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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: What’s New in Season 9 With Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 428 of Live Happy Now. It's a new month. And for Live Happy Now, it's the start of a brand new season. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, as we launch season nine, I'm talking with Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, about some of the great new things that you can expect. We're rolling out some new ways to help you discover happiness, and we're excited to share these with you. So let's get to it. [EPISODE] [00:00:30] PF: Deb, always a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for sitting down with me today. [00:00:35] DH: Well, I wasn't going to miss it today. It's the first episode of our ninth season, which either means that we're really old or we're having too much fun, one or the other. [00:00:43] PF: I think it's a little of both. [00:00:44] DH: Yes. [00:00:46] PF: Yes. I mean, it's amazing when I sit down and say, “Oh, my gosh. Yes, we're starting our ninth season.” Because when we started this, we didn't know if anyone was going to tune in. Lucky for us, they did. [00:00:55] DH: Yes. You know, podcasts were just getting started. I think we had the serial podcast, which really took off. It was like right after we started this one. So that was really interesting. We got into podcasting originally as a way to expand on the magazine and do some interviews because we always got to interview these great people. We’ve been getting to do those interviews on tape, so to speak. That really shows my age. We’ve been getting to do interviews live and then share those. That's really why we started the podcast. Then, of course, the whole podcast thing took off. It's still the most fun and my favorite thing that we do. [00:01:27] PF: Yes. If we can just figure out how to combine true crime and happiness, we're going to have the biggest hit podcast of all time, so. [00:01:34] DH: Yes. Speaking of serial, true crime and happiness. Yes, it's interesting. The true crime genre is certainly the one that I think most people think of when they think of podcasts. Or if they don't, they at least are aware. Either that or business help podcasts, self-help personal podcasts. A lot of those are really successful. I guess we kind of fit into that. Happiness will certainly help business. We don't fit into true crime, but I kind of look at it as us as the antithesis to true crime. [00:02:01] PF: Yes. That's true. [00:02:02] DH: Yes. We talk a lot about paying attention to what you put in your head. You and I were talking before the podcast about how people who listen to true crime to decompress may not be processing their stress well. [00:02:17] PF: Not judging. We're not judging. [00:02:18] DH: Not judging at all. [00:02:19] PF: That was an actual study that was done. [00:02:21] DH: Yes, true. But it is hard to be bombarded with everything we've got going on in the world. We've talked about this before, all the political stuff, all the war in Europe right now, and all the negativity. Then you add true crime on top of that. You add your news feed on top of that. It's very easy to look at the world as a dangerous and unwelcoming and not fun place. We are the antithesis of that. Listen to Live Happy Now. Listen to it. Go online and look at our website, livehappy.com. Subscribe to our newsletter. Fill up your inbox with the opportunity at least to get something positive out of your day. I love that because for me, sometimes just putting that in my head makes me think about the world a little differently. A lot of the stuff that we share that research is being done just changes your perspective and kind of puts you back on course because I'm still a little more than a glass half full. I'm kind of a glass overflowing person in regard. I think the world’s a wonderful place with tremendous opportunities and beautiful things and a lot of joy out there. I like to be exposed to that, and it's so much fun to share with everybody else. [00:03:26] PF: Yes. Filling your brain with good stuff since 2013. [00:03:30] DH: New tagline. [00:03:31] PF: Exactly. There we go. And which is crazy to think. Now, that means we're going to – in October, we turn 10 years old. Like Live Happy has been around for 10 years and been active. I think that's really exciting just to see that people have embraced it and are hanging with us. [00:03:45] DH: As you know, we've had millions and millions and millions of downloads of the podcast. A hundred thousand of people hit our website. It is humbling to realize that something that we really started working on about 11 years ago has morphed into this positive force in the world, and it's great. But 10 years, wow. My youngest child is 11. So it’s her entire life. [00:04:11] PF: All she knows. [00:04:12] DH: Yes, all she knows. [00:04:14] PF: That’s cool. We're doing some new things. We were talking about this. So we have Live Happy Now podcast. That's done obviously very well. Last year, I added On a Positive Note, which looks at music and how it affects our happiness. We look at it through the health and well-being, a lot of different aspects of music. So now, this year, we're going to add the Happiness Unleashed, the new pet podcast. Now, you know as well as I do that pets are such a huge thing not just for Live Happy but in the world. So let's kind of talk about why we believe so much in pets and what they can do for us. [00:04:48] DH: We've always been a family-oriented podcast or a family-oriented property. Not all of our content is suitable for children. That's not what I mean. I mean that we're always about building families, building relationships in the community. Pets are a part of our family. They're a part of our lives. They are something that we integrate, that we care about. There's so much research out there on how they improve your overall well-being, everything from lowering your blood pressure to being a companion in stressful times. They are part of our families, and we know that there's a lot of people that can't imagine not having their pets in their lives. I think it's a really good thing. It's an important part of our lives, and I just don't think there's that much out there about it. I think people are really interested in it, so I'm super excited to be adding that, kind of our repertoire. [00:05:37] PF: Yes. What's great too is they don't have to listen to me. It's going to be Brittany Derrenbacher, who has been on here frequently. She's been our pet expert. She is so well-versed. She is a therapist. She does deal with things like pet loss, grief, compassion, fatigue, things like that. She's in the rescue space. So I think she's going to bring some incredible insights into how pets help us heal and what good they can do for us. So I'm excited to see how that one unfolds. [00:05:59] DH: I am too. It’s great to add another voice to Live Happy. Yes, she's done a fantastic job on the podcast in the past. You and I have talked about how they’re some of the most downloaded and most listened-to podcasts we have. [00:06:10] PF: They are. It's like maybe we should pay attention to that. [00:06:13] DH: I would call that a clue. I'm taking the clue, and we're super excited to have Brittany on. She's just got some fantastic insights. I just think this is something that people are going to be really interested in. [00:06:24] PF: I do too. I'm excited to see that play out. Another thing that we just added, we did our first episode with Dawn McMullan as a Happy Activist. You originated the Happy Activist idea back with our Happy Acts. We would spotlight people on the website who were doing amazing things. Somehow, as the magazine went away, we kind of got away from that. With this Happy Activist segment, we're bringing that back once a month to be able to spotlight someone who's doing amazing things in their community. So tell us a little bit about what you perceive a Happy Activist to be. [00:06:57] DH: When we started Live Happy in general, we really wanted to focus on the science and the fact that there are things you can do that you can actually do proactively to make your world a happier place for yourself, your family, your community, all of that. But there are people out there in the world who are doing it as their way of life. There are people who are doing things that truly make a difference in the lives of others. They truly do things to improve the well-being of themselves, their community and families in a very public way and sometimes not so public. They aren't as sung. It’s not that they’re unsung heroes. It's more like I don't think they even realize, as many of these people don't even realize, the impact they're having and to be able to celebrate that and to be able to share the stories of people who are truly, truly putting their heart into the well-being of others. It brings me joy that we can tell those stories because I don't think we see enough of those stories. There are so many people in the world that that's their mission and their purpose, and they found it, and it's just really important to share that. So a Happy Activist, to me, is someone who's out there improving the well-being of their community as a personal mission. [00:08:08] PF: What I love about it is it gives our listeners more participation in the content of the podcast. It's our listeners who are going to be bringing their Happy Activist to us and recommending people. We're going to be doing some things on social media, on the website, in the newsletter to promote that, so they know how to reach it. But they can just send us an email to editor@livehappy.com and tell us about their Happy Activists. We'll look into them and see about getting them on a future episode. [00:08:33] DH: Yes. We really want our listeners and our readers and the people passionate about happiness the way we are to share the people in their lives that are making a difference. We don't know who they are, but we know they're out there, and we know that you know who they are. A little bit of recognition goes a long way. But I think that we need to spotlight the people that are doing good in the world. The people who are not, have true crime podcasts about them. [inaudible 00:08:56]. [00:08:59] PF: Go back to the anti-true crime podcast. We’re the true good podcast. That's what we are. [00:09:05] DH: There you go. [00:09:08] PF: Yes. What's wonderful too is someone else hears that and discovers new ways to give back. So like with Dawn and the work that she's doing in Congo to help women give them a future was just amazing. She just gave so many ideas for how you can get involved in ways that you can give back, stuff that I had not even thought about. [00:09:28] DH: Well, and I think that's important because I think so many people hear those stories, and they think, “Wow, that's huge. I could never do that. That's great. I'm really glad they're doing it, but I could never do that.” That's not what it is. There are little things you can do in little pockets of time. Don't take dedication of going to the Congo to just – [00:09:48] PF: We don't all have to go to East Africa. Okay. [00:09:49] DH: We don’t have to go to East Africa to make a difference in the world. That is one of the great things about her perspective is she knows that. But something the other Happy Activists are doing things that you can do in your backyard that don't take heroic full-time effort to do. Share their stories. We want to hear about them. They make a difference. [00:10:07] PF: Yes, they do. I'm excited to meet these people. One more thing I think that we should talk about today is a newsletter because we've had this for a while, and we're doing a lot of great things with it. I think we know it's there. Like I know it's there. You know it's there. We kind of take it for granted. It's like that middle child. Like we just, “Yes, they're doing good. We love them. It's great.” But we don't really talk about all the things that the newsletter has to offer, and I'm really excited about some of the ways that we're pumping it up and making it even bigger and better, a weekly free in your inbox. Get that great news delivered. [00:10:39] DH: Well, one of the ways of making it better you just hit on, weekly. In the past, we've done it monthly, which is great. We've got a couple hundred thousand subscribers. We want more. Really, it is that little burst of joy, happiness in your inbox once a week. It will give you information on the next podcast episode. It'll have some of that news in the happiness space. Yes, there is news in the happiness space. There's happiness. There's other news in the happiness phase. It'll give you a little taste of the type of content we have on the website without you having to go like intentionally seek that out, although we want you to go intentionally to seek that out. When we talk about filling up your mind with positive stuff, fill up your inbox with positive stuff, and give yourself the best opportunity to brighten your day, and find out a little more about how you can make yourself and the community around you a happier place. [00:11:27] PF: Yes. One thing we've added to the newsletter, and it's my personal favorite passion project, and that's, of course, music. We've had the Live Happy Now playlist for a long time. Sometimes, we'll talk about – we'll do special playlists for Mother's Day, Valentine's, things like that. Haven't been talking about the playlist lately, so each issue of the newsletter is going to have a song that fits the theme of that newsletter. Then we'll direct you back to the Live Happy Now playlist, so you can just put on some tunes, change your state, make your brain happy, and maybe do a little bit of dancing in the kitchen. [00:11:58] DH: Well, we really are looking at things that are in our everyday lives that make us happier. You start talking about pets. You start talking about music. I mean, all these are things that most people listening to the podcast, the families. Most people understand that this is where the key to happiness is. I love the music piece because you’re music. I’m film. I'm passionate about movies. There's not as many movies that make me happy as there are songs. But dancing in the kitchen is one of my favorite pastimes. [00:12:29] PF: It's a universal skill because you don't have to be good at it. [00:12:32] DH: So we just want to expose people to things that really enhance their lives. Music is absolutely one of them. I'm super excited we're doing that. [00:12:40] PF: Yes. So those are some of the new things that we have coming up for this season. Gosh, 10 years. So what are you excited to see? As this new season, this New Year unfolds for us, who are you most excited about or looking forward to? [00:12:52] DH: Well, I'm going to divert the conversation a little bit here because one of the things I'm most excited to see is a picture of you with a chicken on your shoulder, getting ready for this particular issue we were talking about. Paula lives in a rural area. [00:13:07] PF: Let's tell. During the pandemic, I moved from a top floor apartment in downtown Nashville to six acres on a lake about an hour away from Nashville. To say it was a culture change is kind of an understatement. [00:13:20] DH: I am certain it was a culture change. I think what you were telling me earlier was like you went from music to chickens. [00:13:27] PF: Yes, pretty much. Concerts to chickens. There we go. [00:13:31] DH: Tell us about your chicken project, just because I think that they gave us a nice chuckle earlier. But it's also really interesting to me what you're doing with chickens. [00:13:38] PF: First of all, I have to tell you, we were going to get 15 little baby chicks. Then my partner was in charge of buying them. They're very cute on the website, and so somehow we ended up with an order of 25. Shortly after that order had been placed, a friend came and had three grown chickens that needed re-homed. So we took those in. Now, we have like – basically, with the little chicks getting here, we've raised them. They’re like 12 weeks or whatever. So we now have a chicken farm. But, yes, one of the things behind us, one of the driving ideas behind it is our ability to give back and that with chickens comes eggs. There are many people who are not able to access the food that they need. Being able to have that many eggs produced gives us the opportunity to help people who maybe wouldn't have access to that. We also have a very huge garden, and that's what we – our intention behind it is to be able to help other people who aren't having the food that they need, the nutrition. There's no reason in the world in America today that people are going to bed hungry at night. Food scarcity is a huge concern of mine. So that's what we want to be able to do is help eliminate that in our own area. If it's only with three families, if it's only with three people, then that makes a difference to those three people. That's kind of where it all started. [00:14:53] DH: Well, now, you have shared what a Happy Activist is. Paula, my favorite things about doing this podcast is the team we have working on. We were on earlier with Laura and Casey and where we're going. It is a joy in my life to see the people who are at Live Happy. They're genuinely Happy Activists in their own life. I'm really glad you shared that because I think that's something that people need to realize. I mean, you have a job. You work. You do everything else. But you've also – something you're very passionate about. You're taking time out of your day and your life and your lives to really support that, in addition to your dogs and cat and rabbit and – [00:15:33] PF: The whole freaking zoo that I got out here. [00:15:36] DH: I'm so glad I asked you about that. I wanted to share it. But what I'm excited about for the podcast this year really is the expansion and the integration. By the expansion, I mean, I love that we're adding pets. I love that we're going back to put more of the happy playlist in. But I like the integration. The newsletter is kind of going to tie it all together and just continue to expand the number of people we're reaching, continuing to share that. One of the things I'm most proud of Live Happy is that everything that we do is free to you in terms of content. It's just a joy to be able to give back to the world in that way. So I'm super excited about that. I know we've got some podcasts coming out about what happened at IPPA, the International Positive Psychology Association event. I know we've got more podcasts about pets and people and Happy Activists and the science behind happiness. I just hope everybody turns in and fills their mind with good stuff 20 minutes a week. Let's make a difference in the world. I hope they become Happy Activists like you. 00:16:36] PF: Oh. Well, thank you. To be honest, Live Happy has changed me by making me so aware how I can help, how I can be of service. It's literally impossible to interview someone every week, a different person every week who is putting good into the world, who is telling us how to be better humans, how to be happier humans. You have to change your life. There's no way that you can just say, “Okay, on to the next thing.” You can't do it. It affects you. It has made a profound difference in my life and, therefore, is making the difference for other people because it's changing the way that I walk in this world. [00:17:10] DH: I think if you listen to it, it's the same way. If you listen to it every week, it's just that reminder that you don't have to accept things the way they are. You can make a difference. You can make a change. Change starts with you. You can be happier. We always say happiness is a choice, and we don't really mean that entirely. I mean, obviously, there are things in the world that impede that for people that are very real. But you can choose to do things to make yourselves incrementally happier. You can choose to do things that give back to the world incrementally. It's a privilege to be sharing that information. [00:17:43] PF: Deb, I cannot think of a better way to end this that you've summed it up beautifully. This is a pleasure. It's an honor to get to do this. I love sitting down and talking about what we're going to do because it gets me so excited for this coming season. Thank you and for the opportunity to do this. Thank you for creating this for us all to be able to come play in the happiness space. [00:18:02] DH: Thank you for everything that you do to keep me on track. I appreciate it. Have a great season. [END OF EPISODE] [00:18:12] PF: That was Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder, Deborah Heisz, talking about what you can expect from season nine. If you'd like to sign up for our newsletter, tell us about a Happy Activist, or follow us on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. You'll find that information on the landing page for this episode. 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: Easing Back-to-School Anxiety With Dr. Laura Phillips [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 427 of Live Happy Now. It's time to go back to school, and for some kids, that means a whole lot of stress. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Dr. Laura Phillips, the Senior Director in the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Institute. Laura specializes in working with children who have learning disorders, mood disorders, and anxiety, among other things, and she's committed to improving the social, emotional well-being of children and adolescents, so she's sitting down with me today to talk about how going back to school can create anxiety for kids of all ages and how it can also affect their parents. Then, she's going to tell us what we can do about it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [0:00:47] PF: Well, Laura, thank you so much for coming on the show today. [0:00:50] LP: Thank you so much for having me. [0:00:52] PF: I wanted to talk to you, because back to school is on the minds of everybody, kids, parents, shopkeepers. We tend to, at this time of year, focus on the excitement of the new school year and all the great things, but there is a lot of research that shows that children are more anxious than ever about going back to school. I wanted to talk, first of all, and find out what you're seeing. [0:01:14] LP: I think, children are more anxious than ever, unfortunately, about everything. I think back to school is a transition which tends to be anxiety-provoking for children, particularly those who experience anxiety. The last three years, each transition back to school was anxiety-provoking, because kids didn't know what the year would look like in the fall of 2020. We had kids who were doing full-time remote instruction, hybrid instruction. Some kids were back in classrooms for the first time since the previous March, so that was really anxiety-provoking. Then the following fall, there was increased return to the classroom, but still some – I mean, really significant changes from what normal school looks like. Then there were really young kids who never really knew what normal school looked like, because they hadn't had a normal school year, because of where they were when COVID hit. The past couple of years, the back-to-school transition, I think, was anxiety-provoking, because kids didn't really know what that would look like. This year, we seem to be out of that pandemic phase, so it's a more normal return to school this year than I think the past couple of years had been. But that's with an atypically anxious population of kids and teenagers. As you said, general rates of anxiety are higher than ever before among our teenagers and children, and that's true for mood disorders as well. We have a group of kids and teenagers who are coming up, who are just really struggling from an emotional perspective. [0:02:42] PF: What is the biggest cause of that anxiety? Because I do hear a lot more about anxiety, and I don't think it's just because we're more aware of it. I think there's a greater amount of it. [0:02:54] LP: I think that's right. It's really not just COVID. This isn't a COVID relic, although I don't think that the pandemic helped, but we really did see these trends, rising rates of anxiety and mood disorders preceding the pandemic, and really dating back really to the mid-2000s. I think that there are a lot of things. I think that a really big contributor is social media. We have kids who are constantly connected to one another and to the world. That can take a hit on their self-esteem, because there's just this constant comparison game that's taking place and FOMO and the unkind behavior that used to end at 3:00 tends to follow kids now home at the end of the day, because there's just constant connection. There's also just constant information. The world is a scary place. I think that kids are really acutely aware of it, because there's a 24-hour news cycle and because of their constant access to information through social media and being on screens. They're hearing about school shootings. They're hearing about racialized violence. They're hearing about global warming. There's a lot of reasons for kids to feel nervous about the state of the world. There's also a lot of pressure on kids, which I think comes from very well-intended parents who also have a lot of concerns about the state of the world. They want to feel like they have some control over their children and their children's future. There's a lot of pressure put on kids to have academic success. From very early on in kids' school years, they're hearing that how important it is to do well in school and to get into a good college and to get a good job. Free time is pretty limited now, because kids are really involved in a ton of programming. Some of which is really good, but I think that downtime is really important, both from a mental health perspective, but also from a cognitive development perspective. I think that there are a lot of factors contributing to the rising rates of anxiety. [0:04:51] PF: For parents, how do they press pause on some of that? Because you want to keep up, and your child wants to keep up. They want to know what's going on with social media. Even though it's challenging and anxiety-provoking, they don't want to miss out on it. How do you take them away from that a little bit and find some mental health breaks? [0:05:15] LP: It's really, really hard. I don't envy parents of children who are old enough to have screens. I have very young children. I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, and I am not looking forward to the day when my child asks me for a cellphone, or a Facebook account. Because to your point, you don't want kids to miss out, and that is the way that kids are connecting with their friends. That is the way that kids are staying in contact when they're outside of school. That's the way that they're making plans, and so you don't want your child to be isolated, or pulled out of that. But parents need to be monitoring. They need to be aware of who their kids are talking to, what they're talking about. There is a role for restrictions on certain types of programming, or access to people through programming, so you can certainly, you can restrict who kids talk to, and they can only talk to people if you're approved. I mean, there are ways to put in place restrictions on kids' access to screens and social media. But you said mental health break. I think that a break is also really, really important. Not just for kids and teenagers, but for adults too, and I wish that I practiced what I preached. But I talk to parents all the time about, really, we talk about screen contracts, or social media contracts, so coming up with a plan for when and how and for what purposes these devices will be used before giving children the privilege of having a phone, which having a cellphone really is a privilege, which I really try to reinforce with parents a lot. It's a privilege that they have the right to remove if these devices are being abused, or if kids are not following the rules that are set out for them in order to safeguard them and also, to protect their mental health. But within those contracts, should also be designated break times. There should be times throughout the day that kids are not on phones. I think that dinner time and I mean, families have obviously different schedules and different opportunities to be together for dinner. Meal time should be a time ideally where everybody, not just children are putting away their phones and really using that time to come back and connect with one another. The bedroom, designated so to screen-free times of day, also screen-free zones within the house, or the apartment. Maybe the bedroom is a place that we at least after a certain hour of the day, because certainly during the day, kids are going to insist that they need access to their phones and their screens. But maybe after 8:30 p.m., everyone turns in their phones and then there's just designated blackout time for screen media. I think that kids and adults really do need a break, and there's a lot of really compelling research showing mental health benefit of having designated time away from screens. [0:07:55] PF: Then how can you use that time at dinner to connect and find out what's going on at school, what's going on with them, and this is a two-parter, because a child isn't necessarily going to tell you in words, “I'm being picked on. I'm being bullied. I'm not happy. I don't feel comfortable.” How do you use that time at dinner and how do you get into what is really going on? [0:08:16] LP: Well, I mean, anytime you're talking about uncomfortable things, you want to ask open-ended questions. You don't want to ask leading questions and you don't want to plant affect, or emotional experiences into kids' minds. You don't want to say, “Are you nervous about your first day of school tomorrow?” You might want to ask them, “How are you feeling about starting school tomorrow and really see what they bring to you?” Yeah. I mean, kids may not come out and tell you how they're feeling. They might not tell you that they're feeling nervous, or scared, or if they had an unpleasant experience in school. You want to watch carefully for some red flags that we know kids tend to show when they are experiencing something that makes them feel uncomfortable. Changes in affect, changes in behaviors, if you're seeing increased irritability, reduced frustration tolerance, kids are having meltdowns more frequently than, or more easily than they tend to have. If you're seeing changes in sleep patterns. You're noticing that kids are having a hard time falling asleep, they're waking up in the middle of the night, they're waking up earlier in the morning, if they're more clingy than usual, somatic symptoms, so physical complaints like headaches, stomach aches, fatigues, etc., are all really good signs that something might be going on that's making your child feel uncomfortable, which can then be a reason to prompt that conversation either during dinner, or a really good time to have conversations about things that are difficult are when you're doing other things, but also have to be – you're forced together time, like a car ride to school. You're trapped inside a car, but you're also not looking directly at one another, which can make it a little bit easier sometimes for kids to open up about what's feeling uncomfortable for them. Car rides to school. Walks to school. If you have a younger child, bath time. I get a ton of information when I'm giving my younger child a bath. [0:10:00] PF: It's better than an interrogation, right? [0:10:02] LP: Right. I mean, you're together. It's again, it's like this forced together time, but it doesn't feel like an interrogation, because you're in the middle doing something else and you just happen to bring up. My daughter. I'm sorry, I keep bringing up my child, but she's about to – [0:10:15] PF: All good. [0:10:17] LP: - her deep-water test. Rather than saying, “Are you nervous with your deep-water test?” We might say something like, “What's happened? What are you thinking about swimming tomorrow?” Something very benign, something open-ended, and just see what happens to come up. In those moments where kids might be a little bit more willing to share information, rather than if you go into their room and say, “I want to have a conversation with you right now about going back to school tomorrow.” [0:10:42] PF: That's intimidating. [0:10:43] LP: Right. Exactly. Yeah. [0:10:46] PF: If a child does show signs of anxiety about going back to school, how do you differentiate between, this is just jitters of starting a new school year and something unfamiliar? Or there's actually an underlying anxiety situation? [0:10:59] LP: Yeah. That's a really good question, because back to school jitters, I mean, there's a term for it, because it's very common thing. A lot of kids really do feel – it's very normal to feel a little anxious, nervous, jittery at the start of a new school year. Some of that is really excited anticipation also. But you would expect those nerves, if it's just back-to-school jitters to dissipate within a couple of days of that new school year beginning. When we talk about, how do I know if this is something more, I like to talk about frequency intensity, duration, and impairment. The duration piece can be really important in this particular example. Again, if those signs of nervousness, or jitteriness persist beyond those first couple of days of school, and you're seeing more frequent occurrence of either worry thoughts, or stomach aches, or difficulty sleeping than normal, more intense occurrence of those symptoms than normal, and that they're starting to have some functional impairment, like my child is expressing that he doesn't want to go to school, then that suggests that this is more than just typical back-to-school jitters. [0:12:03] PF: Then the question, of course, is what do you do about it? Because when I was growing up, they're like, “Oh, just wait it out.” They're like, “Work through it.” There are better ways, I am sure to do it than just toughen it out. What does a parent do if they realize that their child is very anxious and that it's more than just a couple of days type of thing? [0:12:28] LP: Yeah. You seek support. I mean, I would – teachers are a wealth of information about how your kids are doing during the day they're on the ground. I might reach out to it. I might start by reaching out to a teacher, or if there's the dean, the head of the middle school who might have broader view of your child, because they may have known them over the course of a couple of years. I might reach out to them and say, “Are you noticing anything different? Johnny has been complaining of stomach aches really frequently and that's not very typical for him. I'm wondering if you're seeing anything in school.” I would I would look to teachers for as a really important source of information about how kids are doing during the day. They're usually your mental health professionals on site in school. Whether that's a school counselor, or a school psychologist can be another really second point of contact, either to help check in with your child during the day, or guide you towards whether it might be time to seek support outside of the school system with a mental health professional in the community. [0:13:27] PF: In our conversation, we're talking more about younger children, because, well, teenagers are a whole different ballgame. Once we get to that, they're not talking to us anyway. How do parents start monitoring that tween and teen situation and differentiate between what's just the moodiness of a teenager and an actual problem that's going on? [0:13:51] LP: I think parents have a long view of who their children are, if they're seeing really acute changes that that's suggested it's more than typical moodiness associated with hormone change and development in teenagers. But the same things. It is normal for kids to be a little bit grouchy and hard to wake up in the morning. But if they're refusing to get out of bed, if they're showing sleepiness during the day, if they're insisting that they need to take naps during the day, or if they're indicating that they don't want to go to school, I mean, the more intense communication of these impairment, I think parents would notice. [0:14:33] PF: Okay, that's really good. I guess, the same rules apply. It's like, understand when you need to seek outside help. [0:14:40] LP: I don't think that kids want to feel uncomfortable. I think that they might not know that there's a way for them to feel differently and they might be concerned that there's something wrong with them. Admitting that they need help can be scary. But normalizing it can be a really good way to get a teen to seek out professional help. [0:15:01] PF: Okay. What about children who are either ignored, or bullied in the school environment? That's as a parent, I can't imagine watching my child go through either of those situations. There's only so much that you can do. How can a parent help a child who's dealing with either of those? Then, how do you set them up for success and start changing things for them? [0:15:26] LP: It's really hard, because you also want to, as you said, you can't imagine it. I think that that's something that's really hard for all parents to watch their children go through feelings that their child is being mistreated, or feels uncomfortable, or unsafe in school triggers a lot of anxiety in parents themselves. You want to be really mindful of putting your own anxiety and discomfort onto your children, because then they have the double whammy of not only is school hard for me, but mom is also really upset about this, too. You want to be really careful in how you broach these conversations. You again want to ask open-ended questions about how they're feeling in school, rather than putting the affect into their minds. Like, “Are you nervous about going back to school tomorrow?” Were you going to sit with all your own racing thoughts that you might have? Leave those out of this. When they do communicate to you what they're feeling, you want to validate those feelings without reinforcing those feelings, without reinforcing the fear. You can say, “I understand you're feeling really nervous about the first day of school. I bet a lot of other kids are feeling that same way.” You don't want to say, “Of course, you're feeling nervous. Who are you going to sit with?” Listens to their own concerns. At the same time, if you know that there's something challenging for them, don't start the conversation with that. If you know that they feel nervous about finding someone to sit with at lunch, when they come home from school that first day, don't say, “Who did you sit with at lunch?” You want to start with something that's going to make them feel more positive about how those first days back at school have gone. The big thing is, I think there's this real desire, there's this urge for parents to take away their children's anxiety, either by dismissing it, or telling them these social struggles don't matter. “When you get out of school, you're going to look back at these days and you won't even remember them and you're going to have so many friends.” That's not helpful. Keeping them home from school. If they express that they don't want to go to school, because they're worried about who they're going to sit with at lunch, or they're worried that they're going to be made fun of, keeping them home from school is not helpful, because that's also just reinforcing their own fear. The goal really should be helping them learn how to cope with and tolerate the discomfort, or cope with the anxiety, manage those big feelings and learn skills to manage those anxiety provoking situations, rather than removing those anxiety provoking situations. Practicing with them, or problem solving. Let's think of some people that you can try to sit with at lunch tomorrow. Let's think of some conversation starters. Practicing, coming up with a script for how they might approach a new person in their class, some questions that they can ask and then you can practice asking those questions. Really, the anticipation of the anxiety provoking situation is the hardest part. You want to prepare kids for what those situations look like, previewing, actually visualizing what it looks like to walk into a big cafeteria with a lot of kids around, some of whom you know, some of whom are unkind to you. Another group who hopefully, you can feel comfortable approaching and then actually walking them through what it looks like to go up to a friend and ask if you can sit with them and practicing using their brave words to try to break into a social group. Previewing, practicing and also expressing really positive but realistic expectations about those fear situations. You can't promise your child that first day of school is going to be great. They're going to make a ton of friends. Because that may not be the case, it might be and you should anticipate that for kids who have social anxiety, or who have historically been bullied, first days back to school can be really stressful and challenging and they might have a couple of bumps in the road. You don't want to promise them anything that you can't deliver. You don't want to promise them that those first days of school are going to be easy. You don't want to promise them that they'll have a ton of people to sit with and talk to at lunch. But you do want to imbue in them the confidence that you have that they'll be able to get through it. You can validate, “Yes, this is going to be a – this can be a scary experience and I have faith that you can get through it. This is how we're going to do it.” You're communicating your faith and your confidence in them, validating their feelings and also giving them some tools and practicing using those tools. [0:19:46] PF: Then as they're going through those first few days, if it's not going well, if they are having a very tough time, how do you give them a soft landing when they get home? What are some things that you can do? You can't take away what has happened, or hasn't happened at school, but how can you balance out the day for them and make it less miserable, less uncomfortable for them? [0:20:08] LP: I mean, exactly what you said. You want to give them a soft landing. You want to be very positive. You want to ask questions about things that you know that they enjoy and really try to shine a light on things that were positive about those first days back at school. School is highly structured and highly scheduled. I think that especially in those first couple of weeks, trying to make sure that weekends at least have a lot of unstructured, or unscheduled time, so that kids can feel like they have some control over how they're spending their time. I mean, school is very, very heavily dictated for them during the school day. Giving them some sense of control, some sense of rest and decompression and sensory relief on weekends can be really, really helpful for kids to recuperate after having highly stimulating and stressful days back at school. [0:20:59] PF: There's another sector that we haven't talked about and that's college students going back to school. Only they're going off to school maybe for the first time. I have a gentleman who I know and he had twin sons and they went to separate colleges. One of them is very outgoing and went there and thrived, and the other one is very introverted and ended up coming home during the school year, because he couldn't handle it. How do parents prepare their children for going off to college? [0:21:28] LP: It's the same thing. You want to really help them preview. You can't take away the experience, but you want to help them preview, problem solve, practice how they're going to engage in those situations. I mean, ideally, there might be a person or two that a teenager knows at the school that they're going to, that they can try to connect with and a step, just that they have one safe person. If you have one safe person to go around with and start to meet new people, that can be really, really helpful. If you can find a way to arrange for a meet up with someone, just that there's a familiar face, that can be really, really helpful. Then just talking through, really helping them understand what those first couple of weeks at school might look like, and helping them problem solve can be really, really helpful. Again, validating that this is a new experience, that this is something that could trigger a lot of discomfort in you, and this is how we're going to deal with it, and I believe that you can get through it. [0:22:24] PF: Let them know, it's okay not to be okay, I guess. [0:22:26] LP: It's okay to not be okay. [0:22:29] PF: Then parents, they're also starting to get a little stressed, back to school, because and it's not just the shopping. I know it changes parents’ routines. They've been able to take it a little bit easier without having to carpool and commute with the children and drop them off. What can parents do? As now we get more demands back on our time, what are some great ways for them to approach back to school and breathe and make it a joyous time for everybody? [0:22:56] LP: Yeah. I change in routine is usually a positive one, because there's so much structure and routine that's associated with school. Well, I mean, it might take a minute to get back into that routine, but once you're in the groove and actually, there's something very safe that the school year provides to kids and families in really, the structure and the predictability that the school schedule provides. Yeah. I mean, if you're going from not having to manage carpool and early wakeups and making lunches, etc., there's definitely a lot that parents have to remember how to do. I would say, start early. The whole family, you really want to get people back into that school routine, at least the school schedule, at least before the first day. Start thinking about getting kids to go to bed earlier, waking kids up earlier in the morning and really getting back into the routine of mom and dad are making breakfast, or caregivers, or someone's making – we want to make sure that we're setting up that structure of the school day of where we're getting dressed, we're having breakfast and we're practicing, or thinking at least about what it means to get out the door on time. You want to make sure that you're pulling together school supplies earlier. You don't want to be racing the night before to find the right size binder that your teacher wants for your math class. Just to the extent that you can really do as much in advance those couple of days right before school starts don't feel as hectic. Just to the extent that that parents can really try to prepare earlier, rather than later, or getting back into school routines, starting to, I said, pull together materials, managing parents own anxiety. Thinking about what it is that they're feeling nervous about, whether it's the social piece, the academic piece, the time management piece and managing that outside away from children. I mean, children are so unbelievably perceptive. They really pick up on parent energy. It can be hard to do. But to really try to be mindful of your own emotions and your own level of stress when you're talking to kids about going back to school, because you don't want to put your own anxiety and stress onto children. [0:25:06] PF: Right. When is it a good idea, maybe even for a parent to get some outside help, talk to somebody about it, if they're having trouble managing at all? [0:25:17] LP: This is a Herald confluence quote. “That self-care is child care.” Parents cannot be the parents that they want to be if they themselves are struggling with anxiety, or feeling overwhelmed, or depression. When parents are noticing that they're having a hard time being fully present, it's important for them to take a step back and figure out what it is that they need. Whether they need to seek professional help, or it's just about carving out more time for themselves to exercise, to get sufficient sleep, to connect with friends. That's not selfish. It actually helps make parents better parents, if they're to the extent that they're managing their own anxiety and stress, they can be more available to support their kids through stressful situations. [0:26:01] PF: That's excellent. Laura, you've given us a lot to think about, a lot to learn, and I'm going to tell our listeners how they can find you, find your work, find the Child Mind Institute, and learn more about what you all are about. Thank you for coming on today. This is enlightening, very important topic. I know it's on top of mind for a lot of people right now, so thanks for taking time to sit with us. [0:26:21] LP: Thanks so much for having me. [OUTRO] [0:26:27] PF: That was Dr. Laura Phillips, talking about alleviating back-to-school anxiety. If you'd like to learn more about her work and the Child Mind Institute, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Of course, if you're looking for some uplifting cool t-shirts for your child to wear back to school this fall, be sure and check out our selection at store.livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Happy Activist Dawn McMullan: Changing Lives in the Congo [INTRODUCTION] [0:00:01] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 426 of Live Happy Now. I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, we're introducing a new occasional series called Happy Activists, where I sit down with someone who is doing amazing things to make our world a little bit happier. Our very first happy activist is Dawn McMullan, a freelance writer and editor whose life changed when she met a woman who had fled the Democratic Republic of Congo. As she learned more about the plight of girls and young women in the Congo, Dawn was compelled to act, and as you're about to learn, she has become part of a nonprofit organization called Congo Restoration that has already changed hundreds of families and continues to grow. Let's listen as Dawn tells us how giving back to others has given her a greater sense of purpose. [EPISODE] [0:00:50] PF: Well, Dawn, thank you for joining me as our first Happy Activist episode on Live Happy Now. [0:00:55] DM: Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here. Very, very excited. [0:01:00] PF: I just had to get you on the show, because I've known you for a very long time, full disclosure. I've watched as you become really passionate about helping others. As long as I've known you, you have always made it a point to give back. I've seen you take your entire family to Mexico and work on homes. You've collected donations for refugees who are starting over in the US. It seems to me like you are always doing good for others. I wanted to know, first of all, where did that come from and how did that start? [0:01:31] DM: I'll correct you that when we met in our 20s, I was probably not doing that, but – [0:01:31] PF: We had other stuff going on in our 20s. [0:01:39] DM: Exactly. But how it started was that I had kids. I think there's a shift in a lot of parents when they have kids and how you're engaging with the world and your child looking at you engaging with the world. That really is how it started. We go to a church and that, unfortunately, or fortunately, is a way a lot of people connect with doing good in the world. I say, unfortunately, because I have a lot of friends who don't go to church and they have a difficult time finding ways to involve their kids and do good in the world. That's how it started with us. We started going to church, because our kids started asking questions. Then here we are with this little liberal church in Dallas, doing a lot of good in the world. One of those ways was to go to war as and build houses, and that's a fun thing to take little boys to do. So, it started as a way I wanted to parent and teach my kids about the world. Then as with a lot of things, then it became much more than that for me. [0:02:41] PF: I think it's important to note that now your little boys are young men, and they're still doing that. I just went back to Mexico with your husband, their dad, and did it again. I was really surprised to see that, gosh, after all these years, they're still doing that, because you don't think of – well, think of us in our 20s. We were not going to Mexico and helping others, but they do. It's still important to them. I love that that instilled a sense of helping others in them. [0:03:07] DM: Yeah. They were five and eight the first time we took them. They're 26 and 23 now. Yeah, they take turns going with their dad. Sometimes they all go together, but once a year, there's some combination of our family. I've opted out of that, because I've decided at 55, I don't want to do manual labor as much anymore, but luckily, I gave birth to these people who do. I feel like I've checked that box. [0:03:31] PF: That's terrific. You do other things, though. That leads us to the Congo Restoration Project. How is, first of all, what that is, how this all started? [0:03:41] DM: Congo Restoration is a project out of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A dear friend of mine, Gorethy Nabushosi is Congolese. She is from the eastern part of Congo, which border is Rwanda. Now, most people don't know much about the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most people are familiar with Rwanda, where the genocide happened in the mid-90s. There was a lot of publicity about that. There was a movie about that. It got all the guilt, money and good deeds done, because it's a very famous thing. A million people died in the genocide. I was just there. Actually, one week ago today, I was at the genocide museum. It's all very fresh to me. [0:04:22] PF: Wow. [0:04:23] DM: Six million people died in Congo, right across the border from partially the genocide expanding into that area. The people who did the killing escape to that area, that reached some havoc. A lot of the turmoil there has been because there's a mineral in the Democratic Republic of Congo called Colton. 70% of the Colton in the world comes from this area. It is required in every single phone, every single laptop, every single iPad. This is required to run them. You would think that it would be just a super-rich country, right? Because they have the minerals that we all need, but that's not the case, because it's a corrupt, generally been corrupt government. A few people at the top get rich and it's one of the poorest countries in the entire world. My friend is from there. [0:05:16] PF: Did she come to the US and that’s – you met her here in the States? [0:05:20] DM: Yes. Yeah, she was a refugee who came shortly after the genocide, actually, when there was a lot of unrest, because of that. She's an attorney by trade. She was trying to fight for women's rights. That is so not a thing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In fact, it's still not a thing, but it was even worse this time. She was in danger. She came here. She has six kids. They were aged three to 11 at the time. The way that asylee status works in the States, you come by yourself and then you try to get status for the rest of your family. She fled here, literally made smoothies at Whole Foods, because your education doesn't really count once you get here and got asylee status. Then the rest of her family joined her. This is in Dallas where I live. She raised her family here. Then she went back at some point about 10 years later, right before I met her. She went to a hospital that was treating women for injuries of rape, because at one point, Congo was the rape capital of the world. It was used as a weapon of war. It's still not uncommon there, but at least I don't think they have that title anymore, but at the time they did. She went because women's rights were really her passion at that point. She went to this hospital and all the women were just saying, “I don't know where my kids are.” Like they'd been – war, war is chaotic. They'd been pulled away from their family. She went to this village and found the kids, found, basically a lot of orphans and took them in, took 30 kids in, called her husband and said, “I need a thousand dollars to figure out what to do with these kids. I can't leave them.” Okay. So, that's how Congo Restoration began. That's our origin story. I met her shortly after that. She came home and just made a random call, like looked up. I know Methodist church on the internet and called the main office in New York. My church is Methodist. I'd happened to connect – I had connected with somebody there recently. That's how we got connected. It's a super random thing. [0:07:16] PF: That's amazing, like that meant to be. [0:07:20] DM: Yes. They’re like, “I don't know what to do with you, but Dawn's in Dallas. Call her” [0:07:26] PF: What was it that made you connect with it? Cause there's so much need. We are constantly hearing tragic stories. It's like everywhere we turned, somebody needs help. There's a nonprofit that needs our money. What was it that made you say, “Yeah, I'm going to invest, not just my money, but my life and my time into this?” [0:07:45] DM: I had been to Rwanda the year before on a trip with also connected to my church. We had just seen how the systems work and don't work in that same region. This is all the same region. In Rwanda, because of the genocide, there were tons of orphans that were heads of household. This nonprofit was trying to help those oldest kids of these families really start a community, because a lot of the adults were just gone. You had to create a new system, basically. I'd gone on this trip and just really seeing things I didn't know existed. Like I – like you mentioned. I've been to Mexico. I've been to El Salvador. I'd seen poverty. I'd seen deep poverty, but I hadn't seen the lack of infrastructure where there's no way you're going to have running water in your life, probably, where just basic human needs were just unreachable. I hadn't seen anything like that in my life. I don't know. It just seemed so ridiculous in whatever year this was that I went 2008. It's also ridiculous in 2023. I just came back and saw the same thing. There was something about, and you never know what's going to reach you. You just never know. If you get out there and say yes to interesting opportunities in life. You may – like I never, if you'd asked me 15 years ago, “Hey, do you think you're going to be passionate about Eastern Africa?” I'd be like, “I don't know. Never been.” [0:09:13] PF: Do they have gorillas there? [0:09:14] DM: Yeah. They have gorillas there, which is a nice little bonus to my work. Yeah, I can't quite explain it except the – I didn't know that situation really existed in the world on that level of being in the middle of it. Then there was just something about the people there and the region that just really touched my heart. Again, that's different for everybody. That's what mine was. When Gorethy came into my life, six months later, I was already somewhat familiar with the situation and just had this great, inexplicable passion for it. From there, from that beginning, we started what Congo Restoration is now, which I'm happy to tell you about whenever you're ready to hear about. [0:09:57] PF: Yes. So, what is it? What exactly does it do? [0:09:59] DM: Our basic mission is to empower women and girls through education. Gorethy was also an orphan. Her parents died really young. Her siblings made sure she finished school and not only did she finish school, she's an attorney. She was a, as I mentioned here, she was asylee here, working at Whole Foods. Her husband was a pharmacist, but also that did not translate here. They went from high – [0:10:28] PF: A comfortable life. [0:10:29] DM: Comfortable life there to minimum wage here. They had six kids, all of them went to college, like education was very core to everything she believed. Of course, I agree with her. There's so many problems when you go into a place like Congo. It just seems like, “Well, how can I make a difference here? It's just nothing works.” It just seems like nothing works. If you come at that in a smaller way, which is how it's always good to come in a problem. It's like, “Well, what can we do?” We can lift up women through education. That's where we focus. After the orphans, which we took in. She took in the 30. The next project was a sewing school for women who – girls there often don't finish school, because it's not mandatory and it's not free. If you're going to spend $15 a month or $5 a month on uniforms and tuition for public school, you're going to send your boys. That's just the culture there. Girls and women are meant to work in the field, so if you put them in school, you're also cutting down on the fact that they're gathering food for the family that you're going to eat that night. These are very different priorities that they have to have and they do have as far as eating and food, food, security and girls and boys. There were a lot of young women who didn't finish primary school. They – a lot of them back then had been raped in the conflict. That was another overlaying factor. They are just the bottom wrong of society. Those couple of things. We started a sewing school. They learn a skill. They study for six to eight months. When they graduate. We give them a sewing machine and a sewing kit full of things they need for their sewing business, and they start a business. We've had more than 800 women graduate, and all but two of them have done exactly that. The other two moved off to – [0:12:12] PF: That is amazing. How many years have you had the school up? [0:12:16] DM: Since 2010 – [0:12:19] PF: How many women? [0:12:21] DM: I think it's actually 850 from the graduation. I just went to about – [0:12:23] PF: That is absolutely incredible, that you've impacted directly that many lives. [0:12:29] DM: Not only does that give them a way to make money that they didn't have before, but it also raises them up in society, like they're no longer the lowest ranks of society. They are respected women, because they have a business. They send their kids to school, because they can make money. They're in charge of their financial destiny. That is not a thing in the Democratic Republic of Congo that a woman would be in charge of that. Statistically speaking, no offense to men. If you invest in women, if you give women an opportunity to make money, they will invest it in their families and in their community at a much higher rate than men will. Again, no offense. [0:13:08] PF: Are you starting to see that next generation yet that's being affected by it from the early graduates? [0:13:14] DM: Yes. We have – I mean, they're still running their businesses. They are hiring. I went to a shop just a couple of weeks ago when I was there, one of our graduates she graduated about three or four years ago. She has a shop. She's hiring three other people in her shop. She's not only running her own business. She's actually employing people. Her kids go to school because she's in charge of that money. She makes that decision that they're going to go to school. I mean, when you throw education at people, there's nothing that's going to – it's going to do, but lift them up. Just fight me on that. There's just nothing that – it can only lift them up. I don't have the statistics right in front of me, but that's just the case. We're – seeing that. [0:13:56] PF: Then how does it change the community that this is in where they see these young girls, these women creating a different life? How does it change the way that they view their own roles in society and what they can accomplish? [0:14:10] DM: It's interesting, because when we first started in 2010, a couple of things happened. One, Gorethy had to go – we have 40 women at a time. She had to go to almost all the homes of these young women and convince the parents to send them, because, again, what are you doing? You're taking them out of the fields. [0:14:28] PF: Right. She had to convince them that this is a long-term thing. We have gone through phases where we would give out soap or salt or something that was valuable, so that their families wouldn't think they were wasting their time. There is no way to control how many kids you have in Congo, really. A lot of these young women would have kids. We'd have to convince the parents it's worth your time to watch their toddler while they're in school. Let's think long term. We used to have to do that. Now there are hundreds of women who line up when it's time, when we're about to graduate a class who line up wanting to be in that next class. One, that's changed. Two, in the beginning, she would have a lot of pushback from the leaders in the community, who were all men, saying, “Why are you wasting your time with these women? Why are you investing in women?” They didn't want to come to graduations. They didn't want to be – they just thought, they didn't like what Gorethy was doing. Now they come to our graduations. Now there is still some pushback of why we mainly help women and girls. I'll get into, because we have another project that's with girls in a minute, but generally, their families come. They're so excited. Their families cry when they get their diploma. It's a shift in how the community sees these women. You can also see the shift in the women. I always meet when I go to a graduation, which is every few years. We'll have the graduation celebration. Then usually the next 40 women will be there at the end and I'll meet them. They just have a look about them. They don't see their own value. You can see it in their eyes. You can just see it. Then you look at our graduates and you can see them around town and they are just – they definitely see their value. We teach them a lot of things in that six month. Sewing is one of them, but there's also, there are other things we teach them about how valuable they are. You can visibly see that in their eyes. The other project we have, because Gorethy saw like, this is making a huge difference, but it's not going deep enough, because these are again, women who have had just a primary education. They've not had secondary education. They need to know how to read and write, so they can take orders from customers, but that's really all. She wanted to go deeper. We started an all-girls primary school in fall of 2019. Not amazing timing with the pandemic right around corner, but who knew, who knew. [0:16:50] PF: Well, you did not. [0:16:51] DM: We did not. We have, as I mentioned, school is not free or mandatory. Often girls don't get to go to school. We started a primary school. As of September we will have grades one through six, 160 girls. That again was a bit of a battle. Gorethy had to really talk it up like, well, first of all, we made it free, some people were somewhat interested in that. They didn't have to pay for anything. Our sewing school makes the uniforms. Uniforms are mandatory. [0:17:16] PF: Oh, nice. [0:17:17] DM: Throughout Congo, so that's another obstacle. If you want to send your kids to school, you have to buy uniforms. We don't have to worry about that. Our sewing school makes those. Then we decided to feed them breakfast and lunch, which is highly unusual. Parents really liked that. These are kids who were eating one, probably not super healthy meal a day at home. So, to feed them two at school? That, one, is just good for their brains. Two, was a reason that parents were willing to send them. Again, now that school is very popular. People are always asking us why they can't send their boys. Somebody else needs to come in. I'm going to do a shout out. Somebody else needs to come in and educate boys in that area, because girls are – Yeah, it's just it lifts the whole village up, because there's something exciting coming there. The first graduation. The first sewing school graduation I went to in 2015, two UN white Jeep, land cruisers, right? Land Rovers, whatever they're called, pulled up dramatically outside the school. We were having this big festival, this big like celebration. These guys get out and I'm still connected to one of them actually on social media. This guy from Pakistan says, “What's going on here?” Very like somewhat aggressive. I said, “Oh” I explained what was going on. I said, “Did you have questions?” He goes, “No, I've been here for two years and I've never seen joy, so I just had to stop and see.” [0:18:35] PF: Oh, my gosh. [0:18:36] DM: He stayed for the whole thing, because he's just like, “I've never seen anything like this in this community.” I think what our schools do in this village, even if you're not directly involved, like you're not a student or your kids not a student or your daughter's not a student, is it offers hope. It offers hope, which is something hard to come by in this area of the world. [0:18:59] PF: It's so essential. That is just absolutely amazing. Tell me, we can see what it's doing for the women and the girls that you're working with. What has it done for you? How has it changed your worldview and how you welcome others into your life? [0:19:15] DM: I think it's just, it's changed so much. It's hard to not be changed by visiting that part of the world. Now I was involved in – I went to Rwanda. Then I was involved with Congo Restoration for six or seven years before I actually went. You should not look up the state departments warning about whether you should go to Congo. There was a little bit of a pause of me actually getting to convincing my family that was a good idea. It's perfect. I've never had a problem. [0:19:42] PF: Mommy will come back. It's fine. [0:19:43] DM: Yeah. Mommy will – my husband's always joking, he has to get down to his dating weight before I leave. But I've never had any problems there. Certain parts of Congo, I wouldn't go to. This part of Congo has been fine. To live in our world where just, literally things work. Let's set aside the poverty for a minute, but just, things work. We have roads, we have water that comes out of a faucet. We have Wi-Fi that works. We have electricity that works. To leave that world for an extended period of time and to realize that most of the world lives more like that than we live. I mean, Congo is an extreme example, but honestly, more people in the world live closer to that than live as we live. To be in that world and to be in that world enough where you have friends and people you know who live in that all the time, just you can't help but come back to our world, and, well, just one, just be more thankful for it and not take it for granted as much as you can. Although, that's hard, because this is our reality. I think it makes you much more – it's hard to really complain. I mean, we can complain, but it's hard to complain a lot when we have the lives that we have. Certainly, things go wrong in our life. They do, but on a daily basis, we have food, that we have a bed to sleep on, not a floor to sleep on. Women have rights more, less than we did, but we women have rights here. Women are valued here. It's not perfect, none of it's perfect, but being a woman in Congo looks like the hardest thing I've ever seen. They will carry things on their back with a baby on their front, that look just impossible. They are, like a cow has more value, I think, literally than a woman does in Congo. To see that makes me feel like I have such a responsibility as a woman to, one, lift others up because of the privilege that I have, just from being born here. I was just born here and they were just born there. Nothing else happened. That's it. To pass that on to my sons, specifically. If I had daughters, I'd probably have a different take on it. That knowledge, yeah, it just, it can't help but change you to see how differently other people live. I have met so many interesting people that I would never know there and in other ways, because I'm connected to this. So when you say yes to something that really jazzes you, and to whatever your ability is to go all in – now I'm very lucky that I am a freelance writer and editor. I can travel this way. My work is more flexible than a lot of people's work. Right now, I'm an empty nester, generally. I have a lot more freedom in that way, but to say yes to the things that really light you up like that, I think just adds so much to your life. I can't even imagine my life without Congo Restoration. [0:22:45] PF: Yeah. Everyone connects with something a little bit different and finds that that thing that lights them up and it's going to be different than what yours is or the next person. What's your advice for anyone who's looking for that thing? Because sometimes we go through life and we're like, “Man, I want to feel like I'm giving back. I want to feel like I'm making a difference and scattershot about it.” How do you do that? [0:23:07] DM: One thing is look for how you feel, like I don't know something in your life that when you, for me, it's like when I go out with my girlfriends. When I leave that energy, like I'm driving home and I just feel like I've had too much caffeine. That's what it feels like, just a little buzz, like I can't quite just go right to bed when I get home. There's something about that energy. That's one thing I can compare it to. When I'm at Congo – when I am leading a Congo Restoration meeting or meeting with Gorethy about it. I have that same buzz like afterward. So, when you're in situations, I think look for that, it may not feel – maybe I'm just weird with this whole caffeine buzz thing, but that's what it feels like to me. [0:23:49] PF: Maybe it's just an actual caffeine buzz, Dawn. [0:23:51] DM: It might be, but I don't think so. Just look for your reaction to it, because there are some things. I mean, I have been on some boards on some very, for some very important things in the world and just been like, “Oh, I don't want to go to this meeting.” Oh, this is such important work, but it's not interesting to me. That's okay. Everything's not interesting to everybody. I don't think you need to force a situation that doesn't jazz you. It's like when you're looking to make friends or you're looking to date somebody. If you're open to it and you're saying yes to things and you're exploring around, there'll be some hits and misses. But if you're open to it and you say yes to things, I think that you'll find it. I would also like look around your normal world, like if you would rather cuddle with your dog than go out to dinner with your significant other, I'm not judging you. I get it. That might be – [0:24:41] PF: Are you speaking, specifically to me right now? [0:24:44] DM: I mean, I might be. Also, talking to myself, but like that might be like ding, ding, ding, maybe animals are the thing or if you like a certain region of the world. If you think about what jazz as you already maybe start out in that direction. Again, church is an easy way to do it. there are other ways to do it that don't involve church. If you're open to it. I think being open to it is key. [0:25:11] PF: Yeah. Then this seems idealistic, but let's go there for a minute. How would our world look different if everyone would find just one thing that lights him up and find one way to give back? [0:25:23] DM: Oh, I just think it would be amazing. I mean, how could it not be different? There's so many people in the world that just have their job and their family. Their friends and they watch Netflix at night. I do those things too. I also think there are people who like, are at the grocery store and everything's giving round up to the nearest dollar for the food pantry and check the box. Go for that. Please do that. That's important. If everybody in the world did something with the passion that helped some do good in the world, one, there's just no way the world's not benefiting from all those good deeds and all that good energy. Also, it's just such a, for yourself. There's very few things like giving back. When I go to Congo, when I'm doing my things for the schools, I get so many things from the people there. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for doing this, like, but you have no idea how much you're changing me, how much you're teaching me. I just learned so many things. To have that energy from something you're doing just makes you different, so you're different, the people you're helping are different. There's just no bad scenario to all that happening. I just really wish people would find the one thing, if everybody would find the one thing that they – you don't have to go to Congo. I'm an extreme example. You don't have – [0:26:50] PF: You go to the animal shelter. [0:26:52] DM: Yes. You can go to the animal shelter. If you, do it regularly, like working out, like if you do it regularly, that's where the difference is made. You're changed, they're changed. Relationships are made and that is where the magic happens. [0:27:07] PF: Love it. Dawn, thank you so much for joining me today. I am so thrilled to be able to have you as our very first happy activist and couldn't think of a better person for it. Thank you for the good that you're putting out into the world. Thank you for coming on and telling us about it. [0:27:21] DM: Thank you. [OUTRO] [0:27:26] PF: That was Dawn McMullan talking about her work with Congo Restoration has helped make her own life better. If you'd like to learn more about Dawn and the Congo Restoration Project, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. If you have a happy activist in your life that you'd like to see featured in a future episode, please email us at editor@livehappy.com and tell us all about them. That's editor@livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Writing for Well-being with Beth Kempton [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PP: Thank you for joining us for episode 425 of Live Happy Now. What would you say if I told you that picking up a pen could change your life? I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Beth Kempton about how writing can help you connect with your feelings, your creativity and ignite your dreams. As the author of many books, including her latest, The Way of The Fearless Writer, Beth knows firsthand how writing can help boost our well-being. More than 30,000 people have taken her online writing courses. And today, she's here to talk about why becoming a writer is more about what it does for your soul and becoming a bestseller. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PP: Beth, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:47] BK: Oh, it's my pleasure what a treat to get to talk to you about writing and call it work. [00:00:52] PP: I know. I'm so excited to have this conversation because, you know, writing has been part of my life since I was a child. And I think it's an amazing way to connect with ourselves, connect with others. And to begin with, I wanted to find out about your writing journey. Tell me how writing started for you. [00:01:09] BK: I don't remember not writing. I mean, I was surrounded by books since – well, for as long as I can remember. They were a part of decoration in my house as a child. Books everywhere. And even when we didn't have much money, my mum would always prioritize buying books, going to the library. And interestingly, we would be rewarded with books. And I remember she had this bin bag. Here in the UK, we have black bin bags. Well, these days it's just landfill. But back in the days of no recycling, we used to have these big, heavy, black bin bags that she would fill with books. And if it was a rainy day, we'd get to go in the cupboard under the stairs and pick one out. Like a lucky dip. So it always just been such a wonderful part of my life. I didn't get to writing books until much, much later. But I have always written. I mean, I have over a hundred journals in cardboard boxes in my attic. And not always writing the same thing. Not always – only journaling. Not always writing stories. Not always writing lists. Just literally, it's just a mishmash in every journal. And it's very interesting to look back through certain periods of my life and see how what I wrote changed. How I wrote changed? And even the style of writing changes. Like if I'm very excited, and traveling and good stuff going on, I tend to write like really loopy and big. And then some of my journals are like really, really tiny neat writing. As if everything is – I'm very constricted. It's very interesting to look at that. And I wasn't aware of it at the time. But when I came to write about writing, I started to think about all these things and realized how I've really traced a path through my whole life with words. [00:02:55] PP: And that's interesting that you saved all that. Because that's important. I know, as a child, I would write a lot of stories. And when I read them now, I'm like, "Oh, did no one call CPS?" Because I was working out a lot of family stuff in my stories. And my mom ended up saving them. And I read them now and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. I was a little kid trying to process trauma." And I was doing that through telling these stories. [00:03:22] BK: That's incredible though, that you did that and put it on the page. [00:03:27] PP: No. That was just such a way – even back then, without me realizing, it was such a way for me to speak my truth and be able to tell a story even though I was telling it as fiction as somebody – it was happening to somebody else. And it was happening in other times. You know, like medieval times, or Hobbit times, or whatever. [00:03:44] BK: Yeah. [00:03:46] PP: But, yeah. For myself, that's where it began. Like I started using storytelling to work through some of that stuff that I couldn't process as a kid. And so, I think it's so wonderful that you were able to save all that and look back really on your life through the eyes of your younger self writing that story. [00:04:05] BK: Yeah. I mean, one of my favorites is a five-year diary from when I was a teenager. Um, it's one of those where it's got the same day every year for five years on a single page. So you can see how I'm maturing in the way I write. And also, the things I notice and care about and write, it's fascinating. I wish I'd kept that up all my life. [00:04:25] PP: Oh, yeah. Oh, man. That's a great one for our listeners to jump on to. That'd be a great practice to start where, one day, you pick the same day every year and you write about where you're at. That's fantastic. [00:04:37] BK: Yes. And I think what's wonderful about that is that when you get back to the first page, January the 1st, or whenever you started, you realize how far you've come. And I think sometimes when things are really difficult, it feels like we're treading water or we're kind of going through mud and nothing's changing. But something is always changing. And it's not always a good idea to go back and read everything. Sometimes I think just getting onto the page and getting it out is the best place for it to be. But for little snippets like that, it can be really good to remember, "Oh, yeah. I was experiencing that. And I don't feel like that anymore. And I've come far." Whatever. It can really help you notice those changes however small or big. [00:05:19] PP: And what I love about that too is you can look at it. If you're going through a difficult time one year, you can look back and say, "Okay. But three years ago, look how good things were." And you can see, like it can get back to that again. You start recognizing how cyclical everything in life is. And you're going to have years that are amazing. And you're going to have yours that you barely survive. But you can kind of track that. [00:05:45] BK: And see that the difficult periods end as well. Everything ends at some point, which can be hard to see when you're in it. But it's a beautiful way to capture that, for sure. [00:05:55] PP: That's a terrific tool. I love that. At what point did you realize what writing could do? That it was more than just something you were driven to do. But you really realized it was a need? [00:06:08] BK: Well, I think I wrote my way out of my corporate career just in terms of what I wrote in my notebook. And I was just talking to my husband about this the other day actually. Because we're soon on our way to Japan for the summer. And we're taking our children now. And they've never been. But we got engaged there 12 years ago. And he took a sabbatical from work for six months. And he took a notebook, a brand new notebook with him, and he went to Japanese school in the morning. And every afternoon, he would cycle down the river and sit by the river and write in his notebook. And he'd never done that before. It was like a whole new thinking. And he wasn't really aware of what he'd written. And then he said – he was looking on the plane home and realized he'd written, "I must quit my job," about 15 times in his notebook. And he hadn't even realized he'd written it. And so, he came back and quit his job and joined my company. And we've been working together ever since. But I think that often happens. It's what you write over and over again without realizing it. It's like you're trying to send yourself a really important message. I've done that as well. But in terms of understanding how it can help us through difficult times in – I mean, in my work, my company is called Do What You Love. And I help people to navigate difficult times in their life or change career and find ways to do what they love. And most of my teaching is online. And I've always had a lot of very interactive exercises, which I think in the beginning I didn't realize how much they would generate words. I would just ask people questions. And I think it's strange to – especially being British, to name my own superpower. But if I have one, it's probably asking questions. Just asking people exactly the question that they need to hear to find their own answer. And so, that's what a lot of my courses have done. And what I was finding was that people were just writing and writing and writing and finding that that in itself was helping them. Never mind the answers that they were discovering in the writing. I felt that more than a decade ago. And as we've gone on and I've started teaching actual writing classes. Not very conventionally. There's never any feedback in my writing classes. And they're very warm, comforting places. There's absolutely no critique or anything like that. It's absolutely just about learning to trust yourself and getting your words on the page. But it's amazing to see how people open up. And when they start their writing habit, you come – I do a lot of seasonal writing courses. And so, they come back the following years. This is what we were talking about with the diary. And they've kept their writing habit up all year round and they come back again. Say, they were in the winter one. They come back the next winter. And you can see how they've worked through so much in their life. But also, how their writing has developed. Because they're allowing themselves to just write whatever wants to be written rather than trying to call something on the page. And I've found it in my own life. But more than ever this year. Because I lost my mum a few months ago. And it's just been such a difficult time. I was very close to her. And it's interesting because I had a very strong 5am writing habit before she became ill. I'd done it all the way through writing The Way of the Fearless Writer. And it's really how I get books written as somebody – a mother of two small children. I have to be up early in the morning. But that whole routine went out of the window when she was diagnosed with cancer. And I spent the last weeks of her life by her side the whole time. There was no routine, whatsoever. But I kept writing in all sorts of ways. I had a journal. I'd write a lot on my phone. I would speak into my phone as well. And I recently put this all together. And there are thousands of words. And where my brain has kind of went to mush and I couldn't really remember the details of what had happened. And I'd find myself going towards biases of certain things. Things were really difficult. Things were really beautiful. Things were really challenging. Depending on my mood, that's how I was reflecting. I looked at my notes and it gave me a much clearer picture of the whole thing. And I'd captured entire conversations with my mother. And I'd captured my own experience of going through something that I never experienced before. And now I'm still in the very early stages of grief. But without question, writing words myself and reading, poetry especially, it's been incredibly feeling. [00:10:51] PP: Yeah. What a gift you gave yourself to – because when you're in the middle of that journey. And as you said, it's a blur. You're going through it. You're on autopilot a lot of times. There's so many big emotions involved. And to be able to sit down afterwards and see what you were feeling and what you were going through. And you find – you discover good times that wouldn't have stuck out to you had you not written it down. I think that's such wonderful advice. And like I said, it's such an incredible gift that you give yourself, give your future self, to be able to document challenging times and see how you made it through. [00:11:26] BK: And I think that's exactly the right word, to document. And I wasn't differentiating between what's a beautiful thought, or a poetic thought or something, "Oh, I must capture this." Because I just had an idea about the meaning of life or whatever. I was capturing everything. There's medical notes. How much she drunk, you know? Or pain relief she'd been given followed by a line that might be in a poem. Followed by what the weather's like. A conversation I'd had with one of my brothers. You know, it's a real mishmash. But it's so interesting to have it all as a picture. And actually, I'm working on another book now. And a whole chapter is based on those notes. I didn't write them to become part of a book. But as it so often happens, when we're completely honest with our words, something really important bubbles up out of it. And you can sense a kind of truth that maybe doesn't sit in the individual words. But when you look back at the whole thing, you can kind of see into the heart of it. And that's certainly been my experience these past few months. [00:12:31] PP: Yeah. And I want to talk about the fact that, so oftentimes, people say, "Well, I want to be a writer." And they feel like if they're not going to write a book or if they can't get a book published, there's really no reason to write. And I come from a very different place on that. I have had some books published. but I've also written manuscripts that were entirely for the journey of writing it. It was telling the story. And it didn't really matter if that story ever got out. It was my need to tell that story. Can you talk about the importance of people considering writing even if it's never going to be published? Even if only one other person reads it. Or if nobody reads it. What is the value of discovering that writing journey? [00:13:15] BK: It's such an important thing to ask ourselves. And I'll be completely honest and say, when I got my first piece of paid writing published, it was in a travel magazine. I was still quite young in my early 20s. But I think I thought, "Oh, my goodness. I'm a writer now. I've had this validation from an editor who thinks it's good enough to pay me. And they paid me enough money to buy a visa to go to China. Oh, my goodness. This is like the real deal." But, obviously, in the year since I'd come to realize that writing has nothing to do with money. For me, writing – there's many reasons to write books. But the financial side of things purely buys me time to do more writing. That's really what it's all about. And I think our society has a lot to answer for in terms of why we feel that way. And, I mean, I've had thousands of people through my courses. And the same things come up again and again. And we trust other people's opinions. And we value other people's opinions more than our own. Why is that? It's crazy. When you start writing from that point of view, you expect what you write to begin with to be – has to be really good. Otherwise, I'm going to get – someone's going to say my writing's rubbish. And then my confidence is going to be crushed. And then – well, probably. But nobody said you have to share your writing with someone as soon as you put a sentence on the page. I mean, if you go back through my journals and my notes, even notes from my MacBook manuscripts, until very far down the line, they're a little rubbish to someone else reading them. And I put a lot of effort into polishing my sentences towards the end. But I'm interested in what comes from my heart and spills onto the page. And some people call that flow. What is really important to remember is that flowing the writing doesn't mean flow in the reading. [00:15:19] PP: Ah. That's true. Yeah. That's a good point. [00:15:21] BK: It really doesn't. There's work to do to make it flow when you read it. But the flow in the writing is I feel like it's connecting to something very, very deep and important in the human experience. It's very bizarre when you get to a point that you can spill words in a way that you almost can't remember what you've written until you look back and read them. And so often, what you read back just feels like something you knew but you don't know how you knew it. And when you get to the point that you can do that, which simply comes from practice, from ritual, from seeing writing as a sacred thing that you do in your life. You might light a candle before you write. You might just find other ways to close kind of – I like to think about going to another room not necessarily physically. But a different space away from the rest of my life to write and come back again. If you give yourself the grace to do that, whether that's for five minutes, or five hours, or five days, you're sending yourself a really important message about the fact that getting to know who you are, and what matters to you, what words live inside you, is important to you. Because, for sure, it's important. That is what is going to guide you authentically through your life and help you stop being swayed by what everyone else thinks and help you make better decisions as much as anything. I mean, I think it's a real life tool. And then there's the creativity aspect of it. Just the beauty in some words landing on a page and feeling like a poem. That's just gorgeous. That's as beautiful as any flower you'll find in your garden. [00:17:14] PP: That is so true. Because as you're speaking, it occurs to me like I do. I feel like my smarter self shows up to write. And then I come back through and read it and go, "Oh, okay. That's a great thought." And that's what you're talking about without flow. Like we have an innate wisdom. We have things that our head is too busy to hear. And when you really release on a page and you let yourself write at that level, then things come out that, like I said, you're just too busy to hear. [00:17:43] BK: Yeah. And I think there's a lot of things that we struggle to articulate in words out loud to another human being if things are difficult. If we're trying to make a decision, or we're not happy with something in our life, or there's a relationship difficulty, or we're struggling because of grief or whatever it is that is difficult for us. I find, if I'm in my head, which is where I am often when I'm talking, although I'm learning to talk from somewhere else, I struggle with the words I want to say. And because, often, somebody – in conversation, just the way we often talk to each other, they then come back and then I have to respond to them. And blah-blah-blah. And I don't really get to what I want to say. But when it's just you and the page, the page doesn't say anything back to you. It just accepts whatever you put on to it. And I think, that way, you can work through a lot of your suffering or also your joy and capture it in a way that might get cut off in a conversation. Whether that's because of the other person or just because of your own brain going, "You haven't said that very well. Stop talking." [00:19:00] PP: Well, and I think it's important to point out. Like, to mothers, that might be the only conversation you have where nobody talks back to you that whole day. [00:19:09] BK: Absolutely. And any kind of life situation that feels lonely, I think words are amazing. And any life situation that feels overwhelming, because you've got too many people around all the time, it's also respite from that. It's just the easiest, cheapest, most wonderful tool I think that we have to use in so many ways. I think one thing that does happen though is people say I'm not a writer yet. I have to become a writer first. And to me, writing is literally just writing words on a page. It's taking what's in your head and heart and spilling it and just capturing your experience of being a human. Nobody before or since will have the exact experience as you. So don't be selfish. Share that with everybody. [inaudible 00:19:58]. [00:19:58] PP: Exactly. Yeah. Even if you feel like you don't need to share it with anyone, it changes you. And so, can we talk about that? How you've seen people change when they connect with themselves? Connect with their writing? What does that do for them? [00:20:13] BK: I think it changes the way that people see the world, and respond to the world and see their place in the world. I'm speaking very much from experience. But also, from what it's reported back to me from students. I think if you have been able to draw out the words that have been stuffed down, there's a liberation in that. Just as some people use breathwork for trauma release, for example, writing can be just as powerful as that. You're physically letting something out of your body. So you're not carrying it anymore. And people say that they're walking through the world much more lightly. And they're noticing things that they were totally closed off to before. They find themselves having conversations with new people because, suddenly, they realize that everybody is inspiration as well as everything else. And also, I think it can help you relate to other people better. Because you realize that just as there's things behind the mask for you, things below the surface, you start to notice that in other people too, which can lead to really amazing connection. [00:21:26] PP: Yeah. Throughout your book, you have some wonderful lessons. And I think it's important to note that it's not just about – it is about writing. But this is not a semantics of writing book. And one of my favorite chapters is the one on releasing. And I thought that was so amazing because you give us exercises. You give us ways to really go deep and release things through our writing. I thought that was really incredible. One of the statements that you have in there, and you have great little sayings in the margins, but you said, "Words heal. Apply liberally." [00:22:01] BK: Yeah. [00:22:02] PP: And tell me where that came from. Because I absolutely loved it. I'm like I need to make a sticker of that and put it on my wall. [00:22:10] BK: Oh, I love that idea. But like I always say to people, you are right that the world needs your medicine. But before you can start administering that medicine to anyone else, you have to administer it to yourself. And really, words are so healing. Of course, they can also be damaging if they're used in the wrong way. But in the sense that I'm talking about, which is just getting words out onto the page. And also, filling your life with words. Reading beautiful words from other people. Just the more you do it, the better you get. Like if you need medicine and you take it in the doses that you're supposed to take it in, you'll probably get better. It is just the same thing. [00:22:56] PP: But what I really want to know from you is tell us what it means to be a fearless writer. Because your book is called The Way of the Fearless Writer. And explain to us what a fearless writer is. [00:23:09] BK: For me, a fearless writer is just somebody who allows themselves without editing, or criticism, or any kind of barrier to spill what is in their heart and their head onto the page. That's where it all begins. That's how books get written. That's how hearts get healed. That's how things get figured out. It really is just that. The fearless part of it I think – well, I did a survey not long ago with more than a thousand writers in my community. And a hundred percent of them said that self-doubt got in the way of them writing what they want to write. I mean, I've never done a survey where 100% of people have said the same thing. And it was incredible. That's actually partly why I wanted to write the book. Because it's such a – we love to talk about the fear of writing as well. We love to talk about writer's block. We'd love to talk about how hard it is and all of this. And I really wanted to write a book which gave people tools that they could give themselves permission to not be afraid to write. Because sometimes that's all it is. [00:24:19] PP: That is the perfect way to wrap this up. Because you've given us a lot to think about. And your book has so many wonderful exercises. So many tips. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find it. We're going to let them download a free chapter of it. And I really appreciate you sitting down with us today and talking about this. [00:24:37] BK: Oh, it's such a joy. I'm so grateful for everything that writing has brought to my life. Just in the pages of my notebook at five o'clock in the morning with a candle and the early sunrise. And also, the doors that writing books have opened to new people and new opportunities. Things I never could have dreamed of. And it all begins with just writing words on a page, which anyone can do, right? [00:25:00] PP: That's great. Beth, thank you so much. [00:25:04] BK: Thank you so much. What a joy. [OUTRO] [00:25:10] PP: That was author, Beth Kempton, talking about how writing can help you connect with your feelings and your dreams. If you'd like to learn more about Beth and her books or her online writing courses, follow her on social media or download a free chapter of her latest book, The Way of the Fearless Writer, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Living With Intention With Dr. Greg Hammer [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 423 of Live Happy Now. By now we're all aware that the mind and body are connected. But how do we use that knowledge to create our best life? I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm talking with Dr. Greg Hammer, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, physician, and a mindfulness expert, who developed the four-step gain method of mindfulness. As he explains in his book, Gain Without Pain, this is an acronym for gratitude, acceptance, intention, and non-judgment. He teaches this method to reduce stress and increase wellbeing. Today, he's going to talk about how you can create a more intentional and happier life. Let's welcome Dr. Greg Hammer. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:50] PF: I'm so excited to talk to you. You have a lot to tell us about the power of intention. But before we get to that, I want you to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, because you've been so instrumental in showing us how our mental state affects our physical wellbeing. Explain to us how you became so attuned with that and why it's so important to you? [00:01:12] GH: I have been a lifelong fitness enthusiast in every sense of the word, mental, spiritual, physical. About 10 years ago, I joined a directive at Stanford called Well MD, that was convened in order to address the growing prevalence of burnout among physicians, which has only probably gotten worse since then. But in any case, I joined Well MD, and then I was asked to give a talk on burnout and wellness at a national meeting, and then another talk, another other talk, and then I had some sabbatical time, and I decided to write the book. The first book that I wrote. In the meantime, I've been – went to medical school because of my interest in in the human body and the miracle of how all the parts are interrelated, I found that I really had an affinity for people that work with children. They don't seem to take themselves quite as seriously as some of the people in adult medicine and that comported with my personality. So, I did a residency in pediatrics and loved Intensive Care Medicine. So, I did a residency in anesthesiology, and then fellowships in pediatric anesthesia and critical care. I've been working in both arenas, the pediatric intensive care unit and cardiac anesthesia for over 30 years. I have a research lab at Stanford where we study developmental pharmacology from babies up to adults. Again, my interest in in wellness has further intensified, I would say. I've been a student rather of Advaita, or non-duality for 12 years or so. That has certainly influenced my ways of thinking. So, everything I talk about with you, probably for the rest of this session is going to have something to do with all of that. [00:03:05] PF: Are you seeing more of that in the medical community where they're not just treating the body, but they are looking at things like mindfulness. You're huge on mindfulness and you're a trailblazer in that way, because I know in my own life, just having a physician that sees things that way, has been a challenge. Do you see that changing? [00:03:24] GH: I do. I think that just like our medical system as a whole has really focused on disease more than preventing disease. That ship is kind of slow to turn, as we put more resources into preventive medicine now, which is absolutely requisite if we want to be a well society. Similarly, I think that physicians and others in medicine have focused on disease and finding, taking sort of a reductionist approach to health, I would say, trying to break things down into their component parts and figure out how to cure things. I think, that colors the profession as a whole, and what we need to do is really move much toward prevention in our own wellness, because unless we are, well, it's going to be difficult to take care of others. It's sort of the put your oxygen mask on first. Your own oxygen mask before you take care of the child or someone who's acting like a child sitting next to you on the aircraft. Yes, I think things are changing. But the culture is very well entrenched, and it is a big ship and slow to turn. But I do think things are changing in medicine for the better. [00:04:43] PF: That's good to hear. And you are so pivotal in this and you teach us so much about what it does to have the right mindset, and what I want to talk to you about today is intentional living. Let's start by making sure we're all on the same page. Tell us what you mean when you say intentional living. [00:05:03] GH: We can start by just acknowledging that our brains have become hardwired over tens of thousands of years of evolution, in ways that are no longer adaptive, or we might say they're maladaptive. For example, we all have a negativity bias. We tend to focus on the negative and forget about the positive. We get out of bed in the morning, and maybe we have an ache or a pain. Our back is stiff. So, we focus on that and we just initiate the day with a cascade of thoughts about woe is me, this and that, instead of focusing on the miracle of the human body, that we even woke up and could get out of bed at all, and all the good things about our physical state. So, we have a negativity bias. The other thing is, the way our brains have become wired is we're very distracted with the past and the future. So, we have a hard time being present, which is where happiness lives. It's adaptive to some extent to dwell in the past. We want to learn from our mistakes. We want to savor our good memories. But beyond that, we overthink the past and with our negativity bias, we end up with a lot of shame and regret, low self-esteem and depression. Likewise, we overthink the future, in ways that are maladaptive and we catastrophize with our negativity bias and think of the worst thing that could happen. We generate a lot of fear and anxiety. So, if we're not intentional, if we don't have a plan, then we're going to simply lapse into our default modes of thinking, and that is negative and other than present. If we want to be more positive, and really focus on all the miraculous things that are happening around us all the time, including inside us, and we want to be more present, and therefore happy. We need to have a plan. We need to be purposeful. That's really where intention is a requisite component of happiness. [00:07:03] PF: So, when you set an intention, what do you mean, how do you go about doing that? [00:07:10] GH: Sure. Well, I can just briefly tell you about the gain method, the gain meditation. So, we get up in the morning, we open the blinds, we do our morning hygiene. We find a comfortable place to sit. We close our eyes, hopefully in a quiet place, and we focus on our breath. We slow it down. So, our first intention, actually, with regard to this gain process begins the night before, because we acknowledge we're going to do this gain meditation in the morning. It may take as little as three minutes, we're going to set our alarm three minutes earlier than we otherwise would. So, who's going to miss that three minutes? Or we can go to bed three minutes earlier. Instead of getting up at seven o'clock, we're going to get up at 6:57. We're setting our intention for this whole process the night before. Then, we were sitting quietly, we focus on the breath, we slow down the inhalation, pause and take a nice slow exhalation without any effort. By slowing our breathing down, we activate our parasympathetic nervous system. We slow our heart rate, lower our blood pressure, our blood sugar, and then we begin contemplation of that for which we're grateful. We all have much for which should be grateful, so we spent 45 seconds or so just focusing on our friends, our family, our loved ones, our relative health, even if it's not perfect. It's miraculous that we're as healthy as we are, and all the other things for which we're grateful. Then, we transition to acceptance, we need to acknowledge that there is pain in life, and pain, and joy are kind of hand in hand. So, we may take something uncomfortable or painful, and actually, imagine bringing it into our bodies, opening our chest, opening our heart, bringing this experience into our heart, and nurturing it, enveloping it with our heart. We find that it's not so bad and we can live with it. Then, we transition to intention, which is where your question originated and we start by having the intention of noticing what's happening in this moment. So, we may just, for example, have the intention of noticing the pressure of the chair against our body, noticing the tingling on the soles of our feet, noticing the sounds that we're hearing as we breathe deeply and slowly. So, for me, I have a meditation room in my home on Stanford campus. I'm sort of halfway between San Francisco and San Jose airports. I often hear a plane going by in the distance – [00:09:40] PF: It becomes part of the meditation, right? [00:09:44] GH: It does. It's the part of the intention portion of the gain meditation because I'm setting my intention as you put it with what's happening right now. So, I'm just spending 10 or 15 seconds noticing my bodily sensations, noticing my perceptions, what I feel, what I hear, what I may smell, just the slight sweetness of the air, I'm breathing. So, we spend 10 or 15 seconds being present in this way, really noticing what's happening in this moment. Then, we go to our intention of generally looking at the positive side of things, rather than the negative. So, what we're doing is we're actually rewiring our brains, because as we focus on our gratitude, acceptance, intention, and then non-judgment in life, we're actually rewiring our brains toward a more positive and present way of thinking and experiencing, and therefore being more happy. [00:10:48] PF: How long does that rewiring take? Because I know that over time, it does completely start changing the way you look at the world when you get up. The ache and pain that you have, you see it differently. But how long does that take for us to start doing? When do we start seeing results? [00:11:06] GH: As in life, life is a journey. Really, there's no destination. So, I think we can notice a change in our thought processes very soon, like after days, or a couple of weeks. What happens is, when we, for example, do this gain, practice, we set our intention the night before. We sit, we breathe, we go through our gratitude, acceptance, intention, non-judgement. We return to the breath. We slowly open our eyes. We go out in the world. What happens is, even after a short period of time, in days, maybe a couple of weeks, we noticed that when we're being ungrateful, or resisting, or unintentional, lapsing into our negativity bias, or we're judging. What happens is a light bulb goes off. We just did our gain practice and we notice when we're being ungrateful, we're sort of whining and complaining. Then, we remind ourselves, “Oh, these are first world problems”, as my daughter would say. These are not deal breakers. These are really pretty much small stuff, things. That light bulb moment actually brings us a bit of a smile, and then we simply redirect our thoughts back to gratitude, acceptance, intention and non-judgment. We do our gain meditation. We go to work, maybe we drive to work, and there's a driver that is in the lane to the right of us, and he or she changes lanes into our lane, without using the turn signal ahead of us. We start to make all these judgments about the driver, and then a light bulb goes off, and we realize, I just did my gain meditation. I dropped the judgment. I realized that things don't have to be good or bad. So, I have some imagery associated with this. A light bulb goes off, and I smile, and I drop the judgment of that driver, and it actually feels good. I get a little dopamine hit. Instead of getting negative about it, and getting angry, I actually have a smile and a little positive reaction. That light bulb moment where we notice our thoughts and experiences, and we can redirect them. That happens actually just really after a short period of time. [00:13:24] PF: Yes, and I've noticed, when you start living that way, when you start thinking that way, you do offer people more grace, in situations that come up, some of the things that all have popped into my head unexpectedly and automatically, it's like, “Well, you know what, I've done the same thing.” I start seeing less judgment toward them and more like, “Okay, how many times have I done that?” That's just karma saying, “Hey, remember that time you cut someone off in traffic.” It does, it just starts changing the way you receive the experiences. [00:13:54] GH: Absolutely. So, just drill a little bit deeper into that judgment process, in the gain meditation, when we do our non-judgement contemplation, I often personally, I do this, and I recommend that others do it. Just picture an image of the Earth, one of these beautiful NASA images where the earth is apparently suspended in space. It's a beautiful planet. It's neither good nor bad. It's just a planet. So, we kind of pronounced to ourselves as we breathe slowly and deeply, and we picture this image of the earth. The earth is just a planet. It's neither good nor bad. It's just the planet that it is. Therefore, it's only rational for me to look at myself the same way. I'm just a human being. I'm neither good nor bad. I simply am the human being that I am. Then, we may repeat I am and link that with our breath. Then, we slowly open our eyes. Again, what happens is, when we find ourselves judging, like that driver, we just discussed, or ourselves, when we find that we're judging ourselves, since we're our own harshest critic, we may notice that what we're doing is judging, and we also notice the fact that we're judging ourselves with this negativity bias. So, we can have that light bulb moment and just drop the judgment and go back to, “I'm just the human being that I am, I'm neither good nor bad.” We learn that we don't have to cast a hue over the world and see things through this veil of negativity. We can look at things just exactly as they are, without judging them to be good or bad. They just are what they are. I think that's such an important change in our thought process. [00:15:43] PF: It's huge. I want to dig into that a little bit more, because as we've talked about, we do judge ourselves so harshly. Some people – I see people who just beat themselves up over and over. How do we – before we start judging ourselves, how do we start setting our brain up to not do that? How do we get very specific and break that judgment, self-judgment habit? [00:16:08] GH: I think, when you talk about intention, we need to have a plan, and that really translate into having a practice, right? We need to have a practice that preferably is daily, because our brains are very hard wired. Again, they became this way over tens of thousands of years, and we're not going to change them overnight. So, we have to have a baby step process, preferably a daily plan, where we begin to rewire our brains. That happens only through intention. If we're not purposeful, we just lapse into this negativity, and this very judgmental way of being. Again, when we have this practice, and we find that we're judging ourselves, we're down on ourselves, we're getting depressed, we can have that light bulb moment and recognize that this is just the way our brains work. This is not something unique to us that we think this way, in this negative way. This is the way we all think. I think that's the first lesson is that this isn't our dirty little secret. We're not the only one that has these thoughts. We all have these thoughts. I was listening to a wonderful show on NPR called The Hidden Brain, and the host had somebody on who's an expert in the imposter syndrome. The message was that we all feel this way. We all feel like imposters no matter how accomplished we are. This is again that negative voice speaking to us. So, we need to have a plan to change the way we think. When we're having these very negative thoughts about ourselves, I like the cognitive behavioral approach of we're criticizing ourselves for a particular thing or things. Imagine we're talking to a good friend, who's got the same voice, who's criticizing themselves for these things, something they did or said or didn't do, would we be judging them harshly? No, we would probably be reassuring them, and not judging them. Just reassuring them that they're just a human being. We're all mortal, we're all fallible, we're not perfect. Don't be so hard on yourself. So, use that same voice with yourself when you're getting into this very negative way of thinking and judging. [00:18:24] PF: Over time, it becomes easier to do that. You start recognizing it faster. You correct the behavior sooner, and you just don't go as deep into that judgment. Is that correct? [00:18:34] GH: Oh, absolutely. One of my heroes in life is Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn who's really been a leader in mindfulness. He defines mindfulness as awareness of the present moment, on purpose, non-judgmentally. So, there are some of the gain elements. On purpose, we talked about intention. You need to have that purposefulness to have a plan to rewire our brain, because we have this wonderful quality called neuroplasticity. But we have to have a plan. So, awareness of the present moment, which is where happiness lives, on purpose, with intention, non-judgmentally, and we touched on the importance of being nonjudgmental, especially toward ourselves. [00:19:24] PF: That gives us greater happiness. It gives us greater mental and emotional wellbeing. Talk about what it's doing for us physically. Because you've, you've been so great at bringing those two things together. [00:19:36] GH: Sure. Well, we're all feeling kind of burnt out. I think that COVID amplified the stress that we all experience, which is just part of life. Burnout is simply the mental and physical exhaustion that we experience related to chronic stress. Chronic stress is a condition where we have an increase in the adrenaline or epinephrine in our bodies, increases our heart rate, our blood pressure. We have an increase in cortisol, which is a hormone that also increases our blood pressure, increases our blood sugar, predisposes to diabetes and other adverse health conditions. Stress has a number of effect physical effects on our body. It actually shortens these little protective caps we have at the tips of our chromosomes, which I likened to the little plastic protective tips at the end of our shoelaces that keep the ends of our shoelaces from becoming frayed. As we age, we have a shortening of these telomeres and that's been associated with a degradation in the function of our cells, and the aging process. That is accelerated when we're stressed. So, chronic stress actually induces changes akin to aging. There are so many physiologic effects of stress on our bodies, just about on every organ, and tissue, and cell in our body. Really, stress, ages us. So, the question is, how do we change that? That's really what we're talking about with this gain method, with a practice of non-judgment, with a practice of mindfulness meditation. These are ways of increasing our personal resilience and decreasing the amount of stress that we experience. Lowering our heart rate, our blood pressure, our cortisol, our blood sugar, reversing this process of our telomere shortening, our cells degrading, our genetics, our epigenetics degrading. So, it's so important that we recognize that we have this chronic stress, and what the effects are, and that we really make priority number one in our lives actually addressing this. [00:21:58] PF: Yes, because I've seen people being a lot less healthy since the pandemic, and of all ages. We have some fairly young friends, they’re in their early 30s, who are talking about these health problems they've started having since the pandemic. Is that an effect of the stress? Or is it because we got so unhealthy sitting around during the pandemic? What has created this? Because I'm seeing it everywhere from, like I said, early 30s, up into their 60s and 70s. [00:22:29] GH: I would say all of the above. What happens is, the three legs that form the tripod supporting our physical wellbeing, which then supports our mental and spiritual wellbeing, our sleep, exercise, and nutrition. What are the effects of stress on our sleep, exercise, and nutrition? Well, briefly, stress causes a degradation in the quality and quantity of our sleep. So, when we're stressed, we don't sleep as well. Of course, we all have experienced this. We wake up early in the morning and our minds are racing with all kinds of lists of things we have to do and anxieties and stresses. So, stress degrades our sleep, makes us fatigued. When we're fatigued, we tend to be too tired to exercise. Our exercise regimen goes downhill and we saw this in COVID, where gyms were closed, and people spent a lot more time indoors, not only depriving themselves of the magic of nature, but also not exercising very much. They're fatigued. We're not exercising. Our diet actually degrades as well. We're tired, so we reach for these sugary and fatty, so-called comfort foods, to give us a boost of energy. Of course, then we crash, and these foods are not healthy. So, our sleep, exercise and nutrition are very interrelated. When we're stressed, they all are degraded. Of course, the sleep exercise and nutrition habits and practice that we have are so integral to our health overall, when we're not sleeping well, we're not exercising, we're not eating well. Of course, we're more predisposed to hypertension, diabetes. Again, the effects of stress are magnified when we're fatigued, not exercising, and not eating well. This is all like a self-propagating loop that is causing us to spiral in a downward direction. [00:24:28] PF: It's difficult to tell someone who's going through that, that doing some meditation, or setting intentions is going to actually turn that around. [00:24:39] GH: You might advise your listeners, well, if you're tired and feel out of shape, and you're depressed, focus on the basics of sleep, exercise, and nutrition. Just for example, address your sleep hygiene. There's several things, we all know what to do, but we don't do them, typically. But we really want to improve our sleep. So, instead of perhaps recommending something abstract, like setting intentions, you can say something specific, like, let's address our sleep. Focus on your sleep hygiene and start to sleep better. What you're really advising when you ask someone to really focus on their sleep and sleep hygiene, is you're asking them to set their intention, right? That is an intention. It's improving your health by improving your sleep. That's a very tangible, easy to understand concrete bit of advice that does involve intentions. [00:25:41] PF: Well, Greg, thank you so much for taking this time with me. You're so insightful. A lot we can learn from you. As I said, we're going to tell them how they can learn more about you and your books. I just appreciate you taking time with me today. [00:25:54] GH: Well, likewise, it's been really a pleasure having a conversation with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:03] PF: That was Dr. Greg Hammer, talking about how to live with intention. If you'd like to learn more about Greg and his book, Gain Without Pain, or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Processing Grief Through Music with Morgan James [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What's up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you're listening to On a Positive Note. We know that listening to music offers a soothing emotional experience. But what can it do for the person who writes that song?   Today, I'm joined by Morgan James, a Juilliard-trained singer, whose diverse talent has taken her from performing on Broadway stages, to working with symphony orchestras, to writing and recording soulful R&B music. While working on her latest album, she and Doug Wamble, her husband and co-writer, both were grappling with devastating illnesses of dear friends. They put the tangled emotions of uncertainty, grief, and loss into a song called I’ll Be Holding On, which also has become the album's video centerpiece. In this interview, Morgan shares how writing and performing this song has helped her come to terms with grief and how performing music helps her heal. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:01:00] PF: Morgan, thank you so much for sitting down with me today. [00:01:03] MJ: Thank you so much for having me. [00:01:05] PF: You have an incredible body of work. Just first of all, we're going to tell our listeners how they can discover all the different types of music that you've done because you've done some amazing projects. The reason we're here today is to talk about a song I'll Be Holding On. This is such a powerful piece of music, and we need to start by letting our listeners know the story behind it. Can you talk about that? [00:01:27] MJ: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me and for listening to the song, the song I wrote with my husband, Doug Wamble. When we were working on the album, we were going through a pretty traumatic period of time with our respective best friends. My best friend, Richard, was going through a health crisis. Doug's best friend, Lanie, was also going through a health crisis. We didn't know if they were going to make it, and we wanted to write something to help ourselves through the feeling of helplessness, of not being able to save them, not being able to help them. We wanted to write something that might reach them and help ourselves at the same time. I don't normally write something inspirational, so I really wanted to dig in and write something that felt like it could speak to our friends in our particular stories but also to everyone. What exacerbated the emotion of the song was the fact that Lanie passed away in a very, very tragic way and unexpectedly at the end of this journey. So our kind of worst fears came true that we had to say goodbye to someone we couldn't bear to say goodbye to. That was how the song came about. When it came time to make the video to go with the song, my director, Jonah, really wanted to create a detailed story of friendship and love, and tell something that was so specific and so detailed and yet could be universal. I think that he really hit it out of the park. [00:02:57] PF: Yes, he did. That's an amazing video, and we are going to talk about that. But I wanted to dig in a little bit about what it was like for you and your husband. You're already frequent collaborators on songs. But how was it working on something that was so intensely painful and personal? Did it help? Did it sometimes hurt? What was that like? [00:03:19] MJ: Every time we've written something really personal, I've written songs about breakups from the past. We've written songs about breakups. We've written songs about things we've gone through with our family, with our parents, things we've gone through with friends. Every time that we write something personal, it's painful because it is the best and most specific tool that we have to process everything in our life is our art. It feels painful sometimes still to sing things that are deeply personal. But that's my job. There were a lot of tears because we really wanted to reach them. They both felt very unreachable in these moments, and we felt like we couldn't save them. So we cried and cried and cried, and we didn't know another way to try to reach because this is the only thing I know how to do is make music, is make art. It's incredibly cathartic as well. So it's painful but it's also freeing. [00:04:15] PF: So how did that come about? What made you two look at each other and say, “We need to write a song about this.”? What was that process like, the genesis of that decision? [00:04:24] MJ: Well, I knew I wanted a song on the album with a choir because I've always wanted to record with the Morgan State University Choir. It's been a dream of mine. Okay, well, we need to write a song for the choir. I hadn't even written it yet when I secured the choir. [00:04:37] PF: Really? [00:04:38] MJ: Yes. [00:04:38] PF: That’s safe. [00:04:39] MJ: Yes. I knew that I wanted a song. I wanted a song like Mariah Carey, Anytime You Need a Friend. I love that song, and I think that it's incredible. The way the choir functions in that song is pretty powerful. That song is very inspirational, and it's hard to write an inspirational song without being cheesy, without being trite. It's hard to write something personal that feels real. We sat down. It was a big challenge, but I said, “What should we write about?” Doug said, “We need to write this about our friends. We need to write this pain that we feel, the fear that we feel. We need to put this in this song.” So we started talking about, okay, well, what would we want to say to them. For instance, with my friend, Richard, sometimes it's hard for him to accept help, right? So these two people, Richard and Lanie, they're the ones that are always helping others. They're always doing something and neglecting themselves sometimes. How do you say that to someone kindly? How do you say to them, “I'm here. Reach out to me. Take my hand.” Accepting help is one of the hardest things to do. [00:05:44] PF: So as you were working on it, was it different than your usual collaboration? Was there a different vibe to it? Or how was that? [00:05:51] MJ: I think it's a different vibe of a song than I've ever written. I really went out on a limb and tried to write something a little different and challenged myself. It felt vulnerable. It felt a little scary. I think that we were – so often with songs, especially because they're from my album, sometimes Doug will defer to certain things that I want from my album. I think this really felt like we both had something we wanted to accomplish emotionally. Yes, I definitely think that it was extremely difficult and cathartic process writing the song. [00:06:24] PF: It's interesting because on this show, we talk a lot about how music heals and soothes us as listeners. But we have never really tackled it from the aspect of how it heals and soothes the songwriter. [00:06:37] MJ: The writer. [00:06:38] PF: Yes. So can you talk about how does it change the experience for you as you're able to write about it? Then after that, let's talk. You said that sometimes it's still painful to sing these songs. So I'd love to explore that a little bit more as well. [00:06:53] MJ: I think that every single song, there have been times that I've been writing something that I won't be able to get to the end of it in therapy or in my own process. Sometimes, a song gets me to the end of it. There are songs that I write that I'm trying to express something I can't tell a person, whether it's my mother or my father or my friends or someone in my life that has hurt me or someone I've hurt. Sometimes, the only way to get through it is in a song because songs are so unique because they're poetry, they're a journal entry, and they're also a painting. I read a great quote about paintings are how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time. [00:07:37] PF: Ooh, I love that. [00:07:39] MJ: Music is – sometimes, a song will come on, and we'll start weeping because it will take us to a moment that no words could ever describe. It will take us to our eighth-grade dance. It will take us to a funeral. It'll take us to a wedding. It will take us to a memory. It's transformative. So when I'm writing songs, I don't always hit them out of the park, but they're always about something real. I don't write songs about nothing. When I've gone on co-writes, let's say in Nashville or Los Angeles, sometimes people will want me to write songs about nothing, just to get a song done. It's just not how my mind works. It has to be about something that I have seen or known or experienced. How lucky am I that I get to process my memories that way. [00:08:22] PF: Right. Does it change the way you see those memories sometimes? [00:08:27] MJ: It does. Sometimes, when I sing songs, I have a song about someone who left me, right? Now, the hurt is gone, but I have put in a capsule the way it felt to be there. So I'll always remember. Even though my memories of it have softened, it's almost like it marks time. Songs mark time. There have been a few songs that have been so cathartic to me that they actually – I get over them. I get over the hurt or over the pain because the song takes me over the hump. The song helps me heal in a way that other things could never help me heal. Just talking about something could never help me heal the way a song could help me heal. [00:09:10] PF: Do you have that moment where you kind of look back at it and say, “Oh, my gosh. I completely changed the way that that feels within me.”? [00:09:19] MJ: Yes. I think it's over time. It’s a process where all of a sudden you look back, and you’re further along than you thought you were, these moments of healing. There's a couple songs that I'm very proud of that that I look at them and I say I was able to capture exactly what I wanted to say in that. That's the hardest thing about songwriting. Sometimes, you miss. You miss a lot. You write a lot of bad songs, songs that don't really hit the nail on the head. Then there are a couple that you are able to say, “I said exactly what I wanted to say, and I was able to satisfy myself and others.” I mean, that's really hard. You want to write something so specific that it is in turn universal. Like the best songs everyone can relate to, and yet they're specific to the writer. That's the biggest challenge of songwriting I think. [00:10:08] PF: Oh, yes. At what point in your life did you start using songwriting as an outlet? When did you realize just how much power it had for you and that that was what you wanted to do? [00:10:19] MJ: Oh, my gosh. I came to it so late. I came to it so late. I still consider myself a new songwriter because John Lennon said, “You can't call yourself a songwriter until you've written 100 songs.” I came to it very, very late. I didn't know that I was going to be a songwriter until I was in my 30s. [00:10:36] PF: Really? [00:10:36] MJ: I probably didn't write my first song until my late 20s. Even at that, I was tiptoeing because I was very intimidated because I am in awe of songwriters. I thought that it was such a difficult task and such a high art. So I think that what has helped me is writing a ton of songs and understanding that it's okay that a lot of them will be bad or won't fit somewhere. It’s okay if they remain orphans or if they don't find a home because the art of it is actually the doing. [00:11:07] PF: Right. [00:11:07] MJ: Yes. I came to it very late in life. [00:11:09] PF: So what brought you into it? At what point did you say, “Okay, I'm going to try this.”? [00:11:14] MJ: Well, when I started my first band, I started playing shows out in New York, and I got a music manager, and I started trying to get a record deal. A lot of people around me were like, “You need to have a stake in your music. You need to sing something that's from your heart that's original. You need to have original music. I think that's the way that you're going to break through.” I've always sung covers, and I always will. But I started being encouraged by my management to write. So they would send me on co-writing dates, which is like speed dating, which is hilarious, where you sit down with a stranger and try to write something from your deepest depths. I started just trying it. I think a real breakthrough for me was my manager sent me to Nashville for a writing week, and I did two writing sessions a day for a week. So I did 14 writing sessions with 14 different collaborators. I realized, okay, I can do this every day. Also, I was always kind of intimidated. They’re an experienced songwriter. I'm not. But then I realized, oh, I know more about this. I'm better than I think. I should be confident. I should lean in. I should celebrate my ideas more. That was really liberating. [00:12:29] PF: Oh, that's amazing. So if – your music, do you usually know, hey, this is a great one, and this one's not as good? Or is it they all feel the same or they're all your babies? How does that work for you? [00:12:42] MJ: Doug and I have been writing together for 10 years, and we know if a song doesn't come together and kind of get finished within an hour or two. We give up and walk away and start again another day. So I think that a good song will show itself to you really quickly. We'll write in in a couple hours, and then like we have the general sculpture, and then we'll chisel away at the details. I tend to think if it's taking too long, it's not right. If you're on hour 7, 8, 9, 10 and you still don't have a song, something is not right. Some songs just don't – I have a couple songs I love that just never fit anywhere, never found a home. I call them like the orphan songs. [00:13:22] PF: You can do the orphan album one day. [00:13:24] MJ: Exactly, like the B-sides, like we used to do B-sides. So, yes, some songs I love and other people don't respond to. Then some songs I think are fine and other people love. So the longer I write and the older I get, I get more picky and scrutinizing with my lyrics to really fine boil things down to the finest point. Doug can play anything. So our problem is narrowing down and getting very, very specific because I can sing most things. He can play most things. So we have to use our critical thinking and really get hard on ourselves. Is that good enough, right? Is what you played good enough? Is what you sang good enough? Is that lyric good enough? That's a really fun part of the puzzle. [00:14:06] PF: So at what point did you know I'll Be Holding On was good to go, like that's what we wanted to say, and it's ready? Did it take a lot of polishing? Or did you pretty much put it out there together, and it came together quickly? [00:14:18] MJ: Usually, when we write, we'll write a song, and then we'll step away from it. Within a few days of writing, it will make a demo. We'll sit with it and see if it feels cooked. When we started putting together the instrumentation, we recorded it with just vocals and the whole band. Then when we took it to – there were lots of layers that we started adding. But the chorus, to me, I think we had to work a lot longer on the verses than the – the chorus, to me, felt right right away. We wrote the chorus first, and then we had to go back and through and write the verses. I think that you kind of feel when a song is cooked. Then adding the choir just felt like that was the final glaze. [00:15:01] PF: Yes. So the video, we got to talk about this because I can't even call it a video. It's a film. It's a short film and incredibly well done. How did that come about? Was that your vision? Was it Jonah's vision? Was it a combination? [00:15:16] MJ: So when I sent the entire album to Jonah, I said, “Let's make a video together. Pick a song, any song.” He picks the longest, most dramatic song on the entire album, and I'm like, “Wow, okay.” He goes, “Tell me what it's about,” because he just listened to the song and didn't know the story. I told him the story, and he was like, “Well, now, I really want to do this.’ He sent me a screenplay. He sent me a full – [00:15:38] PF: Wow. I'm going to interrupt real quick because we should tell people. I know who Jonah is, and you know who Jonah is. Why don't you tell our listeners who Jonah is? [00:15:47] MJ: Jonah Z. Helms is my friend, my incredible filmmaker friend. He also directed my video for Give You Up, which was totally different vibe, completely inane and wacky and fun. He's an incredible empath, like one of the most heartful, thoughtful people I've ever known. I really trusted him to tell this story. He wanted to tell a story of taking a friend, a terminally ill friend, on a road trip to see the ocean one last time. He wrote this beautiful screenplay with like so much detail and so much thoughtful ideas. Everything in the video, from the car, everything in the car, it was set dressed. Everything that you – the crowns. His partner made the crowns that we wear. Every detail was so thoughtfully executed, and the ideas were so clear and beautiful. I don't have that visual storytelling mind. I just think it's genius. I wish I had it. But when you are around someone who's that's their gift, it's just so amazing. We did it on a shoestring budget over three days in the desert. We actually did a road trip. We drove that ‘72 Bronco, the two of us, and they filmed it. [00:17:06] PF: First of all, where did you all even find that Bronco? Because that was like, “Oh, my God.” [00:17:11] MJ: Oh, my God. It's a character in the little film. [00:17:14] PF: It is. [00:17:15] MJ: He found it. He rented it from a place that rents exotic or interesting cars. He rented it in LA. We filmed in Southern California. Then we drove up to Pismo Beach to go on the dunes. Yes, we filmed for three days straight in the desert with a very, very small crew. I think there were only six of us, including Pearl and myself, a very small crew. What we got done in the time that we had, I mean. We also shot so many other scenes that we couldn't include. So it was incredible. [00:17:48] PF: So when he gave you that vision, were you immediately like, “This is everything.”? How did that land with you? [00:17:54] MJ: We got on Zoom, actually. Pearl, Jonah, myself got on Zoom and went through every single scene and talked about every portion of it, just like we would. We had like a rehearsal, just like we would for a film and all the beats, everything. The second I read it, I sent it to Doug to read, and he just fell apart crying, just reading it. That's how I knew it was right is that it was really important to me to capture because Doug lost his best friend. It was really important for me to capture that deep love that you have in a friendship that is inexplicable. I wanted to capture the helplessness, and I wanted it to be cathartic for him to watch. [00:18:35] PF: It is. It’s so tender. It's joyous, but it's also heart-wrenching. As I was watching it for like the fourth time, I was wondering how it was for you to film that because you’re not just an actress. You have lived this, and this is part of your story. [00:18:53] MJ: It was so painful. I cried for three days straight. I mean, the tears are, obviously, real. Pearl and I bonded so much in the filming and in the road trip that we shared things that we had never shared with anyone else before. So the grief is also her grief. It's mine. We were like channeling things that we needed to process in a deep way, and we had this vehicle, which was – it was also exhausting. The day on the dunes, like we were physically exhausted, and he was pushing us to our physical limits. It was one of the most fascinating and challenging experiences of my career, and I just needed to cry for three days. We just ended up filming those three days of crying. [00:19:42] PF: So what kind of response have you had since its release, the song and the video? [00:19:47] MJ: I've had a pretty amazing response to the video. A lot of people sending me selfies of themselves crying, which I think like really touches my heart. I mean, the biggest compliment I could ever receive is that someone is moved by something I create. I think it's also people aren't watching it saying, “Oh, I'm sad for you,” or, “Oh, what an interesting story.” They're watching it and saying that felt like I was there. It felt like I felt my mother, my sister, my father, my friend. I remembered a moment with my best friend. I remembered a moment with my sister. People are feeling connected to it for their own personal life, and that is the goal. That's the goal. [00:20:27] PF: Yes. It's beautifully done. It does give a voice to something we've all felt at one time or another. I think that's why it just pulls us in and makes it our own story. So it's just incredibly well done. What do you hope it accomplishes? [00:20:42] MJ: We recorded a few versions where I'm lip-syncing like a traditional music video. In the end, we didn't use any of those, and I'm so glad because it's a powerful story with no words, right? It shows the power of our imagination and our eyes and our minds and what we can say without speaking. I hope that people watch it, and it puts voice to something that they have not been able to articulate in their own grieving. I think that so often, it's just so hard to explain how we feel. It just feels so painful, and it feels locked up inside of our throat or our heart. I want this to speak to that. [00:21:22] PF: So it's beautiful. It's so well done. Morgan, thank you for coming on and talking about this. We're going to tell our listeners where they can find the video, where they can find you, see more about the music that you're doing, and just get to know you a little bit better. [00:21:36] MJ: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having this conversation about something that's important to me, and it means so much. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:47] PF: That was Morgan James, talking about how songwriting has helped her manage loss and grief. If you'd like to learn more about Morgan, listen to her music, or follow her on social media, just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. While you're there, be sure to check out our very cool perfect-for-summer tie-dye Live Happy Now t-shirt in the Live Happy Store. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note, and I look forward to joining you again next time. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]