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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: How to Stress Wisely with Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 476 of Live Happy Now. If you're feeling more stressed than usual these days, you aren't alone. Today, we're going to find out why that is and what you can do about it. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm joined by Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, an author, psychology instructor, and expert on resiliency. Her latest book, Stress Wisely: How to Be Well in an Unwell World, breaks down why the stress of today's fast-paced world is having such a devastating effect on us, both physically and mentally. She's here today to explain how we can manage that stress to become more resilient and even how we can proactively prepare for stress before it happens. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:49] PF: Robyne, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [0:00:52] RHD: I am thrilled to spend time with you here, so thank you for the invitation. [0:00:56] PF: I'm excited to have you. I received your book, Stress Wisely, and it is one of the most profound books on stress I have ever read. The time I've spent with this is really more than I would normally spend with a single book, because you approach it in so many different ways. Before we dig into that, tell the listeners what led you to write this book. [0:01:19] RHD: Oh, well, first, thank you for that very generous feedback. My area of research is around human resiliency. I've been really curious. I've been teaching and doing research almost 20 years now on that area. One of the through-line, Paula, that just kept coming to the surface was that persons who were able to work with their stress systems, like people who had strategies to work with their stress system, they were so better positioned to be able to manage life when things went off the rails, or when stressors became really apparent. As I was doing this work on resiliency, I just really felt that calling to be able to say, hey, we got to shine some light and spend some good intention about understanding our nervous system, because that's really going to unlock how we can really, truly be well. [0:02:06] PF: Mm-hmm. One of the things that I love about your approach is it's very knowledgeable and scientific, but it's like talking to a friend. It is really like you, take us by hand, it's like, “Hey, we're going to go on this little journey through this thing called stress.” It's very friendly in the tone. Was that just a natural thing for you to write it that way? [0:02:28] RHD: I feel very fortunate and, again, being in a position where as someone who really struggled with school, so I was not a really super strong student, I really navigated with a lot of challenges academically, until I learned that with my ADHD and learning disabilities that I just process information in a different way. Despite being able to go on and being able to complete multiple degrees and have this really great academic success, something that's always been true to me is I love to share information in a way that resonates with how information lands with me. I'm really not interested in that notion of expertise. I'm interested in allyship, where walk with me and help me understand, because that's the learning that really resonates with me. Again, to be true, to be able to do this work, I felt I wanted to represent it in that similar way. That's why I'm just really appreciative when I hear folks say that, hey, this was a pretty kind approach to be talking about a very complex topic, which is what I really strive to do with how I prepared that material. [0:03:29] PF: A lot of books, or articles that we read about stress, it's like, how to overcome it. It's like, this is something we should beat, which just stresses us out more, because it's like, “I can't. Stress is bigger than I am.” You really take a different approach in that you talk about making stress an ally. [0:03:48] RHD: Absolutely. [0:03:50] PF: Talk about what that looks like when you make stress an ally and how you even begin doing that. [0:03:56] RHD: Yeah. You're absolutely right. Right now, it seems like, everything is going to kill us, right? Stress is one of those things, where they say, 90% of all diseases are associated with high levels of stress. It seems like, it's just permeating every aspect of our well-being and our culture. Then we hear that the remedy is to try and get rid of stress. Where I ran into a bit of just this disconnect was stress is actually our first line of defense. Our stress system is designed to keep us alive. It's not meant to do us this harm. What I really fell into was this notion that the way that we're living our lives very much is going against our biology. When we start to re-imagine that relationship with stress as in like, hey, this is my internal system that's letting me know what's okay and what's not okay, letting me know when do I need to rest? When do I need to focus? When do I need to regroup? Again, when do I need to just find a different way through it? What I really started to get curious about is how do we change that narrative that, again, stress isn't the enemy. It's the doses of cortisol that we're getting on a daily basis that we're now using as our default setting. Our default setting is this sense of urgency that everything's a crisis, and that hustle and that just never enough feeling is really this idea that that's just not sustainable. Instead, learning how do we re-regulate these nervous systems, so we can work in partnership with all of our parts, versus working against ourselves is what we started to think about in this work. [0:05:33] PF: I love that you acknowledge the fact that our bodies were not built for today's world. [0:05:38] RHD: Not even close. [0:05:39] PF: Talk about that. Why do you say that we are not equipped to live in the society we've created? [0:05:45] RHD: Well, I think the biggest one, even just if we come at it from a physiological perspective, our bodies and our brains are not designed to be in this place of omnipresence. What I mean by that is we're not meant to have these 18, 20-hour days where we don't have opportunities for rest and recovery. What's happened right now is we're creating this artificial ecosystem where we're calling this high performance, or we're just calling this the way that the world is now. But the reality is our nature is very much designed to have ebbs and flows, to have seasons of high productivity, absolutely. But then, we need time to rest and to recharge and just really enjoy that. Right now, again, I think we're doing a big disservice by suggesting that everything needs to be this complicated, and this full, versus being able to priority management, the things that matter most and make those things matter most, so we can enjoy the process. [0:06:43] PF: What's so difficult is we keep adding more things that need to be done. Even some of those things are, “I need to relax. I need to build in time to meditate, or whatever my form of relaxation is.” Then it becomes just one more thing on this list. You get stressed out looking at it, because you can't get to all those things. [0:07:03] RHD: Absolutely. It would be a full-time job in itself just to do all the things that they say we ought to be doing and we should be doing, or we could be doing for our well-being. One of the things that when we're doing this research that really was striking for me was, for example, we learned that loneliness will kill you faster than a bad diet. Yet, we're not talking about social connection. As we are talking about what's the nice next hype cycle of what nutrition program we should be following. Again, it's reimagining that, okay, well, what is it that we actually need? Really, much going back to some of those fundamentals of ensuring that we're meeting all of the parts of our well-being. So often, again, when we talk about well-being, I think people are really talking about health and you know what? Yeah, health is associated with the physical self. Well-being is the emotional self, it's the spiritual self, it's all of the parts of us that make up our identity. I think coming at this from a different perspective of radically simplifying the things that matter most, where we'll get the best return on our investment. I can give you an example of that. Okay, just recently I was at a huge event and they were all asking me what supplements should I be taking, or how cold should the cold plunge be? They're just really talking about a lot of those pieces of information in the media that are making some really big promises to radically transform our lives. They're like, “Which one should I do, Robyne?” I said, well, I can ask you this. Do you sleep? They said, “Well, no.” Then I said, well, you're really stepping over a $100 bill to try and pick up a penny if you're looking at supplements, because if you're not having a good night's sleep, or using naps to help recover, none of the supplementation is going to work. You're trying to find a way to replace something that's so fundamental to our sense of well-being, which you just can't do with supplementation and things like that. [0:08:58] PF: Yeah, we do try to find this answer without looking at the actual cure for what's going on. As you brought up, sleep is such a huge factor in how we're doing well overall and stress completely robs us of that. Can you talk about some of the other ways we are affected when we are living in this world of constant stimulation? [0:09:18] RHD: Yeah. Well, I think one interesting area that we're seeing right now in the research is that as we see, for example, emotional health starting to get quite bumpy and there's a lot of turbulence right now about emotional health and mental health, one of the things that I'm really seeing is we're not really giving ourselves the spaciousness to be able to process our emotions. I'll give you this example. Imagine when you're a little kid and you're walking home from school after you've had a bad day, right? You're holding your backpack and you're walking down the street, chances are in the background, your brain is processing all of the day's events, right? Maybe you're not even giving it a lot of conscious thought, but in the background, your brain is organizing the learning, it's making space to process all of it However, now, when that little one is walking home from school, chances are they're scrolling on a phone. They're just adding more content constantly in. It's the steady stream of over-information, and what happens is our brain never gets to really do its job around putting things into place. Even just that notion that we're robbing ourselves the time to process thoughts and feelings and learnings, and we're just always on this treadmill of consumption, versus having time to be a curator and organize some of those thoughts and feelings. Then usually, what we see happens, Paula, is at the end of the day, you might just pass out, because you're exhausted. You're not falling asleep. You're just passing out. Then, because we haven't processed the day, we'll usually get a cortisol spike, I think usually between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., and we wake up and we feel the sense of worry. We feel the sense of dread, because our body has just got this huge hit of cortisol. Again, we're in this cycle where our default setting isn't really manageable to the reality of how we want to be in our day and really how we want to feel most of the time. [0:11:10] PF: Yeah. It's like, our day is we just grab it and try to hold on. It's given a whole different meaning to seize the day. It's like, now I grab your hat and hold the hell on, kind of thing is how you feel. I think of that from an adult perspective. Then as you mentioned, the child, kids that are growing up in this always on environment, how is that rewiring them for the world? Because we know the studies are showing, each generation is subsequently less happy and more anxious and that is alarming. What does this have? What role does this play in it? [0:11:46] RHD: Oh, absolutely. You're absolutely right. It is very concerning, because the world is unwell and our children very much are unwell in this world in some cases. Again, what I really think is happening is that we've created that baseline, or our emotional home of that place of anxiety, of that place of, again, I don't think we're ever meant, or designed to have access to all of the information that we have. We know historically, there's always been unrest in the world, yet we were sheltered from it in some cases, because we didn't have this 24-hour news cycle, or this news feed always showing us the worst and all that noise and negativity. Our brains weren't designed to be activated in that state of threat, like they are all the time. I can share with you, when I'm working with young ones and especially adolescents is there's not a lot of hope right now in some places. They're not really excited about growing up, because they're not really seeing examples of grownups who are happy and grounded and really thriving. Right now, they're seeing very exhausted people who, again, are just, as you said, they're just barely holding on. I think it's really important that we find ways to model that, yes, we want to be productive and have these good livelihoods and this solid lifestyle. But there's also room for play and joy and this all being meaningful and worthwhile in the process. [0:13:13] PF: Yeah. As adults model that, we're not giving them anything to look forward to. [0:13:19] RHD: Yeah. I can tell you from a very – with radical candor, I recall several years ago, sitting at the kitchen table and my oldest at the time, he was there, and we were chatting and I had a very difficult, no good rotten day at work and this was becoming a theme. He said to me. He goes, “Mama, you told me that if I work really hard and that I set my intentions in the right way,” he said, “I could be anything that I wanted to be when I grow up. Is that true?” I was like, “Yes, Hunter. You can be anything, as long as you set your course in that right way and you work hard.” He paused, Paula, and he looked at me and he said, “Why can't you? Why can't you be anything when you grow up?” Because he goes, “Right now, mama,” he goes, “I just can't imagine, this is what you want to be. This is what you want to do.” [0:14:03] PF: Well, first of all, what an insightful son you have. [0:14:07] RHD: Absolutely. It was this emotional two by four to the face. It was just this moment of just stark clarity, where I realized, I was modeling behavior to my children of like, you know what? Other people can be happy. Other people can have this. But I was just in these trenches and repeating what I wasn't repairing. It was a really big wake-up call for me to say, “You know what? I do want to take this chance. I do want to write these books. I do want to explore my career, so I can model for my kids that there's another way to go about building a livelihood and a lifestyle.” [0:14:42] PF: We'll be right back. Now, it's time for Casey Johnson, Live Happy Marketing Manager and cat owner, to talk to us about PrettyLitter. [CASEY JOHNSON] [0:14:49] PF: Casey, welcome back. [0:14:50] CJ: Thanks. With three cats, PrettyLitter has become an essential part of our cat care routine. I must say, I understand why it's called PrettyLitter, because the packaging and the crystals are gorgeous. They live up to the name. Plus, they're super lightweight and lasts up to a month. That means, changing out the litter boxes less often, which is always a plus when you have a cat. Even better, they're delivered right to my doorstep and come in a small lightweight bag. Now, I don't have huge containers taking up space in our small condo. [0:15:18] PF: That's awesome. We're going to give that same opportunity to our listeners. They can go to prettylitter.com/livehappy and use the code LIVEHAPPY to save 20% on their first order and get a free cat toy. It's prettylitter.com/livehappy, code LIVEHAPPY to save 20% and get that free cat toy. Again, prettylitter.com/livehappy, code LIVEHAPPY. Now, let's get back to the show. [SPONSOR MESSAGE] [0:15:44] PF: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. As we're discussing today, most of us are feeling a lot of stress these days. One thing that can add to that stress is comparing ourselves to others on social media. It's so easy to start feeling like your life doesn't measure up. But with help from therapy, you can learn to focus on what you want, instead of what others are doing. Therapy can improve your coping skills and change the way you look at your world. BetterHelp is a great place to start. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire and you'll get matched with a licensed therapist. You can always change therapists at any time at no extra charge to make sure you get the therapist who's right for you. It's completely online, so it's flexible, convenient, and works with your schedule. Stop comparing and start focusing with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/livehappy today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com/livehappy. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [0:16:46] PF: One of the things I want to talk about is you talk about proactively planning for stress. [0:16:51] RHD: Yes. [0:16:52] PF: it's so simple, but genius. It's like, yes. Because we know it's coming. Let's talk about that. Talk about what you mean to plan for stress and then how that's going to change the way it affects us. [0:17:04] RHD: Yeah. The strategy we talk about is cope ahead of time. In our culture, many of us have been conditioned, or raised that we need to just go amongst our day and then stress will happen and then we have to recover from it. It's this idea that the stressor comes first and then we do recovery. The reality is, our evenings and our weekends, they're not long enough to repair all the things that we need to fix. Instead, the conversation switches to, okay, if this is what my day looks like, or this season, or this week, how do I make sure I'm coping ahead of time? That means, for example, even things like, planning out your meals, because the last thing anyone wants to do at 6.00 is to try and figure out what they want for dinner, right? We're not doing this because we're really adopting the hype cycle about meal prep and all the delivery things. It's nothing about that. It’s simply, you can decide that you're going to have pancakes for dinner, but just make that decision in the morning when you have good energy, versus waiting till you have that 6.00 energy that doesn't want to be able to make another decision, or a choice. We jokingly talk about how that's a swear word in our house like, “Mom, what's for dinner?” Don't you dare talk like that in this house. [0:18:15] PF: Watch your mouth, son. [0:18:17] RHD: Watch your mouth, exactly. That notion of cope ahead of time, where if you're going to have a stressful day, a stressful season, or even, let's say, a difficult conversation, or a difficult interaction, instead of booking an appointment, or a meeting right afterwards, give yourself the gift of blocking an hour in your calendar, so you can go for a walk, or you can call a trusted friend, or maybe even just do some online shopping to find some digital dopamine. Whatever it is, it's totally cool. It's the idea that you plan ahead of time. You forecast where there likely might be a few little bumps and you already have a strategy outlined. The other part, too, when we think about cope ahead of time, right now, our calendars are so full. There's no time for anything to go off the rails. That way, when a little irritant happens in our day, it almost feels catastrophic, because we're so scheduled. Even this notion of operating at a solid 80% of the capacity of most of the time, 80% of the time, and then you have 20% for wiggle room, if things pop up, or the unexpected happens. [0:19:26] PF: We can't change the amount of things we have to do. Overall, we cannot change our must-do list. We can't change the hours we have in a day. How do we change our mindset to embrace this better? As you say, stress wisely. [0:19:43] RHD: Again, this is the idea, I think, that’s so important is that we're operating a place within our values. What I mean by that is ensuring we're doing the things that matter most and make the matter most for the right reasons. I can give you a quick example, where when people show me their calendar and we say, okay, what are those must do's? What's not even, that's non-negotiable? Often, things that we might feel are non-negotiables, or must dos, actually might not be the way that they are. But we've just told ourselves that they are. I could give you another quick example. I remember one time, my son, he's off at university, he called, he's like, “Hey, I'm on my way home with some friends.” I said, “Okay, but not yet. I just need a few more hours, because I need to make our house look like nobody lives there.” That’s the goal, right? Anyway, so I'm frantically running around, trying to get the house looking like nobody lives there. What was so amazing, in the meantime, he had contacted his siblings who were home. Hunter said like, “What is she doing? What's mom doing that’s so big that we can't come home yet?” The little brother goes downstairs and he sees me wiping the baseboards, right? I'm wiping the baseboards and Jack says to his brother, “She's wiping the white stuff along the bottom of the room.” Hunter is like, “Okay.” Anyway, so a couple hours later, Hunter and his classmates come back to the house and they walk in and Hunter takes his friends, his new friends from university right into the dining room. He's showing them the baseboards. He's like, “Boys, I want you to see how clean my mother's baseboards are.” I was mortified. I was so mortified. I'm like, “Dude, I can't believe you did that. You just outed me like that.” He's just like, “Hey.” He's like, “Mom, if you're going to put it in the effort, I just want it acknowledged.” It was this awesome moment, again, where I was just like, I felt I had to do that before he came home. Paula, he lives in dorms. I can't even tell you the state of – [0:21:37] PF: Right. If there's not food on the floor, it's clean. [0:21:40] RHD: Exactly. In the moment it felt that I had to do this. This was so important. As soon as we take that moment to zoom out and look at the big picture, a lot of this stuff really doesn't feel as must do anymore. I tell you, kids need a present parent. They don't need a perfect parent. They just need us to be present. [0:22:03] PF: Yeah. I love that. Prioritizing, you talked about it a little bit. How do we start that process? Because we've got so many things. Like, list the most important thing. Well, I have three of those. [0:22:15] RHD: Yes. [0:22:16] PF: Where do we get this prioritization going for us? [0:22:21] RHD: Again, one of the things that we talk about is making the invisible visible, right? So many of us, especially when we're the predominant person in the household, we hold so much knowledge that literally it's like, we're these oracles, right? We have all of this knowledge in our head, but none of it's visible. As soon as we start to make it visible, so if we even just grab a piece of paper, or a whiteboard and just start mapping out all the things that we feel we need to do, and then again, just looking at it, taking that step back and being like, is this a must do? Or is this, it would be nice to do? Is this really an alignment with how I want to feel? How I want to be, especially when we think about all that invisible labor in with our family systems. Again, once we start looking at it and getting it out of our heads, putting it on paper, we're going to realize that there's some places where we can get some clarity, and especially around simplification. Things do not need to be as complex, I think, as we're making them out to be right now. [0:23:23] PF: But it's almost become our way to just complicate things. Why are we doing that? [0:23:28] RHD: Well, I think it's very much because we're trying to fit in. We're trying to fit in with the people around us, versus finding our sense of belonging. Our sense of belonging, when we're with the right community, we don't feel the need to try and compete. If you're with your people, with the right friends and the right community, this isn't a competition, because I want you to win as well. It's those people who, yeah, they can show up and have a barbecue and we're not feeling the need to run around the house to make it look that no one lives there. We're not feeling that need, that everything has to be perfect. Because for the right people, that's not what they're interested in. They're interested in the people in the space, not what some of these spaces look like. I think just that competition sometimes and that social comparison, just trying to fit in and be included. I also think as well, there's this notion that we've lost sight that we have way more control in this whole situation than we really acknowledge, because it doesn't have to be this way. We can step out of this race at any time and we can run our own race. We can do it our own way. Again, I think so often, we give up so much of our ability to choose and identify what matters most to my family, or to my community. We just get pulled along in this current. But we can say, we're done. We can say, “This isn't how I want to feel most of the time.” That's what I really encourage people, when we think about these practices that are going to foster self-care, or self-stewardship, it's not like, what do you want to do, or how do you want to look, or what do you want to achieve? The question is, how do you want to feel? I know personally, I want to feel present. I want to feel grounded. I want to have space for joy. I want to have space for spontaneity. I want to have space for us to be able to enjoy our days. They're very, very special to be able to have these opportunities. [0:25:16] PF: As you say that, you can almost hear people saying, “Yes, but.” Because we think, “Oh, yeah. That sounds great. That sounds great for you, but you don't understand how busy my life is, or how much I have going on.” You have all people understand that. [0:25:32] RHD: I do. [0:25:33] PF: When someone is sitting in your office and says that to you, what is your response? [0:25:39] RHD: First of all, my response would be to sit beside the person ear-to-ear, not eye-to-eye and acknowledge that that reality for them is real. That right now, it doesn't seem like there's another way, other than this fullness that we've created. Because we've created these lives, right? Again, I do recognize that there's an abundance of privilege to be able to say, take a break, step back, because some persons are navigating some big complicated situations. Even with that, there is a way to do it in a gentler, more compassionate way. I would want to sit beside that person and say, yeah, what you're feeling is absolutely real and you're not alone. I would love to show you a different way. Even just one of the questions I really love to ask people to move them out in that place of scarcity, where it's like, I don't have enough of time, I'm always chasing, hustling. I love to ask the person this question is, what does it feel like when you are connected with your favorite self, your favorite part of you? Now, this isn't your best self, or your wisest self, or your most integrated self. It's like, what are you feeling when you're your favorite version of you? I love how this question just dismantles a lot of the roles and obligations and the shoulds and I have tos, and it just allows people to reconnect with the parts of them that are like, “Hey.” I hear things follow like, “When I'm my favorite self, I'm not worrying as much. When I'm my favorite self, I roll with things a little better. I don't hold things so tightly. Maybe I'm a little bit more child-like, and I'm up to new adventures, or maybe there's a curiosity, or a silliness.” Again, I think we can reactivate and reconnect with the parts of us that are really, really looking to shine and come out, because they've worked very hard, but I think they need to play as hard as well. [0:27:34] PF: Is a lot of it just recognizing what you want that self to look like? [0:27:39] RHD: I believe so. Again, self-awareness right now is the most critical social-emotional skill that we can have, the self-awareness, when we actually just take a step back and we look at that pig picture and say, “Okay is this working for me? Is this actually how I want to feel? Is this actually how I want my days to be?” As somebody who, I myself, and I write about this in my first book, I experienced a very significant, a catastrophic car accident when I was 16-years-old. That event was very much this turning point for me personally. What happens when you've had these very difficult experiences and this traumatic event is that you get this clarity and this perspective that comes, where I often ask myself at the end of the day, it's like, “If this is my last day today, is this what I want to be doing? Is this what I want to be feeling? Is this where I want to be spending my time and my energy?” Again, the reality, not to sound doom and gloom about forecasting the end of our days, but there's something pretty powerful when you pause and be like, “Okay, if this is my last day, am I going to look back on and said, it was a good day, or I made the best of it?” I think, again, just that awareness and those radical shifts, they're not these – it's interesting. It's the little things done well and those little things aren't that little after all. [0:29:02] PF: Yeah. One thing that I've started doing, a lot of it is due to the recent death of some aunts. That has given me an appreciation for things that I have to do that I don't want to do. But the fact that I can do them, the fact that I'm healthy and I'm strong and I can go do these things, it's really interesting how that reframes the things that you don't care for in life. [0:29:29] RHD: Absolutely. I could share with you just recently, I was working with, again, at a large event, and somebody was saying that, “Oh, gosh. I would do anything for my kids. I would do absolutely anything for them.” I'm like, “That's great.” A woman actually said, “I would die for them. There's nothing I would not do for my family.” I said, “Interesting.” I said, “But would you live for them? Would you take care of yourself for them? Would you prioritize your own well-being and mental health, so you can be here for as long as possible in the most healthy way?” It was just this really interesting moment. One woman actually asked me like, “Okay. Well, what do you do each day to look after yourself, Robyne?” I shared some very simple practices that I like to do. Another woman said, “Well, don't you feel guilty? Don't you feel guilty for doing that?” I said, “No, I feel guilty if I yell at my kids. I feel guilty if I yell at my husband,” or I'm sure with my husband when I know there's things that I can do to be the best version of myself and I don't do them. I don't feel guilty for taking care of myself. I feel guilty when I don't do those things. Then my family's caught up in the blast radius. [0:30:34] PF: I love that. I love thinking that way, and I love being able to remind ourselves that self-care is taking care of everyone around you, because they're all going to benefit from that. [0:30:44] RHD: Absolutely. [0:30:46] PF: We have possibly a difficult fall coming up. No matter where you stand on anything, let's say. There's a lot of stress, and it's already starting to bubble up. Using what you teach in your book, how can we approach this and plan for the stress and make it an easier time? [0:31:07] RHD: You're asking such a great question. There's so many different ways that we can approach it. I think what's really important, when things feel out of control, or there's uncertainty or division, one of the things that we can really lean into are habits, routines, or rituals, where we can make sure that we are okay. We know, for example, that morning routine, taking a few minutes each morning to whether it's go for a walk, or just write in your journal, or have that cup of coffee and just be present, and not start our day opening ourselves up to the world. We want to make sure that we just take a few minutes to ground ourselves. Then when we are able to take that time, make sure our head and our heart are okay. Then we open up to the big world that's out there, we’ll be in a better position to cope and manage with what's going on. The other thing is I think that there's also a place for avoiding certain conversations, if you just know that the outcome isn't going to be positive for either person. What I mean by that is there's some conversations just be willing to walk away from. I think it was actually the actor, Keanu Reeves, who said, he got to the point in his life where if somebody told him that one plus one equals five, he would say, “Cool, you're right,” and walk away. Stop engaging in battles with people who just live to be upset. Some people just live to be upset, and recognizing that that's not how you want to feel. There's just some conversations. That doesn't mean we turn to blind eye to big, significant social justice issues that are unfolding. I'm not suggesting that we come passive. I just want to make sure that we are as well-resourced as possible to make sure that we are okay and our family systems are okay, because that's our best chance to weather a difficult season. [0:32:54] PF: I love that. There's a lot to unpack when we're talking about stress. But right now, what is the one thing that listeners can take away with them, about how they can live their lives with a little bit less stress and learn to manage what stress they do have? [0:33:11] RHD: Yeah, again, a great question. I think where we would start is if we think about the power of our relationships. What I mean by that is we're not meant to do all of this alone. So often, when we're under high levels of stress and have lots of cortisol in our bloodstreams, what happens is we feel this tendency to lone wolf it. That we have to just be more stoic and just hustle through, push through. The reality is when we show up for one another and we nurture those relationships and connect with that collective humanity, it's going to serve us a lot better. Pushing away from that driver, that tendency to shut down, and instead of giving ourselves a timeout, give ourselves a time in, where we are able to connect with the people that matter most to us and be able to see those communities, because that sense of belonging will help us weather whatever stressors come our way. [0:34:01] PF: Robyne, you have a lot to teach us. I thank you for sharing some of it today. I do. I appreciate you coming on the show, and love this book and would love to talk to you some more. [0:34:10] RHD: I would love that. Take good care and thank you for this chance to chat today. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:34:18] PF: That was Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, talking about resilience and how we can better respond to stress. If you'd like to learn more about Robyne, follow her on social media, check out her book, Stress Wisely, or discover her online classes to learn about resilience, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. 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's 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: 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: Gen Z and Mental Health With Deborah Heisz [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:03] LM: Thank you for joining us for episode 466 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And while we look at mental health all year long, this is the perfect time to take an even closer look at something we all should be talking about. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And today I'm joined by Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, to talk about Gen Z and mental health. According to recent studies, Generation Z is experiencing unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns. Today, Deb and I are talking about what's causing this Mental Health crisis among young people and what we all can do about it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Deb, thank you for coming on the show. [00:00:47] DH: Thanks, Paula. It's always a joy when I get to spend some time with you talking about things that we're both passionate about. [00:00:53] PF: Yes. And May is Mental Health Month. We're doing this. This is the last episode of April. Tomorrow we start a shiny new month looking at mental health awareness. And this was a fantastic time to sit down and talk to you. You and I had had this conversation offline about The World Happiness Report and specifically its findings on Gen Z. And so, that conversation was so good. It's like let's do this on the air and talk about it. [00:01:20] DH: I think The World Happiness Report, for us it's kind of a landmark thing. It turns out we started Live Happy while they were working on the World Happiness Report. We of course didn't know that at the time. It's kind of we're parallel in age. We have the same age. What's interesting to me is the World Happiness Report really has started to take a deep dive into human well-being, which is something that wasn't taking place before that. I mean, positive psychology wasn't that old to begin with. And then for governments and for social agencies to really start looking not just at health concerns of their population. But, also, mental well-being of the population really hits the world happiness. A lot of that data is in the World Happiness Report. It's really kind of a cool thing for us. But I think for this year, it's interesting because something appeared that we hadn't seen before. Something really near and dear to my heart. And I kind of want to preface this conversation by reminding everybody or telling everybody if they don't already know, neither Paula nor I are scientists. Paula is an editor, gatherer of information, interpreter of information extraordinaire. One of the best interviewers I've ever met. And truly passionate about what we do at Live Happy. I am an MBA who runs businesses. I'm also a parent of teens who happen to – that's why this episode is particularly interesting to me. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff. But anything we say might be or actually is opinion. This topic is one that needs to be talked about. Needs to be talked about broadly. Which is why even though we don't have the scientific background, it's such a passion thing for us. And I know that you think, just like I think, people need to be talking about this. And what they need to be talking about is the well-being of Generation Z. I mean, when I'm retired, they're the ones who are going to be leading the world. We should really, really care about how they're thinking about themselves. What they're feeling and what they think of the world around them. There's a lot of concerning information in this year's World Happiness Report. [00:03:16] PF: Yeah. Because the thing that really struck me is, overall, in most countries, the happiest generation is the youngest generation. In the US, we were exactly the opposite. Our happiest generation is the Boomer. And then each subsequent generation just gets less happy. And by the time we get down to Gen Z, it's dismal. And that's alarming. Because we know that how happy you are in adolescence is a predictor of your happiness in adulthood. Where would you like to start unpacking this ginormous subject on? Because I'd really like to talk about what's driving it. And then, also, what we can do? Because there's no easy way to turn this around. [00:03:56] DH: No. No. There isn't. When you just mentioned that how happy you are at a young age, in your teen years, is a predictor of how happy you'll be later in life, the truly disturbing fact is that tends to be your happiest point in life. Your teenage years, you tend to be happier than you are later. If they're starting at a lower set point, that does not bode well for the future. If they're already less happy than 30-year-olds, how much less happier are they going to be when they're 30 than 30-year-olds right now? It's very concerning. And the question that everybody has to be asking is why are they less happy than prior generations? Why are they less happy than their peers in other countries or in other regions of the world? It's very concerning. And it's something that people really should be standing on the rooftop screaming, "We've got to do something about this." [00:04:47] PF: Yeah. I think it's like an all-hands-on-deck kind of crisis. Because if they're not happy, then they're giving birth to the next generation. You can just kind of extrapolate what goes on down the line if we can't turn this around. [00:05:01] DH: It's not something that's going to fix itself. It's something that people need to start looking at and saying, "Okay, what's causing this? How do we make changes? What is controllable?" It's always like, "Well, that's great. But I can't really control that." But there's a lot more that as a society we can control and influence that I think we realize. But we have to start. And the way to start is by at least talking about it. [00:05:24] PF: Absolutely. After we had talked about that, you were going to look up some things. Because you were very inspired not just from a professional standpoint. But as you mentioned, personally, you have children who fall into this age group and below. What were some of the things that you found as triggers that are preventing children from being happier? [00:05:45] DH: Well, I think two things really struck me as being things that impact the younger generations right now. And one of them is directly related to where they are in life. My kids – this is not being a scientist. Everything in the world around children is going to somehow be related to my children and to my brain. My kids are looking at college. They're looking at going to college. They're looking at what kind of life am I going to have after college? And I've had several dialogues with my son and his friends about I'm never going to be able to buy a house I'm like, "You're 16. What makes you think you're never going to be able to buy a house?" And they look out and they see the economy and they see all of the information about how expensive you're looking at going to college. How expensive going to college has become relative to what you earn afterwards. They see rising interest rates. They see rising home prices. And if you tell someone who's 16 years old that they're going to have to graduate from college $200,000 in debt and buy a house that's going to cost them $300,000 $400,000, they're like, "What? I will never be able to do that." Numbers they can't get their heads around. But more importantly, the media and the economy is telling them they won't. When we're looking at what's going on in the world and we're exposed to media, our kids are super exposed. I mean, they're on their phones. They talk to their friends. We all know that depending on which version of the internet you're looking at, which site you're looking at, you get different views. And their views may not be what we're seeing. But we do know that they look at the world very differently than the way we look at it. There's a great book by Jason Dorsey called Zconomy which really examines the difference about how young people approach business. How they approach looking for a job. How they approach everything in life. And how different it is from the way the Millennials, the Generations Z and how they approach it. And one of the interesting things to me that he points out is they're more like Generation X. They're more like my generation. How they think about it than they are with the Millennials. And what's cool about that to me is, first of all, I'm Generation X. Therefore, I can relate. And my kids think I'm cool. No. But I like to think they think I'm cool. But when I was growing up, we were coming out of massive inflation. We were coming out of the Reagan Era. There was a concern about jobs. We were pre-recession. But there was this hugely unstable economic outlook in our minds. And so, we all became focused on doing better, on personal achievement. Generation X is very focused on doing what they can do to control their environment, and career path, and working harder. And what's interesting is Generation Z is like that. Although, they don't have the hope that we had. We were always kind of told we can work really hard and control our future. And for some reason, all of this financial information and all this financial fear is manifesting differently in them. I don't think they have the hope they're going to be able to achieve what their parents achieved. That American dream of every generation's better. Maybe we've kind of reached the end of that where they're thinking I just want to catch up. I'm not looking to being better. I'm looking to not falling backwards. [00:09:03] PF: And do you think, too, growing up with parents who maybe are millennials or even Gen X and those parents were given everything and didn't learn how to save in the ways that they spend their money differently? And now Gen Z is like, "I don't want to be broke. I want to be able to do these things." [00:09:24] DH: I will say that Gen X and Millennials, as we know, are more likely to have credit card debt than Baby Boomers. Right? And they're more likely to be in debt. And I do think that there is a debt fear that the next generation doesn't want to be in debt because they've seen the oldest part of that generation live through the 2008 economic crisis. But the youngest part didn't. My son is 17. He was born in 2007. He does not remember 2008 when people were losing jobs and homes. But it does have a follow-on effect. There's that I don't want to be in debt. I don't want to owe people money. I just want to live my life. One of the good things I think though is, like the millennial generation, they care more about the environment. They care more about the planet. They care more about all of that. Here's the challenge. That doesn't necessarily manifest itself in hope. Right? [00:10:14] PF: And right now, it's more like a discouraging thing. Because every day we're seeing like, "Oh, here's one more atrocity that's being committed against the planet." And it's like just that constant drum beat of one more thing going wrong. One more species being extinct. [00:10:30] DH: And you look at it from a standpoint of – last night I was talking to my son and he needed to buy something. I pulled out my phone. I was going to order on Amazon. He's like, "Mom, don't order it on Amazon." I'm like, "Why?" He goes, "That's bad for the environment." Like, what? Everything gets trucked. Everything gets moved. But in his mind, having an individual package sent to the house is bad for the environment. Versus him going to the store and buying it. And I'm like, "Well, you use the same gas in the store to get –" never mind. Let's not introduce logic into the conversation. And he said, "I don't want to support big business. I want to support small business. I don't want conglomerates." That's what's in their head. They're scared of the environment. They're scared of their financial future. They don't see enough action being taken to improve those things. They don't know where they're going to end up. They don't know that the same jobs are going to be there. We look at AI like, "Oh, this is really cool." They look at AI like I was going to be a developer. I was going to be a writer. Am I going to have a job? [00:11:24] PF: Right. Do I just need to learn how to write prompts? Is that what my future holds? [00:11:29] DH: The future holds – scarier, right? A little scarier. I do think that that – now describing a problem, you hope there's a solution. I don't know what the solution is. But I do know that I think that has created a lot of what they're seeing and feeling. And as parents and as people interact with young people, we need to be cognizant of that's their starting place. Their starting place is the world is not healthy. Our generation is killing the Earth. Our opportunity isn't the same as your opportunity. I'm never going to be able to afford a house. I'm going to graduate – if I graduate from high school and go to college, I'm going to end up in a ton of debt. If I graduate from high school and get a job, I'm not going to have the same opportunities I would have had had I gone to college. It's a horrible choice to have to make. For some reason, that generation is focused on not what could be but what is right now. [00:12:18] PF: It's so very interesting. And as you and I have talked, one of the big things driving their mindset is what they see on social media. Because unlike where we grew up with television. And let's face it, it was a pretty sugarcoated TV land when you and I were growing up. We didn't have Dateline with a new dead person every week. It was a completely different world. the social media and how it is just constantly exposing them to new tragedies, to new dangers, to new ways to bully one another, what do you see that doing? You and I have talked about some of the studies that we've read. Can we kind of unpack that a little bit? [00:12:59] DH: I do think social media is a huge. And we go to conferences where they talk about social media having a huge negative impact. We need to acknowledge though social media has a positive impact as well. The positive impact is the ability to communicate, to build relationships, to find like-minded people. Maybe you live in a small town and no one around you seems to have the same interests as you have. You can go on social media and actually interact and have some meaningful touch points with people that are like you and figure out that you're not that weird. That there are other people like you in the world. Or have a conversation with somebody that maybe lives a long way away or maybe still talking to friends at school but you're able to communicate with a larger group and it feels more social and a little less isolated. Because we all know, social isolation is a big driver of depression and negative outlook on life. I do think, in a lot of ways, social media has helped kids feel more involved, more included. Flip side of that of course is the bullying and stuff like that. Is tragic and is an issue. But for me – we could do a whole episode on online bullying. But for me, I think the bigger thing is this FOMO, right? And this not having a good image of yourself when you engage not in that dialogue nature of social media. But in the observing nature of social media. There's this great study that was done. I think it was done by the Mayo Clinic. I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that once again. Not a scientist. But it talks about how, in adolescence, the part of your brain that processes emotions, it develops faster than the part that develops judgment critical thinking. You can have emotions and you can make decisions emotionally as teenagers are prone to do. We all know teenagers do not necessarily stop and think. That critical thinking isn't there. You can respond emotionally to content you're seeing on social media and not really think about it critically. That can develop body image issues in girls particularly. Well, although, boys as well. My son goes to the gym all the time and he really is focused on how he looks as well as being healthy. But body image issues can come into it. Because even though you're seeing it on social media, you don't necessarily think that's not real. Unless it's obviously not real, right? And the other thing is they can see people doing things. And those people look really happy. And they can emotionally react and go, "All those people – that looks like so much fun because all those people are doing it." And then they think, in order to be happy, they need to do that. [BREAK] [00:15:32] PF: We'll get right back to my conversation about Gen Z and mental health. But in addition to this being Mental Health Awareness Month, we have Mother's Day right around the corner. And if you have a new mom in your life, why not give her the gift of a good night's sleep? Did you know that 70% of new parents lose about 3 hours of sleep every night during their baby's first year? Why not help her make the most of the hours she does get with luxurious bedding from Cozy Earth? These super soft bamboo sheets will immediately become her favorite thing. 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Franne Golde is providing Live Happy now listeners 20% off their first order of $75 or more. Go to frannegolde.com/podcast and use code HAPPY for 20% off. That's frannegolde.com/podcast for 20% off your order of $75 more with code HAPPY. And now, let's get back to talking about Gen Z. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [00:17:35] DH: There's this discordance between what they're seeing and what's real. You brought up we watched television. We watched television. We knew that wasn't real. [inaudible 00:17:44] wasn't real. We knew the Loveboat wasn't real. [00:17:48] PF: Wait. Wait. What? [00:17:52] DH: Fantasy Island wasn't real. We watched it and it was entertaining. But we knew that wasn't real life. Social media, I don't think kids get that the image – I think they get it if you talk to them about it. They know it's not real. But, emotionally, they're reacting to it. And so, they may know it's not real. But they still create worry and concern in them. Too much social media, it creates this image that they think they need to live up to. And then they add on, "I'm never going to have enough money. I'm never going to be cute enough. I'm never going to –" whatever it is. It creates a problem. And I do think that's a big driver of why they're unhappy. [00:18:29] PF: There's an organization called Ruling Our eXperiences and they deal with how social media affects young girls. And one of the things that they found is how greatly it – as you had talked about the eating disorders. But it said it also is leading to mental health things like suicidal ideation. And it's become more accepted among teenage girls to go to that place. We didn't have that issue growing up. You didn't think these kids are picking on me, I'm going to go kill myself. And I've seen things recently where there was like an 8-year-old boy that committed suicide after being bullied. And it's just online. And it's just astounding to me that these things are filtering through to our children. Those are the outcomes that we're getting because they somewhere are getting the message that that's the only way out. [00:19:18] DH: Yeah. It's tragic. And we do know – we do know that there's more suicidal ideation comes along. But the question is, for me, it's always is it just that people are talking about it more? Or is it actually new? And then when you start looking like an 8-year-old, thank God, that's a huge outlier. But it's not as taboo to talk about as it was when I was growing up, for sure. It was a really rare occurrence that you heard about it or thought about it. Heard about it at school. It just was not that prevalent. And so, you kind of wonder how much just introducing an idea is part of an issue. Right? But then again, if you don't talk about it, then you can't solve the problem. This stuck. One of the things that I thought was really interesting, and I know I started off this way on social media, was we always want to point at the negatives without pointing at the positives. And I think when we look at generation, we really need to look at the fact that they were hit much harder by the pandemic than any other group. And social media helped get them through that, that isolation sense. [00:20:23] PF: Yes. [00:20:25] DH: But that pandemic I also think significantly contributed in our country overall negative outlook. By social isolation, I mean kids staying home for two years as opposed to going to school. [00:20:38] PF: And this was during key times of development. How does a kindergartner learn social skills if they've been at home for two years? [00:20:47] DH: Right. And then a lot of them, homeschoolings weigh up as a result too. Kids didn't go back to school. They continued their social isolation, which is interesting. Like, "Oh, they could go back to school. But now they're comfortable at home. They don't want to. They don't want to go back out and interact with people." And you hear about people that were at the wrong time in terms of development and they missed their prom, they missed their graduation. They started school. But I'm not as concerned about them. Because that's going to end up being – that was a really sad thing. But you kind of got your social skills by the time you're 16 or 17. But you're right. 10-year-olds are very different. They're not fully socially developed. They haven't figured out how to interact. Doing team projects at school. Just playing on the playground. All that stuff, which decades of research showing how important that stuff is to kids is just gone for a couple years. And they ended up in their little cocoon and their little bubble. And there's fear of social interaction. Learning how to interview for a job, learning how to write a resume, all that stuff that we need to teach not in college. You need to learn how to do that in high school. Well, there were no jobs to go get. You missed that too. There's just so much that they missed. I look back and I'm like I would be so sad if I didn't have that part of my life. And they didn't. [00:22:08] PF: Yeah. Like you said, there's no way to go reclaim that. We don't get a doover starting in 2020. Although, I think we all deserve one. But, yeah, especially the kids. How do we start reaching out? And how do we start creating a different world knowing what they're going through? [00:22:28] DH: Well, I think, first thing, except there's a problem. First of all – and the World Happiness Report is great. There's a problem we have to start talking about. I don't think anyone knows the answers. They kind of know the answers to various smaller issues, like social media intrinsically is not bad. But we should monitor what our children are doing on social media. We should know what they're doing. We should monitor the amount of time. We should balance online interactions with real-world interactions. Don't leave them to their own devices. Don't say, "Oh, well, here – literally device. Here's your iPad and go." In fact, my kids call – probably not a nice word, but they'll call not a nice descriptor. But they'll say that's an iPad kid. Meaning that kid doesn't socially interact. [00:23:14] PF: Wow. That is amazing. That is amazing that it now it actually has that phrase. [00:23:19] DH: It's a negative connotation. And I'm like, "Don't say that." But that's what they mean, "Oh, that's an iPad kid." We as parents need to acknowledge that we're responsible for how much time, and how much interaction, and what they're doing, and knowing what's on. I mean, my kids hate it. But you will keep your find my phone on. Because if I can't find your phone, I can't find you. And if I can't find you and I can't find your phone, you don't need a phone. And I'll know where it's going to be. It's going to be here in the house. Right? But we need to take responsibility and not demonize social media. Because if you tell your kid it's all bad, you don't need to be doing it. You're not telling them the truth. I mean, when we did research for this podcast, as light as it was, being that we're not scientists, but when we did research for this podcast, where did we go? We went online. [00:24:08] PF: Internet. Yeah. [00:24:09] DH: We went to the internet. I mean, the internet's a tool. It's pervasive in their life. Y ou can't take that away. That's not going to work. And social media is part of that tool. I need to do a deep dive into X, Y, Z. And I find a Facebook group that talks about X, Y, Z. It's part – actually, they wouldn't find a Facebook. They'd find an Instagram. But – [00:24:30] PF: Or TikTok. Until it's banned. [00:24:31] DH: Or TikTok. Exactly. But it by itself is not evil or detrimental. But we have to monitor what they're doing. We have to know what they're doing. We have to set limits and boundaries and be parents. And we also need to encourage them to develop face-to-face social skills. Actually, get out and talk to people. Learn how to shake somebody's hand. Learn how to have a conversation. Learn how to interact with somebody who's an adult on a regular basis. But we're not going to fix it by fixing social media. Social media itself doesn't fix it, right? But I do think it all stems back to having the dialogue. Understanding that where the youth go is where we go. This country, the United States, was really built in its current form by the Baby Boomer generation. I mean, I'm Generation X. I'm right behind them. But if you look at everything in our society in general, it's Boomers that are – which is a negative word too. iPad kids and Boomers. It was really built by that generation. And as Millennials and Generation Z move into positions of power and authority, they're going to have control over our economy and over our lives. And what they care about is different than maybe what the Boomers cared about. And acknowledging that, and having dialogue, and caring, and paying attention to what they care about and starting to work on some of those things. I mean, I don't know or care what any listener's position is on global warming. But I will tell you that our generation, our generation Z, they aren't talking about global warming. They're talking about impact, litter, oceans being dirty, air being dirty. They are looking at the whole thing of are we taking care of the Earth. In a way, I think past Generations really didn't. Even though they said that they did. That generation is fully embedded in polar bears are dying. We need to take care of the oceans. And we're missing out on animals that used to exist. And we have too much pollution. And they'll even tell you, "But electrical cars aren't the answer because there's battery parts that are bad for the –" they're looking for answers that they don't have. [inaudible 00:26:56] find them. [00:26:57] PF: Yeah. And I think this this is where it's really – where you talk about social media and the internet having so much purpose. What is done – we used to be so removed at polar bears are dying. But that didn't affect me. Now they're watching a video. They are seeing things in real life. And it affects them profoundly. [00:27:16] DH: It does. And a lot of it has to do with – back to the point that they are emotionally developed but not critically developed, critical thinkers. Has to do with their source. If somebody is attaching great meaning to something, they're incredibly smart, they don't have the cognitive reasoning that jumps in to say, "Is that right?" right away. They can be easily swayed by what they're seeing. And I'll tell you one thing that drives me crazy is advertisers know that. [00:27:45] PF: Yes. [00:27:45] DH: They know that if they drop that ad into social media and they get an emotional reaction either because it's funny or because – it's not as simple as we were. It's like it was cool. No. They actually make them laugh or they make them cry. They know that whatever it is they're advertising is going to be affiliated with that emotion. They know that. And that there's not necessarily critical thinking to parse that in younger people, in teenagers even. And so, they take advantage of that. We just have to be cognizant of the fact that they don't have straightforward news like we used to have. Just the facts, ma'am. Right? That doesn't exist anymore. They get all of everything that's going on in the world from a million different directions. Some of it's cultivated. Some of it's made up. Some of it's got meaning attached to it. We need to have those offline conversations. And as non-parents, have those offline conversations. Don't just assume it's just going to happen. That somehow these people are miraculously going to figure out that that's not real, or that this is real, or that this isn't important. And know that everything that we're bombarding everybody with, including ourselves, is manipulating us in one way or another. Try not to do that. They need to know that it's going to be okay. And I don't think the way our media is set up, you and I have talked all about, I can't tell you how many times I've said be wary of what you put in your head, my kids, to people we've talked about, Live Happy, you worry what you put in your head. So you start believing it. And they are inundated with stuff that tells them they're less than, that tells them there's something to be scared of. We've got to start balancing that with the other side. There's a lot to hope for. There's a lot of good coming down the pipe. We've got to spend time and energy creating that content. And aren't we lucky that we get to do that for a living, Paula? [00:29:35] PF: I love that. But you know what? I'd also love to hear is what our listeners think. I'd love to hear what they're doing with their children, with other Gen Z. If they want to drop us an email, editor@livehappy.com, and let us know. And let us know what you'd like to hear more on this topic. Because it is a mental health crisis that we've got to resolve. Because it's not going to resolve itself. [00:29:59] DH: Well, and our commitment to our listeners is you're like, "Yeah, you guys have been babbling about the problem. Didn't feel any better today." That's okay. Our commitment to our listeners is we're going to try and get some of the experts out there that are studying this on the podcast. Not next week. We're going to be doing some additional podcasts on this topic in the future. Some more expertise than we have. But it was such a standout moment in the World Happiness Report this year. We felt it was worth talking about. And at least creating the thought or the dialogue where people can say, "Hey, we need to be talking about this." Because we do. We really, really do. I think if you don't know how disenfranchised that generation is feeling right now, you just need to be aware that that's what's going on with them. And we've got a moral obligation to help them find success and find happiness in their lives. And they're not starting from a good spot. [00:30:55] PF: All right. Well, we'll do what we can. We'll start working on it. [00:30:59] DH: All right. You get on that, Paula. [00:30:59] PF: Yeah. I'll put it on my to-do list. But, thank you. Yeah, thank you for having this conversation. As you said, we are going to be talking with some experts about it. Bringing some other people in to really look at specific areas that we can make improvements in. Specific things that we can do. And, again, we'd love to hear from our listeners, editor@livehappy.com. We want to know what you want to hear and what you're. [OUTRO] [00:31:27] PF: That was Live Happy's CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, talking with me about Gen Z and mental health. We'd love to hear what you think about this topic. Be sure to drop us a line at editor@livehappy.com and tell us 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. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: 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: Living Better Longer With Caroline Paul [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 462 of Live Happy Now. We all have one thing in common, and that is that we are not getting any younger. But today's guest gives us a whole new way to approach the years ahead of us. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm talking with New York Times bestselling author, Caroline Paul. Her new book, Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking―How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age, turns some common myths about aging completely upside down. Combining stories of women who are embracing outdoor adventure in their later years with cultural and scientific research, Caroline gives us a roadmap for improving and enjoying the journey. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:46] PF: Caroline, thank you so much for joining us on Live Happy Now. [0:00:50] CP: I'm really happy to join you, Paula. It's going to be great. [0:00:53] PF: You have written an amazing book. First of all, the title describes you, tough broad. So, that had my attention immediately. But this book is so engaging and it's so inspiring, and in many ways, a call for us to up our game as we get older. So, I wanted to find out how this book came about, and really, who you are writing this for? [0:01:15] CP: Honestly, I was kind of writing for myself. I was 55 and looking around on my surfboard and seeing no women my age surfing. I'm not a really good surfer. So, I knew there was a lot of women who could be out there, but they just weren't out there. The same when I was on my electric skateboard. I saw no women my age, certainly no women older. And when I was flying my experimental planes, the same. But I saw men my age and men older. So, I started to think, “Well, I'm seeing 60 blank on the horizon. What is my future look like?” I decided to go and ask women who – because I wanted to keep outdoor adventure in my life, but maybe I wasn't supposed to. I kind of thought I was, but I wanted to go ask women who were there already. This is about those women. It's actually about fulfilling aging and those women explained it to me. [0:02:03] PF: Was it hard to find the people? Because you cover a lot of different types of activity and we'll get into that. But was it difficult to track these women down? [0:02:12] CP: It kind of was. I mean, first of all, women tend not to trumpet themselves on social media and stuff. So, you don't find them that way as much. Frankly, it felt like there weren't a lot of women out there doing these things. It turns out that they are out there. But what I did was I told everybody that I was working on this book and so people gave me names, and that started to snowball. Then, I did hire a researcher who found a lot of people. [0:02:38] PF: Okay. That makes sense, because one thing that we really work on here at Live Happy Now is to make sure that we back everything with science. And your book, the stories are so rich, but every one of them is backed by the science of what it's doing for us. How did that all – how did you marry all that? Did the story come first, and then you did research on what it was doing? Or how did those two components come together? [0:03:03] CP: Honestly, I was going to throw myself sort of like the paraglider that I was, off a cliff, and with an inflated, shoot and float around and talk to these women, and see how the book would come about. But I knew I didn't want it to be – it's not a book about profiles about women. This is a book about fulfilling aging in the outdoors. How the outdoors optimizes that. So, in a weird way, the pandemic was good for me, because it hit just as I was about to go interview people so nobody could talk to me. I had to sit down and do a lot of research about fulfilling aging. And I started to see what we needed to keep in our lives, and I was thinking about how outdoor adventure married perfectly with that. I went out and interviewed people doing specific adventures. I went and did the adventures with them. I usually had a specific idea of where that adventure would fit in to what I considered the five pillars of healthy aging. Usually, it came out completely surprised by something new. I was constantly schooled in this book, because again, it was a quest. [0:04:05] PF: Yes. Can we talk about those five pillars? [0:04:08] CP: Yes. The first four are pretty obvious. It’s we need, and we need as human beings, but they tend to fall away as we age. So, we have to be specifically cognizant that we need community. We need purpose. We need health. We need novelty. Those four things are really important as we age and they are harder to find. The last one, the one that intrigued me the most, the one that I actually started off with was we need a positive mindset about our own aging. The reason I say that is because I was interested in the messaging that we get as older women, because I had a feeling that was why these women weren't out there in the water with me are in the air with me. Because the messaging about women aging is really toxic and subliminal and insidious and we tend to believe it and the people around us believe it. It's basically that our future is one of declining cognitive health, frail bones, and increasing irrelevance. I mean, frankly, we're boring. You'll hear – I mean, I hear this from a lot of my peers who were disheartened about their own aging. We feel invisible. We feel invisible to the culture. So, I was interested in that messaging. Then, I found research that made it even more important to pay attention to because the research says that the way we look at our own aging predicts how well we age. That means negative view of aging, you actually have a significantly higher chance of a cardiac event earlier, cognitive decline earlier, and the opposite is true. If you look at your aging as a time of vitality and exploration, then you are going to be healthier, happier, and statistically, you live seven years longer. That seemed really important, and kind of mind-blowing. But the scientists had told us this, but they didn't say how to get that positive mindset. Of course, when something, how are we going to do that in the face of such difficult and disheartening messaging, and I had a feeling that the key was an outdoor adventure. [0:06:17] PF: It was, as we discover in your book. And I want to go back to what you were just talking about, and the research about how you aging affects how you age. Because it even changes your brain. Weren't you saying that in the book, it talks about the brain of a person who had negative perceptions is actually different after death than someone who had positive perceptions about aging. [0:06:39] CP: Yes, they had all those tangles and the neural ill health that signifies memory loss. I mean, they have actually shown that conversely, if you have a positive view on aging, you have a much higher chance of not turning on that AOPE4 gene that makes you more predisposed to Alzheimer's. That's pretty big. But we think it's inevitable when we see both our parents or our grandparents have Alzheimer's. We have that gene, but it's actually not. [0:07:10] PF: That is so interesting, because we just talked about the World Happiness Report last week, which came out, and one of the chapters was about well-being and dementia. It backs up everything that you talk about in your book where they had done all this research, and people who had a positive view of aging were less likely to develop dementia. At the same time, people with dementia who had a positive attitude, fared better with that dementia. It was really interesting to me to receive this report at the same time I'm reading your book because it was just like this companion research piece. I love how you bring in the adventurer. I wanted to know as I read this, it seems like you were probably always adventurous, and what about women who haven't been adventurous throughout their lives? How can they turn into someone who is a little bit more adventurous and try some of these things? [0:08:05] CP: Yes. After I did my research, I was clear that the outdoors is really good for us. So, just getting outside is super important. Because as the science shows, it's medicinal. From the tree chemicals that are emitted, to bird song, to even the architecture of like horizon lines that are soft and rounded, and the fractal nature of the outdoors is all really good for our well-being. On a biological level, it improves our immune system. It also makes it so our brain processes less noise, which makes it healthier and able to deal with what we really want to deal with. So, people who took walks outside, for instance, tested better on cognitive and memory tests afterwards. Your brain wasn't doing the busy work when it has to filter out noise, and just all this information that urban environments in the indoors, computers and stuff give you. So, I wanted them to get outside. I knew that adventure wasn't for everybody, at least my definition of adventure, which is fairly was fairly high octane. So, I wanted to talk to all different kinds of people who got outside. Among them, for instance, was I went birdwatching. Birdwatching, no one would think of as an adventurer, including me. In fact, I was kind of like, “Yes, I'm doing a book about outdoor adventure.” Then, in my head, I was like, “You're not an adventure but I'm going to include you because I wanted everybody out there.” But it turns out, and all the bird watchers already know this, that bird watching is an adventure. Because there was the quest of trying to see the bird. There was the exhilaration when you saw it. There was the physical vitality because we actually walked and I was with Virginia Rose who's actually in a wheelchair, and so she wheeled six miles. There was a physical vitality of an adventure. Basically, birdwatching had all the rhythms of an adventure and I had to – during the quest of that, was my book. One of the things that happened to me is I had to change, I'd expand my view of adventure and realize it's not about the actual action. It's about how you feel during it. So, if you're accessing your exploratory side, feeling exhilaration, pushing maybe a comfort zone, feeling physical, vital. That's an adventure. That was exciting to me. [0:10:21] PF: One thing that you talk about, and I love this, because we've talked about it on the show, is the importance of awe, and how changing that can be to even just take a walk and experience awe. Can you kind of talk about that a little bit? [0:10:35] CP: Yes. Well, it turns out another great reason why the outdoors is so healthy for us is that it's a surefire trigger for awe. Because all is that feeling that you get in the presence of something bigger. It's something that religion has used mostly, and we associated with religion. But in fact, we feel it when we look at the big sky. We look at the Grand Canyon. Of course, I felt it on some of my adventures. But it turns out, you don't have to go. I mean, it is in the presence of something bigger that you feel, but you can also access awe. You can cultivate awe. They did studies on this here in San Francisco, where the researchers asked people between the ages of 60 and 80 to go on walks, and simply look at things with childlike wonder, with fresh childlike eyes, I think is a quote. They were basically getting their participants to access awe. Then, they had a control group that just walked like we all walk, which is we ruminate and look at our phones. And they found after eight weeks that the people who were doing the awe walks had measurably different inflammatory markers. It went way down. Inflammation is a big sign of ill health. They reported feeling weightless, anxious, and depressed. And this was kind of crazy, they felt more compassion and gratitude, which makes sense, because awe is about seeing yourself in a larger picture. So, it made sense that they feel gratitude and compassion because you feel interconnected. The other thing is, is that we live in a world of anti-awe devices, especially inside. Our phone, our computer, it's all narrowing our focus, and making us seem like we have a lot of power and control. That's the opposite of awe. It's not that good for us. It gives us an inflated sense of ourselves and that's not healthy. So, awe is good for us. Getting outside is a really easy way to access awe. [0:12:25] PF: Yes, it is simple, and it's like, if you get out every day and you do it, it will absolutely change the way that you see the world. As you bring up so many times throughout the book, your mindset makes such a difference in how you age. So, as you look at how you're changing your mindset, what role does awe in developing positivity? [0:12:49] CP: Well, I mean, I think that, just because it does – one of the things they call awe is a reset button for the brain. What it does is that it changes your neural patterns. It kind of shakes them up. It kind of opens them up. You become more open to new ideas. They found more creative. And all that is really important for, well, anything in your life, but certainly for your just exploratory spirit, and your sense that there's more to do, more to access, just that openness. So, yes, awe is indispensable for our emotional well-being. [0:13:25] PF: You talked about how good it is to be out in nature. But in the book, you really drill down into the combination of nature and movement. [0:13:33] CP: Yes. Specifically, I was interested in ironically, not movement, but the brain. I wanted to know how a novelty was good for us, because I knew that one of the big things we worry about as we age is our memory. We need to keep challenging our brain. There is a sense that our brain is hardening, that we can't learn new things, and that it's probably withering away too. Well, it turns out, that's not true. The brain is highly plastic. It is laying down new neural pathways, growing new brain cells, well into older age. I don't even know if it ever stops. Even if you slow down some of the neural pathways for some reason, the brain then decides – they'll figure out how to lay different routes. It's almost like taking a different exit on the highway. I mean, the brain is amazing. So, you can continue to learn and you continue to explore. One of the things I did was I was interested in memory, because we're afraid of losing that. It turns out navigation and memory are in the same parts of our brain. So, I wanted to find someone who navigated in their outdoor sport. I found it orienteer. I went orienteering, which is basically when you race from a start line to a finish line, but you stop on checkpoints on the way that are on your map. Using your map, she called it running with a map and compass but she really call it running and thinking. [Inaudible 0:14:56]. What I found was that researched showed that if you actually are physically moving, you are more creative in your brain. Because our brain is not like a computer. A lot of great thinkers like Einstein would go on walks, and they would come up with great ideas during or after, because there is a way that they have shown that if you use your kinetic self, when you are thinking of an idea, you have a greater chance of solving it. So, an all waves movement, which is obviously important, physically is also good neurally. Also, then you feel better about yourself. [0:15:37] PF: I love that. We've become a society that's just sitting down and stuck in front of a screen and not trying to go outside and get creativity that way. We're trying to find it within. To change that – [0:15:50] CP: We’re on the Internet. [0:15:52] PF: Yes. I'll just Google that. I'll get my OpenAI and write that for me. But it is, like to be able to change that thinking, what have you seen it do either for yourself or someone else to start adopting that approach of saying, “I'm going to get up and move because I'm stuck on this problem.” [0:16:12] CP: Well, let me just say, I'll back up just a tiny bit and just say that. Back to that messaging about how we view ourselves, we have all these sort of subtle ideas about our own limitations as older women, especially because of the messaging that we get, and that's what's stopping us from going outside a lot. Because again, the messaging is about how frail and kind of incompetent we are, and boring, like I said. It's just a sense that our life is narrowing down. But what I found with the women I interviewed, especially the ones that had never gone outside before, that when they did – so, for instance, I went boogie boarding with a bunch of women in San Diego, and they were between the ages of 60 and in their 90s playing in the water. I talked to someone named Lorraine Voight. At 60, she saw these women when she was walking on the beach during the pandemic, and she thought, “Oh, they're having fun.” But she had no outdoor experience. She didn't even like the water. But it was that inflection point. It's the pandemic and she had had really tough 50s with deaths and just a lot of like reversals in her life. It was kind of a what the heck moment, probably, and she got in the water with them, and she was hooked. But not only did she love boogie boarding, she said to me, “Caroline, boogie boarding changed my life.” Now, boogie boarding is a very simple activity. That's something that kids do. I mean, you really are just – you’re just on a little floatation and just let the wave push you to shore. How could it change your life? I asked her, “How could it change your life?” She said, “Basically, look at the big cold Pacific Ocean. Look at the tumbling that happens. Look at the fun I'm having.” Basically, what she was telling me, she had up ended her own expectations of herself by simply taking those steps into the water. Because of that, it opened up all these other things about what she could do. [0:18:02] PF: I love that you bring up fun, because as adults, we tend to forget how important that is. Adventure is fun. It can be terrifying. But also, it's fun, and we need to be able to bring fun into our lives. [0:18:19] CP: Well, I looked into play, which is an actual science. I mean, people look into the benefits of play, and it's incredibly important. I mean, it's what we do to get to know ourselves better, and the people around us and community. I mean, that's what we did as kids. That's what dogs do in the dog park. You're right. It's actually a trust exercise. It's actually, obviously, you're getting physical vitality, but then there's lots of connection because there's a dance to it. Yes, play is important, and it's especially something that we lose not just as adults, but as women, because we're sort of expected to be such a certain way and trod such a particular path. Really, women are really watched a lot during their life in certain ways and judged. So, play is something that is scary for us because it's an abandon that – I say the word unruly in the book, and I think that's really apt. Unruly is an unusual way to describe women. We don't want to be described that way usually. But play is really good for us and it lets loose this sense of judgment. You don't care what other think and you're simply connecting with somebody else. [0:19:28] PF: So, as women are listening to this, and they're saying, “Oh, my God. I want to be her. I want to do that.” But there's something that holds us back. It's like, “Oh, my husband, my spouse, my kids, whatever. What will the neighbors think?” Kind of thing. How do we break out of that kind of thinking of like, “Yes, that's great. I wish I could, but I can't.” [0:19:51] CP: I've heard this a lot from people and it is hard to break out of our comfort zone. Especially, as women, we're not really taught to. I think men are often given training for very young age to kind of burst out and try new things and explore on your own and do it on your own. We are not. I did a lot of research on this for my book for girls. We are basically taught to be fearful about a lot of things at a very young age, which means we don't have that exploratory spirit, and we don't trust ourselves. Here's what I say, I say, I'm just trying to convince you how good it is for you to go outside and have an activity outside, and experience those aspects of adventure, like I said. So, if you believe me on that, you take pharmaceuticals, for whatever ails you, because you think it's going to make you feel better. There are always side effects. In fact, there's a very long list of side effects that are really unpleasant. They look like vomiting, diarrhea, don't drive ahead a vehicle. I could go on. I mean, you see them on the TV. If going outside your comfort zone or feeling a little fear, feels like something insurmountable, I urge you to think of it as just a little side effect of this incredibly health-giving pill that you're going to take. It is not only health-giving, but it's just going to open up your life in ways that I want you to tell me after you do it. Because again, as a rebuke to all the messaging you get, you find out things about yourself in the smoke without even trying. It's not like you're sitting down at a test and being like, “Now, I have to figure out about myself.” No, you're just going outside to birdwatch. That's what I just say. It's a side effect. I want you to take a small step. Do not fly a gyrocopter like I did for the book. [0:21:31] PF: But that was a great story. [0:21:33] CP: Do not BASE jump like somebody else I interviewed. Do not scuba dive like Louise Wholey who's 80. Don't do that. Take a walk with a friend. Do not learn to swim, maybe, like [inaudible 0:21:44] did. But go to the ocean and play in the side of the waves. Just push your comfort zone a tiny bit and I think it'll start to somersault as you find that – first of all, let me add one more thing, which is that every woman told me who was older than me that the 60s was their favorite decade. [0:22:02] PF: I love that. [0:22:04] CP: I know. It was unbelievable, because we're not told that. We're told that our best years are behind us. I remember my supposed best years and they were angst-filled and insecure. Now, I feel great. I enjoy everything, because I have that capacity to do it. So, we cannot let this slip by, by giving in to things like a little fear, like a little discomfort about our comfort zone. Because it's such an opportunity. It will be the best decade of your life or if you're past 60, the 70s, the 80s. [0:22:34] PF: I had an aunt who died at, she was either 96 or 97. I can't remember which. She had told me when I was younger, I was a lot like her. I tended to speak whatever was on my mind. She explained me like, “Yes, you will get in trouble. As a child, they're going to say you're insolent. As a young adult, they're going to say you're immature. As a middle-aged person, they're going to be like, we're not really sure about her.” She goes, “Once you hit 60, you can say anything you want, then now, you're the quirky fun person.” I was like, “Oh, man, so she really had me like looking forward to this.” [0:23:09] CP: We’re underestimated, and sometimes it's good to be underestimated and so – [0:23:13] PF: Exactly. [0:23:15] CP: You're invisible. Go do what you want. [0:23:17] PF: See if anyone finds out. You interviewed so many different women. You tell such great stories. One way I look at this book is as kind of like a catalogue of adventures that you could try. Like, “Oh, I never even thought about that.” I wondered if there was any single person or adventure that affected you most? [0:23:41] CP: All these women were amazing to me. I mean, I looked at women who were of different races, because I know that it's really hard for people of color to feel welcome outside. Of course, different abilities and different knowledge. Everybody amazed me. I feel like that since I mean really honestly, the chapter that was the most moving to me, of course, was writing about my own mother, who turns out was my subliminal messaging that made me blossom because I saw the way she opened up as she aged. That chapter was, of course, really important for me to write and difficult, and perhaps the most moving. [0:24:19] PF: Yes. Did you have any surprise learnings when you set out to write a book – [0:24:23] CP: Every single time. No, I came in with a swagger like, “This is an adventure.” Then, realized, when I went on a walk with a 93-year-old, just a mere walk was eye-opening and exhilarating because of the way she did it. She looked at everything. She quoted poetry while we did it. She looked at the sky, she looked at the birds. I mean, basically we went on an awe walk. I hadn't yet discovered awe, because awe discovered in this book. I did not understand that concept at all until I found it myself. But I had gone on an awe walk with dot. So, I guess I was just continually surprised. [0:25:04] PF: And as you look back on the experience of writing it, what was your biggest learning, would you say? [0:25:10] CP: Well, that, a small thing like an outdoor adventure will cover all the pillars of healthy aging. People say, but I can go to a book club, or I go to the gym, and all that is great. You got to do that too. But I'm just saying, it's to have the whole enchilada, basically, of community, purpose, novelty, vitality, and keep surprising and up ending expectations. Keep that positive mindset about your own aging. It's really an outdoor activity that will do it for you. Here's my final thing is that, with the climate chaos, we need to get out because it's disappearing. We only save what we love, as somebody said, someone very smart. So, if we begin to see just how vital the outdoors is, maybe we can save it before it's too late. [0:25:56] PF: I love that. I love that. Caroline, you have written a fantastic book. We are going to tell our listeners where they can find it. I strongly encourage them to pick it up during your 50s or up, or if you know someone, it is truly one of those books that gives so much inspiration, and even excitement about moving into the next 30 years. First of all, thank you for writing it, and then thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. [0:26:19] CP: Such an honor. Thank you, Paula. Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:26:25] PF: That was Caroline Paul, talking about how outdoor adventure improves our lives as we age. If you'd like to learn more about Caroline, follow her on social media, or buy a copy of her book, Tough Broad. 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 Tuesday, 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: How Happiness is Changing in the U.S. With Dr. Lara Aknin [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 461 of Live Happy Now. Last week, the annual World Happiness Report was released. This week's guest is helping break down what it all means. I'm your host Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Lara Aknin, a distinguished professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University and one of the editors of the World Happiness Report. She's here to tell us why the US fell out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first time since the report has been published, which age group is thriving in the US, and talk about why our young people are struggling right now. She also shares some really encouraging findings about well-being and dementia, as well as how benevolence is changing worldwide. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:49] PF: Lara, thank you for joining me today on Live Happy Now. [00:00:53] LA: Thank you for having me. [00:00:54] PF: Every year, this is such a big time for us because the World Happiness Report comes out. We dig into it, and we try to cover it the best that we can. So I appreciate you sitting down and talking about it. How long have you been involved in working with the report? [00:01:08] LA: I have been involved for about five years now, back in 2019 I believe it was. My memory since COVID is a little fuzzy, but I believe it was 2019. My colleagues and I contributed a chapter to the World Happiness Report on some of the research we do regarding kindness and happiness. Then shortly after that, I was invited to join the editorial team. [00:01:28] PF: Nice, nice. Such an important report and we learn new things every year. For those who don't know, the report has certain themes it covers every year. Then it'll kind of branch out and do other subtopics every year. One thing they talked about this year was age and happiness. I wanted to know if you had any insight into why they decided to look at that topic. [00:01:53] LA: There are lots of reasons. One major one is that there's this burst of new research looking at some really interesting ideas and questions. So you'll see one of the chapters in this year's report written by Dr. Emily Willroth and her colleagues, I think, presents some of this really groundbreaking research, trying to understand not necessarily actually the predictors of happiness across the lifespan but the consequences of happiness for really important outcomes like dementia. Their chapters kind of split broadly into two parts, but one of the parts that I find so intriguing and then so excited about is how happiness or life satisfaction and well-being might be a protective factor against dementia. As a huge subset of the population is aging, all of us eventually, hopefully will. There's no known cure for dementia. This seems like one very important meaningful way in which we can intercept and perhaps improve the lives for many people. The new research is one key reason that it was – we chose to focus on this year's report on aging and happiness. But the other is the availability of data. One of the main sources, one of the incredible sources of information we draw upon for the World Happiness Report is the Gallup World Pole, which for those listeners who don't know is probably the most representative sample of planet Earth. So it's not just convenient samples drawn from wealthy nations, but it's individuals from rich and poor countries. They go out of their way to reach those who we might not be able to reach otherwise. Now, there are almost two decades worth, I believe, of data that allow us to look back and see these not only trends in happiness over time but allows us to try to tease apart some of the cohort effects from age effects, which is really exciting and promising for getting a closer look into what's going on in happiness across the lifespan. [00:03:38] PF: They touched on so many different things. As an editor, I wondered if there was anything that stood out to you about age and happiness on a global sense, as you were working on the project. [00:03:49] LA: Yes. There are a couple notable findings, and the report is so rich with so much information. I encourage your listeners to go have a look. There's so much to be seen. But two things that jump out at me that I think are kind of remarkable across the data sets and the information presented is, first and foremost, that around the world looking at global data, the happiness is highest among the young, so those under 30. Then begins to drop and remains relatively consistent over the rest of one's life. Now, that's looking at global data, which is really interesting. But get a little bit more interesting and sometimes unfortunate when you drill down into specific world regions. One that I think might be of particular interest to perhaps many listeners is that in North America, particularly in Canada and the United States, the young have started rating their life satisfaction quite a bit lower. In fact, it is one of the only world regions in the world where the young are less happy than the old. That is kind of an interesting point of complexity and intrigue and, for many, I imagine some concern. That is one fascinating finding. [00:04:54] PF: I was completely astonished to see that because in our case of people under the age of 30 in the US ranked 62nd. To put that in perspective, Russia is 68th. Young people in Russia are not that much more unhappy than young people in the US. Do we know what is driving that? [00:05:16] LA: That is a really important question. It’s a complex answer, as you might imagine. But, yes, if I can just pause and highlight what I think is so noteworthy here, which is that, yes, within the United States, older individuals, so those 16 above, are rating their lives much better. I believe there's over a 50 ranking gap between older adults in the United States compared to those under 30. There's something pretty unique going on here with the younger individuals. Why is this going on is a difficult thing to kind of parse, right? These data sets, the complexity and the size of them give us a huge snapshot of what is going on. But the challenge of that is that there are so many moving pieces. It's hard to pinpoint one exact explanatory feature. That being said, some of the authors of chapter two in the report, Dr. John Helliwell and Haifang Huang have done some deep dives to try to understand what's going on. There's a little bit of traction in understanding. In particular, what these two and their co-authors have found is that adults under 30, so Americans under 30, are reporting some interesting differences to compare to those who were 30 several decades ago, so those who were 30 in the early 2000s and up to 2010. In particular, those under 30 these days are reporting less support from their friends and family than did earlier cohorts. They're also reporting less freedom to make life choices, more stress and anxiety, but not more anger, less confidence in the government, greater perceptions of corruption. Another important one is feeling less satisfied with their living situation. I think although incomes are not necessarily especially low, I think they're stagnating relative to the cost of living. So that might be a point of frustration or stress and anxiety for some younger Americans under 30. It seems to be this cocktail of predictors that are associated with lower levels of well-being among those under 30 and different from those that were reported about a decade and a bit ago. [00:07:23] PF: At the same time, those young people are – the report shows that those young people are more benevolent. They're more altruistic, which is so interesting that they would be dissatisfied because one thing we talk about quite a bit on Live Happy Now is how – and you would know this about practicing kindness and acts of altruism. Those increase our satisfaction. That, to me, was just a striking disparity that we have this generation that's more giving, more altruistic, but they're also more dissatisfied. [00:07:56] LA: Exactly. That was going to be my other notable thing. It's always a silver lining for me. Or a really fascinating spotlight in the report is this increase, this upshoot in benevolence, especially since COVID, since pre-COVID years. You're right. Across all three metrics of benevolence that are captured in the Gallup World Poll data, which is helping a stranger, donating to charity, and volunteering. Each of these are relatively high across the board. They're higher post-COVID than they were before COVID. There don't seem to be whopping generational differences in this. If anything, we're seeing the young being equally, in most cases, benevolent across the board. They're more likely to help a stranger and less likely to donate. That might be partially because they just have lower levels of income. But you're right. Benevolence doesn't seem to be the explanatory factor. One might wonder if this is even buffering or supporting their well-being that these differences reported might be even more extreme if these weren't the actions people were taking. I just want to point out, though, that those benevolence ratings are global, and the findings that we're talking about here are within the United States. So I don't know exactly the benevolence levels within the United States, but that would be an interesting question to drill down upon. [00:09:07] PF: The report does an excellent job of parsing out this information, but what it doesn't do and intentionally is say, “Here's the cure.” We get a lot of information, and I think that's what a lot of us want to know is like, wow, if our young people are that unhappy, what is it that we can do about it? As you mentioned, there are several factors driving this, so it's not this small ship that we can just turn on a dime. As people who are not in our 30s and younger, what do we do? How do we start helping support young people and changing the way that they feel? [00:09:45] LA: That's a really important question. Like you say, I don't know if there's a perfect solitary answer to this. I think there's a lot to be considered in part because some of these may be societal changes, right? Concerns, for instance, about less freedom to make life choices and concerns about corruption and less trust in government would be hard for any caring friend or family member to interject upon and maybe change things. It's possible perhaps that there might be other pathways that are a little bit more tractable, so for instance, the support from friends and family. Interestingly, I believe some of the data suggest that these individuals are not necessarily receiving less contact, if you will, from friends and family but perhaps feel like they're not receiving enough. Or at least they're less satisfied with the support from friends and family. One perhaps avenue or strategy for support might be to have some very open conversations with the younger adults in your life and kind of see how they're doing. Perhaps find ways to offer additional support. There might be other factors. I mean, it's hard to support someone's satisfaction with their living conditions. I mean, that's not an easy way to just step in and change. Some of these may be more systematic or societal-level concerns. I’m not saying that this is out of our reach, but I think there's a lot of conversation to be had about which ways to kind of step in and support adults under 30. [00:11:09] PF: Do you think knowing this that now we are going to do that, now that we are aware of this situation is becoming more dire? Do you think there's a community starting with a scientific community that shares this information? Then are we going to start saying, okay, we need to enact some change, some real change in the world to make this better? [00:11:28] LA: I remain overoptimistic. I think one of the main thrusts and the rationales for the World Happiness Report is to present some of this leading evidence on the science of happiness to the public and also to policymakers and individuals who are concerned about the well-being of their constituents and their community members and their neighbors. The hope is that by bringing some hard science to this question to delineate and demonstrate the trends over time and shine a spotlight on those who perhaps are not thriving or doing as well as we would have hoped can direct attention to those areas. There's always a lot of discussion. There are many governments that are trying to pay attention to these well-being reports. I know many governments are starting to ask these questions regarding life satisfaction and well-being in their census data. I think that's a step in the right direction. But as you'll see in chapter I believe it's three of this year's report, which is focused on the youth, there is actually not as much data as we would like to grapple with some strong insights, especially in developing nations. A lot of the evidence is lacking, and so that raises some questions about how people who perhaps are really struggling are not even being assessed and observed. I think that we're certainly making strides, but I think we're far from perfect data and perfect insights on how to address this. [00:12:41] PF: I think that's one thing the World Happiness Report does is every year, we talk about it. Then it's in the spotlight. It's in the news. Then it kind of, uh, slips out. That’s why I love the fact that it comes out every year. It doesn't let us forget that, hey, we still have – this is an important thing. Happiness is an important indicator, and we need to be studying it, looking at it, and figuring out what's going on in our world. [00:13:05] LA: I think it's important because happiness isn't just the absence of negative emotions. It's more than that. I think there's – as chapter four in this year's report nicely illustrates, these protective factors matter a lot. It's not just this wishy-washy vague sense of well-being that we can hope for, but that it matters for some of these really consequential outcomes, even beyond the fact that we care about our own and our neighbor’s well-being. It predicts some really mean meaningful hard outcomes. I think it helps, like you say, shine a spotlight on some of these important pressing issues. [00:13:37] PF: We've talked about the not-so-great news with the young people but great news with the boomers. US is number 10 among the age group, the baby boomer age group for happiness. That's incredibly good news. That means we're doing great in terms of people, what is that, from 1964? [00:13:55] LA: Yes. I think it – yes. I think you're right. I think you're right. I think it's 1964. Yes. [00:14:01] PF: Why? Why? [00:14:03] LA: I think we know less about that. I mean, part of it is I think although objectively boomers have, I think, less in the way of social contact, I think that there is a greater satisfaction with it. That is one memory I have from reading this report multiple times. But I don't think we have never done a drill down among the older boomers in the United States or even the boomer generation just globally to figure out what is exactly the unique predictors there. What we do know is that countries that rank highly among the older boomer generation tend to be those that are ranked more highly overall but to be in the top 20 and certainly among the top 10 and 15. I think the United States is an interesting case where the happiness of the young, those under 30, is really [inaudible 00:14:48] the average ranking of the United States because these adults under 30 are reporting significantly lower levels of life satisfaction. Yes, for the first time in a number of years, the United States has dropped out of top 20. I think the boomers are what's elevating the ranking, but the young are what is dropping it down. [00:15:06] PF: That's interesting. When I first started covering this, we were at number 13. Then it was 50. It’s like – [00:15:13] LA: I mean, we don't have any measurement of this but some. It might have to do with political tensions or divisions in growing levels of income inequality but also well-being inequality that is mentioned a bit in chapter two of the report. But it is also, I think, those societal, political level factors in the United States might be contributing perhaps especially. Who knows? This remains to be tested. Perhaps might be shifting the well-being of the young or influencing the well-being of the young perhaps more so. [00:15:43] PF: Well, does what drives happiness in older populations differ from what drives happiness in younger age groups? Is that part of it at all? [00:15:52] LA: It certainly could be. I don't think chapter two includes any analyses that would answer that question specifically. I mean, many of the – because it's a global report with so much data, usually the focus is on looking for commonalities, not differences across the world but also across the ages. But I don't think there was any analysis that looked at whether, for instance, social relationships was a greater predictor of well-being amongst the old versus the young. That's a really intriguing question. There are some interesting psychological theories that might bring to bear on this question. I'm happy to mention them, but I don't know if it – they weren't tested directly in the report. So you can let me know if that's a – [00:16:31] PF: Yes, go ahead. I'd love to hear it. [00:16:33] LA: Sure. Laura Carstensen has this really fascinating theory arguing that when we're young, time seems expansive. Normally, people prioritize these kind of efforts to go out to search for unique new experiences. People prioritize having usually a diverse set of friends, a diverse set of experiences because it's all about learning and trying new things. It's like this very exploratory mindset. Then as people get older and people start to realize that time is not infinite, instead of taking this purely exploratory approach as they navigate the world, they prioritize things that are particularly meaningful and valuable and positive to them. How this matters, for instance, for predictors of happiness but also for relationships might be instead of trying to maintain dozens of different friend groups, people might prioritize these three, four individuals, these three or four networks in their lives that tend to bring them the most joy and meaning and whatever it is they prioritize. This theory suggests that the predictors of happiness may vary slightly as a function of age. Generally speaking, most people derive a lot of joy from helping others, from being with others. But who exactly are those others may differ, right? When you're 18 and starting college, that might be trying everything there is. When you're 75, that might be your closest friends. Social relationships might matter across the lifespan, but who are those contributing individuals might vary. [00:17:59] PF: That makes so much sense. To me, it was so interesting that this report really focuses a lot on age because when we look at how aging is portrayed like, “Oh, you're going to be lonely. You're going to be falling apart,” there are so many messages that's negative about aging. When you look at this report, it's really an inspirational read. It shows you that that's not what is going on. Has that actually changed, or has it just been always portrayed incorrectly? [00:18:32] LA: It's important to note it might be inspirational for folks living in North America and Australia, New Zealand, where this trend is happiness generally speaking across the lifespan is on an upward trajectory. But there certainly are world regions where the reverse is true. For instance, in Central and Eastern Europe, I believe that it's a downward trend across the lifespan. There are some notable differences across the globe. Different cultures hold aging in different regards, right? In many Eastern cultures, it's an honor. There's a lot of honor and respect for the elders, whereas that isn't necessarily true across all different nationalities and ethnicities and religious affiliations. So perhaps in North America it's kind of seen like as you get older, you're out of touch. You're falling apart. It might be a lot of negative portrayals. But I don't think that's always the case worldwide. But I agree with you. I think certainly from a North American perspective, especially Canada and the United States, the older adults are reporting their lives as much more aligned with their ideal than are the young. That is perhaps inspirational for many people who are in that generation. [00:19:39] PF: Yes, because we're all headed in that direction. We want to know it's getting better, right? [00:19:44] LA: Hopefully, it's all getting better. Yes, for sure. [00:19:47] PF: Well, there's so much in this report. What is it that you would think that is a takeaway that you hope that everybody would get from sitting down and spending some time with this report? [00:19:59] LA: Well, I think broadly speaking, I think the report does what I think and perhaps I'm very biased here, but I think it does a really great job of showcasing what I think is some of the best science on the question of happiness around the globe and some of the most cutting-edge interesting findings. Details aside for a second, I think the report, hopefully, is a nice demonstration, is a convincing demonstration of where the science of well-being is at and convinces many people that this is not a floofy self-help grounded literature but rather a hard science where people are able to self-report how they feel about their lives and how scientists can try to understand what are these correlates, and how does it track over time, and how does it differ across age and region. Many important variables that help us give some traction on perhaps how to improve the lives of others. I hope, big picture, people walk away with an understanding that this is a hard science and one that we can really sink our teeth into and try to improve the lives of many people with. I think two highlights for me in this report are, one, the benevolence finding that we talked about already. I realized that there are some mixed pictures. There’s a lot of nuance in this report. Looking across the world is always difficult with hundreds of thousands of individuals offering their take on their lives. There's so much data to dig into. Normally, just looking around the globe is complex and nuanced enough. But now to split it by age group and cohort or generation is even more nuanced. But I think the benevolence finding is one of the clearest cut across the globe, which is that there's been this increase in benevolence that it's pretty consistent across the generations. I think while many things can sometimes look a mess in this world and in people's well-being, this is one very rosy optimistic picture showing that people are in perhaps better – higher than we would assume, looking out for one another and helping their neighbors, helping their communities. The other finding that I think is really important and worth showcasing is the findings from chapter four, which is on the dementia findings I mentioned earlier, which is just how all of us are, hopefully, getting older. Unfortunately, dementia is one thing that raises significant challenges for many people who are facing these cognitive impairments. But also for their friends and their family who are trying to help these individuals be well and enjoy their lives, even with this very difficult diagnosis. I think there are some really interesting and important information to bring to bear in this year's report about how well-being and life satisfaction can be a really important protective factor for that. I just think it raises the stakes for some of the – thinking about some of this research. It's not just about feeling good, which I think is motivation enough in itself to care about our own and other’s well-being. But I think it really raises concerns about what it is we want in our communities and our societies and how we take care of each other. [00:22:48] PF: I agree 100%. This was so interesting. Lara, I appreciate you sitting down and talking with me. You really distilled a lot of great information for it. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find the report, how they can digest it. We're going to run some things on our website about it. But thank you for making sense of it for us and taking this time with me today. [00:23:07] LA: My pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. [00:23:12] PF: That was Dr. Lara Aknin, talking about findings from the World Happiness Report. If you'd like to download a full copy of the report, read additional stories about the findings, or learn more about Lara, just visit us at livehappy.com. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Live Happy Now. 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]