger than themselves. I just gave them that opportunity and platform and told them, yes, they were taking a big risk at disclosing their own challenges. But they also felt they had an opportunity to help others. For those of us in recovery, that is the key to our own recovery is making our own experience worthwhile, so we can try to help someone else. In helping others, we get liberated from our own self-imprisonment and our own self-centered selfish behavior. It's really the antidote for our illness to speak out and not be shamed and to help others. That's the way we get freedom from ourselves. [00:10:35] PF: Do you have an overall goal for the book? I imagine your goals for this book are not measured in sales. I feel like you have such a grand plan for this. What do you hope to see as a result of this book coming? [00:10:47] PK: Well, thank you, Paula. I started a campaign. It's not a political campaign for office. It's a campaign to build a movement for those suffering from mental illness and addiction, which of course, are treated separately in our reimbursement systems. We do not have a system, so to speak, that treats these as biopsychosocial illnesses. Biological because they're brain-based; psychological because they're mental health; and social because if people don't get support of housing, support of employment, they're just not going to have the same opportunities to succeed in recovery, which of course, we don't emphasize in the treatment of these illnesses. We only treat them in acute episodic fashion, as opposed to treating them as the chronic illnesses that they are. I have something called the Alignment for Progress because I believe we have to align financial incentives. We spend tons of money on the criminal justice system, on fire and police, on emergency rooms, on lost days and productivity and disability. I mean, we are spending so much money not taking care of these illnesses that I think if we align the budgets to actually prevent many of these illnesses from pathologizing, i.e. let's treat these like we do cancer, which is screen for stage one. Not wait till people are at death store and in a stage-four crisis. These are the things that I think we need to build into a national agenda. When I was in Congress, I could go to any special interest group, and they would tell me. The labor unions would tell me, “This is what is overtime pay. These are health benefits. This is pension and retirement. These are safe working conditions.” They literally have their whole agenda organized. I hate to say it but in mental health and addiction, we do not have a consumer-driven movement like every other patient advocacy movement. We don't have a common agenda. Everyone is marching up to Capitol Hill with their own diagnosis and bipolar over here and depression over here and anxiety over here and alcoholism over here. Even alcoholism and opioid use disorder are treated separately in terms of people's mindset. You could go on and on. The problem is we're all united on 99% of the same things, and yet we're not organized like a AFL-CIO or a League of Conservation Voters. [00:13:21] PF: Why do you think that is? If you look at the sheer volume of people who are suffering from it, you would think that someone else would have thought of this before now and started bringing it together under one umbrella. [00:13:33] PK: Well, the psychologist can't convene the psychiatrist and vice versa. The peer support people can't convene the social workers and marriage counselors. The schizophrenia people want SMI as the priority, which they deserve. Then we need mental wellness, but we don't really have that covered because that's not a diagnostic group. That falls into public health category. My point is no one's been able to kind of bring them all together. As I said, I was really honored to be the author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act because as I said, I was outed, so I had no choice in the matter. I felt like I could put my name on a bill that had mental and addiction in it because, essentially, I had already been outed. That bill really affects all groups because it calls for reimbursement by insurance companies, including the federal government, for mental illness and addiction in a way that's no different from other chronic illnesses like asthma and cardiovascular disease and cancer, so forth. That is a bill that is kind of like a medical version of civil rights. It affects everybody that's kind of marginalized from these illnesses. Because of that, I have kind of a unique opportunity to kind of pull everyone in together because everyone, whether you're a psychologist, social worker, peer support specialist psych, you all benefit from this. If you're an inpatient hospital or an outpatient clinic, they all benefit from ending discrimination in reimbursement and coverage by insurance companies. I'm the guy that brought that, so I can call these people and basically say to these folks, “This is the new frontier for us. We need to band together and build a voice.” I often say it's like that Godfather film where they say, “We're bigger than US steel,” back in the fifties, talking about organized crime. This is the biggest special interest group in this country. If you count all the families affected by overdose, suicide, those living with these illnesses, there's no doubt everybody's affected by these illnesses, including the family members who are often left out of the narrative. If we ever organized, can you imagine the power we would have to transform the system? That's what I'm after. In the back of the book, I have a QR code which links people to a policy guide. I'm literally trying to get donors to allow us to build literally a movement. Let's get the number of people that care about this on listserv. If someone's running for office, they know how many people in their district, whether it's a state or federal office care about this issue. If we start doing those things, I am telling you we'll get more than the money we're getting today, and we'll get more of the urgency than we're getting today. [00:16:47] PF: How are you seeing the attitudes changing? How is that going to affect how it moves forward? Then part three of this question is in what still needs to happen. [00:16:57] PK: If we normalize this, if we allow people to get screened at every place of their medical system, if they're a cancer patient, they had better be screened for anxiety and depression and trauma. If they're having heart disease, they're four times more likely to die of a heart attack if they have depression. If they are diabetic and they don't have their alcoholism treated, just forget treating diabetes and so forth and so on. Our whole medical system ignores mental health and addiction. I think the more people we normalize this and just treat it as part of treatment for every illness, the less kind of bound up and stigma will be. Look at what we've done with HIV/AIDS. You look on the TV and you see ads for HIV drugs. Look on the TV and there's ads for erectile dysfunction and STDs. I mean, there's no difference in terms of the stigma that those illnesses had to overcome and the stigma we have to overcome. We can do this. We just have to do it as soon as possible because too many people are dying out there. [00:18:16] PF: Do you see it getting worse or getting better? Are there higher incidents of mental health problems? Or are we just more aware of it? What's the research and numbers showing? [00:18:25] PK: Well, the bottom line is we're playing a lot of catch-up because we've never invested in this space. Today, there's greater demand. Part of that's reduction in stigma. But part of it is the real trauma that people are living with today and the toxic world that we're living in and the ubiquitous technology that's sapping us. I think we're going to continue to see tragically worse and worse statistics in terms of the number of people dying of suicide and overdose, unless we take a fundamentally different approach. That means not just treating these illnesses after they occur but doing our best to try to prevent these illnesses from occurring by embedding, if you will, coping mechanisms, stress management, problem-solving skill development for our kids in elementary and secondary education. If kids cannot learn to self-modulate, in other words, understand how to manage their emotions, they can learn all the numeracy and history and literacy and not be successful in life because if you can't manage your feelings, then you're just not going to be successful in life. Then what we need to do is, just as I said, screen early so that for those who have kind of more predisposition for illnesses, severe mental illnesses, schizophrenia, bipolar, we know who's at risk. We could deploy a lot better early detection and screening. We need to be doing that because if we intervene, for example, with people who have their first psychotic break, we can dramatically reduce the disability that comes from that illness. We just don't treat people with schizophrenia, and we don't get their coordinated care, which is the evidence form of intervention put in place until after they've had multiple psychotic breaks, which frankly really pathologizes their illness, which means they have to take higher medications for their illness. If you have to take higher medications, then there's higher side effects, which means people don't want to take those medications. Imagine if we treated them early and they didn't have to take those high doses. They could probably stay compliant and live much more productive meaningful lives. [00:20:58] PF: Is this a solvable problem? Can we manage it if we start really working together and implementing these solutions that you're talking about? [00:21:07] PK: 100%. We can do this. We could literally – if we have this as an objective, we can align all of our federal agencies and departments and coordinate with county and municipal and states to really address this in a comprehensive way. I said there's so much cost to us not doing this. We just need to organize ourselves with all the resources. Now, when there's a tornado or hurricane or fire, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, comes in to manage the aftermath. We need a FEMA for our homeless population with mental illness. We need a FEMA for the scourge of addiction in this country, which means we need a comprehensive approach. When FEMA comes in, they support the housing. They support the employment. They give small business loans. They help with food. They will help with clothing. They coordinate with Social Services. We need that type of approach for these illnesses. We need a multipronged systems-based approach to addressing these. If we do that, and we can do that, we will dramatically reduce the number of people dying of these illnesses and people who are suffering. Keep in mind, even if someone's not dying, they're dying inside. They're not living their full lives, and they're not living their lives. It's one thing to live physically. It's another to live spiritually and socially and emotionally. We don't look at that in our medical system and understand the value of people living free, of being hostage to their brain illness. [00:22:58] PF: You're doing such incredible work. We're going to let our listeners know how they can find your book. We'll give them links to the work that you're doing, connect them with that QR code, and so they can really support this. Because I know it's something everyone's concerned about, everyone is affected by. I think a lot of times, we don't know what to do, and we feel like, yes, there isn't a joint movement. There isn't something that I can do that can help affect change. I so appreciate all the work that you're doing and the fact that you're going to let our listeners jump in and help you on that mission. Patrick, I wish you the best of success with Profiles in Mental Health Courage and with all the other amazing projects you're working on. [00:23:33] PK: I want to thank you for allowing me to come on, and I appreciate the chance to speak to you and your listeners. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:44] PF: That was Patrick J. Kennedy, author of Profiles in Mental Health Courage, and an advocate for mental health and addiction education and treatment. If you'd like to learn more about his initiatives, discover his book, or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly Live Happy newsletter. Every week, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. 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: Becoming a Mindful Mother With Jennifer Mulholland [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 465 of Live Happy Now. In just a few days, we're going to celebrate Mother's Day. But the fact is, all the moms out there need to take time to celebrate themselves every day. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm sitting down with Jennifer Mulholland, a working mom, conscious leadership expert, and co-author of the book, Leading with Light: Choosing Conscious Leadership When You're Ready for More. Jennifer's work focuses on cultivating presence and rediscovering the light within, and she's here to talk about how we can bring that business principle into our lives as mothers and how it can change the world for us and around us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Jennifer, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [0:00:49] JM: Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here today, Paula. [0:00:53] PF: We have a big day coming up, and that's Mother's Day. So, that's the perfect time to talk about something that you call mindful mothering. I was really taken by that phrase. I may have heard it before. But it landed with me differently when I received that email about you talking about that. So, I wonder to start things, if you could explain what it means to be a mindful mother. [0:01:16] JM: Lovely. Yes, I think, well, first of all, being a mother is such a gift that we've been given for those of us that have children, or mothering our pets, or mothering our parents. It comes in many different forms. But I really feel like we've just been given such an incredible gift to be in that role. Being a mindful mother really means being more aware, aligned, and intentional, and how we nurture those we care for, and how we nurture and care for ourselves. It's all too easy to be the givers, and the doers, and the coordinators, and the schedulers, and the lovers, and the band-aid-ers, and all the roles that mothering comes. It's too easy to leave ourselves out of that equation. So, being a mindful mother is really slowing down to be present with your way and how you care for others and how you care for yourself. [0:02:23] PF: That sounds amazing. We know that would have incredible results. You can tell just from thinking about it and how it feels when you think about that, you know it's going to have an incredible effect. But what happens in real life, when you're burning the candle at both ends, and the kids are going crazy, and all kinds of chaos is happening around you. How do you maintain that mindful mother state when everything around you is chaos? [0:02:49] JM: Yes. It's such a practice and it's a giant experiment. So, what works for me, may not work for you and we're all trying to figure it out. I would say, the old adage that we can't give what we don't have, I feel like is the routing of where I'm coming from with this kind of idea, in the sense that, to be mindful is to really be aware of what works for you and what doesn't. To be aligned with that and then be more intentional in how you show up. One of the greatest ways we can practice is practicing presence. Literally, being present with the micro-moment that shows up. Oftentimes, we are so hijacked as mothers, where we're doing one thing, and then we get a call from our child, or depending upon the age of your children, like you have a tug on your leg, or the door opens and it's all of a sudden, you're constantly distracted and multitasked and taken away from being present. So, practicing being present, pulling yourself back with whatever is in front of us. Because if a child or if a loved one comes in, then how can you be attentive with them fully? One of our greatest gifts is our presence. It's not necessarily what we're saying all the time, or the decisions that we're making, or the advice we're giving. It's the energy, it's the essence at which we show up in that exchange. Oftentimes, it's not verbal. Oftentimes, it's just the way we are when somebody is needing something from us. That can be a choice of whether it's frenetic, and distracted, and frustrated, and irritated because we've been interrupted for the 10 millionth time. That's human and we all get that place. Or it can be practice in a way that we really slow down and look to the other person of what are they needing from me right now? Do they need a solution? Do they need to be told? Do they need advice? Or do they just need my love and care, and I need a hold space for them, so they feel heard and seen and supported? So, they can figure it out. Man, that's the art of parenting, of just, when do you know when to shut up? When you don't know just to let your child figure it out for themselves? But you are really with them in that discovery. I feel like one of the routing of a practice is making sure that we are present with whatever is showing up in our field. Because when we are we actually take in more information. That's the awareness. We're able to see and sense and feel a lot more information coming in, that helps us attune and align to what is needed in the moment for ourselves and for the other person that's showing up. [0:06:10] PF: That goes completely into what you talk about in the business realm with conscious leadership and being present. How, as parents, as mothers, as women, do we learn how to start doing that? Because again, you talked about. It is a practice. It's something you can get up in the morning and say, “I'm going to be present today and I'm going to do this.” Then the fires start and they plan to go out the window. So, what are some of the tools that you use and that you give to others to help them learn how to be present? [0:06:42] JM: Well, one of the things, mantras I say, as soon as my feet hit the ground, when I wake up in the morning is, “I am fully embodied.” What that means for me is like my presence is fully in this vehicle and vessel. Because if it's not, we often kind of live in the realm of our heads. A lot of thinking. So, we kick into automatic habit of doing, doing, doing, and coordinating, and scheduling, and showing up, and driving, and all of the things that we do. Oftentimes that's coming from our headspace. So, really try and bring my awareness into my heart space and into the full body vehicle just with that mantra. It helps me ground so that I can listen to my body's cues. That is probably the number one hack that I think we miss a lot and in how our body speaks to us, giving us cues throughout the day of when we are feeling alive and aligned to our light within and when we're not. When we want to leave the room, when we want to procrastinate, when we want to pull back. When we live in our head, we kind of check out of our body's innate wisdom that's constantly giving us the cues of what works for us and what doesn't. One of the practices of being present is just tuning into how does my body feel in this moment? Am I leaning into this conversation? Am I feeling engaged? Do I want to learn more? Stay here? Am I curious? Or am I wanting to get the hell out of here as fast as I can? Am I frustrated? Am I distracted? Am I bored? Our bodies tell us that information all the time. So, I think as moms, as we're spinning a lot of plates and trying to be more mindful in the automatic role of giving, giving, giving, we forget that actually, if we can tune the attention back to mothering ourselves first, what does my body need in this moment? What is it telling me? What does my spirit soul, light, whatever you name it to be need, to feel calm, to feel peaceful, to feel connected? Your body will tell you. A great practice is, I love journal journaling. My business partner and I journal all the time. One great exercise is to literally write a letter to your body, or write a letter to your soul, or spirit, or light, or essence. And ask it what it needs from you, as if it was your inner child. So, if I'm exhausted and I am so tired at the end of the day, and I don't have any energy, and I'm gaining weight, and I'm feeling down, and I can't figure that out, write a letter to your body and ask what it needs. Your body will tell you. Just write, write, write what it’s saying. Or if you're feeling like, “Wow, I am so scattered and depleted by giving to all my relationships, and my partner, and my family, and my parents, I am just feeling depleted.” Ask your spirit, your light, what it needs to feel more alive, more connected. You'd be so surprised of the wisdom that you already have, we just forget to ask it. [0:10:26] PF: I love that. We do forget that we can tap into ourselves. We're always looking for a cup of coffee, or something else that's going to do that for us. You really talk about – what you're talking about is extreme self-care. It's not just taking a bubble bath. It's really taking care of your soul. It's more like soul care. As moms, it's often difficult to put ourselves first, to say like, “I am going to shut everything out and take care of myself.” But why is it important that women do that and take that time for self-care? How does that make them better as mothers? [MESSAGE] [0:11:03] PF: We'll be right back with Jennifer's answer about how moms can practice self-care. But right now, I wanted to share one of my favorite new indulgences. Discovering the incredibly luxurious bedding from Cozy Earth has completely changed the way I sleep. If you want to get some of the best sleep you've ever had, you need to check it out. I never dreamed that bedsheets could change your life. But Cozy Earth made a believer out of me with these super soft bamboo sheets. They not only feel amazing, but they come in so many beautiful colors that you'll find at least one that fits your style. What's even better is Cozy Earth is as convinced as I am that you'll love these sheets. So, they're offering a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on every purchase. What have you got to lose? Not sleep. To sweeten the deal, we're giving you a discount so you can enjoy the luxury you deserve with Cozy Earth. So, head over to cozyearth.com and use promo code Happy 35 for an exclusive 35% off. That's cozyearth.com and use the promo code Happy 35. Now, let's get back to my talk with Jennifer and find out how practicing self-care makes us better mothers. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:12:14] JM: The world needs more love and care and connection and community and peace. I really believe like the feminine principle, the Divine Mother is here to help cultivate that state of being for ourselves and for all. If we desire that out there in a world where we wish that there's no more war, and we wish for more peace, the only way we are going to get to that as a society is to have that individually in ourselves. There's no better person equipped for that than the mother. Learning what self-care looks like to you, is I just want to say, it’s a giant experiment. Because I have gotten so frustrated myself of like, “Well, I know I need to care for myself. I don't freaking know how to do it. I don't know what I need and it changes.” So, give yourself more grace in experimenting and checking in, like, “What do I need and want in this moment? What would feel good?” I think that question, what feels good to me now is so helpful, and following the feeling of feeling good, is likely to lead to peace, and love, and more care, and nurturing. So, that feels like the playground. If we could follow the feeling of feeling good, more for ourselves, whatever that is, and that can change 10 times throughout the day, then we can really bring that state of calmness, of more peace and groundedness and connection to anybody we connect with, especially our families and loved ones. [0:14:14] PF: Yes. As you were talking, I could see just like putting it across my computer, what would feel good right now? Just so you have that constant reminder until you get into that rhythm of looking for that and seeking that out. In your work, because you work with so many different people. What do you see as the biggest obstacle to finding what is good for them? Because I know it's probably an obstacle we're putting up ourselves. [0:14:39] JM: I see so a lot of caregivers, that they're so good at caring for others and they've lost themselves, that they haven't put themselves in that relationship. Over time, that depletes us all, right? I've been one of them too. Just going, going, going and not even catching myself that – because it felt selfish in a way. Self-care, caring for self is not selfish. I just want to rearchitect that unconscious belief system that somehow we have to be humble, and be the givers, and the Wonder Women, and have the red capes to be able to come in, and be strong, and resilient, and know the answers, and know where we're going. And it's just bullshit, we don't, right? So, experimenting and being more gentle. One of the greatest barriers is lack of self-worth. I don't feel enough. I feel like I have to lose weight to be better. I have to dye my hair to be better. I have to have the right job to be better. I can't just be a mom. I have to be a working mom and I have to have a business and I have to be on this ladder and this trajectory. There’s so many conditions, unconsciously, I think that we have kind of layered ourselves with, and it's tricky, because it's not obvious. I think what I would love to, for other people, to give themselves permission to be human, and hear, and know that you're enough right now. That you have everything that you need to not only nurture others, but to nurture yourself in a more mindful, intentional way. We get to choose if the monkey mind, if the inner critic is getting louder and louder, and my confidence, or your confidence is going lower and lower, we get to choose when we're going to say, “How is that working for me? Is it working for me? Is it giving me the results I want?” If it's not, we get to choose. That's free will. We have this incredible ability to choose to not feed that narrative anymore. That's what gets in the way. The self-worth and society is, especially, in the United States. We are just being bombarded with Instagram ads and like model-type bodies, and this is the house you need to have. It beats you down after a while. [0:17:31] PF: How does that affect people as mothers? Because, again, they're getting that message of you shouldn't be doing this, and you should be all these things. And the normal female is like, “I'm not and I can't.” What does that do to us emotionally and mentally, when we're getting all these messages, that we should, we should, we should, and we're like, “I can't?” [0:17:56] JM: Right. Well, what has happened is that it's kicked in a response to do more. The opposite is the antidote, honestly. The less we do, the more space we have, the more space we create, the more space we give ourselves to be ourselves fully. We kind of can then start to subtly unplug from those unconscious messages, and cultural conditionings, and programs that kick us into this idea that we need to have more, do more, to be more. Where I'm sitting in practice is, “Well, what if I just were to be me? What would that look like?” That takes a lot of practice, to bring more of my full self to my children, instead of having such a schedule, to have space where there's no schedule, and there's room in those spaces for new connection, new insight to come through. If we're so overscheduled and we're on the hamster wheel seeking to be more, to do more, to have more, which is the kind of cultural machine in the United States. We just start to deplete because we're not restoring, we're not remembering who we are, and that who we are is a being, it's a human being. It's not a human doing, as we've all been kind of tricked to believe. [0:19:36] PF: I'd love to talk about how if a mother can change and learn to be a mindful mother can become more present, what is that going to teach her children? Because one thing we've talked about, just last week's podcast, we talked about Gen Z and the horrible state of mental health among young people, and what the surveys are showing us. Obviously, so much of it is your product of the home in which you're raised as well. So, if you become a mindful mother, what kind of gift are you giving your children? And how are you changing their experience when they become parents of their own? [0:20:12] JM: I come back to presence, because I think that is really getting hijacked to use that term, again, in society and with the technology that our attention spans have become so short in what we're able to sit with and be with. A mother's presence, unspoken, it's like the healing ointment that is needed. That may look like a deep connection with your child in that moment. It may just be sitting with them, not saying anything. It may be really deeply listening, not to fix, not to solve, not to give advice, but to listen to where they're coming from, as they share it. That seems to be a real helpful tool that if we can practice being present and not meeting our children in the frenetic bounce of subject to subject, multitask, multimedia, kind of state of affairs. If we can ground in learning how to quiet our own minds, we become less reactive, and we become more intentional in how we respond and participate in the care that we're giving. Again, we can't give that care unless we are giving that care to ourselves. So, I think with the Gen Z, we’re kind of in the state with mental health, where we have really bought our thinking. We're buying our low-quality thoughts. And we – [0:22:08] PF: I love how you put that. I've never heard it put that way and I love that. [0:22:12] JM: We're not taught to question them. We're taught to identify that those things, thoughts are me. That's who I am. Versus I'm in a low mood, I woke up feeling shitty, or whatever, and I'm having low-quality thinking right now. So, I'm actually not going to take my thinking so seriously, because I can't really trust it, because it's not really helpful. We get to choose what we're buying, and we just haven't really been educated or taught that we have a say in which thoughts we're going to digest. We do it so unconsciously. And the moment, we pull a thought down and digest it, guess what it does? It creates a feeling. That feeling then emanates and then we attract people that match that feeling. So, we have a society right now, and especially with the Gen Z generation, I feel like that they're being bombarded with so much negativity, and we don't have tools to help them navigate which thinking, which thoughts they're choosing, and which thoughts they're not. Now granted, there are many people that are in different states of mental health, that I don't want to diminish the causality, and the conditions that are so many different flavors that people have. But I do believe when we are present, we get to then more consciously choose which thoughts we're buying, and we want to bring into our digestive system, and create the feelings we want to have throughout the day and which ones we don't. [0:23:46] PF: I love the way you present that. It paints such a wonderful picture, and really sums it up. So, what do you want moms to think about? If you're talking directly to all the moms out there, what is the one thing that they should keep in mind say, beginning with this Mother's Day and then hearing through, to become more mindful, and to enjoy this journey of motherhood and life more? [0:24:12] JM: What do you really need for yourself to feel mothered? If you were to mother yourself, or if you are your own best friend, and you could wrap yourself in the care and the love and the nurturing that you really need, what you need today, tomorrow, this week, to feel more cared for? To feel more supported? To feel more gotten? To feel more loved? Try those things. Just do something for yourself. I would so encourage you to create space for yourself with yourself, with no one else. That can look like meditation. It could look like going for a walk outside in nature. It could look like journaling for five minutes on what you have to be grateful for. It could look like taking a yummy bath and putting bubbles in it. But just really mothering yourself is a learned practice. I didn't learn how to mother myself from my mom. I learned how to be a great mom to my children from my mom. But now, I'm like having to learn how do I mother myself? Mothering the mother within, I do feel like is a game changer to unlock this next level of capacity for our divine feminine that is wired to nurture. It's wired to naturally love, and include, and care, and create peace and harmony. Don't we want that for our families and communities in the world? So, I would encourage you as we go up to Mother's Day, to put yourself at that center and say, “What do I need to feel mothered? To feel nurtured? To feel loved?” And try it. [0:26:14] PF: I love it. That is a perfect way to wrap this up. You have a lot to teach us. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find your book, how they can find you, and learn more. But thank you. This is incredible conversation and I appreciate you coming and hanging out with me. [0:26:27] JM: Oh, thank you so much. To all the mothers out there, you're doing a great job and you're worth every single penny, every single second, and we're so grateful. I'm so grateful to walk this path with you. Thanks, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:26:46] PF: That was Jennifer Mulholland, talking about mindful motherhood. If you'd like to learn more about Jennifer, discover her book, Leading with Light, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly live happy newsletter. Every week, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. 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: Reclaim Your Personal Power With Dr. Emma Seppälä [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 465 of Live Happy Now. We live in a world that is increasingly chaotic, and this week's guest has a better roadmap for navigating this uncertain territory. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today I'm sitting down with Dr. Emma Seppälä, a Yale professor, bestselling author, and research scientist, whose new book is, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos. Emma is here to talk about how embracing both our positive and negative experiences and becoming more compassionate with ourselves, can improve our relationships, cultivate greater personal freedom, and even improve our physical health. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Emma, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:49] ES: Thank you, I'm so happy to be here. [0:00:51] PF: It's such an honor to have you on the show. You've done some amazing work already and you have a brand-new book coming out that we're going to talk about, but I really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk to us today. [0:01:02] ES: Absolutely. Yes. I'm delighted. [0:01:06] PF: So, your new book is called Sovereign and that's a word we don't hear a lot. It kind of stops you for a moment. So, it takes a little bit of an introduction to understand what is sovereignty and especially for you, you talk about personal sovereignty. Can you explain that to us? [0:01:23] ES: Absolutely. So, my first book was about science of happiness, and there's a lot to share there, as you know, from your podcast. But after – I used all those practices, and I use them still daily. But I realized there was another element that you can be doing all the self-care practices you want. But if you don't have sovereignty, and I'll explain what that is, then you can't get all the way there. What do I mean by that, you can meditate all day, but if you are highly self-critical, and buy into fears and beliefs about yourself, that are not serving you, and engage in behaviors and addictive habits that are destructive, then you're not going to be able to attain the level of fulfillment that you wish, nor are you going to be able to show up as your best self. So, I think it's helpful if I give an example. [0:02:12] PF: Please. Yes. [0:02:13] ES: Yes, I teach audiences. So, I teach executives at the Yale School of Management and I see these highly talented people coming through. When I ask audiences, “How many of you are self-critical”, 90% to 95% of people raise their hand. As you probably know, from psychology, self-criticism is a form of self-loathing. When you think about that for a second, you're like, “Wait a second, 90% to 95% of people are walking around with self-loathing. That's pretty intense.” When you look at the research, self-criticism, as you’re beating yourself up whenever you make mistakes, which most people do, is linked to anxiety, is linked to depression, it's linked to fear of failure, it's linked to less willingness to try again. All of the things that are the opposite of resilience are the opposite of wellbeing. And you've got to wonder, like, I mean, you can wonder where this all comes from. But that that actually doesn't really matter. I mean, it's social conditioning, programming, whatever you want to call it. But the idea is, once we can acknowledge that this is happening, that's when you can have that awareness and step out of it and reprogram yourself, and question the way you've been doing things because research shows when we have a more life supportive relationship with ourselves, that's when we're really going to thrive. So, I often ask people, what do you say to yourself when you make a big mistake? People usually say, “You're such an idiot. Blanc.” Those kinds of words. But then if you ask people, what would you say to your best friend who've made the same mistake? They'll say, “You're okay. Everyone makes mistakes. You're doing great. Don't worry.” Right? [0:03:40] PF: Right. [0:03:41] ES: So, the question is, what's the difference between you and your best friend, there's no difference other than that you live inside different bodies. You got to wonder, so that's where I question some of these beliefs and I call that the bound state, because that binds us. It's like we have like an inner terrorist living inside of us and that is not allowing us to show up at our full potential. The majority of people on their deathbeds regret not living the life they wanted. Let's not be one of those people. [0:04:09] PF: Yes. I love this because I know people who don't understand why the practices aren't working for them. It's like, but I practice gratitude, and I practice, I want to forgive people and I try these different things, try to take these steps toward joy. I practice kindness and it's just not getting them quite there. This is kind of like tilling the soil, to make the – plant the seeds that will really be able to grow and make those practices bloom. [0:04:38] ES: Absolutely. So, one other example is I have a whole chapter on the mind, and so many of us don't realize that we are conditioning our minds all day long with the information we're taking, and we're taking in over 60,000 gigabytes of information across all our media channels every day, which is enough to crash a small computer in a week. I mean – [0:04:56] PF: Oh, my gosh. That’s overwhelming. [0:04:58] ES: It’s overwhelming. When you think about it, so what is it that we're taking in? And are we aware of what we're taking in, and the impact it's having on us? If you're constantly taking in, let's say, news, you're conditioning yourself for fear and anxiety. If you're constantly taking in, if you're just doom scrolling, and looking at accounts that are making you want to buy something, or making you feel like you're not attractive enough, or whatever the other things, many things that evoke desire are ways that we're conditioning our mind for anxiety, for depression. Many of us are not aware of everything we're taking in, and what the quality of our mind that ensues. So, you are what you eat is also true of your mind. One of the things I'm inviting people to do is okay, what are you conditioning your mind with? Of course, the mind is also conditioned by everything else, it's received, like, for example, that the self-loathing is something that is passed down in families and societies. Yes, I mean, there's so much more to say. I mean, trauma is obviously also something that everybody, most people have to deal with a certain level of it and that's a form of mind conditioning. There are ways that we can help ourselves to become aware of state of our mind and what we can do about it, to have a more sovereign mind. [0:06:11] PF: This is such a huge topic and I look at all the different silos that it affects when you talk about, we're being programmed, we have our own internal cues that we're giving ourselves. How did you even start mapping out what all needed to be included in this? What you needed to address, and then how did you research this? Because it is a massive, massive, and it's not something that I've seen touched on a lot. [0:06:37] ES: Thank you, Paula. This doesn't sound very scientific. But it does, in some sense that I feel like this book came to me. Actually, when we look at research on creativity, we get our ideas. Those aha moments often come in times when we're in meditation, or when we're in this alpha wave, brainwave state. I feel like this book came to me, and I had it all mapped out in my mind. Of course, also, was my own experience. I went through my own experience of feeling like, “Wow, I'm applying all the happiness principles, but I'm still in this bound state and I had like a major health issue.” I realized, “Well, there are certain beliefs, there are certain habits, and things that we engage in that can bind us, regardless.” Like I said earlier, of the practices we're doing. So, the book really mapped itself out in my own mind, and each chapter could be a book on its own. In fact, I've had early readers read it and be like, “Oh, well, I'm not going to write a book about this whole topic that you address in one chapter.” I have one chapter on intuition, which doesn't sound scientific, but there's research on it. Neuroscience research, the military is doing research on it and there's really interesting findings. One of my colleagues was like, “Well, my next book is about intuition, because I read your chapter.” So, you could go so deep and this is sort of an introduction to sovereignty, I think. And then readers can explore the topic further as it applies to them. [0:07:56] PF: How does it specifically fit in this time we live in? Fifteen years ago, it wouldn't land the way that it lands today. So, can you talk about this, why this is a book that is really a book of our times? [0:08:10] ES: We live in a time of hyper-distraction, and to the point where there's so much coming at us that sometimes it's hard to know what we think, who we are, and what we believe, because there is so much and it's a sailing on our senses. And it's a sailing on our mind, and we know that the quality of our life depends on the state of our mind, right? You could be in traffic and still be happy. Or you could be on a desert, on a beautiful – Hawaii or something and be unhappy. It's all about state of our mind. This is a time also where there's just chaos. There's chaos outside, there's chaos on the globe, there's distraction, like crazy through, all of our media channels, different messaging, who knows what to even – what to align with. In a sense, we can so easily lose our footing with regard to our state of mind or state of being and a lot of people are struggling. There are also countless forms of addictive distractions to help us feel better, right? Whether it's – anyway, I'm not just talking about the regular alcohol and drugs. There's – [0:09:12] PF: We’ve progressed past that. [0:09:14] ES: Yes. There's so much now. There's so much and so many people profiting from that and so many businesses run off of them many ways. Even some people it's like, “Well, they're overworking or over exercising or you whatever it is.” I think a lot of people feel lost. [0:09:31] PF: It's like we're bombarded with so much but our lives feel empty. There's such a dichotomy there. But it's like there's so much coming at us and coming at us and we don't really drink in the nutrients that we need for a healthy life, emotional, healthy life. [0:09:48] ES: I love how you just said that, Paula. That's exactly right. So, this book is an invitation to become aware of the many different ways in which we are being bombarded, in which we are standing in our own way without realizing, and waking up to the fact that we have a choice, and what are some things we can do to reclaim the life that we want to live, how we want to live it. Ideally, in the fullest expression of ourselves and to how to navigate these times. [0:10:15] PF: Can you talk about where someone starts? Does it start with identifying where we're at? And then deciding what you need? Or how do we start reclaiming that personal sovereignty? [0:10:25] ES: So, I do include a lot of tools in the book, because I remember this, there was so much talk about self-love at some point, and you kind of felt like, what the heck is that? How do you even do that? As a scientist, I like to keep things really pragmatic. My first chapter is actually about sovereign self. Sovereign self, sovereign emotion, sovereign mind, sovereign relationship, sovereign intuition, and so forth, sovereign body. But I start with sovereign self because of that, like I said earlier, that state of self-loathing that most people are in, and that we don't even realize. I think one of the first steps to sovereignty is becoming aware of how we treat ourselves, and also having – but in order to build that self-awareness, a practice I really encourages meditation, which is now no longer – which is now popular, thanks to research that my colleagues and I did, and we've done some of that research. But I think for a lot of people, meditation is still a strain. Because when there's anxiety and you sit to meditate, it's really hard. So, I think a lot of people have tried meditation and kind of feel like, “It doesn't work for me.” We actually conducted research on breathing. For veterans with trauma, those are my original studies that we ran, because there was such high levels of anxiety that sitting and meditating was not an option. I can relate to that, because I was in New York City during 9/11 and I tried eating after that, and it was just not going to work for me. What worked was a breathing practice called SKY Breath Meditation. Then 10 years later, and I’m working with veterans with trauma, and again, they were falling through the cracks with regards to therapy and pharmaceutical approaches. Then meditation, the mindfulness studies were not working out at the time in the VA that I was in because they were, again, when you have high anxiety, sitting and closing your eyes is just more anxiety provoking. So, we wanted to see, “Well, maybe this breathing practice that I learned all those years go through to that non-profit called Art of Living.” I thought maybe we can work with them, to see if we can work the veterans. We did, and it was really amazing to see how using your breath, you can really reprogram your nervous system. In a sense, and again, actually the nonprofit that we worked with is called Project Welcome Home Troops and they offer this breathing for veterans, military, active, and their families. But what's really interesting to me, as I call it, and Paula, tell me, if you agree on this, that psychology is such a top-down approach. It's like all about change your thoughts, change your life. Right? [0:12:50] PF: Right. We want that simple, like, “Okay, but where do I start? I'm anxious, I don't have time to sit down and read a book. Tell me what to do.” And we can take a breath. You can learn to take a breath. I know that breathing is just a lifesaver. I remember being told when I was going through a very difficult time in my 30s, and someone said, “Paula, just breathe.” I thought, “That's stupid.” Then I breathed, and it's like, okay, and that saying just sticks in my head forever. Like, “Paula, just breathe.” That's that trigger, when I get anxious is like, just breathe. And it does, it changes everything for people. [0:13:29] ES: Changes everything. And it was the most moving research study I've ever run, because the veterans were at risk for taking their own lives and they said, “Thanks for giving me my life back.” And I thought, “Wow, something so simple, and yet so powerful.” In fact, yes, this week, actually, just this very week, I'm actually teaching someone who grew up as an enslaved person in Nepal, working in the sweatshops. I just met her a couple of days ago. In fact, I talk about her in my book in the introduction. She said, “Can you teach me?” It's making a huge difference. It's like, wow, I wish all people and all children and like – imagine everyone learns at 18. There goes your childhood trauma. Move on, sovereign. [0:14:12] PF: There you go. We'll get right back to my conversation with Emma. [MESSAGE] [0:14:15] PF: But I wanted to take a moment to remind you that Mother's Day is just around the corner. If you're still trying to figure out the right gift for your mom, why not give her the very thing you took from her when you were born? Sleep. Sleep is so important to your physical and mental health and one way to get better sleep is with luxurious bedding from Cozy Earth. I recently discovered their incredible super soft bamboo sheets and I'm telling you, this is the easiest way to give your mom an incredible night's sleep. Their temperature-regulating bedding means it doesn't matter if she runs hot or cold. She's going to enjoy a fabulous night of sleep while enjoying the ultimate and comfort and indulgence. This is truly a gift that keeps on giving and even better, we're going to give you a discount so you give her the luxury she deserves with Cozy Earth. Head over to cozyearth.com and use the promo code happy 35 for an exclusive 35% off. That's cozyearth.com and use the promo code happy 35. Now, let's hear more from Dr. Emma Seppälä. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:15:19] ES: SKY Breath MEDITATION is a really powerful protocol. But what it showed us is that just as you can train your muscles to be strong for you to go out in the world, you can train your nervous system to be more resilient to stress by conditioning it and to be more in that parasympathetic mode. It's stress resiliency and that's what I love. [0:15:38] PF: Yes. That's such an important step. Then what about with all this self-loathing and self-criticism? What's so interesting, because it can be self-critical, but I've never thought of it as self-loathing. I just thought, I'm just mean to myself sometimes. So, when you frame it like that, that gives you a whole different perspective. So, how do people go about correcting that? Because that's a huge part of creating that better relationship with ourselves. [0:16:03] ES: Well, first, you have to want to. It's shocking how many people really relate to – well, I have to be critical of myself, because I'm so X, Y, Z. It's like, “Says who?” Right? So, I think one way that can shock you into paying attention to this is when I was postpartum with my second child, my first child was three, and he heard me saying something out loud, like, “I just can't do this.” Regarding parenting. Someone was screaming. I was like, “I just can't – I'm not good at this.” I said something like that. And then a few days later, when he messed up at something, I heard him say the same words. Sometimes you need a shock like that, like, “Oh, really? Are you going to pass this on? You're going to pass the self-loathing onto your child? Really? Is that what you want for your child?” Sometimes something like that. Because it most definitely has been passed on in our families, in our societies, in our culture. If you're a woman, even more so. What does it do? It disempowers you. It takes away your sovereignty, and you have to decide, “Wait a second, do I don't want this for me, let alone for my child? Or do I want to live the life that I want?” There's that. But that’s like, “Well, how do you do it?” I want to break this down in the most practical way possible. Is that throughout the day, just tuning in, and instead of asking, “Am I good enough?” Which so many people ask themselves. Am I good enough to be a spouse? Am I good enough to be doing the work I'm doing or whatever it is, right? Asking what's good for me right now? What do I need right now? Tuning in a couple times a day, especially when you're feeling stressed, or you're feeling tension. Just what do I need right now? I can tell you that right before this podcast. This morning, I had some different, like, other PR stuff that I'm doing to the book and I tuned in, after lunch, I tuned in like, wow, it's been a lot today. I have an inbox overflowing with people emailing me, again, because I haven't responded to their email and I should be doing that, but I didn't. I went on that couch and I meditated. That’s what I needed to do. What do I need right now? That allows me to then show up for you, Paula, but also, for me to show up for me, in a way that I have taken care of my nervous system. So, sometimes just training yourself to ask that. Sometimes you might need a nap. Sometimes you might need, if you don't have any time, you just have five minutes. But what are you doing in those five minutes? Are you doing scrolling? Or you can take five minutes to go outside and just breathe some fresh air, or pet your dog, or whatever it is. Just a few minutes. In those few minutes are you doing something nourishing for yourself and keeping it really practical? Are you getting enough sleep at night? Are you eating enough? Are you eating quality? Little things like that. But I often think like when you have a child, you're constantly aware, “Oh, wow, they haven't had any water in like four hours if you're aware.” Constantly, like, “Oh, my gosh. If they don't eat soon, they're going to have a meltdown. But we don't do that for ourselves. So, it's a little bit like training that, training that awareness inward. [0:19:03] PF: How do, especially women, get past the idea that self-care is selfish? Because even though we know it's not, we can tell each other it's not – there are still a lot of times that little bit of guilt like, “Man, I shouldn't be taking this time for myself when I still have laundry to do. I have this to do. I've got places I need to be.” So, how does someone get past that and recognize the importance of that self-care both physically and emotionally? I [0:19:30] ES: I mean, this is such a – I mean, scientifically speaking, I can definitely share with you that when you take care of yourself, you show up with more emotional intelligence. So, you're able to enact more successfully with others. You show up with a – so you're going to have better relationships, whether it's at work or at home. You're going to make better decisions. You're going to think more clearly. You're going to remember things better. You're going to be more efficient in what you're doing because you're going to be more present with what you're doing. So, in a sense, if you want to be successful, you doing self-care is going to help you. But it's also going to help others because we all know what it feels like to be around someone who's stressed and burned out. It makes us feel stressed and burned out. Someone who's stressed and burned out is also more likely to fly off the handle, and to be even hurtful ways. Oftentimes, our inability to take care of ourselves makes us hurt the people we love the most and want to hurt the least. So, it's not selfish. It's absolutely essential. If you want to – just for the people around you, if not for yourself. [0:20:37] PF: Yes. So, it's really an investment in not just yourself, but in your working relationships, in your personal relationships. It's improving that for everybody. [0:20:47] ES: Absolutely. Then, when you go to sleep at night, you don't regret something you did or said, right? When you have greater self-care, you're going to be more mindful. You're going to be more thoughtful. You're going to be more perceptive. You're actually going to see more things. Our research shows that when you're stressed, you’re tunnel-visioned. When you’re taking care of yourself and are in the sort of calmer space, you're able to perceive more things, which is when you think about it, whether you're a parent or leader, or whatever you're doing. Being able to perceive more things and think from a broader perspective, is going to make you a lot more successful at what you're doing. [0:21:23] PF: Yes. When you invest in that strong personal relationship with yourself, how have you seen it change people? You've done so much research on this. When they really do make a personal relationship their priority, what does that do for them? [0:21:37] ES: What happens is that they become more successful in everything that they're doing. In their relationships, in their marriage, in their –why is it that marriages are so strained when there's little kids, right? It's because both parents have a hard time doing the self-care. Really, the relationship could be just fine, if everyone had time to sleep, to eat, and a few minutes to just be by themselves, right? That applies for the rest of our lives. So many people might not have little kids, and yet, are straining themselves by overworking, not sleeping enough, not taking care of their mind or body, their sleep, et cetera. Then, they're suffering, and so are the people around them. [0:22:17] PF: So, if someone reads this, and they start making this change, and they make it not just for themselves, they pass that on with their family, and then their friends start making that change. How does this start reshaping the way that we move through the world? Because as you've mentioned, we're inundated with too much information, too much stress, too much negativity. How can we change that? [0:22:39] ES: Well, I think that once people start making more sovereign choices with regard to themselves, and how they live, it can change society, and it can change families and society, and help us to navigate this world in a way that we actually live the life we want to live in accordance with who we really are, and most importantly, we can live in a way that fully expresses the gifts that we have. [0:23:04] PF: That's fantastic. [0:23:05] ES: Yes. I mean, I'm just thinking now of a story that someone shared about his son, who has been so addicted to screens since he was about five years old. But he's now 18, and unable to really focus on anything and sits in his car, and drains his car battery, because he's scrolling through his phone for hours. When you think about that, and that boy who has undoubtedly his own very unique gifts, and how he has been completely bound up by what the technology has done to him. Now, other things may be going on there as well. But we all have our own beautiful, sovereign potential, and are we going to choose to live it? Are we going to choose to model it for others and for our children? That's for us to do and the potential is huge to make this world a better place. [0:23:50] PF: Yes. I think what's so wonderful with your book is it kind of gives us the path to get there, and the hope that we can get there, and through ways that might be more simple than we thought. Not easy, necessarily, but simple. Two of the things that you talked about that I really want you to touch on before I let you go is like elevation and forgiveness. So, can you tell us about what each of those means and why they're so important? [0:24:17] ES: Yes. Whenever you see someone helping another person, it can be very moving to see that, whether you're out in the street, seeing someone helping another person, it's very inspiring and moving. That's a state we call elevation. Psychologists call elevation. What's really interesting about that is that when you see someone helping someone else, you are then more likely to go and help someone else. What the research shows is that whenever one person acts with compassion or engages in acts of kindness, it actually ripples out to three degrees of separation away from them. So, when they do an act of kindness and the onlookers are impacted, and so are two degrees away. Let's say you do a kind act for a work colleague, and then someone else sees you. You're impacting that person's sister’s brother-in-law or whatever. That ripple effect is happening so often, especially in this world that's so chaotic and crazy right now. We think, “Oh, who am I? What difference do I make?” You don't even know the ripple effect that every micro-moment of kindness, the joke you share with the person at their cash register, the kind gesture you do for your neighbor, the kind words you share with your kid’s teacher or whatever. You don't know the ripple effect of goodness that happens. That, to me, gives a lot of hope. Because each one of us can make an enormous difference, without even knowing it, and everybody does. That's one thing. Then, with regard to forgiveness, it can sound so sappy. Yet when you look at the data, forgiveness has nothing much to do with the person you're forgiving. Everything to do with you. Because when you forgive research shows that it literally lightens your load. You literally can jump higher after you've forgiven someone. This research has been done. Just showing just how heavy a load it is to not forgive or to live in resentment. Living in resentment is kind of like punishing yourself for what someone else did. Living in anger, it's like, because you're the one reaping the health benefits, and we know for example, that anger has health impact on your heart health. So, people who tend to hold on to anger or resentment tend to have heart issues. When you're forgiving, you're not only unburdening the other person, possibly, if they know or they don't know. But your own blood pressure reduces, and you're able to move on with much better mental health and well-being. So, forgiveness is really for yourself. [0:26:41] PF: On that note too, self-forgiveness is super important. Because as you've noted, we're self-critical and we can also beat ourselves up for years about things that we did, that maybe nobody else even remembers. You're a wonderful researcher and scientists. How do you discover self-forgiveness? [0:27:01] ES: That's such a good question. Whenever I feel the guilt coming up, often it's around my children. It’s like, “I wish I did this.” I just breathe through it and I bring myself back to the present moment, and I'm like right here, right now. I can always – I'm doing my best right here right now and I did the best that I could then. I think that's one of the mantras, self-compassion mantras I used, I still use, doing the best that I can. [0:27:26] PF: That's wonderful. You have so many tools and guides within this book to help people understand and achieve that personal sovereignty. I'm really excited to see what happens as it reaches the world. You also have some wonderful bonus tools that you're offering people, and so we're going to give links to all of that on our landing page. But what is it, you've poured yourself into this book, you've poured your work into this book, what is it that you hope people take away from it? [0:27:54] ES: I hope people take away that they have a choice as to how they want to live, how they want to manage their minds and their relationships, and that they have the option to live a very fulfilled, happy life in which they can live in the fullest expression of themselves, that they have that for permission. Because sometimes I think we've forgotten that we can do that. If people remember that they have their own gifts to fully express and that they can and have permission to do that, it's going to make their life more fulfilled, but they're also going to become a gift for everyone who meets them. [0:28:29] PF: I love that. If you're not doing it for yourself, do it for those around you, right? [0:28:32] ES: Mm-hmm. [0:28:33] PF: Well, Emma, such a pleasure to talk to you, really excited to see this book come out, as I said, and we're going to tell our listeners where they can find it, where they can order it, how they can get those free bonuses. Thank you again. Thank you again for sitting down with me. [0:28:47] ES: Thank you, Paula. Lots of pleasure. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:28:53] PF: That was Dr. Emma Seppälä, talking about how sovereignty can help us improve our relationships with ourselves and those around us. If you'd like to learn more about Emma or her new book, Sovereign: Reclaim Your Freedom, Energy, and Power in a Time of Distraction, Uncertainty, and Chaos, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now, and if you aren't already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think. 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: Launch Your Awakening Adventure With Steve Taylor [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 452 of Live Happy Now. Throughout the month of January, we've been sharing practices that can help you create habits to increase your wellbeing. Now, it's time for an adventure. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Steve Taylor, a best-selling author and senior lecturer at Leeds Beckett University in England. Steve has devoted his life to investigating spiritual awakenings, both for himself and for others. In his new book, The Adventure, Steve provides a roadmap to walk us all through the practices he's found most useful for helping us embark on our own awakening journey. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW]   [0:00:45] PF: Steve, welcome to Live Happy Now. [0:00:47] ST: Hi, Paula. Great to be with you. [0:00:48] PF: I'm so excited to talk with you. All throughout the month of January, we've been talking about new practices, things that people can do to really start a new year off with change. We make resolutions, but those may or may not mean anything in February and after that. So what we're really talking about is practices that we can adopt and adapt into our lives. So your book, boy, when you talk about an awakening that is just so incredible. Tell us a little bit about what you mean when you talk about spiritual awakening. [0:01:22] ST: Awakening means really expansion, it's like an expansion of awareness, an expansion of potential, an expansion of our inner being. It's also about connection, it's about connecting to more deeply to ourselves, connecting more deeply to other people, and connecting more deeply to the world. Yes, the world in general. [0:01:42] PF: Yes. What kind of change does it make when we connect more deeply with ourselves? How does that connect us then with other people? [0:01:50] ST: It brings a sense of wellbeing, because most of the time, we live at the surface of our minds, we live at the level of thought, and our identity, our normal sense of identity is derived from our thoughts. Because our thoughts are so restless, because our thoughts often tend towards negativity, worrying about the future, feeling guilty, or angry about the past. If you leave at there before, it causes discord, it often leads to unhappiness. But when you expand your sense of identity, then you dive below the level of thoughts into your deeper being. It's like a diver, diving from the surface of the ocean, into the depths of the ocean. When you dive into the depths below the surface of your mind, you find that there is a natural harmony there, it just seems to be the nature of our deep being. It just seems to exist in a natural state of contentment and ease. Of course, when you do that, you also free yourself from the worries of the mind, the restlessness of the mind, you find a stillness. At that point too, you also find it easier to connect with other people. Because when our minds are filled with thought chatter, it creates a sense of separation. Thoughts, they enclose is within our own identity. So as soon as we go beyond thoughts, into our deeper beings, our being opens up, and we find it easier to empathize with others, we find that we are naturally more altruistic to others, because we feel more connected to them. [0:03:22] PF: That's incredible. I'll also point out, that what you talked about, like the story of diving into an ocean, that's also – you've got a great meditation that you start the book out with, that is exactly that. Like diving below the turmoil of the surface of the ocean and getting down underneath. I've got to say, I've been using that, and it's a really effective meditation.   [0:03:41] ST: So good.   [0:03:42] PF: Absolutely encourage anybody to check out the book, and learn that meditation, because it is really effective, and it's very peaceful. [0:03:49] ST: Oh, brilliant. Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad. [0:03:52] PF: So your book is called The Adventure. You say that awakening is the greatest adventure that we can undertake as human beings. Can you explain why that is? [0:04:02] ST: It's natural for us. I think we are meant to awaken in our lives. We're not meant to be enclosed. We're not meant to live within these restless minds, within this discord. That's not really a normal – well, it's a normal state, because it's the state we experience most of the time. But I don't think it's our natural state. I think it is our natural state to live in wellbeing, to live in a more expensive, and more connected way, and it feels right. One of the great things about awakening is, once you begin the journey, it has its own momentum, and you reap benefits almost straightaway. You feel an increasing sense of stillness, and ease, and harmony in your life. It's kind of self-perpetuating that wellbeing, that harmony propels you, gives you further motivation to continue. It seems so natural to grow. I think as human beings, we're meant to grow. We're meant to expand, just like all living beings grow in some form, physically, at least. But I think, human beings, we don't just grow physically, we grow psychologically, and spiritually as well. When we do that, it just feels so right and so natural. It feels like exactly what we're meant to do. [0:05:08] PF: This comes out at an interesting time, because there is a lot of turmoil. There's a lot of concern about what is going on. So it seems like if there was ever a time when we needed this awakening, it would be now. Can you talk about the need for a collective spiritual awakening? [0:05:26] ST: As you say, we are living through a time of great turmoil. I think in a way, that's always been the case. Human societies have always been full of conflict, and full of oppression. Human beings have, throughout recorded history, we've fought wars against each other. So there's always been conflict, and chaos, and discord. But now, because of the technology of the modern world, and the interconnectedness of the modern world, it seems to be more intense than ever. It's happening on a massive global scale. I think all of the problems we face in the world are the direct result of what I call our normal sleep state, they are the direct result of our normal, constricted, discordant minds. But when we open up, when we expand our awareness, once we begin to feel some sense of inner harmony, then everything changes, our own behavior changes, our relationship to others changes. We become much more altruistic rather than materialistic and selfish. We promote harmony in everything we do. Once you have a large number of people living in that way, the whole of society changes. If a large enough number of people did begin to live in that way, then the whole world would change, the world would shift from this state of discord into a mode of harmony, a mode of cooperation, rather than competition. We will treat nature as being sacred and spiritual, rather than exploiting nature. We will treat each other with respect rather than exploiting and mistrusting each other. The whole world would change. I do think that a collective awakening is the most urgent need of our time. [0:07:05] PF: The world that you've described sounds very appealing, very much where we want to live. How do we as individuals, if we're going on this individual, spiritual awakening, how do we help that create a collective spiritual awakening? [0:07:20] ST: It happens naturally to some degree, because as I say, once we undergo our own personal shift, it changes our behavior. But we also have a kind of – you've probably noticed it, if you've met people who are naturally content, who are naturally altruistic, those people probably are people who have had a spiritual awakening. Then, these people have a kind of radiance about them. They change the mood around them. You walk into a room with one of these people in it. You can sense the contentment around them. It just in the same way, as you walk into a room with a very aggressive or angry person, you can sense the mood around them. It changes in terms of how we behave, and it changes in terms of the aura or the atmosphere that we generate around us. It is kind of self-perpetuating. The more people who generate some degree of awakening within themselves, the greater the momentum of wakefulness will – ultimately, maybe it will reach a threshold where it becomes human beings normal state. [0:08:18] PF: I would love to see that happen. You really do walk us through how to reach this state of wakefulness. Eight of the things that you begin with, you talk about the qualities of wakefulness. Do you mind going over those a little bit, explain what wakefulness means, and why those qualities are so important? [0:08:34] ST: Great. Yes. Yes. I'd love to do that. Wakefulness is, you could define it very simply as an expansion of identity with a sense of connectedness on many different levels. I have a part time role as a psychologist. I've been a psychologist for many years, and I specialize in investigating cases of spiritual awakening in people. I've also been undergoing my own personal journey of awakening since I was a teenager. That's quite a long time now. Basically, in my own experience, and in my research, I've identified eight essential qualities, which all awakened people demonstrate and which naturally arise through the process of awakening. First one is disidentification. That means a bit like I described earlier. That's when we step outside the thought mind and realize that we are not our thoughts. Then, we have gratitude, which means developing an all-encompassing sense of appreciation for everything and everyone in our lives, including life itself. Then, third characteristic is presence, which basically means living in the moment, being aware of our experience, and our surroundings, rather than living in the future, or the past, or within our own thoughts. Then, altruism, giving to the world, which incorporates things like empathy, connectedness, being compassionate towards others, being generous, and kind to other human beings. Every spiritual tradition in the world, or every religious tradition emphasizes the importance of kindness and altruism. But altruism is also a spiritual quality in itself, it's a spiritual practice in itself. The fifth quality is acceptance, which means, simply not resisting the reality of our lives, not resisting the reality of our predicament in life or our situations in life. Then, we move on to integration with the body. That's important because there's a slight tendency in some spiritual traditions, certainly some religious traditions to denigrate the body, to see the body as an enemy, or even to suggest that the body is not really real. It's a kind of illusory thing. But it's very important to gain a sense of harmony with the body, and to realize that the body is sacred and spiritual in itself. Then, there is detachment. That simply means not being dependent on external things for your identity and wellbeing. Finally, the eighth quality is embracing mortality, which means being aware of our own mortality, accepting our own mortality, and living in harmony with the fact of our own mortality. [0:11:27] PF: Now, with those qualities, are those things that you need to learn and experience in the order that they're presented in the book and in the order that you just presented now? [0:11:37] ST: No, that's not really the case. There was one exception, which is disidentification from the ego. That is kind of the gateway to spiritual awakening. You can't undergo spiritual awakening unless you go through that stage of disidentifying with your thought mind. Once you've done that, then any of the other seven characteristics can be practiced in any order. They're not reliant, it may depend on your personality. Certain characteristics may be more important for you to develop. You may already have developed certain characteristics to some extent. So it will vary from person to person/ [0:12:13] PF: The ability to walk away from our thought mind for that disidentification is, it seems very difficult, because we are all wrapped up in our thoughts every minute of the day.   [0:12:26] ST: Yes, that's true.   [0:12:27] PF: Can you talk about that a little bit? That seems like an ambitious and very big first step talk, but you make it pretty simple in the book. Can you talk about that, like how people go about doing that, taking that first step on the journey? [0:12:41] ST: You're right, it is the first most important step. It may seem difficult, but if you think about it, there are lots of times in our lives when we step beyond the thought mind. They're usually the times when we are happiest. For example, when you get absorbed in an enjoyable activity, if you're playing music, or engaged in a creative activity, or even when you're socializing with friends, or even reading a really enthralling book, or watching a really enthralling film, you stop thinking. You step outside your thought mind. An hour or two may pass by, and then the activity, or the play, or the film is over, and you think, "Oh, here I am again. It's me. I can start thinking again." But you know that you've been in a state of wellbeing during those moments. Also, for example, if you walk in the countryside, you feel a sense of wellbeing, you feel a sense of inner calm, you feel connected to your beautiful surroundings. That's because your mind has become quiet, maybe your brain isn't completely empty, but you're thinking less. There are also certain moments when we don't like what we're thinking. We become aware of ourselves thinking silly thought, and we say to ourselves, "Don't be so ridiculous." You think about a job interview or something, and think, "Oh, no. I'm going to make a mess of it. It's going to be terrible." Then you think, "No, don't be ridiculous. It's going to be fine." We do it from time to time. That is an example of disidentifying with your thought mind. It is also the basic aim of meditation is to disidentify with your thought mind, or meditation practices teaches to do that. It's a question of, slowly developing an ability that we already have, and cultivating it over maybe a few weeks, maybe even a few months, so that it becomes stronger. [0:14:27] PF: It's not something that is going to happen overnight, that part. It's going to take some practice. [0:14:32] ST: Yes, you can certainly glimpse it. We all glimpse it from time to time, anyway. Maybe, once you glimpse it for the first time, then you realize, "Ah, I am not my thoughts. There is something else beyond or beneath my thoughts. That's a really important moment, that moment of realization encourages you to cultivate the state. It will usually take a few weeks or a few months for it to become stronger for it to pick up momentum. [0:14:57] PF: So as someone goes through this book, do you recommend that they read the entire book, or do they say like, "Do you have guidelines? So we know going into it." I love how you present that. If you're going to go on a journey, you need a map, because you need to know where you're going, and what to expect, how to dress for this trip. You do a great job of setting that up. Then, we get into that journey. Do we need to say, take that first chapter on disidentification, and just stay with that until we feel we've mastered that? Or do we read the entire book, and then come back, and do the practices? How do you see that working for people? [0:15:33] ST: I'd like people to be flexible. As I said before, there are certain characteristics which are maybe more important to some people. Some people will know that they need to work on one particular characteristic, so they can turn to that chapter straightaway. The chapters don't necessarily need to be read sequentially, although all of the eight qualities are important. A think they're all equally important. They do all need to be cultivated. But you know, people should be flexible. It never really works. When you're too prescriptive to people, when you say to them, do this, stick to the plan, you got to allow for some flexibility, and some variations in people's personalities. [0:16:09] PF: I love it. Here at Live Happy, we talk about gratitude a lot. That is one of the qualities, and the subtitle of that chapter is overcoming the taking for granted syndrome. Can you talk about what the taking for granted syndrome is, and then tell us how we overcome it? [0:16:25] ST: In my view, the taking for granted syndrome is probably the biggest single issue with human beings, the biggest single thing that stops us attaining happiness. It's basically the human tendency to take things for granted. It's so easy for us to take things for granted. Sometimes when some of that is taken away from us, we realize how valuable it is. For example, is your health. If your health becomes endangered, if you have a serious illness or an accident, you become aware of how valuable and how wonderful your body is, and how miraculous the body is. But then, your body heals again, and you start to forget it again. You fall under the sway of the taking for granted syndrome. It's the same with people. You may fall in love with a person, and they're the most wonderful person in the world for a few months, and your life is much better with them, you feel happy, you feel harmony in your life. But after a certain amount of time, you start to take them for granted, and they don't bring you as much happiness and your life is not so different the way it was before. That happens in all areas of our lives. It happens with life itself. One of the things that happens when people are close to death, in some way, if they have an accident or a life-threatening illness, they realize how miraculous, and how fragile, and how beautiful life itself is. They realize what an amazing gift it is to be alive, just to be alive. Doesn't matter what's happening in your life, just life itself. But again, we tend to switch off to that. One of the special characteristics of spiritually awakened people is that they're not affected by the taking for granted syndrome. They are always in a state of appreciation. They always, to some degree, they always appreciate the value of their health, the people in their lives, their freedom, and prosperity, and life itself. But yes, it's a process. It's a journey to transcend the taken for granted syndrome, but it can be done. I developed exercises over a number of years, all of the exercises in the book, we've been kind of road tested at workshops over a number of years. They all are effective, and that applies to the gratitude exercises too. [0:18:32] PF: Another thing that you talk about, it's near the end of the book, and I think this is so important. You talk about embracing our mortality. This is a two-part question, because first, I want to know how we do that, because it's difficult. We don't really want to think about that a lot. Then secondly, how does embracing our mortality help us become more awakened? [0:18:50] ST: It can be difficult. I mean, in psychology, there are three basic attitudes to death. This is sometimes called the three A's. One of them is avoidance, when we don't think about our death, or our mortality. The second one is anxiety, when we do think about it occasionally, but when we feel uneasy. The third one is acceptance, which is when we do contemplate our death, and we accept the fact that we're going to die, and we live life in the light of that. The only attitude which brings any well-being is acceptance. The other two, if you avoid thinking about mortality, or if you feel anxious about it, obviously, that leads to discomfort. Many human beings do live with those two attitudes to death with an avoidance or anxiety. But when we do contemplate death seriously, when we face it in a direct way, and we really acknowledged the fact that death is real, then we move beyond the anxiety. We actually begin to sense the value of life, and we begin to sense the preciousness of all of the things in our lives, and the preciousness of the world the precious beauty of the world. That's one way in which being aware of death brings wellbeing. It takes us beyond the taking for granted syndrome. It's a really good way of transcending the taking for granted syndrome. Another thing is that death gives us motivation, the fact that life is temporary. It gives us motivation to fulfill our ambitions, no longer to procrastinate. It makes us aware that we only have a limited amount of time. Life is fragile, and temporary. It also makes us more present, and it helps us to let go of attachments. Because being aware of mortality makes us aware that possessions are not important. The old saying, you can't take it with you. But possessions are meaningless, because sooner or later, they're going to be taken away from us. To some extent, even achievements, and even successes can be considered meaningless because it's going to be taken away. But what's really important, and what's real, is being here now in this present moment. So death helps us to be aware of that. [0:21:07] PF: You've given us so many ways to awaken. You've given us so many practices, and you also have an online course that that people can take. What is it that you really hope to accomplish with this book? It's not your first book, you've written several bestsellers. What is it about this one that you really hope every reader takes away from? [0:21:27] ST: This book is quite special to me, because it's my first really practical book. I've written a few books in the mode of psychologists, analyzing, and describing people's experiences, even described my own experiences. But this is the first book where I offer a guidebook, or a handbook of spiritual awakening. On the one hand, I hope that people realize that awakening or enlightenment is not something unattainable or inaccessible. Some people think that it's only monks or mystics, or people who've been meditating for decades who can become awakened. It's open to all of us. It's our most natural, authentic state, so it's in us already. It's really just a question of uncovering what's already in us. So I hope people realize that it's accessible. Although, you have to apply yourself, you have to stick to certain practices, you have to have a certain degree of discipline, and motivation. But it's not difficult, once you get started as I said before, it has its own momentum. It becomes self-perpetuating. In some ways, it becomes easier as you do it, that the path of awakening has its own momentum that carries you towards the goal. But ultimately, even beyond that, I want to promote harmony. Because as I mentioned earlier, I do believe that the world is in such a chaotic, such a state of suffering, because of our normal, limited sleep awareness. I think, really, the only way in which we can begin to live in harmony on this planet is for more people to move towards awakening. [0:22:59] PF: I would agree with you and you've given us a great roadmap to do that. I thank you for writing it, and I thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. [0:23:08] ST: Thank you, Paula. It's been really enjoyable. [END OF EPISODE] [0:23:14] PF: That was Steve Taylor talking about how to begin your own spiritual awakening. To learn more about Steve and his book, The Adventurer: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Awakening, or follow him on social media or visit his website. Just go to livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]