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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Repairing the Mother/Daughter Relationship With Leslie and Lindsey Glass [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 468 of Live Happy Now. Mother's Day might be behind us. But for many moms and daughters, that holiday can be less about celebrating and more about surviving one another. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm joined by co-authors and mother-daughter duo, Leslie and Lindsey Glass, who have just released the book The Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover. They know all too well how fraught this relationship can be. They're here to talk about what makes this relationship so difficult for some and how you can rebuild that relationship, find a positive pathway to peace, and finally restore the love between you. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:47] PF: Leslie and Lindsey, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:51] LESLIE GLASS: Oh, we're delighted to be here. [00:00:54] LINDSEY GLASS: Yes, good to meet you. [00:00:55] PF: I want to start with the big question, and that is the one most of us have, and that is why is the mother-daughter relationship so challenging. [00:01:04] LINDSEY GLASS: I'm going to start because I – [00:01:05] PF: Let the daughter start. [00:01:09] LINDSEY GLASS: I think there are a lot of reasons, and I will certainly let Leslie jump in. One of the things that I think is the biggest factor is that often moms feel that daughters are reflective of them. If daughter isn't dressing right, if she isn't acting right, if she's doing things that are embarrassing, that is a reflection that maybe mom didn't raise her right. I also think in a situation like ours, I look just like her. My mom was perfectly dressed at all times and quaffed, and that was not my style. She likes to call me, what a street rat, which is very kind. But it was the eighties and the nineties. It was grunge. It was hip-hop. I did not follow her style. I did not follow her interests. She cooked. She knitted. She planted flowers. Now, the irony is I do now, but then I didn't. That's what I think is a big trigger for moms. This child looks like me but is nothing like me. [00:02:15] LESLIE GLASS: All right, I'm going to take us on a completely different track here. [00:02:19] PF: I love this. [00:02:21] LESLIE GLASS: I think the conflict between mothers and daughters begins with the fact that mothers have control in the young years, and they need to have control. Moms are the ones who tell you what to eat and when to go to bed and how to do everything. I think that moms do this because it's their job to keep their children safe, and it's their job to kind of raise their children well. I think what happens when daughters go to middle school and high school, that's where the independence, the – of course, starting at the age of two, they want their own independence. But going into middle school, when girls have their own secrets, they have their own friends, they have extreme challenges, especially nowadays. Wanting to have moms not in their head, not telling them what to do, not telling them how to look, all of those things create conflicts that begin kind of in the teenage years, and they can get stuck there. Lindsey says it's about daughters being the reflection of moms. I think moms want their daughters to be safe. I think they want them to be safe. I think they want them to behave well and achieve well. Who wants to do that when you're a teenager? [00:03:38] PF: Exactly. Well, how is it different than sons? I have friends. I don't have children but I have friends. Pretty much all my friends have children, and I see a big difference with those who have boys and those who have – I have one friend, very good friend, and she's like, “I would much rather have my two boys and put up with all the things that come with boys than navigate with girls.” What's the difference? [00:04:01] LESLIE GLASS: I'm going to start. I think that very often, you just give your sons a lot of slack. You think they're handsome. You think they're wonderful. You think they're doing well. But we can't make generalizations about anything. I think we’re – I would say girls are prey animals, so we are very, very concerned about keeping our daughters safe. I will say that over and over and over again. Your son is going to get into fights. He's going to tussle. He may start drinking early and do bad things. But you kind of let it go because you think they're tougher, and they can handle it. Of course, some mothers in many cultures think their sons are perfect, no matter what. [00:04:42] PF: Absolutely. [00:04:43] LESLIE GLASS: What would you say, Lindsey? [00:04:45] LINDSEY GLASS: Yes. I think it's just less emotionally charged with boys. I've certainly seen dads who are really hard on their sons, and let the girls get away with everything. I do think the wanting to protect the daughter and keep her safe and know everything has a lot to do with it. Yes, I think boys just share less also, so you don't necessarily know. A mentor, and I was talking to one of my colleagues there, and I was like, “How are you doing?” She goes, “I've got a teenage daughter,” and I just started laughing. [00:05:20] PF: It’s like that’s all you need to say. [00:05:22] LINDSEY GLASS: I said, “What's going on?” She goes, “She's in her feelings.” No one needed to say anything else. Everyone in the room understood. [00:05:31] PF: It's like a moment of silence for Mom. [00:05:32] LINDSEY GLASS: That 13, 14-year-old. Yes, inner feelings. I think that's part of it. The girls will come home, and sometimes they share. Sometimes, they don't. “Oh, they cut me out of the friend group. I didn't get invited to the mall.” I think it opens the door for a lot more drama. [00:05:50] PF: Right. Now, you all have an interesting relationship, and this book is a product of that. First of all, I have to say this book is so insightful, and it takes us through so many areas of conflict that makes us realize how universal this is. Just that recognition is incredibly helpful. But can you talk a little bit? Tell our listeners a little about your relationship and how that led to writing this book. [00:06:16] LINDSEY GLASS: I'll jump in on this one. We went off track in my teen years, and we got into the fighting habit. I call it the fighting habit. We had different communication styles. We had different personality styles. We just started clashing at a certain point and really struggled as the years went on. We were always close. There were times we were very close, but we would just battle. As the years went on, it becomes more and more toxic to have somebody in your life that you're battling and issues of control, issues of boundaries. That kind of split us up. We both went off and did a lot of our own work and found our way back. Here are a few of the things we realized. Almost everybody's struggling with a few of these issues. Too, we're so busy pointing fingers at other people. We forget sometimes to step back, stop fighting, and look at ourselves. There were so many universal things that we were experiencing that we were seeing happening with. I'm in recovery. I sponsor young women. I’m sponsored, which means I work with younger sober people, and we were hearing the same things, and nobody had tools. We were seeing tons of people who just were screaming at each other with no tools on how to stop. We've been writing for our website for 12 years on relationships and mental health and behavioral health. We said, “Hey, we actually have a story to share, and we have the tools to share.” Because we're a family in recovery, we're very solution-based. We'll talk about the problem, but we want to move on to the solution, so less takeover. [00:08:01] LESLIE GLASS: You did that really well, Lindsey. I've been a good trainer as a mom. I think that – [00:08:08] LINDSEY GLASS: She talks about it like a horse trainer. [00:08:10] PF: Exactly. [00:08:10] LESLIE GLASS: She's got a great gate. She can [inaudible 00:08:13] a pony. [00:08:14] PF: She can move her head the right way. [00:08:16] LESLIE GLASS: I think that Lindsey hit the nail on the head. We've been writing about relationships for 12 years, and I've been a novelist for 30 years before that. I'm a novelist. I was a journalist before that. When Lindsey and I started working together, our whole purpose was to try and create the content, a body of content that would lift the stigma from addiction and explain what life in recovery looks like. In order to do that, we had to kind of out ourselves. I mean, we had to say, “You want to know what recovery looks like or if you think recovery isn't working, we're in recovery. This is what recovery looks like. It looks like the two of us.” [00:08:58] LINDSEY GLASS: Not always but sometimes. [00:09:00] LESLIE GLASS: Well, yes. I mean, it doesn't always look like us because there are some families where part of the family is in recovery and part of the family isn't in recovery. There are a lot of clashes over that. We had a mission. I think that Lindsey and I have been writers forever and ever and ever. That is part of our solution. Our part of our solution is creating the tools and being able to understand what's happening. We've been writing about this family function, dysfunction, addiction, what is addiction, what is recovery for a lot of years. We decided because self-help books can be kind of descriptive in terms of telling you what to do prescriptive but without having the background of being able to say, “Well, how does change really happen?” The evolution was to take the knowledge that we had acquired over 12 years and put it in one book. [00:09:51] PF: One thing I really liked about this is you have the journal prompts at the end. It is a very interactive book because it's not something that you just read and you're getting information thrown at you. You actually participate in it and decide how this affects you and what you need to do. I really love that about this book. [00:10:09] LESLIE GLASS: Not everybody likes to write, but there are ways that you can use the journal prompts. The idea is to start in the beginning by telling your story and getting some understanding about where you and your mother come from. What are your backgrounds? The idea is to start getting in the habit of kind of writing things down and with the idea that in the beginning of the book, you think one way, and then you go through these 61 journal prompts. At the end of the book, look at it and say, “Oh, wait a minute. Okay, I'm different now. Or I can look at it, and my perspective has changed.” [00:10:43] PF: That's super important, and I love that you brought up the fact that you dive into your background because so many books, so many resources, they look at the immediate problem. Can you explain to us why it's so important for you to go back? You went way back, not just how your mother was raised. I found it fascinating as you tied all these threads together and showed the way that your great, great grandmother's upbringing influenced you. Can you talk about that, why it's so important to dig back into that? [00:11:14] LESLIE GLASS: I will because I think when we just look at our mother, we're just looking at this person who irritates us. No matter how great your relationship is, this person who raised you is going to be irritating or in some way or another. But how did she get the way she is, and how did I get the way I am? As we started to write our own stories, I wanted everybody to go back and be able to see, “Well, my mother was an immigrant,” or, “My grandmother was an immigrant.” Or she was Greek or she was Irish or she was Swedish. How does that culture inform our behavior? A lot of our behavior, a lot of our beliefs come from our culture and our religion. How do those different components on make our mother act the way she did, our grandmother act the way she did? Now, I'm acting the way I am because the way I act are things that were taught to me by my grandmother who lived a hundred years ago and my great-grandmother who raised her. When you understand the components and the history of the women in your family and what they've been through, maybe the traumas that they've been through, you have more perspective, and you have more compassion for the way you were raised. All of us have toxic aspects to our relationships. [00:12:35] LINDSEY GLASS: I think that's really, really good. I think one of the things I just wanted to expand on for a second was it's that compassion and that point of view. I was so angry at my mom about certain behaviors and certain things. Now, I'm an adult. I'm in my 40s, and I'm writing a book, and I'm reading about how she had nobody to help her when she had young children. Her mother died when she was young. People were trying to get her not to work. All she wanted to do was work, and they didn't want to let her work. There were just so many things and traumas that happened in her own life that I didn't know. As a teenager, you’re so angry like, “What's wrong with you?” Then as an adult, you're like, “Oh, my gosh.” She was dealing with mental health stuff, whatever the situation was. She was in a tumultuous marriage. She had no female support in her life. We didn't live in a world where we could talk about how we were feeling. This is a relatively new thing. Learning that mental health history is also really important, so you're not sitting here going, “Why do I feel crazy? Why do I –” Well, maybe there are reasons. [BREAK] [00:13:42] PF: We'll be right back with Leslie and Lindsey Glass. But I wanted to take a moment to talk about how you can make your day more comfortable and more stylish with help from Franne Golde. This line of clothing was created by a Grammy-winning musician who knows the importance of looking good on the road. But she didn't want to sacrifice comfort, so she created a line of wrinkle-free essentials to build a wardrobe that feels as good as it looks. Right now, Franne Goldie is providing Live Happy Now listeners 20% off their first order of $75 or more. You can go to frannegolde.com/podcast and use the code HAPPY for 20% off. That's F-R-A-N-N-E-G-O-L-D-E.com/podcast for 20% off your order of $75 or more with the code HAPPY. Now, let's get back to my talk with Leslie and Lindsey to learn more about how to repair a fractured mother-daughter relationship. [INTERVIEW RESUMED] [00:14:41] PF: As you came to grips with everything, your relationship, all the dynamics of it, how did you outline how to put that into this book? It's very thoughtfully arranged and it takes us through this. As you said, these steps at the end, you're like, “I'm a changed person.” How did you come up with this outline? [00:14:59] LINDSEY GLASS: What most people don't know is we actually wrote a different version of this book 14 years ago. We were glad that version never made it because we had so much more to go through, and it was a much darker story. It didn't have the self-help stuff because that's something our business has grown into. We had a lot of the story that we wanted to tell about ourselves already in our heads. Then as far as how we actually outline the steps, we really wanted to take the reader on kind of a transformative experience so that when they started, they were over here thinking, “Oh, she's the problem. This is what's happened in my life.” We followed almost a 12-step formula, which is we want you to get some understanding about who you are and what's happened. Then we want you to understand what the issues are, so we chose the eight biggest issues that mothers and daughters fight about for part two. Then for part three and part four, that's pretty much all self-help. Part three, obviously, if you're in this situation, you need healing and forgiveness. We spent four years doing that. We're going to talk about all the things we did. Then the end is some people are not going to be able to reconcile if there's addiction or serious mental health issues or somebody is unsafe. These situations happen, and we wanted to create a section for what to do if you can't reconcile. Because we love recovery, it changed our lives. We did a whole recovery lifestyle piece because any family that's been through dysfunction, everybody's recovering from something. Has a family member been sick? Has there been suicide in the family? Did somebody lose a job and it created financial instability? All of these things you can find recovery from. That's the sort of model we followed, and we got a lot of good advice along the way. [00:17:06] LESLIE GLASS: I think it's funny because our contract says that we need to write kind of a self-help book in 165 pages, right? When Lindsey and I started getting into it, we knew that the issues that mother and daughters fight about, the eight issues that we chose, was almost the book contract. [00:17:24] LINDSEY GLASS: Length of the book, yes. [00:17:25] LESLIE GLASS: Yes, the length of the book. You can't just start with triggers and traumas. You can't start a book with what are your triggers because you have to first understand who you are. What is it about my daughter that's making me angry? Does it come from me or does it come from my mother, right? We really felt that you need to have a background for everything that you're talking about. You can't just – Lindsey, you said it perfectly. So many self-help books that we read, they're taking the problem. You're fighting. You may be addicted to fighting because it's bringing those bad hormones front and center. [00:18:01] LINDSEY GLASS: We used our own story for there always to be a little bit of background. Here's what happened to us. Now, you can figure out what happened to you. [00:18:11] PF: I like that because kind of like sitting down with a therapist where you're not just having to say, “Okay, here's what's going on.” Or it's like you soften us up a bit by sharing you're so vulnerable and open with us about your story, which makes me as a reader more willing to be open. I think that's very well done with this. [00:18:29] LINDSEY GLASS: It's just interesting. When you start to actually talk about these kind of – I don't want to call them shameful but issues that nobody likes to admit. People don't like to admit that there are problems in the family or that somebody's lying or that somebody has an addiction. I'm sure you know as well as I do. Addictions don't have to be just to drugs and alcohol. [00:18:50] PF: Right. I would love for our listeners to hear about some of the universal conflicts because you do break it down where someone might be reading it thinking, “I thought it was just me and my mom that went through it about this topic.” Let's talk about what are the major areas of conflict between mothers and daughters. [00:19:08] LESLIE GLASS: I'm going to start with food because I think food is a big one in this country right now, and we do talk a lot about food. I was overfed as a child. That meant that people were pushing a lot of food into me all of the time when I wasn't hungry, but I wasn't allowed to have snacks. Now, all day every day in America, people are feeding their children snacks all day long. Then they're worried about whether they're too heavy or they're not too heavy. The whole idea of what the food industry has done to us in terms of not eating meals anymore. We used to eat meals. We used to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Now, it's like snack time all day long. [00:19:49] PF: We graze. We don't eat. We graze. Yes. [00:19:51] LESLIE GLASS: I think it's very difficult to be thin in a family where people are big. I think it's very difficult to be big in a family where the people are thin. I think there's a lot of conflict around food and culture and confusing food with love and all of that. I would say food is a big one. [00:20:14] LINDSEY GLASS: I'll list them out, and then I'll tell you the ones that we struggled with. We did boyfriends, girlfriends, romantic partners. I mean, come on, endless possibilities. Does mom not like the boyfriend, the girlfriend? Are there sexuality questions that family members don't understand? Romantic partners was a huge one. That wasn't an issue for us actually. She was very, very accepting of my friends and partners, so we didn't actually have that one. We had money. Money was one of our biggest trigger issues because my mom was successful. She spoiled me, and I grew up thinking that what she had I had. We had to do some real boundary work. We can talk about money in a second. There was food, independence, and codependence. [00:21:05] LESLIE GLASS: Codependence. [00:21:06] LINDSEY GLASS: Those issues of mom wanting to know where you are, what you're doing, are you calling me, what's your curfew, and daughters wanting to be more independent. Or for every one of these situations, there's the opposite. There's the good girl with a party-girl mom. Why aren't I being picked up on school? Why am I the only one left over at the sleepover whose mom hasn't picked her up? My mom would forget me and bring me places on the wrong day. Guess what? So did her mom, did the same thing. Full taffeta dress, party gift in my hand, knocking on the door. “Leslie, today is not the birthday party. Take her home. It's next week.” [00:21:44] PF: Oh, no. [00:21:47] LESLIE GLASS: I have trouble with numbers. [00:21:50] PF: That's because you're a journalist. [00:21:51] LINDSEY GLASS: And I inherited that. Appearance and style, that's another big one. I was a club kid and a grunge kid, and that was infuriating to my mother, boundaries and detachment. Then the last two, and this isn't for every family, but when these are involved, they're a huge deal, drugs and alcohol and mental illness. Those to us and from a little bit of research seem to be the biggest global issues that mothers and daughters fight about. For us, obviously, drugs and alcohol, independence and codependence, those were our big ones. [00:22:31] PF: Right now, mental health is such a huge concern. We just did something, the World Happiness Report, and it showed how Gen Z in particular is suffering. Their mental health is very, very poor. Then the millennials aren't doing great either. Gen X is a little better, and then the boomers are fine. What then, as parents, if you're a mother and you have a daughter who is part of Gen Z, who is going through this mental distress that's happening globally really, what are some of the ways that they can navigate that? [00:23:05] LINDSEY GLASS: When I talk to parents, one of the things we want to have them do is really pay attention. Don't look the other way. It's not a phase. It's usually not a phase. Or the boys will be boys, that's not acceptable. These are not acceptable things anymore. We have to really look at the behavior and ask questions and not all always – here's the thing. No one wants to believe their child lies, no one. But some do, and it's very hard when you talk to parents because they say, “My child would never lie to me.” Then I get in the room with the kids, and I'm like, “How many of you are actually telling your parents everything that's going on in your lives?” Not one hand goes up, so they have to check. My mom talks. She goes, “I never called any other parents.” I believed her. I was never where I said I was. Had she called once, she would have known. I was never where I said I was. I mean, I might have gone to that person's house at the end of the night, but we certainly weren't sitting home baking Toll House cookies and watching movies. [00:24:10] LESLIE GLASS: You said you were. [00:24:10] PF: That is not what was going on. [00:24:13] LINDSEY GLASS: That's what I kind of say to parents. Take it really seriously, and always feel good and okay about getting outside help. Kids don't want to talk to their parents. They're going to talk to somebody else. When you ask kids why they don't want to talk to their parents, they don't want to disappoint them. They don't want to worry them. They don't want to start a fight. Kids aren't being bad. They're just – I didn't want to say to my mom, “I think I'm a drug addict at 15.” Mom, do you want to add stuff? [00:24:43] LESLIE GLASS: I do because you write a lot about despair. I think what happens in middle school and high school, kids experience trauma, a lot more trauma than in earlier generations. I think a lot of the trauma happens then. It happens because of drinking. It happens because of bullying. It happens for a myriad of reasons. But kids are – threefold concern is how am I achieving, how do I look, and how do I behave. That's how parents and their teachers are looking at them. They're being judged by their looks, their behavior, and their achievement. Basically, what makes us good human beings and what makes us happy human beings later in life have nothing to do with how we look, how we achieve, and how we behave. It's what's happening inside. The one thing that parents are not talking about, except your friend who you were mentoring the other day said inner feelings, but basically parents are not really connected with their children's inner feelings. They don't have the tools for children and young adults to be able to talk to them in a way that inspires them and helps them move past whatever destructive feelings or conditioning they're getting elsewhere. We just aren't helping our teens and our young adults. They don't have that drive and ambition. A lot of them don't have it, so it may be because marijuana is more prevalent, and it makes you not care a lot. I think that we're missing a step in development, and that's emotional development. Because we're not working on that piece of human development, our young people are feeling empty, lost. They don't know what their place is in society, and they're scared. [00:26:32] LINDSEY GLASS: Let's be honest. There were no shootings in schools when I was growing up. There was no climate catastrophe. We were way, way more protected in the world in the early nineties than we are now. [00:26:44] LESLIE GLASS: I think every student, every young person, whether it's a high school student or a college student, knows somebody who's died or maybe a number of people who have died. Their siblings are may be using drugs. They may be incredibly frightened. We're concerned about mental health, but are we using the kind of tools that we need to stay connected emotionally with our children? Mental health is not jumping off the roof. It's finding ways to live happy. Live well and be happy. [00:27:13] PF: It is. It is. When children are born, you hear parents say, “I don't care. I just want them to be happy and healthy.” Then by the time they're three years old, they're like, “I want them to get into this school, and I want them to do this, and I want them to be a doctor or a lawyer.” It’s interesting to see how every parent wants their child to be happy, but we're not really equipping them with the tools and skills to achieve happiness. We teach them how to be successful, but we don't teach them how to be happy. [00:27:40] LESLIE GLASS: That's right. Yes, that's right. [00:27:42] PF: One thing that struck me as I was reading your book is how this is about changing the relationship between the current mother and daughter. How, in doing that, is that going to change subsequent generations? That’s what strikes me is like this is a book that does just change the two – the mother-daughter. You can affect generations by making these changes. Have you talked about that? [00:28:06] LESLIE GLASS: Absolutely. It's like breaking the cycles, breaking the cycles, breaking all destructive cycles, whether it's a fighting habit, whether it's being judgmental about everything the other one does, whether it's that fight or flight kind of slamming doors or that being silent, that being silent and being cold to each other. The whole idea is to find compassion for the other person and have the tools, have the actual ways to stop your fighting, have the – we talk about triggers and how to stop your triggers. I think that once you create new habits and new cultural habits with your mother and daughter, your grandchildren are going to repeat it, your sons. It will also work with all your other relationships. [00:28:56] PF: About that, go ahead and answer. I was going to ask about that, too. [00:28:59] LINDSEY GLASS: Well, I'm going to lead right into that question because often when one person changes, people follow. If one person gets sober, sometimes other people get sober. If one person in the family says, “Hey, I'm not going to fight anymore. You want to talk to me. Here's how you have to talk to me,” and it sticks. Then, yes, you're going to be moving forward. I think the whole thing about stopping the generational stuff is clarity because people are walking around not even understanding that they're behaving in ways. I have heard so many women tell me how crazy their mother is. Then I'm looking at their lives and their behavior and their relationships, and I'm like, “Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, honey.” In our family, we said, “Hey, we've got X, Y, and Z going on, and we don't want this going on to the next generation. So here are the things we're willing to do.” Here's the problem with outing yourself. Once everybody knows, you have to be accountable. There's a certain amount of accountability that we're forced into just by – I'm like – now, I can't scream at people in the car because somebody will recognize me. [00:30:15] LESLIE GLASS: She's not so recovered. [00:30:18] PF: As I said, this is an incredible book. It has so much advice and so much insight to give. What is it that you hope to see come out of it? [00:30:25] LINDSEY GLASS: My big thing was hope because when we were in that bad place, it felt hopeless. It wasn't until I went into certain kinds of groups that I even knew other people were dealing with it. My hope is that it shares with a lot of people that a lot of us are going through this and that you're not alone. If you struggle with your mom or daughter, you are just not alone, and there are some solutions. What about you? [00:30:50] LESLIE GLASS: I just want people to understand more about the female experience. I want people to be able to look and say, “Oh, my gosh. I didn't know that about women. I didn't know that about women. I didn't know.” It was looking back a hundred years of the way my great-grandmother probably didn't know how to read. She raised nine children, and they all went on to be successful people. I just want people to understand how much trauma and how difficult it is to be a woman. How great we are. The Chinese say that we hold up half of the heaven, but we probably hold up the whole heaven because there wouldn't be any humanity without us. I want mothers and daughters to have more compassion for who we are and what we've accomplished in the world, what we have to go through. [00:31:44] PF: Lindsey, Leslie, fabulous spending time with you today. I know our listeners are going to love this. We're going to tell them how they can find you, how they can find your book, and how they can start healing their own mother-daughter relationships. [00:31:56] LESLIE GLASS: Awesome. [00:31:57] PF: Thank you for what you've done. [00:31:57] LINDSEY GLASS: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:32:03] PF: That was Leslie and Lindsey Glass, authors of The Mother-Daughter Relationship Makeover. If you'd like to learn more about them, discover their book, or follow them 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. If you aren't already receiving us every week, we invite you to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to drop us a review and let us know what you think of the show. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Harmony and Healing Through Jin Shin Jyutsu With Adele Leas   [INTRO] [0:00:08] PF: Welcome to Happiness Unleashed with your host, Brittany Derrenbacher, presented by Live Happy. As companions for our animals, most of us like to take a hands-on approach. But today's guest shows us how we can use our hands to help our animals find better health and harmony. I'm Paula Felps, and I'm joining Brittany as she sits down with Adele Leas, internationally known teacher and originator of Jin Shin Jyutsu for animals. Although this practice was originally designed for humans, Adele discovered its amazing ability to balance the body, mind, and spirit in diverse species of animals to deepen the human animal connection and keep everyone happy and healthy. Let’s have a listen. [INTERIVEW] [0:00:50] BD: Hi, Adele. Welcome to the show. [0:00:52] AL: Hi there. Thrilled to be here. [0:00:55] BD: So, Jin Shin Jyutsu. Did I say that correctly? [0:01:02] AL: You're perfect. [0:01:03] BD: What does that mean? [0:01:05] AL: So, it translates from the Japanese as Jin is man or person of knowing, and compassion. Shin is the Creator. But this is not a religion. Jyutsu, the art of. So, you string it all together. You've got the art of the Creator, through compassionate person of knowing. Ain’t that pretty? [0:01:33] BD: Yes. That's beautiful. So, this is a healing modality that can be used on animals. It’s often associated with humans, but this is your life's work to use this modality with animals. [0:01:47] AL: Exactly. [0:01:48] BD: How would you describe to the listeners just a very easy way to describe what Jin Shin is, just for maybe someone that's listening that has never heard of it before? That has no idea what this modality is? What's the most accessible definition of what this modality is? [0:02:08] AL: I would say that it's the harmonizing art, based in the breath, using gentle, non-invasive touch that balances body, mind, and spirit. [0:02:20] BD: How did you get into this? How did this come about in your life? [0:02:26] AL: Totally by accident, but I think, I mean, in air quotes, I in 1988, I was in a drowning accident and I was with my fiancé. He died. They brought me back to life with the paddles. I lost a third of my left lung. So, I had a whole lot of grief. I couldn't breathe. Without breathing and grief, your immune system cycles down. Did the western route and I just wasn't getting better. Someone I worked with gave me a gift certificate for this thing that we've already shown. It’s hard to pronounce. At least until you know it. I went and got on our table and she very gently said, “How about if we take off the oxygen mask?” I was just terrified, and she said, “It'll be right here. You put up one finger or something and I'll put it back on.” That's where it started. [0:03:25] PF: So, what exactly is it? You and Brittany are obviously very familiar with it, and I only know it through Brittany and knowing that she has this worked on her animals. What exactly does it do? [0:03:37] AL: So, as I mentioned, its history is an ancient Japanese hands-on harmonizing art. Healing, being a byproduct of harmony. The woman who brought it to this country in the 1950s, Mary Burmeister says that, “When you are in harmony, there is no imbalance.” Another one of her quote is, “You're never in disharmony because of what you lack, but what you haven't let go of.” So, maybe that hit the nail on the head. The idea of the work is based in the breath. And while we have to inhale, the most important part of it is the exhale. The letting go. From that letting go, we can come back to the state of the energy of our blueprint. What we were intended to be. So, it balances spirit, mind, body. I work with people who have cluster migraines, and I work with dogs who have had a leg amputated. I work with cats who, his person has passed away, and they have been given to the refuge where I'm on staff, and they're untouchable. You can meet these beings where they're at. [0:05:11] BD: So, Jin Shin is understanding that animals have energy bodies, just like we do, and that if we are willing to first regulate our own nervous system, we can then be agents in working with the nervous systems of the animals in our lives. [0:05:34] AL: Absolutely. Oh, well said young lady. It's really, again, I quote Mary Burmeister a lot. But she has a quote that says, “It is complicatedly simple, not simply complicated.” You can learn a few basics, and then be with these animals, and they're going to guide you to a very large extent. They're going to show you – [0:06:08] BD: How can animals teach us harmonizing? Because I feel like that, what is harmonizing? And how can animals teach us that? [0:06:18] AL: I think, harmonizing, I think it's being in the present. I think they are champions of that. They don't have taxes that are due. They don't have social media praise them. They don't have term papers due or cars that need to get to the repair shop. They're where they are. And they don't hold on to things. So, for me, always my way to touch base, my way to come back, is to get with my animals. [0:06:54] BD: What is your hope with teaching Jin Shin as a healing modality for animal companions? [0:07:02] AL: You are an angel. Just yesterday, I was journaling on this and meditating on this. I would love this to become common knowledge, like they used to say, “Mom’s home remedies.” If people build this way of connecting to their animals into their way of living, we always said that Jin Shin Jyutsu works best when nothing happens. Because it goes on in harmony. There aren’t big crises as often. I'm not saying it can't happen. But it deepens the connections with your animals. For me, I don't believe you can do this very long, without becoming better and better at intuitive communication. Because they're telling us, and if we’re hands on, and we're focused on them, we're in the right space to hear. So, I would just love it to be kind of an everyday thing. Take the woo-woo and exotic out and make it a way to be with our animals. [0:08:15] PF: What are some other results that people will see if they're like, “Well, this sounds interesting, but I don't know. My pet has been sick for a while. My pet is emotionally distraught all the time.” What are some changes you'll see in animals as they are treated this way? [0:08:31] AL: It's a great question. So, it's a cumulative art. Mostly, you see – and that's why I love people to learn it to share at home, so you see little incremental changes. [0:08:45] BD: Adele, tell us about you have an upcoming workshop in Louisville, Kentucky at the end of May and tell the listeners what that's about. [0:08:53] AL: Yes. I'm really looking forward to it. It is a three-day workshop from May 31st through June 2nd, and it's a first. I am co-teaching with two of my faculty. Susan [Name inaudible 0:09:08] who I mentioned earlier, and Kelly Mount, both fabulous, longtime Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners and longtime animal people. We are going to be at Windy Meadows equestrian farm, which has a combination of rescue horses and dogs and retired horses, I believe. It's going to be a lovely time to go in depth. We'll work on ourselves, we'll study, and then we'll work on the animals. You'll get different species. And I always want people to work on themselves first so they understand how that feels, what you're sharing with the animals. [0:09:54] BD: Adele, thank you so much for coming on the show and hopefully all the listeners feel just as harmonized as I do by listening to the sound of your voice, while we talked about this topic, but we really appreciate your time. [0:10:08] AL: Well, thank you. This is my idea of absolute fun. So, I appreciate it. Thanks for your interest. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:10:14] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher talking with Adele Leas about Jin Shin Jyutsu for animals. If you'd like to learn more about this art, you can check out Adele's book, Jin Shin Jyutsu For Your Animal Companion, watch a video to learn how to practice it yourself, or check out her three-day animal retreat in Kentucky later this month. You can find information for all of those when you visit our website at livehappy.com. Of course, Brittany will be back next month to talk about how pets bring us joy, help us heal, and can be some of our greatest teachers. So, until then, for everyone at Live Happy, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Becoming a Mindful Mother With Jennifer Mulholland [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 465 of Live Happy Now. In just a few days, we're going to celebrate Mother's Day. But the fact is, all the moms out there need to take time to celebrate themselves every day. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today, I'm sitting down with Jennifer Mulholland, a working mom, conscious leadership expert, and co-author of the book, Leading with Light: Choosing Conscious Leadership When You're Ready for More. Jennifer's work focuses on cultivating presence and rediscovering the light within, and she's here to talk about how we can bring that business principle into our lives as mothers and how it can change the world for us and around us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Jennifer, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [0:00:49] JM: Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here today, Paula. [0:00:53] PF: We have a big day coming up, and that's Mother's Day. So, that's the perfect time to talk about something that you call mindful mothering. I was really taken by that phrase. I may have heard it before. But it landed with me differently when I received that email about you talking about that. So, I wonder to start things, if you could explain what it means to be a mindful mother. [0:01:16] JM: Lovely. Yes, I think, well, first of all, being a mother is such a gift that we've been given for those of us that have children, or mothering our pets, or mothering our parents. It comes in many different forms. But I really feel like we've just been given such an incredible gift to be in that role. Being a mindful mother really means being more aware, aligned, and intentional, and how we nurture those we care for, and how we nurture and care for ourselves. It's all too easy to be the givers, and the doers, and the coordinators, and the schedulers, and the lovers, and the band-aid-ers, and all the roles that mothering comes. It's too easy to leave ourselves out of that equation. So, being a mindful mother is really slowing down to be present with your way and how you care for others and how you care for yourself. [0:02:23] PF: That sounds amazing. We know that would have incredible results. You can tell just from thinking about it and how it feels when you think about that, you know it's going to have an incredible effect. But what happens in real life, when you're burning the candle at both ends, and the kids are going crazy, and all kinds of chaos is happening around you. How do you maintain that mindful mother state when everything around you is chaos? [0:02:49] JM: Yes. It's such a practice and it's a giant experiment. So, what works for me, may not work for you and we're all trying to figure it out. I would say, the old adage that we can't give what we don't have, I feel like is the routing of where I'm coming from with this kind of idea, in the sense that, to be mindful is to really be aware of what works for you and what doesn't. To be aligned with that and then be more intentional in how you show up. One of the greatest ways we can practice is practicing presence. Literally, being present with the micro-moment that shows up. Oftentimes, we are so hijacked as mothers, where we're doing one thing, and then we get a call from our child, or depending upon the age of your children, like you have a tug on your leg, or the door opens and it's all of a sudden, you're constantly distracted and multitasked and taken away from being present. So, practicing being present, pulling yourself back with whatever is in front of us. Because if a child or if a loved one comes in, then how can you be attentive with them fully? One of our greatest gifts is our presence. It's not necessarily what we're saying all the time, or the decisions that we're making, or the advice we're giving. It's the energy, it's the essence at which we show up in that exchange. Oftentimes, it's not verbal. Oftentimes, it's just the way we are when somebody is needing something from us. That can be a choice of whether it's frenetic, and distracted, and frustrated, and irritated because we've been interrupted for the 10 millionth time. That's human and we all get that place. Or it can be practice in a way that we really slow down and look to the other person of what are they needing from me right now? Do they need a solution? Do they need to be told? Do they need advice? Or do they just need my love and care, and I need a hold space for them, so they feel heard and seen and supported? So, they can figure it out. Man, that's the art of parenting, of just, when do you know when to shut up? When you don't know just to let your child figure it out for themselves? But you are really with them in that discovery. I feel like one of the routing of a practice is making sure that we are present with whatever is showing up in our field. Because when we are we actually take in more information. That's the awareness. We're able to see and sense and feel a lot more information coming in, that helps us attune and align to what is needed in the moment for ourselves and for the other person that's showing up. [0:06:10] PF: That goes completely into what you talk about in the business realm with conscious leadership and being present. How, as parents, as mothers, as women, do we learn how to start doing that? Because again, you talked about. It is a practice. It's something you can get up in the morning and say, “I'm going to be present today and I'm going to do this.” Then the fires start and they plan to go out the window. So, what are some of the tools that you use and that you give to others to help them learn how to be present? [0:06:42] JM: Well, one of the things, mantras I say, as soon as my feet hit the ground, when I wake up in the morning is, “I am fully embodied.” What that means for me is like my presence is fully in this vehicle and vessel. Because if it's not, we often kind of live in the realm of our heads. A lot of thinking. So, we kick into automatic habit of doing, doing, doing, and coordinating, and scheduling, and showing up, and driving, and all of the things that we do. Oftentimes that's coming from our headspace. So, really try and bring my awareness into my heart space and into the full body vehicle just with that mantra. It helps me ground so that I can listen to my body's cues. That is probably the number one hack that I think we miss a lot and in how our body speaks to us, giving us cues throughout the day of when we are feeling alive and aligned to our light within and when we're not. When we want to leave the room, when we want to procrastinate, when we want to pull back. When we live in our head, we kind of check out of our body's innate wisdom that's constantly giving us the cues of what works for us and what doesn't. One of the practices of being present is just tuning into how does my body feel in this moment? Am I leaning into this conversation? Am I feeling engaged? Do I want to learn more? Stay here? Am I curious? Or am I wanting to get the hell out of here as fast as I can? Am I frustrated? Am I distracted? Am I bored? Our bodies tell us that information all the time. So, I think as moms, as we're spinning a lot of plates and trying to be more mindful in the automatic role of giving, giving, giving, we forget that actually, if we can tune the attention back to mothering ourselves first, what does my body need in this moment? What is it telling me? What does my spirit soul, light, whatever you name it to be need, to feel calm, to feel peaceful, to feel connected? Your body will tell you. A great practice is, I love journal journaling. My business partner and I journal all the time. One great exercise is to literally write a letter to your body, or write a letter to your soul, or spirit, or light, or essence. And ask it what it needs from you, as if it was your inner child. So, if I'm exhausted and I am so tired at the end of the day, and I don't have any energy, and I'm gaining weight, and I'm feeling down, and I can't figure that out, write a letter to your body and ask what it needs. Your body will tell you. Just write, write, write what it’s saying. Or if you're feeling like, “Wow, I am so scattered and depleted by giving to all my relationships, and my partner, and my family, and my parents, I am just feeling depleted.” Ask your spirit, your light, what it needs to feel more alive, more connected. You'd be so surprised of the wisdom that you already have, we just forget to ask it. [0:10:26] PF: I love that. We do forget that we can tap into ourselves. We're always looking for a cup of coffee, or something else that's going to do that for us. You really talk about – what you're talking about is extreme self-care. It's not just taking a bubble bath. It's really taking care of your soul. It's more like soul care. As moms, it's often difficult to put ourselves first, to say like, “I am going to shut everything out and take care of myself.” But why is it important that women do that and take that time for self-care? How does that make them better as mothers? [MESSAGE] [0:11:03] PF: We'll be right back with Jennifer's answer about how moms can practice self-care. But right now, I wanted to share one of my favorite new indulgences. Discovering the incredibly luxurious bedding from Cozy Earth has completely changed the way I sleep. If you want to get some of the best sleep you've ever had, you need to check it out. I never dreamed that bedsheets could change your life. But Cozy Earth made a believer out of me with these super soft bamboo sheets. They not only feel amazing, but they come in so many beautiful colors that you'll find at least one that fits your style. What's even better is Cozy Earth is as convinced as I am that you'll love these sheets. So, they're offering a 100-night sleep trial and a 10-year warranty on every purchase. What have you got to lose? Not sleep. To sweeten the deal, we're giving you a discount so you can enjoy the luxury you deserve with Cozy Earth. So, head over to cozyearth.com and use promo code Happy 35 for an exclusive 35% off. That's cozyearth.com and use the promo code Happy 35. Now, let's get back to my talk with Jennifer and find out how practicing self-care makes us better mothers. [INTERVIEW CONTINUES] [0:12:14] JM: The world needs more love and care and connection and community and peace. I really believe like the feminine principle, the Divine Mother is here to help cultivate that state of being for ourselves and for all. If we desire that out there in a world where we wish that there's no more war, and we wish for more peace, the only way we are going to get to that as a society is to have that individually in ourselves. There's no better person equipped for that than the mother. Learning what self-care looks like to you, is I just want to say, it’s a giant experiment. Because I have gotten so frustrated myself of like, “Well, I know I need to care for myself. I don't freaking know how to do it. I don't know what I need and it changes.” So, give yourself more grace in experimenting and checking in, like, “What do I need and want in this moment? What would feel good?” I think that question, what feels good to me now is so helpful, and following the feeling of feeling good, is likely to lead to peace, and love, and more care, and nurturing. So, that feels like the playground. If we could follow the feeling of feeling good, more for ourselves, whatever that is, and that can change 10 times throughout the day, then we can really bring that state of calmness, of more peace and groundedness and connection to anybody we connect with, especially our families and loved ones. [0:14:14] PF: Yes. As you were talking, I could see just like putting it across my computer, what would feel good right now? Just so you have that constant reminder until you get into that rhythm of looking for that and seeking that out. In your work, because you work with so many different people. What do you see as the biggest obstacle to finding what is good for them? Because I know it's probably an obstacle we're putting up ourselves. [0:14:39] JM: I see so a lot of caregivers, that they're so good at caring for others and they've lost themselves, that they haven't put themselves in that relationship. Over time, that depletes us all, right? I've been one of them too. Just going, going, going and not even catching myself that – because it felt selfish in a way. Self-care, caring for self is not selfish. I just want to rearchitect that unconscious belief system that somehow we have to be humble, and be the givers, and the Wonder Women, and have the red capes to be able to come in, and be strong, and resilient, and know the answers, and know where we're going. And it's just bullshit, we don't, right? So, experimenting and being more gentle. One of the greatest barriers is lack of self-worth. I don't feel enough. I feel like I have to lose weight to be better. I have to dye my hair to be better. I have to have the right job to be better. I can't just be a mom. I have to be a working mom and I have to have a business and I have to be on this ladder and this trajectory. There’s so many conditions, unconsciously, I think that we have kind of layered ourselves with, and it's tricky, because it's not obvious. I think what I would love to, for other people, to give themselves permission to be human, and hear, and know that you're enough right now. That you have everything that you need to not only nurture others, but to nurture yourself in a more mindful, intentional way. We get to choose if the monkey mind, if the inner critic is getting louder and louder, and my confidence, or your confidence is going lower and lower, we get to choose when we're going to say, “How is that working for me? Is it working for me? Is it giving me the results I want?” If it's not, we get to choose. That's free will. We have this incredible ability to choose to not feed that narrative anymore. That's what gets in the way. The self-worth and society is, especially, in the United States. We are just being bombarded with Instagram ads and like model-type bodies, and this is the house you need to have. It beats you down after a while. [0:17:31] PF: How does that affect people as mothers? Because, again, they're getting that message of you shouldn't be doing this, and you should be all these things. And the normal female is like, “I'm not and I can't.” What does that do to us emotionally and mentally, when we're getting all these messages, that we should, we should, we should, and we're like, “I can't?” [0:17:56] JM: Right. Well, what has happened is that it's kicked in a response to do more. The opposite is the antidote, honestly. The less we do, the more space we have, the more space we create, the more space we give ourselves to be ourselves fully. We kind of can then start to subtly unplug from those unconscious messages, and cultural conditionings, and programs that kick us into this idea that we need to have more, do more, to be more. Where I'm sitting in practice is, “Well, what if I just were to be me? What would that look like?” That takes a lot of practice, to bring more of my full self to my children, instead of having such a schedule, to have space where there's no schedule, and there's room in those spaces for new connection, new insight to come through. If we're so overscheduled and we're on the hamster wheel seeking to be more, to do more, to have more, which is the kind of cultural machine in the United States. We just start to deplete because we're not restoring, we're not remembering who we are, and that who we are is a being, it's a human being. It's not a human doing, as we've all been kind of tricked to believe. [0:19:36] PF: I'd love to talk about how if a mother can change and learn to be a mindful mother can become more present, what is that going to teach her children? Because one thing we've talked about, just last week's podcast, we talked about Gen Z and the horrible state of mental health among young people, and what the surveys are showing us. Obviously, so much of it is your product of the home in which you're raised as well. So, if you become a mindful mother, what kind of gift are you giving your children? And how are you changing their experience when they become parents of their own? [0:20:12] JM: I come back to presence, because I think that is really getting hijacked to use that term, again, in society and with the technology that our attention spans have become so short in what we're able to sit with and be with. A mother's presence, unspoken, it's like the healing ointment that is needed. That may look like a deep connection with your child in that moment. It may just be sitting with them, not saying anything. It may be really deeply listening, not to fix, not to solve, not to give advice, but to listen to where they're coming from, as they share it. That seems to be a real helpful tool that if we can practice being present and not meeting our children in the frenetic bounce of subject to subject, multitask, multimedia, kind of state of affairs. If we can ground in learning how to quiet our own minds, we become less reactive, and we become more intentional in how we respond and participate in the care that we're giving. Again, we can't give that care unless we are giving that care to ourselves. So, I think with the Gen Z, we’re kind of in the state with mental health, where we have really bought our thinking. We're buying our low-quality thoughts. And we – [0:22:08] PF: I love how you put that. I've never heard it put that way and I love that. [0:22:12] JM: We're not taught to question them. We're taught to identify that those things, thoughts are me. That's who I am. Versus I'm in a low mood, I woke up feeling shitty, or whatever, and I'm having low-quality thinking right now. So, I'm actually not going to take my thinking so seriously, because I can't really trust it, because it's not really helpful. We get to choose what we're buying, and we just haven't really been educated or taught that we have a say in which thoughts we're going to digest. We do it so unconsciously. And the moment, we pull a thought down and digest it, guess what it does? It creates a feeling. That feeling then emanates and then we attract people that match that feeling. So, we have a society right now, and especially with the Gen Z generation, I feel like that they're being bombarded with so much negativity, and we don't have tools to help them navigate which thinking, which thoughts they're choosing, and which thoughts they're not. Now granted, there are many people that are in different states of mental health, that I don't want to diminish the causality, and the conditions that are so many different flavors that people have. But I do believe when we are present, we get to then more consciously choose which thoughts we're buying, and we want to bring into our digestive system, and create the feelings we want to have throughout the day and which ones we don't. [0:23:46] PF: I love the way you present that. It paints such a wonderful picture, and really sums it up. So, what do you want moms to think about? If you're talking directly to all the moms out there, what is the one thing that they should keep in mind say, beginning with this Mother's Day and then hearing through, to become more mindful, and to enjoy this journey of motherhood and life more? [0:24:12] JM: What do you really need for yourself to feel mothered? If you were to mother yourself, or if you are your own best friend, and you could wrap yourself in the care and the love and the nurturing that you really need, what you need today, tomorrow, this week, to feel more cared for? To feel more supported? To feel more gotten? To feel more loved? Try those things. Just do something for yourself. I would so encourage you to create space for yourself with yourself, with no one else. That can look like meditation. It could look like going for a walk outside in nature. It could look like journaling for five minutes on what you have to be grateful for. It could look like taking a yummy bath and putting bubbles in it. But just really mothering yourself is a learned practice. I didn't learn how to mother myself from my mom. I learned how to be a great mom to my children from my mom. But now, I'm like having to learn how do I mother myself? Mothering the mother within, I do feel like is a game changer to unlock this next level of capacity for our divine feminine that is wired to nurture. It's wired to naturally love, and include, and care, and create peace and harmony. Don't we want that for our families and communities in the world? So, I would encourage you as we go up to Mother's Day, to put yourself at that center and say, “What do I need to feel mothered? To feel nurtured? To feel loved?” And try it. [0:26:14] PF: I love it. That is a perfect way to wrap this up. You have a lot to teach us. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find your book, how they can find you, and learn more. But thank you. This is incredible conversation and I appreciate you coming and hanging out with me. [0:26:27] JM: Oh, thank you so much. To all the mothers out there, you're doing a great job and you're worth every single penny, every single second, and we're so grateful. I'm so grateful to walk this path with you. Thanks, Paula. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:26:46] PF: That was Jennifer Mulholland, talking about mindful motherhood. If you'd like to learn more about Jennifer, discover her book, Leading with Light, or follow her on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to sign up for our weekly live happy newsletter. Every week, we'll drop a little bit of joy in your inbox with the latest stories, podcast info, and even a happy song of the week. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: 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: Embrace Earth Day With Casey Johnson [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 464 of Live Happy Now. This week, we're celebrating Earth Day, and that makes it the perfect time to talk about what we can do for our planet. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm sitting down with Live Happy Marketing Manager, Casey Johnson, who created this year's Earth Day #HappyActs campaign. As you're about to find out, that campaign grew out of her passion for the planet. So she sat down with me to talk about how we can all take small steps to create big changes. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:33] PF: Casey, thank you for joining me on the show today. [00:00:35] CJ: Thank you. It's great to be here. [00:00:38] PF: Well, Earth Day is coming up. [00:00:40] CJ: It is. [00:00:41] PF: There are so many ways to think about it, celebrate it, and talk about it. People probably don't know that that is one thing that you and I have in common. We like animals. We like the planet. We have a lot of things in common. I wanted to bring you on and talk about it because over the years that I've known you, I've just seen how intentional you are with your life and with taking care of the planet and taking care – [00:01:04] CJ: Thank you. [00:01:05] PF: Well, I wanted to talk. What do you do in your daily life? Let's forget about Earth Day for a second. What do you do for the planet just on a day-to-day basis? [00:01:14] CJ: This is one of my favorite topics, so happy to share. I'll start off with this. I mean, people might find this interesting, but I limit my plastic consumption, which is no shock. But I have not bought Ziploc bags in over five years. I will not buy them. [00:01:30] PF: Oh, my gosh. [00:01:31] CJ: I know. I haven't bought them in over five years. [00:01:34] PF: Yes, because I have wanted to cut out that kind of plastic consumption, and it is so hard. How did you do that, and what do you do instead because they're a staple? [00:01:44] CJ: I know. It was honestly really difficult at first. But I've replaced all of it with Stasher bags. That's the brand, Stasher. I mean, they're basically Ziploc bags. They're dishwasher-safe. You can even put them in your oven to a certain temperature, and they won't melt. They're safe. If they get warm, they won't get chemicals on your food or whatever. That’s what I do. [00:02:06] PF: You’re not going to have a BPA sandwich. [00:02:08] CJ: Exactly, yes. No chemicals. That's what I've used in replacement of Ziploc bags, and it's made it just so easy, and they sell them in different sizes. I feel like I should be sponsored right now. Sponsor me, Stasher. Please. But I have them in so many different sizes. I have really large ones to even super small ones where I can even hold ChapStick and small little makeup items. You can repurpose them. They're not just for food. You can use them however you'd like, but that's what's made the transition away from Ziploc bags work for me. [00:02:40] PF: How did you do that? This is incredible. [00:02:42] CJ: I know. People are so shocked when I tell them I don't buy Ziploc bags. [00:02:45] PF: I know. What made you decide like, “I'm not going to do that anymore.”? [00:02:49] CJ: Yes. I mean, I just see all of this pollution and plastic waste, single-use plastic. I just thought, one, and I won't request plastic ware when ordering takeout. That's another simple thing. But, two, Ziploc bags. I'd go to family gatherings, and they'd give me leftovers, and they would give me 10 different Ziploc bags. Then I would just throw it away. So if you add that up every day, it's hundreds of Ziploc bags per household each month. Just eliminating that alone I feel like makes a big difference. [00:03:20] PF: That's amazing. What are other areas where you've cut out? Because I cut out plastic but not as well as you have. I haven’t – [00:03:28] CJ: I know. [00:03:28] PF: Done the Ziploc thing. [00:03:29] CJ: I’m extreme about it. [00:03:30] PF: I love that. I love that. What are some of the other things that you've done? [00:03:34] CJ: Yes. I eat meatless meals. I was actually vegetarian for 10 years, but I had to incorporate meat back into my diet. I only eat meat like one to two times a week, and I feel like that is a significant way to reduce your carbon footprint. [00:03:51] PF: That's terrific. If you're already living like this and then you have Earth Day, do you do anything special? The things that you're doing are things that people would say like, “I'm going to try that for Earth Day,” and then the next day go back to their habits. Then how do you observe Earth Day? Do you do anything special? [00:04:07] CJ: Oh, man. I love Earth Day for so many reasons. I love spending time outdoors and connecting with nature. It just brings a lot of joy into my life. I mean, since I have these daily practices already in place, on Earth Day, I try to spend as much time as I can outside. We have a pond near our house. So maybe I'll go bring some grapes and seeds for the ducks. But, yes, I really just love to be outside. One thing we're doing this year in celebration of Earth Day is #HappyActs to celebrate Earth Day, so eco-friendly #HappyActs. I'll definitely be doing some of those as well. [00:04:44] PF: Yes. We're going to talk about some of those before we end this broadcast. [00:04:47] CJ: I know. I'm jumping ahead. [00:04:49] PF: No. No, you're not. But what I wanted to do – no, that's a teaser. It's like, “Everyone, stay tuned, and we're going to –” [00:04:54] CJ: Yes, the teasers. Stay tuned. [00:04:56] PF: Casey's tips for #HappyActs for Earth Day. What's interesting to me is that you and I are from different generations, not in spirit. [00:05:05] CJ: Hardly. [00:05:08] PF: That’s something I have really seen is people of my time don't have the same kind of compassion and passion about the Earth that my generation's children have and that Gen Z has. Can you talk about that? Did you grow up with the passion for the planet? Or how did this come about? What sparked all this, and what is happening with younger people in terms of how they view the planet? [00:05:37] CJ: Yes, that's a great question. No, I did not grow up with this instilled in my brain or in my lifestyle. It's just something that I've just developed over the years. I think the driver behind this younger generation is that we're extremely aware of the impact humans have on the environment. It's all we've known. We've grown up in a world of climate change, pollution, plastic waste, what we were talking about earlier. [00:06:03] PF: Or millennial. After you, you have Gen Z. [00:06:08] CJ: Gen Z. [00:06:08] PF: How do you think they are even more affected by this? [00:06:12] CJ: They're huge advocates because many schools, they teach kids about climate change and pollution. I think this education just leads to a greater understanding of the importance of sustainability and eco-friendly practices and just saving the planet. [00:06:30] PF: Right. I think that's very cool that they're being raised to think this way. [00:06:35] CJ: They're very vocal. [00:06:36] PF: Yes. We didn't even talk about it. Nobody thought. It's like our whole thing was like, “Don't litter.” That was it. That's as far as it went. [00:06:44] CJ: You got to start somewhere. [00:06:45] PF: Exactly. But what's very interesting to me is how I'm seeing different aspects of loving the Earth come up in my podcast interviews. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had Caroline Paul on, and she was talking about outdoor adventure and how it's so good for us as we – especially for women who aren't encouraged to be adventurous. As they age, it's really fantastic for them. But one thing that she brought up toward the end of the podcast, and she brings it up very well in her book, is that we need to get outside because the outside is going away. If you look at what is happening, we are losing our green space. We are losing our fresh air. So get out there and enjoy it. That has been interesting to me. Then another thing that's come up is just gardening, getting out and tending to the garden. How good it is for you to be in the soil, dig in it, breathe that air. It's amazing the health benefits that it has for you. [00:07:44] CJ: Yes. Grounding, too. [00:07:46] PF: Yes. I've started doing that. Since we moved from downtown Nashville to the rural area, I started earthing a lot. I walk around barefoot a lot, just to get that – [00:07:59] CJ: I love that. [00:07:59] PF: Connection with the Earth. It makes a huge difference to be able to get out and enjoy a green space and to really have that Earth connection. [00:08:07] CJ: Yes, I agree. I mean, I think everyone loves nature. There's just so much science behind it. It does so much for you. One thing I love about Gen Z is that they're demanding action to save our planet. They are demanding it. They're keeping businesses accountable for their environmental practices and demanding cruelty-free ingredients and clean ingredients and just keeping everyone responsible so that we can enjoy these green spaces. [00:08:37] PF: Yes, yes. They do go away, and I noticed quite a bit. I know Dallas is going through the same thing where it just keeps expanding and expanding. Nashville has – [00:08:45] CJ: It’s a concrete jungle. Yes. [00:08:47] PF: It is. It is. Nashville has experienced that. Now, even it's coming out by where we live. We talk about that. Where is the food going to be grown? Where are people going to get that green fix? Where do you get that? We have so many people. We live on a lake, and so we have people already booking for the summer, now booking for the summer 2024, where it's like, “Can we come out? We want to kayak. We want to do this.” All these things that you just can't have access to. I'm impressed, and just I'm surprised to see how much people feel like they need that. I think it's really indicative of how much our green spaces are going away. [00:09:28] CJ: Yes. I mean, gosh, you got me talking about the environment, so I'm going here. Going back to keeping businesses accountable, people want these beautiful spaces. People want to be in nature. Limiting our plastic consumption, we're not using plastic straws. But I think it all comes down to these businesses who are the huge drivers behind climate change and pollution. It infuriates me so much, and I just like hearing you talk about the lake and how people are seeking that out. From the city, they're coming out to basically the country to be in nature. It proves that people want more green spaces and less concrete and buildings. [00:10:14] PF: Yes. Because what's happening, too, in a lot of cities, obviously, it's great to take a walk. Get out in nature. If you're walking on a sidewalk, okay, at least you're getting – there's, hopefully, some trees around you, and you're getting some of that interaction because trees are so good for you. Oh, my gosh. Just everything that they put off and they’re so, so healing. [00:10:31] CJ: Hug a tree on Earth Day. [00:10:33] PF: Exactly. If you can get off that sidewalk and actually find something green to walk on, it's incredible. This is what Caroline Paul talked about in one of her chapters. She was walking with this 93-year-old woman, I believe, and the woman refused to walk on the sidewalk. She was walking through a neighborhood, and the woman's walking in their yard. Caroline's waiting for them, somebody to come out and be like, “Get off my lawn.” The woman's like, “I'm not going to walk on a sidewalk. It's a completely different experience. I want to be in nature, and that's being on the grass.” That's the thing. We don't get that when we're just walking on a sidewalk, even, though, yes, it's good to be outside, breathing the fresh air. Then one thing I saw a lot of is, say, they'd open a new dog park, and they put AstroTurf in there. [00:11:17] CJ: Oh, you know. [00:11:18] PF: It's like, “How's my dog –” [00:11:19] CJ: Don't even get me started on AstroTurf. [00:11:23] PF: You know. So it is. We've gone to that, too, where we we're getting away from nature. In what you're seeing, I see so many ways where we're getting away from nature. How do you see us also getting back to nature? [00:11:37] CJ: Yes. That's a good question because I see little green patches in the middle of a city. Well, that's nice. It also kind of makes me sad in a way. We have this little sliver of green. But then surrounded, it's just the hustle and bustle of the city, although I do see some things on a more positive note. I see in other countries and, hopefully, the US can adopt this, but they're adding greenery to buildings, adding plants on the outside structures of buildings that you're getting that clean air, and just to kind of combat all of the emissions from cars and stuff. Plus it's pretty to look at. I feel like business or building structures now, they all kind of look the same. So I feel like adding the greenery just makes it even more beautiful, beautiful and functional. [00:12:24] PF: Yes. Vertical gardens. Yes, vertical garden. [00:12:27] CJ: Vertical gardens, yes. Yes, exactly. [00:12:28] PF: I love that. I love that idea. Just it's so functional. Like you said, it's beautiful to look at, and it just gives you a different feeling than staring at some concrete. As we move toward Earth Day, you've created some #HappyActs that we could talk about. How do you propose that people can get out there and help celebrate Earth Day? [00:12:52] CJ: Yes. I don't think we've ever done Earth Day #HappyActs before. [00:12:55] PF: We have not. We have done holiday #HappyActs. We have done Halloween #HappyActs. Now, we have Earth Day #HappyActs. [00:13:02] CJ: Yes. I think a lot of this stemmed from wrapping up our 10th year of our annual #HappyActs celebration last month in March. We didn't want to stop there. [00:13:15] PF: We didn't want to stop happy acting. [00:13:17] CJ: No. Happy acting all year round, but yes. Starting this week, we're going to start sharing some eco-friendly #HappyActs leading up to Earth Day, just to make the world a happier and healthier place. [00:13:30] PF: Pray tell, Casey. What would a Earth Day happy act look like? [00:13:34] CJ: Yes. One of them is starting a compost bin for organic waste in your home. They make a lot of – I know a lot of people are like, “Oh, that's going to be so smelly.” They make a lot of small compost bins for your kitchen that you can just put in the corner, and it's not smelly. They have some that actually look aesthetically pleasing, so it can match your kitchen décor. You can also repurpose that for garden. [00:13:59] PF: Can I tell you about our composter? [00:14:01] CJ: Please. [00:14:02] PF: You will just geek out over this. We've discovered something called Lomi, and it's – [00:14:08] CJ: What’s that? [00:14:08] PF: Electric. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous design. It's L-O-M-I. We can put all our food waste in there. Then we turn it on when it's full, and it takes 16 hours. At the end of that, you have this beautiful, dark compost that can go directly into the garden. It's amazing. [00:14:26] CJ: Oh, my gosh. [00:14:27] PF: The amount of food waste that we have eliminated between being able to do that, and then, obviously, there's still stuff that you can throw directly out. It's been amazing. It's been absolutely great for the garden, and it's so simple. You feel great doing it. [00:14:45] CJ: That's amazing. You're living my dream. I want to live out in the country and have a garden. I want to compost the way you guys are. You guys are doing it right. [00:14:54] PF: Come on out, Casey. [00:14:56] CJ: I will. Don't tempt me. A few other happy acts. I could talk about composting all day, but just a few other ones, I saw this on Instagram, actually. I thought this was a really cool idea. One, it eliminates food waste we were talking about. But you can also support your local wildlife by creating a bird feeder. You can cut an orange in half, and scoop out the part that you would eat, and then use the peel as a bird feeder. Just put seed in there and then you can hang it from a tree. [00:15:24] PF: How nice. [00:15:25] CJ: Yes. It’s also bee-friendly. We got to save the bees, too. [00:15:28] PF: Oh, that’s cool. [00:15:30] CJ: Yes. [00:15:30] PF: Oh, Yes. You got to take care of them. That’s cool. [00:15:32] CJ: I thought that was a cool way, yes, to just eliminate food waste and support the birds and pollinators. [00:15:39] PF: I like that. How many happy acts do you have in total you're going to share over the next week? [00:15:43] CJ: I think we have four, five. They’re super simple ways. The whole purpose of this was to make it simple and sustainable for everyone, not make it too complex, simple actions that you can apply in your day-to-day life. I don't expect people to ditch their Ziploc bags right away like I did. [00:16:01] PF: We got to ease into it. [00:16:02] CJ: Yes. You got to start somewhere. [00:16:04] PF: I like that. Where are they going to find the happy acts? Is it – are you sharing it on social? Is it – where's the best place to look for that? [00:16:11] CJ: Yes. We'll be posting that on social; Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Then I'm sure we'll also be sending out a newsletter just for easy access with all of them in one place. [00:16:22] PF: I love this. I love that you took the initiative to create this, and I'm really excited to see how it does. [00:16:28] CJ: Thank you. [00:16:28] PF: I just love how you're so diligent about – it's like Mother's Day for the Earth for you. [00:16:34] CJ: It is. Protect our mother. [00:16:36] PF: I love how you do that. [00:16:36] CJ: Our Mother Earth. [00:16:37] PF: Exactly. She's the only one we got, so – [00:16:41] CJ: That’s right. [00:16:41] PF: Let’s take care of her. I love it. Thank you so much for sitting down and talking about this. I know we can just geek out on this all day, but I really wanted to talk to you about it. [00:16:51] CJ: Of course. Thank you for having me. I love, love, love, love talking about the Earth and how we can make it a better, healthier place. [00:16:58] PF: Let’s do it. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:17:04] PF: That was Casey Johnson, talking about how we can all care for the planet this Earth Day and beyond. If you'd like to learn more about our Live Happy Earth Day #HappyActs or follow us on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. While you're there, be sure to check out our article by Dr. Randall Hansen, who explains the history of victory gardens, the benefits of gardening, and explains why we should all be looking at how to start our own garden no matter how small it might be. You can also sign up for our Live Happy newsletter to make sure you're getting a little bit of joy in your inbox every week 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: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Days With Jodi Wellman [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 463 of Live Happy Now. What if thinking about death could give more meaning to your life? Well, today's guest says, it can, and she has the research to back it up. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm talking with Jodi Wellman, founder of Four Thousand Mondays, a company designed to help people make the most of their time on this planet. Her TED Talk, How Death Can Bring You Back to Life has more than 1.3 million views. And her new book, You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets is being released in just a few weeks. I sat down with Jodi to find out what started this mission and more importantly, how we all can live better by counting the Mondays that we have left. Let's have a listen. [EPISODE] [0:00:49] PF: Jodi, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [0:00:53] JW: Oh, I'm just downright giddy to be here with you, Paula. [0:00:55] PF: As I told you, I have been so looking forward to this conversation. We've been emailing for a while. I kind of had to wait until we are closer to your book coming out, and it's going to be coming out soon. But even without your book being on the shelves, yet, you've been creating some incredible content that reminds us to live our life and be alive. I wanted to find out your backstory. How did that become your mission? [0:01:19] JW: Well, thank you for the compliment, and thank you for asking. I have been – I would say, appropriately interested in our mortality for a very long time, so since I was probably my early twenties. Just to cut to the chase, I really do believe that the way that we can wake up to living is through the – sometimes stark, and sometimes, a bit of a splash cold water in your face reminder that, "Right, right, right. We're totally going to die." How do we use that not to feel morbid? I found in my twenties; I was always just fascinated by it. Then, my mom died. She went and had the nerve to die, that lovely lady in her late fifties. It wasn't so much for me that she died, which was obviously a crappy thing. But it was my perception at the time that she died with a bunch of regrets. It broke my heart to see as I cleaned up her place, like the vestiges of all these dreams that were just sort of like – well, I don't know. I think I call it somewhere in the book, like the land of dormant intentions. Like all these ideas that she was talented, and creative, and fabulous and just didn't execute. It really woke me up to this idea that we have an end date, we don't know when it is. Here we are taking our time for granted. I guess that was a huge wake up for me, which was not just so much that, "Oh, you could die unexpectedly early." But it's like, oh, you could die in a way where maybe we didn't do this life justice, because we all have hopes, and plans, and dreams, and goals, and things. What a shame if we don't get to do them? [0:02:54] PF: That's so insightful that that occurred at such a young age, that you're interested in this, and your fascination, because we are immortal into our thirties. It doesn't cross our mind that anything, even when we lose friends unexpectedly, it's like well, that's tragic, and it's not supposed to happen, but it's not going to happen to me. [0:03:14] JW: Right. Thanks for touching on that, because we do a really good job of sort of just denying the inevitable. If it happens to other people, or they're older, or it is just a very rare tragedy and occurrence that will not be my fate. Then, you're right, as we age, we start to see that, "Wait a minute, maybe this ruse I've been telling myself is, maybe it's actually closer than I think." So let's use that instead of triggering an existential crisis. Let's make it like existential catharsis. Oh, we just coined something new here today. Let's use this, right? [0:03:46] PF: Yes, because you could almost call this the joy of death, the way that you approach it. I mean, you give us so much inspiration to like, "Okay, I have an end date, and here's what I've got to do before." It's not like a bucket list, it's different than a bucket list. Can you explain that? [0:04:01] JW: Oh, sure. I think many of us, I have strong feelings about the bucket list. It can be lovely just as an aside to touch on that for a sec. If we do identify things that we yearn in long to do that might light us up, but I do think that there's danger because it creates this sort of false sense of satisfaction. There's research around this, right? The idea that sometimes we identify a goal, we put it on a piece of paper, or a spreadsheet, and we put it away, and then we go and live our whole ho-hum Monday to Friday lives. Because it's this notion that we'll do it later. And danger signs, like let's have flashing lights happen, because this deferral of life. I'm not even just worried that we won't get there, because odds are maybe slim, but many of us were waiting to live when we retire. Well, being exactly in our prime at that stage of life, to be traipsing around the world. But, I just think, what about our lives now, don't they deserve something? It is more than just ticking things off a list. I think I have this framework about living wider with vitality and deeper with meaning. I love just using that as a way to stop and assess how wide and deep is my life while I'm here. [0:05:11] PF: Can you talk about Four Thousand Mondays? First of all, when it started, and then explain to us what it is because I really, really love this. And your TED Talk, we're going to give listeners a link to your TED Talk, because that is a such an excellent 15-minute explanation of it. [0:05:26] JW: Thank you so much for that. Well, Four Thousand Mondays, I named my company that because that is approximately the math of what we get if we're lucky to get that many weeks. I've chose Mondays on purpose, because they're just the most annoying and I don't want to annoy people, but I want to – if it was like 4,000 Saturdays, we’d be like, "Woohoo. Life's great, don't need to think about it." But Monday's do rankle, and I want to rankle in the right way to say, "Are you enjoying getting up on a Monday morning, or are you dreading it, or maybe somewhere in between, depending on the day and week?" So, roughly with that timeline, that's what we have. Started Four Thousand Mondays after I studied positive psychology of all things at the University of Pennsylvania. That was in 2020. A very interesting year in our globe. [0:06:13] PF: That's a great year to be doing positive psychology. [0:06:17] JW: Yes, it was roll time, didn't know it when I started. I'll just share, having been interested in this mortality topic for years, but skirting the edges of it, because I just told myself a story, that while I worked with corporations, either as an executive coach or leadership consultant. Prior to that, working corporately for 17 years. I was like, "I can't talk about the Grim Reaper and have anybody take me seriously." Then, I think I found a way; studying it. Anything that you can say that there's empirical evidence behind, all of a sudden, you can stand on a stage. At least, I could with more confidence. That for me was this, and in addition to the plague happening to our university. It was like, I think I have a chance to restart. I cannot not do this, like I was grabbed. And I don't know, I'm very visual, but I'm imagining myself literally being gripped on the arm by the Grim Reaper. I couldn't let it go. It was, I have to do this, I have to scream from the mountaintops. It's like, "Live, guys, because time is ticking." [0:07:13] PF: I love that. I mean, that's so much purpose, so much clarity of, "This is my mission, and I have to spread this message." I mean, I very rarely seeing people who are that clear, and that determined, like, this is it, and I've got to get it out, and I will find a way to do that. [0:07:30] JW: Maybe it will be a show that for some people that I work with a lot of people who are trying to find the thing that they are super passionate about. It's an important part of living a life well lived, is feeling like you did the thing that sparked you. I feel fortunate that – I think what I did was I listened finally, and lit the spark. Like I could tell that it was sizzling in the background. I feel fortunate that in my mid-40s back then, I came to this like, "Oh, no, I'm doing the thing. I'm no longer putting that thing aside. I will find a way to talk to corporations about legacy and mortality." On one hand, if you're waiting for that thing to bite you, it could still come. Also, just a little shout out to go and sus around, and find that little ember of a flame of passion, and see what's there, give it a go. [0:08:16] PF: One thing you advise us to do is to count our remaining Mondays. I did that, and then I decided like, I needed more Monday, so I decided to live longer. I expanded it. Why is it a good idea to count our Mondays? They might do like I do, where it's like, "You've got to be kidding me?" [0:08:38] JW: Right. Right. Yes. It is definitely potentially morbid, and eye-opening, and good, I say. This granularity that I am hoping we all get like I just like breaking things down to the ridiculous for the purpose of the wakeup call, right? The idea – and I have a calculator on my website if math is not a good way to spend your remaining Mondays. It's on the resources page. It's a way to say, like I know I have 1,841 Monday's left. When you do the countdown, it usually does create that little reaction, and then the science behind it is what's called temporal scarcity. That's that phenomenon that happens when we tune into something that is limited time only. Our perception about it all of a sudden is very different than when we just thought we could live forever, now that we consciously think that. But when we know something is like a pumpkin spice latte, only going to be around for a certain amount of time, or a rare gem. It's so much more valuable. That is exactly the deal with counting our Mondays. I think we get halfway there when we just talk about the idea that we are finite, "Ugh, sucks to be us. What do you want to do?" Then, go answer your next email. But when you do the math, I don't call it morbid math. I guess, I call it motivating math. That is the thing that makes you say – maybe it takes a bit your breath away. I'd like I did it recently about my working Monday's left. I don't really know if I'll ever really retire. But whatever, like at the age that I feel like I'm allowed to say no to stuff, and it took my breath away. It caused me to cease, and say, "Oh, wait a minute, that's not enough time to do the things I want to do." All right, let's just all take a moment of silence to acknowledge that, "Crap, there will never be enough time to live the lives we are to live." Okay. So now, it's just like a recalibration exercise of like, what matters, what do you want to stuff in there? My exercise was like a career exercise of, "Oh, I do not want to be doing these things anymore." So, I redesigned my business. For example, doing weight less one-on-one coaching. It's like, I want to be doing all my things over here for now. We reserve the right to change. This is that editing that we get to do. It's the reprioritizing that we get to do of, how do I fit in what matters? Presuming you've done a little bit of internal work to figure out what really does matter, now, we can do that in an afternoon at Starbucks. [0:10:59] PF: Yes. Yes. What your message does is give us hope that it doesn't matter how many Mondays we have left. I do have friends. They're either thinking about retiring, or they have retired recently. They're kind of throwing up their hands like, "Well, I didn't do that. I wish I had. Da da da." I'm like, "You still have time, especially if you're not working. You can go do it." That is what your message delivers so clearly, just because you didn't do it. Okay. So you didn't join that rock band in high school, and now you're 70. Pick up a guitar, figure it out, do it now. That is the kind of hope that you give us. [0:11:36] JW: Okay. We're right on the same wavelength, and you're just making the burst here at the seams. Because I have this notion, and it might be my next book that I would call, Not Dead Yet. It is this idea that, wow, while we still have – depending how spiritual you are, but the gift of being alive is preciousness. We're only limited by our imagination and our confidence to be super honest. I think it's fear. We all know, the dreaded F word that just holds us back. You're right, it is not too late, and this is what I call pregrets. I know it's a silly phrase, but it's this idea about –   [0:12:07] PF: I love that.   [0:12:08] JW: Okay. When you do that age-old deathbed regrets exercise, like, "Tonight was my night, what would I be thinking? I wished I did that? I didn't do that. Darn it." Make that list. The good news is that, "Well, hallelujah, you're not dying tonight." Knock on [inaudible 0:12:24], here. Yes, it's your chance. This is why it's a pregret. It is a regret in the making that if you continue down your life course, yes, you will regret not learning Italian and not getting into that band. And not maybe starting that side hustle or whatever. But good news, you're not dead yet, so you could do it. Technically now, even a small version of it. [0:12:48] PF: You know what? Last year, I covered the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp in Nashville. That's where people who have always wanted to be musicians get to come, and they jam with big name musicians. It was the women's version of the camp. I met a woman named Carolyn Price who was 65 years old. When she retired two years ago, she was like, "Well, I've always wanted to play the drums." She went to the School of Rock. Now, if you know School of Rock, these are kids. They're like eight, 12-year-olds. Here she is in her sixties getting out there and learning how to play the drums. I saw this woman get up on stage, and jam with people 20, 30 years younger than her having the ab– she was living her dream. She told me, if that is the only time I ever got on stage like that, worth it. [0:13:37] JW: Oh my goodness, this is fabulous. You reminded me, my sister in Toronto has a friend nearby who was in her early eighties. She said, "I don't know how much time I have left. I got the convertible, and we're driving to Niagara on the Lake, and we've got scarves in our hair like they did in the old movies. And we're driving, and our scars will be blowing in the wind, and we're in a convertible that I just bought, and I just did this." We all know examples. I'm thinking of a fabulous friend who went and got her master's in her sixties, and her early seventies got her PhD. We are not limited. I mean, clearly, sometimes we're resource limited. But usually, we're just holding ourselves back. We get to live wider. Your example there of the school rock gal, that's living wider with vitality at saying, "I want to do these things. I want to feel proud that I showed up and lived it." It's not for optics, it's not just to make other people feel like, "Oh, look at your social media life. It's so glitzy." It's like, I prioritized and I made sure that this list of stuff that I thought would be pretty cool to do, and a life well lived. I made the time for it, and I didn't defer it. I didn't defer it to tomorrow that maybe wouldn't come, or I didn't defer to tomorrow when I maybe wasn't able bodied, and I couldn't actually go on the cruise, and go on the – I know people that have planned, they said I'm going to travel later when I retire, when I retire later, later, and then they did it, Then, their fibromyalgia is so bad, that they basically stayed on the cruise the whole time, and couldn't go on any of the excursions. [0:15:06] PF: Yes. It's so sad because I've seen that as well. We had done some adventure travel, probably 10, 15 years ago, and saw a couple that they had saved up, and they had lived for this adventure, and he couldn't get out of the dinghy to do the climb. Just as sad. It's like, you do, you want to act on your dreams now. One thing that you do to help us get there is you have a quiz to identify how alive we are. I want to find out like, how did you come up with this? And also, what have you discovered through this? [0:15:36] JW: Oh, I've discovered things I did not expect. It's a pretty simple quiz that gets you, it's right on the website. If you go to the website, and annoying pop up will occur, and that's the quiz that will take you there. Pop ups can be good. That it really tracks to the framework that I was telling you about earlier around this idea about living wider with vitality, and deeper with meaning. If you put those two quadrants – not quadrants, those axes together, then you get quadrants. My goal is to help us see where are we today. Are we in the dead zone? Which is like negative on meaning, negative on vitality, faint pulse. Are we vitally empty, which is where we've got lots of fun happening. We are out there, and we are going to the street festivals. But we come home, and we feel like maybe we don't have a purpose, about 10%, 15% of people follow that zone, and 10% fall in that dead zone I told you about. The meatiest zone where most people fall in it, and it oscillates between like 39%, 40%, 41% of people call themselves while they identify as through the survey meaningfully bored. That means, they have enough meaning in their life to be plus on meaning. Maybe they have a job that contribute something, or they're a parent, or looking after aging parents, or something that feels meaningful. But man, do they need a little more fun in their lives? Where's the excitement, and the novelty, and like, I haven't tried Thai food in a while. Like living a little. Maybe the sort of the all work, no play feeling. That's the majority. Like 9% of people are in astonishingly alive, which is truly positive on meaning and truly positive on vitality. That's, of course, where we're aiming to be. If in case, you're a quick mathematician, and you're wondering where the math, there's a big chunk in the middle called the mid zone. That's where a lot of people just kind of it's like a catch all where it's a little bit of everything. [0:17:31] PF: Yes. How do people become astonishingly alive? Because that phrase, it's like, I want to be that. [0:17:39] JW: I know, I know. My first step is to do what I call diagnose the dead zones. Okay. I would be a pretty horrific positive psychology practitioner if I didn't do a quick shout out to identify where the things are feeling lively in your life, and just do more of them. Amplify your positives and strengths. Do more of it, which actually is a great shortcut. It's like, if hanging around with Mitzi makes you feel just like you're laughing, and you pee your pants, and it's so good, hang around with Mitzi more. Okay, do that. But we also have to diagnose where things have flat lined, and I think sometimes we need to clue in and go, "Oh, the thing that's making me feel just kind of, "Ugh" is that I haven't really perked up my social life lately." Or, it could be that, "Wow, my recreation has just fallen off the map, and I haven't really done much lately. I used to go to concerts, or I used to take online courses and learn new things." Maybe if growth matters to you, identify where things need some CPR, so to speak. I've got all the metaphors with the jumper cables on it, and then activate by finding one thing you can do in order to help get a little bit of life back in that action. Many of us think it's an all or nothing thing, or it needs to be a big grand gesture. Like, "I need to go on a big trip I can't afford" or "I need to pick up and move across the country" or "Quit my job and go back to school" and do those things if that really gets you going. But for most of us, we just need like the subtle little sustainable things, which include having a list of things that, again, might be on your deathbed regret list. What's something you really yearn to do, that you would feel that paying of regret for if you're cashing in your chips. What would be a thing? Well, you know, I've always wanted back to speaking Italian. The good news is, we have the Internet now, and we could just look it up, and we could find a way to start to learn Italian tonight. So, just one small step forward. It's sort of committing to a small step is a really big deal. Then, back to the idea about, don't forget to count the Mondays. Don't forget. The memento mori is the concept we're talking about here. [0:19:39] PF: Can you explain that really well. Can you tell us what that means? [0:19:43] JW: For sure. Yes. It's an old Latin phrase that dates back centuries. It means, "Remember, we must die." It is just this whole entire carpe diem philosophy, which is, wow, it's only by remembering through that temporal scarcity that my time is limited. That it will actually egged me on to do those things that normally I would just procrastinate forever, and go to my grave with a whole lot of coulda, shoulda, wouldas. [0:20:09] PF: I think the timing on this, I think it's incredible that you started your map in 2020. You have this whole mission, because I've seen so many people who haven't regained their vibrancy since the shutdown. I see people who are still in their own personal lockdown. I think what you're doing here is reminding us, like, get out there, and do these things again. So, everybody needs to hear this message, because we are still locked up in a lot of ways. [0:20:37] JW: Thanks for saying that. I agree with that fully. Your discussion about get out there, I think about this, like the workshops I give, there are people that rightfully will say, "Hey, what if though, I'm more of an introvert, and getting up, and out there is actually to me my version of like a horror show." I would say, "Well, don't ruin your life. I'm not – there's not a full prescription." You must be out five nights a week? No, because I also am a homebody, and my inclination is like cozy at home with a great movie and a great meal. I also know, it's like finding your right balance for now. But I think we have that sense, if we're being honest with ourselves. Even if you've been feeling like, "No, I like the quiet life, or I just want to read, and I just want the –" great, do that. What else though, look back in history, has made you feel alive? And usually, it does mean saying yes a little bit more to some of those invitations in life. I have to force myself. I in my own case study, because my inclination like I said, "Hello, Netflix." I need to be the one to remind myself when I get an invitation to go out to a happy hour. My first thought is, "Oh, I just want to wash my face, and get in my jammies." Well, you know what? When you come home from the thing from the happy hour, how often have you regretted doing it? Not often. Usually, just makes you feel a little more invigorated and alive. I just know my dose, is I can't have more than one night a week, like one thing a week, but that's my prescription. If I go a month, where I'd have been kind of cocooning, well then, I know. "Oh, honey, you're going to need – remember, don't forget to widen your life with some vitality." What might that look like? [0:22:15] PF: I love that. I love that. You have a new book coming out. It's ready for preorder. It's coming out in May. But we're going to tell listeners how they can preorder it, we'll give them a link to that. Can you talk a little bit about what they can expect from this book? [0:22:28] JW: Oh, thanks for asking. It's called, You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets. You know what? It's like everything we've been talking about here. It's 10 chapters, or we start with a premortem. It's meant to be experiential, because as a coach, it's like, I'm not just going to be telling you stuff. I want you to do, and think, and then, literally do more. But it's this premortem to analyze, like, "Where am I today? Where do I want to be? What scares me? What would like an astonishingly live life look like?" Then, we get into. Okay, let's just talk for a quick hot sec, that we are going to die, and why all this works, and how like talk a little bit about death. We go on a date with death. Then, we talk about the idea about tapping into your regrets, and how to shake things up, and bust some of your habits that might be just kind of turning you into that highly functioning zombie. Then, talking about how to widen your life with vitality, how to deepen your life with meaning. Then, I'm really literal about like a paint by numbers approach to you designing what would make you feel. Like as Hunter S. Thompson said, like skidding in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out into our graves. I want us to skid in broadside, and so, this book is helping you to figure out what's your version of skidding in broadside. Then, of course, there was a post mortem, which is analyzing, okay, wrapping it all up. What one thing do you want to do next, because it needs to be manageable. So yes, that is the experience. That's the wild ride of you only die once. [0:23:51] PF: So excited for this book to come out. So excited to see what this does and to really share your message with our listeners. If they're listening right now, they can't get their hands on it until May, what do they do right now? Where do they start? How do they get off autopilot today, and really start living with purpose?   [0:24:06] JW: Love it. Love it. Love it. [0:24:09] JW: My thought is let's just go to the good old fashioned, count your Mondays. So go to the resources page at fourthousandmondays.com. Do that. Get yourself centered, see how it feels. You may look at it. I did a workshop earlier this week, and someone was like, "Well, that looks like a lot of Mondays." I said, "Well, high five to you. Still, what do you want to do within those Mondays?" Mind you. she wasn't even at the halfway mark yet. [0:24:31] PF: Then, it seems like a lot. [0:24:32] JW: I remember those years. Yes. I would say, yes. First thing is. count the Mondays, and then. even something simple is just start jotting down notes about the stuff that you longed to do. It could be the most miniature version of a bucket list. Silly little things like – I remember when I turned 33, which was a very big year for me at that time. Three is my favorite number, so that I knew was going to be a big year. I'm going to cook my own artichoke. It just felt like that was something I wanted to do. Then, of course, there were things that were bigger scale that might sound more impressive for whatever, but who cares. Little big, minute, magnificent. Just start listing some things that you might love to fit into this one wild and precious life. Then, when the book comes out, you can make more sense of it. Absolutely. [0:25:19] PF: I love it. I love it. Jodi, we have so much to learn from you, and you make it so fun to learn, which doesn't always happen. I appreciate you sitting down, taking his time with us, and talking to us about living like we were dying. [0:25:33] JW: Well put. In a world where like time is scarce, spending this time with you has been time well spent. So, thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [0:25:43] PF: That was Jodi Wellman. Talking about how recognizing our mortality can help us make the most of the time that we have left. If you'd like to learn more about Jodi, take her free astonishingly alive assessment. Follow her on social media or by copy of You Only Die Once: How to Make It to The End with No Regrets. 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]