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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Exploring Nature to Improve Mental Health With Mya-Rose Craig [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 411 of Live Happy Now. We know that getting out in nature is good for us. But this week's guest understands it better than most. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm sitting down with Mya-Rose Craig, a 20-year-old birdwatcher, environmentalist, and diversity activist. Mya-Rose Craig formed the Black2Nature organization at the age of just 14 to engage other teenagers of color with nature. She has already been awarded an honorary doctorate by Bristol University for her pioneering work in this area, and her memoir, Birdgirl: Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future, looks at the power of nature in birds, as well as the important role they have played in dealing with her mother's mental illness. She's here today to share her compelling story about what she's learned from nature. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:55] PF: Mya-Rose Craig, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] MRC: Hi, there. Thank you for having me. [00:01:01] PF: You have written a fantastic book that we're going to talk about today that’s so unique, and I think it's something our listeners are just going to love hearing about. I think, I want to start, your memoir is named Birdgirl. So, can we start by talking about how you earn that nickname? [00:01:18] MRC: Yeah, I think the funny thing, because I started calling myself Birdgirl when I was about 11. Oh, no, possibly slightly younger. And at the time, it was because I had just set up a blog because that was in 2013. That was the thing that people did when they wanted to socialize. I wanted to meet other kids my age that were into like birdwatching and nature because it was a bit nerdy and known at my school. I was sort of having a thing, and I came across this like very cheesy, like sixties, seventies superhero that was in like an old cartoon called Birdgirl. The whole thing with the silly superpowers and the crazy outfit. I was just like, “That's such a cool name.” I thought it sounded really cool for the name of a blog. I think like going back if you told, like, 10, 11-year-old me that at the age of 20, lots of people know me by Birdgirl and not my real name. I think she would have been very surprised by it. Considering as a kid, I made a pretty good decision. [00:02:22] PF: Yes, you could have done a lot worse with the nicknames, when you think back to that at that age. So, you're known as Birdgirl. Obviously, birds became a huge part of your life and your interest in birdwatching really started with your father. Can you talk about how that came about and how you found such a deep connection with nature? [00:02:42] MRC: Yes. I think this is the reason I find it really difficult to explain where birdwatching came for me because I've always been very, very passionate about birds and nature and the outdoors. And especially, when I was younger, it was considered quite a weird hobby for a teenage girl to have, basically. It was just really hard to explain. But you're right, it did all come from my dad, and that he has also been obsessed with birds since he was very, very young. And then he met my mom, and she was a city girl and she went – you can be a bird watcher if you want. But I want nothing to do with that. I'm never going to be doing that with you. But eventually, over the course of a few months, and I talked about this in the book, he sort of slowly dragged her into it until she had her sort of eureka moment where she went like, “Wait, I love birds as well.” So that meant like, by the time I was born, I had two parents who were crazy obsessed with birds and birdwatching and an older sister who was really into birdwatching. I don't know what they would have done if I hadn't also fallen into the trap. But I did, thankfully, and I just spent my whole childhood being taken around outdoors. For me, it was never like a light bulb moment where I realized I love birds in the outdoors because I always have, but more like as I got older, the slow realization that everyone else wasn't also obsessed with birds. That was, I think, as a kid quite weird for me to wrap my head around. [00:04:07] PF: Yeah, I guess if you've grown up in an environment where that's what you know, and everybody is into it, then you meet people who aren't and say, “Well, what is wrong with you guys?” [00:04:17] MRC: Exactly. It seemed very strange to me at the time. [00:04:19] PF: Well, it wasn't just the birds that you connected with. You found this really deep connection with all of nature. And how did that kind of unfold? Starts with the birds, but then you took it next level. [00:04:32] MRC: Yeah, I mean, I think it was a few different things coming together. Again, it did start from the birds, and I feel really lucky looking back on childhood. A lot of my key memories are sort of my parents just letting me run free and sort of woods and fields and rock climbing at the beach and things like that. So, I always just loved being outdoors. But I think it was sort of that combined with as I got a bit older, and you start going to like secondary school or high school or whatever, and you stopped being stressed about life, and for me, it was nature that I always used to turn to. I talk a lot in the book about struggling a lot in terms of my mom being very unwell. She was struggling with very severe mental illness, and it was sort of nature and the outdoors that I would turn to sort of be my version of self-care or mindfulness, I guess. And I think, because of that, it wasn't just a place that I love being, it sort of became something more than that, for me, I guess. [00:05:28] PF: What really struck me is just the fact that you recognize that, because there are a lot of adults don't recognize just how valuable that time in nature is, and how much it gives back to them. So, do you recall there ever being a time when you started consciously realizing that was what you needed? Or was it always something that was just innate, that I've got to get back to nature to kind of get grounded? [00:05:52] MRC: I think a bit of both, and I think when I was younger, my dad knew that very consciously, and so as a family, we'd spend a lot of time outdoors. It was only as I got a bit older, and I was a teenager, and I started sort of going like, “Birdwatching is really uncool.” But I sort of was having to make this decision about how much time I actually wanted to spend outdoors. I kind of didn't – I was sort of torn in some ways. I was like, “Oh, this is so weird and so nerdy, and I don't want people to spot me out birdwatching, and stuff like that.” But the other part of me and the part of that one, I guess, was the one that felt this very deep need to spend time outdoors. And I think especially the period, which again, I do talk about in the book, like after my mom was sectioned, she became very unwell for a period and my parents had already booked this birdwatching holiday away to Ecuador. And they sort of had this moment where they sat down and they had to go, “Is this a wise thing to do to be going on holiday right now? To be going into the middle of the jungle right now?” They sort of went like, “Yes.” It was just this amazing three-week experience where we were sort of away from everything that was sort of stressing us out for the most part. I think, I know, because I was sort of taught at a very young age that going outside is what has helped sort of as an adult, that's what I've turned to. [00:07:15] PF: You didn't wait till adulthood to do that. Because you were 14 when you founded Black2Nature. Can you, first of all, tell us about that organization? Because, okay, when I was 14, I was doing nothing like that. I was doing no good for the world. So, can you explain what that organization does? Tell us how that all came about and what made you want to start that. [00:07:36] MRC: Yes. I think Black2Nature is my charity, that at the time, it all felt very reasonable. And then, I look back, and I'm like, “That's crazy. I was 13, 14 years old.” It felt very necessary to me and it came out the fact that like I said, I spent a lot of time in the countryside and nature and outdoors growing up, and I'm also half Bangladeshi. So, I'm not white. My mom's not white. My sister isn't either. I never saw anyone who looked like me or my family outdoors. There was just a complete lack of diversity and engagement and just in a very basic way, as a kid, that made me really sad. Because I wanted other children to be getting those opportunities that I had. Also, in terms of sort of the conversation with my Asian part of the family, that attitude was always very much like, “Oh, that's very much like a white hobby”, basically, and I always thought that was so stupid. So, I reached an age, and when I was about 13, I also found out that in the US, you have all these summer camps over the summer for basically like every hobby under the sun, including, I found out, nature and bird camps. We don't have that in the UK and sort of eventually, I decided I was just going to organize one for myself for the weekend and I would invite other kids and it was really popular and loads of people signed up. And then, I realized that the only other people apart from me who had signed up, were all like, white teenage boys, like middle-class teenage boys. I think because it was something that I had organized, it felt much more personal and much close to home, I suppose. I sort of went, “I'm going to go and find some kids from the city where I'm from, and I will bring them on this camp, and I will let them engage with nature. I will make them like nature.” But at the time, I already had a bit of a profile online. I remember people kept on going like, “Oh, there are just certain groups of people who you can't engage with the outdoors.” I was like, “But that's stupid.” Because I know from my own family that that's not true. Very long story short, the camp was really successful. These kids had a really good time. They engaged with nature, they had never really left the city before and they loved it. Suddenly, I had all these big organizations writing to me going like, “What was the secret? How can we hear from you?” I was like, “I'm 13. I feel like if I can figure it out, you can figure it out.” But eventually, I decided what I would do, instead of giving them advice, was I would bring them all into one place, and I would get actual experts from the Black and Asian communities to come and talk to them. And my parents were just sort of like, “Mya, that's a conference.” I was like, “Right. Okay, I'm organizing a conference.” It was so successful, it was so good. I sent all these organizations off with like, a list of things to do. And like 14-year-old me was so pleased, I was like, “I fixed it. I've solved the issue.” And then obviously, nothing happened, and it was about six months after that conference that I was like, “This wasn't like a one-off thing. This is becoming a project.” I ended up setting up my charity, Black2Nature, and we still run lots and lots of events with kids, sort of taking them out into nature, or doing camps, or tree planting days, and stuff like that, spending a lot of time actually talking about mental health and mental wellbeing. We also do a lot of campaigning in the environmental sector, in the nature sector, trying to make a bit more diverse, and essentially a bit less racist. It's one of those things that I'm sort of looking back. That's kind of crazy. [00:11:06] PF: It's amazing that you're able to put that together even more amazing that it continues today. Can you talk about some of the changes that you see in people who go to the camps, and are able to participate? [00:11:18] MRC: Yes, absolutely. Sorry, this is one of my favorite things. Obviously, there is a lot of campaigning and stuff, but I love actually working with the kids, and especially at the start when we had less of like a reputation locally, we'd have so many kids turn up. I mean, actually, on the very first camp, I ran with these kids. I remember the boys turned up and they were like, “I don't want to be him. My mom made me come. This is going to be so boring. This can be awful.” I was just like, “What have I done? I've invited these kids out here, and they're going to hate me by the end of this weekend.” But it was like, actually, so many of them, I'm essentially just watching kids and teenagers fall in love with nature all the time. There's always a different thing. It's always a different aspect of it that interests people, but there are just so many, just like little moments that really stick with me. I think one of my favorites was we were out looking for a nightjar, which is like a nocturnal bird. The sun had just set and the stars had just come out. Instead of looking at the bird, this group of boys were looking up at the sky. They sort of called me over and they're like, “What's that? Is that a satellite?” I looked up and I was like, “No, that's a planet. That's Mars.” They literally thought I was joking. They thought I was tricking them because they didn't realize that you can see the planets with your bare eyes from Earth, and they may just get all the telescopes. We went back to camp, and they're looking at the stars. It's just little things like that, where you can sort of see kids sort of falling in love with the place that they live and the planet they live on, and it's really beautiful. [00:12:47] PF: Especially now because we are so connected to digital devices, it's so much harder to get kids away from that. It's hard to get adults away from them, too. So, how does that camp really help them kind of reset? [00:13:00] MRC: It's always fun when we get to a location, we set up the tents and the kids suddenly realize there's no phone reception and there’s no Wi-Fi, and they realized they’re in like two to five days of no internet. I like that zone. I'm sure everyone is, slightly too addicted to your phone and it is difficult. But I think it just feels so good. I mentioned earlier, we also spend a lot of time talking about mental health and well-being and stuff like that. Part of that is because ethnic minority communities in the UK are very disproportionately affected by mental illness. One of the things I do is essentially talk to kids about how they can look after themselves, especially with younger kids, it's literally just on the level of like, if you're feeling sad or angry or upset, just go to the local park and chill out with some trees and some grass and you will feel better. So, there's that kind of thing. But also it is like teaching, especially the older kids the benefit of even if it's just a day trip, going and doing something, and sort of being surrounded by nature and not being on your phone and just actually how good it feels. Because maybe the first day for the kids is really difficult. But by day four, maybe we've driven them up to the main road so they can send a few messages, so they'll go completely insane. But they realized that it feels quite nice sometimes. [00:14:19] PF: I'll be right back with more of my interview with Mya-Rose Craig. But while we're talking about nature, I wanted to share a great way that you can enjoy nature anytime and anyplace. [MESSAGE] [00:14:30] PF: When you can't actually get outside, I've found that listening to sounds of nature is the next best thing. So, I was really excited to discover the Water and Nature Sounds Meditation for Women Podcast by the Women's Meditation Network. I kind of feel like I found my own private Shangri-La in my headphones. You can choose your natural getaway whether you want the sounds of birds, water on the beach, or even the sound of just a gentle crackling fire. With almost 500 episodes to choose from, you can find the hour-long nature break you're looking for. And trust me, you'll feel many of the same relaxing mental and physical benefits as if you just spent an hour in the great outdoors. These amazing meditations can help you find your happy place, no matter where you are. Check it out for yourself, follow the Water and Nature Sounds Meditation for Women by the Women's Meditation Network for free, wherever you listen to podcasts. Or visit the womensmeditationnetwork.com. Now, let's hear more about what nature does for us from this week's guest, Mya-Rose Craig. [INTERIVEW CONTINUED] [00:15:33] PF: There's so much science behind what you're saying, have you studied the science, like a biophilia? Or is this just something that you have learned along the way and know intuitively what it is doing for mental health? [00:15:45] MRC: I think a lot of it, especially when I started because it was like, seven years ago that I started doing this campaigning. It was just, for me, very much a gut feeling. Like, I feel like as animals, because I think we forget sometimes that human beings are animals. I just knew, good for us to be outside. I think since then, so much more research has come out in the UK, medical services have started literally prescribing going outside to people, and things like that. So, much more stuff has come out. But for me, it's always been very intuitive. I think one of the really interesting moments actually was the original lockdown in the UK. There was a really difficult moment where the decision was made to essentially lock up all of the urban green spaces. So suddenly, there were no parks in the cities. There was nowhere for people to go. I think for a lot of people, there was a realization of, even though they wouldn't consider themselves like outdoorsy people, and they wouldn't consider themselves the kind of people who want to go like hiking or birdwatching at the weekend, suddenly, there was a sort of very deep-rooted desire for them to be able to be outside. So, you saw loads more people go into the countryside, and that has actually sort of continued post-COVID, which I think has been really interesting and really exciting. [00:17:01] PF: I think the fact that we had it taken away really made people, like many things, appreciate that a lot more, appreciate being able to be out in nature. As we've talked, you've already referenced mental illness. And throughout the book, your mom's bipolar disorder really plays a key role in the whole story that you tell. It struck me because for one, it’s approached so well and I wondered how difficult it was to write about that part of the story. Could you tell your story without including that? [00:17:36] MRC: That's such a good question. Because when I was first coming up with this book, I suppose, and sort of sketching out the chapters, I had no intention of talking about my mom's mental illness. I had no intention of sort of delving into family, in the way I ended up doing. And I was sort of looking at it, and I realized the story literally didn't make sense without it. It's essentially the story of two parents and a kid traveling and looking at lots of birds, which I do personally, love the idea of. I suppose the trigger of all of that was missing. So, I had this moment where I realized it was going to be included, and I remember going and talking to my mom and saying like, “Would you be comfortable with that?” And I was feeling very apprehensive. Weirdly, she was more down for it than I was, and she was more down for sort of very explicitly laying out as well. So, we had lots of conversations about it and as a family. I think, it sort of went from this terrifying thing. There are lots of things I hadn't really thought about or revisited for years, to sort of becoming a very cathartic experience. I remember first talking to my editor, actually, and she sort of made reference to sort of how in the last chapter in the epilogue, I sort of needed to, and they lived happily ever after sort of way to tie it up. I went like, “But no, that's not how mental illness works.” I think in the end, it's sort of much more like, “We're okay. It's not perfect, but we're dealing.” I think that's much more true to life and much more true to how it is to live with someone who was struggling with mental illness. Also, one of the really lovely things about writing it is, like I said, there were lots of things I hadn't thought about since I was 10, or 11 years old and I ended up just having a much deeper understanding of what my mom and my dad actually was struggling with and what they've gone through, and sort of having a much broader picture of it all, I suppose. So, I'm just basically, I was terrified but I'm so glad I did it. And I hope as well, sort of telling all the good bits and bad bits are helpful to people out there. I think someone said to me, recently, like, out of me and my parents, none of us sort of come across as perfect people. At any point, we all have our bad moments. But I think, again, that is very true to life. [00:19:54] PF: Yes. How long did it take you to write the book? [00:19:58] MRC:  Basically, I took a year off before uni, which happened to be COVID year. I was intending to be birdwatching during my gap year. And instead, I sat at my desk writing. I think it took me about a year total. But I think, because of COVID, it was a much faster process because I was – [00:20:15] PF: Fewer distractions, for sure. [00:20:18] MRC: Yes, like, I couldn't leave my house, and I was getting very bored of looking at the birds that were just in my garden. So, I think, sitting down and remembering all of the stuff that I'd already seen around the world, and sort of revisiting all of these birds was just, yes, so good for me. I loved it. Actually, it was amazing. [00:20:35] PF: Can you talk about how the time that you spent traveling helped you and your father better deal with your mom's mental illness? Did it make it easier being on travels, than if you had stayed home and tried to manage it? [00:20:50] MRC: I suppose there's a few different layers to it. I guess, for me, the main reason it was so helpful when I was younger, in particular, was because by the time we started traveling together, my mom had been really unwell for a few years by that point, essentially, from the end of what I described as our big year, which sort of this year where we're running around trying to see as many birds as possible. She became very depressed at the end there and essentially spent the next three, sorry, two years or so being very unwell. So, I had lost a lot of my relationship with her, and so on a very basic level, sort of dragging her out of her depression, and spending like a very solid period of time together was just amazing. We both talked about how we were essentially using this to rebuild our relationship in circumstances that were much easier than it otherwise would have been. As I got older, even though I then did have that relationship with her, these moments when we're traveling were just so important in terms of sort of maintaining and building that, and birdwatching sort of very intense as well, like you are with everyone all the times. There really was no escaping. It was great. I think, for my dad, like, he's always birdwatching as a tool, just – I don't know, he's the kind of person who starts climbing up the walls when he isn't able to go outside every single day. So, I think for him, it was the combination of birds and essentially running away from all our problems, that was really helpful. Because we acknowledge, that's what it was, we were running away from everything. And when we had to go home again, it was really difficult every time. But I think that was him having an awareness of what worked for our family as well, because we'd spent so much time when I was younger, together as a unit birdwatching. That was the thing that we needed to return to, I suppose? And I can imagine, birdwatching probably wouldn't do that for a lot of people, because you are up at dawn every day and its late nights. That's very difficult. I'm so glad that my parents were able to recognize, I guess, that that's what we needed because it was very rogue. I'm not sure any doctors would have been very happy about us taking her out of the country for three weeks. [00:22:54] PF: Yes. It really is an amazing story and you tell it very well. It's so interesting to me how you have become an advocate for mental illness through this. You're an advocate for nature and the environment. Did you ever expect that you were going to be such an advocate and activist for these different areas? [00:23:14] MRC: No, not really. I always find that strange when this kind of stuff happens. I've been doing a lot of environmental campaigning for a long time now, essentially, since I set up that blog I mentioned earlier, Birdgirl, nine years ago. But yeah, like 10 years, oh, my God, 10 years ago. [00:23:31] PF: It goes fast. [00:23:33] MRC: There was never an expectation of gaining a platform or people listening to me there. That was more just a very opinionated 11-year-old, having lots of strong feelings about lots of things going on in the world. It turned out, people were interested in that. And that became campaigning and activism. I think from, when I was a little kid, I was always slightly too opinionated. So, it made sense. But I think, in some ways, I suppose having entered the space around mental health and mental illness has actually been just like a very healing thing for me on a very personal level. I think, the relationship between people who are dealing with these things, and the people who are looking after them, their carers, it's one of those things that maybe isn't talked about enough and it is a really difficult relationship. I guess, I feel very honored that I'm able to speak for people and hopefully give representation again, of the good and the bad, because that's life, and help people come to terms with things maybe going on in their own lives. For me, I think destigmatization is always just so important. That's how people end up getting help and realizing it's not the end of the world, they can still live their life. [00:24:52] PF: Absolutely. So, what is it that you really hope to see come from publishing this book? And as people read it and again, you touch on so many different ways that we can benefit from nature, what do you hope happens? [00:25:05] MRC: I mean, the original, when I was first thinking of the book, I wanted to write a book about birds for people who weren't into birds. It was essentially, like I said earlier, I've spent, like, my whole life being asked the question of, but why birds? Like why birdwatching? I wanted someone to be able to read the book, and even if they don't magically become a passionate bird watcher themselves to read it and go, like, “I get it. I understand.” And hopefully, maybe to fall in love with birds and nature a bit themselves. So, I think that was always the main goal for me. But I think, contributing to sort of opening up these conversations around mental health and mental illness, and the ways that that impacts people and families and communities and stuff like that, I think, just feels incredibly special to me. But I think, also, one of the things I spend a lot of time telling like people now is just how easy it is, try and work to make things better. I talked to so many people my age who feel so pessimistic and so despondent about the future and feel like they can't do anything, and it's like, yes, maybe things like climate change, and destruction of biodiversity and things like that, they are really really big issues. But I think, realizing that doing something is better than doing nothing and it does make a difference, and it does make you feel better, and it builds communities of people who become stronger together, and all of that sort of thing as well. I think, if people could see that from my own experience, that would be really special. [00:26:44] PF: Yes, you certainly lead by example and you've shown that what one person can accomplish, it's going to be really exciting. I mean, you've done this in the first 20 years or so. I'm really excited to see what you have in store for the next 20. I thank you for coming on the show and for talking about your book, and we're going to tell our listeners, how they can find the book, where they can buy it, and how they can find out more about you and follow you. But thank you for the good that you're putting out in the world because you're on an incredible mission. [00:27:12] MRC: Thank you so much. It's been really lovely speaking with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:19] PF: That was Mya-Rose Craig, talking about the power of nature in her memoir, Birdgirl: Looks to the Skies in Search of a Better Future. If you'd like to learn more about Mya-Rose, buy her book or follow her on social media. Just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for all new episodes. 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: What We Learned from the World Happiness Report with Deborah K. Heisz [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 410 of Live Happy Now. Is it just my imagination? Or is the world getting happier? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm sitting down with Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, to talk about how we're doing when it comes to happiness. Every year on the International Day of Happiness, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network releases its World Happiness Report. Deb's here to talk with me about some of her takeaways from this year's report and why it appears that our happiness is improving. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Deb, thank you for taking time from down under to come on and talk to me about the World Happiness Report. [00:00:44] DB: I am actually excited to be able to do this. This comes out every year on the International Day of Happiness. I had a weird experience this year, Paula. [00:00:52] PF: I love this. [00:00:52] DB: I got on an airplane. I got on an airplane on the 19th of March, and I got off the airplane on the 21st of March because of the timezone changes. So I actually missed the entire International Day of Happiness because I was on a flight to Australia this year. So this is my way of celebrating. [00:01:07] PF: That’s so funny. Yes. Because we were talking about that I was in Dallas with the rest of the Live Happy team, and we were talking about the irony of Deb Heisz missing the Day of Happiness, not just not being able to participate. I mean, completely missing that day. [00:01:23] DB: I had no International Day of Happiness. So talking to you today about the World Happiness Report is my way of celebrating the International Day of Happiness. I'm super excited about it. [00:01:32] PF: This report we really waited for every year. It's something that, I guess, we're a little bit of happiness geeks, and it's very exciting to us to be able to sit down, see what's going on. This year's report, it's the 11th year of the report. It's really showing that even though we had some really tough years, the last three years have been tough on us. But around the world, people are showing a remarkable amount of resilience. I think what struck me so much of the news, and we've had so many discussions about it too, is about how anxiety and depression have really increased during the pandemic and since then. So honestly, I was surprised to see how well we're doing. I wanted to get your takeaway on that. [00:02:14] DB: So, Paula, I do think that there is an increase in anxiety and depression. I think, well, number one, we hear a lot about it because the news focuses on it. News is always negative, always the negative outcomes of things. But I also think if you look at various groups, the lack of social interaction, we know how important relationships are to overall happiness, the Harvard study that's been going on where they talked about how relationships are really the most important thing. But when people are isolated and they aren't able to get together, of course, it fed their anxiety and depression. If you look at young people, people who missed their high school graduations or their proms or had to start university classes in their house and their mom's office because universities weren't doing in-person classes, of course, there's more anxiety and depression, and the world's changed a little bit. But we have to remind ourselves that isn't really what the Happiness Report is about. It isn't really what happiness overall is about. It's about overall well-being. Particularly, the Happiness Report is about population’s well-being. There's a lot of things that changed during the pandemic, that I'm not surprised that we're resilient. People went to the office less. People spent less time in traffic as a result. [00:03:25] PF: That will cheer you up right there. [00:03:27] DB: Absolutely. There are definitely some positive outcomes. But, really, when we're talking about happiness, we aren’t talking about this essentially an absence of anxiety and depression. We're talking about overall well-being. Are you living the life you're meant to live? Of course, we hope that comes with less of those negative things. Really, when you're talking about it as a population or as about a community, it's very different than on an individual basis. So I don't find those two things to be in contrast. [00:03:54] PF: Can you talk about that a little bit more? Because the happiness that people think about, typically, is a lot different than what we often talk about when we are talking about well-being. [00:04:05] DB: So I think a lot of people are short-term outcome-based in a lot of things. They think about, “Oh, if I get that, I'm going to be happy,” or, “When that happens, I'm going to be happy.” Then they define happiness. It’s things like, “I went to that concert last night, and I got to see Taylor Swift, and that was my lifelong dream, and I'm so happy.” That’s fleeting because the next day you go back to the office, you go back to the classroom, and you're right back in whatever your life was like. That gave you a momentary pleasure. You know what they call hedonic happiness, really, where you have this momentary pleasure that brings you excitement and elevates your oxytocin and you feel good about it. That's not what we talk about when we talk about happiness. The type of happiness we talk about is typically called eudaimonic happiness. Not typically called, but I know people that study it that know those big words. [00:04:57] PF: Those science-brained people. [00:04:59] DB: Yes, those science-brained. Not us right-brained creative types, but those science-brained types. Yes. So what they're really talking about is are you living a happy life. Does your life have the meaning that you expect? Are you congruent in what you're doing? Or is your overall well-being happy? That's really what they're talking about. They're not talking about this fleeting emotion. We don't tend to talk about that because that's momentary. What you really want is a life that you feel like is well-lived. The best way I’ve heard this described is – well, I'm going to use two definitions. Number one is the definition that I've heard Shawn Achor use, and I think he's gotten this from Martin Seligman. But what we're talking about is the happiness that you feel when you're striving towards your potential, which, to me, describes fulfillment. Then the other way I've heard it described is when you get to the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, “Did I live a happy life?” That's the life we're talking about. That's what we mean by happiness. [00:06:00] PF: Right, right. Not that day in, day out because we all have up and down. We have good days and bad days, and it doesn't mean we're unhappy if we're having a bad day. [00:06:10] DB: Well, bad things happen to all of us. I mean, no one goes through life without bad things happening to them. No one expects you to be happy in the traditional way you think about it, the hedonic way you think about it, when you're attending a funeral, right? [00:06:22] PF: Right, right. [00:06:24] DB: We all have negative things that happen. We all lose. Well, those of us who are dog lovers, we all lose pets. We all have challenges in our lives. Some are huge, and some are not huge. But it doesn't mean you're happy in the hedonic sense every day. But it means that you're living the life you're supposed to live. [00:06:43] PF: Right. Do you think the pandemic actually helped us become more aware of that? Because I hear people expressing gratitude more and being more aware of just the fact like, “Oh, my gosh. I can get out, and I can be around people, and I can do all these things.” So do you think that has helped made us more content? [00:07:01] DB: I have an interesting way I've started thinking about the pandemic, and I'm going to use the words the great timeout, right? [00:07:08] PF: Oh, I don’t know that. You should trademark that. [00:07:11] DB: Maybe I should. Maybe we should cut it from the podcast, so I can trademark it later. The pandemic was the great timeout. You know I'm a sports fanatic, right? [00:07:21] PF: Yes. [00:07:22] DB: But I have my children playing sports. So they're very into ice hockey. Well, my older two are. So the coaches emphasize that ice hockey is kind of a year-round sport. But one of their coaches emphasizes, “I want you not to do anything hockey-related for two weeks. It's the great timeout so that you can evaluate what it is that you need to work on, what it is that you want to change.” I think if you look at the pandemic as this great timeout, it allowed people to re-examine how they had been spending their time, reexamine what they had been doing with their time. Yes, they were missing a lot of those things. But I think there's a lot of those things they weren't missing. It allowed them to look at what impact they were having what they really wanted out of life in a way that for generations probably had not presented itself. [00:08:19] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Deborah Heisz about the World Happiness Report. But right now, it's time to bring back Kate Vastano to talk about the adventures of Kittles. Kate, welcome back. [00:08:31] KV: Thank you, Paula. [00:08:32] PF: Well, as we told listeners last week, we hook Kittles up with a gorgeous cat tree from Mau Pets. So how's he like it? [00:08:39] KV: He absolutely loves it. We've had other cat trees before where he's kind of lost interest after a couple days, wasn’t super into them. He loves snuggling in the thing, and it is his favorite. [00:08:51] PF: I love hearing that. So what do you love most about it? [00:08:54] KV: Oh, I love, first of all, the design. But I also love that it's made from sustainably sourced wood and has natural wood branches. So it doesn't look manufactured. It doesn't look like something you'd buy at like a generic pet store. Plus, all the parts are replaceable. So if something happens, it's easy to swap them out. As you know, I have three kids, two large dogs, and a cat. So our house is crazy sometimes, and I know it's a matter of time before something gets broken. Or a kid climbs into it and breaks it. I love that there's a replacement aspect to it as well. It's not one of those ugly-looking ones that you want to tuck away somewhere. It literally looks like something you'd find in a museum. It's so beautiful and modern-looking. [00:09:33] PF: If you're ready to upgrade your pet’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's M-A-Upets.com and use the code Live Happy Now to get a five percent discount. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Deborah Heisz. There's one chapter that we both really like. Not that we didn't like the rest of the report but chapter four. Just to be clear, chapter four talked about altruism and how practicing kindness not only has it increased. But we've done just become more aware of the need for it. Obviously, that's something we at Live Happy have been talking about our entire existence, volunteering, donating to charities, helping others, and how good it is for you. Now, this behavior has increased. Do you feel like that is tied back to the fact that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years? [00:10:25] DB: Yes and no. I don't know that it's that we weren't able to do it for a couple of years, as much as it was, I think, when we started to recognize the need to give back in ourselves. Because we talk a lot about gratitude, about being thankful. Well, when somebody does something for you, and you're grateful. But part of that is the joy of giving. It really is people that rediscovered, okay, they had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of – I think. This is what I believe. They had a little bit of loneliness. They had a little bit of extra free time. They wanted to do something to improve the world. The way they do that is by giving back. You see this a lot in young people, their overarching drive to make the world a better place. I think more people, because of the pandemic, they created an awareness in them that they needed to be doing something. Or they felt like they should be doing something. We don't want to ‘should’ all over everybody. You've heard that phrase before. But they wanted to do something to make the world better because it did create a lot of anxiety. It did create a lot of uncertainty about the future. I think in that uncertainty, a lot of people found solace and a place of belonging in giving back to the world around them. I also think, in some ways, it really highlighted need in a way that when you're in the car an extra two hours a day, you might have missed a little bit. [00:11:48] PF: Yes, that makes perfect sense. Of course, we don't have crystal balls. But do you think this pro-social behavior is going to continue increasing? Is this something that we overall are learning? Hey, not only is this good for my fellow man. It's good for me. What are your thoughts on that? [00:12:06] DB: I think a lot of this – I have kids, right? So Generation Z and beyond. I really think that that generation is more pro giving back, more pro-environmentalism, more aware of the economic disparity and resolving that for people. I think that they are more – so I think that because that generation will lead in the future, which always happens. The younger generation ends up leading. I think it will be there. Or more immediately, I think that people have gotten a great benefit from doing more for their fellow man. I mean, we talk about this all the time. You said we've talked about this from the beginning of Live Happy. Yes, the person you did something for is appreciative, and you've done something to share with somebody. But when you go do something like donate blood, which is on the up, by the way, more people are donating blood and things like that, you don't get an immediate impact on who did you help, right? But it helps you. You get an oxytocin boost. You get a sense of accomplishment. You get something out of doing that charitable activity, whatever it is, even if you don't interact with the person who ultimately benefits. So, yes, handing somebody Christmas presents at Christmas time, which is a big deal in the United States. We do all these Christmas tree angel drives, and you can meet at a church, and you get to and stuff out there or Thanksgiving dinners and things like that. I volunteered at a lot of turkey dinner giveaways, that sort of thing. Yes, it's great to be able to give something to somebody and see them, their thankfulness. But a lot of the giving we're doing, you don't ever meet the beneficiary. But you get the positive impact of it. I think as people recognize that it makes them feel good, we're going to continue to see more of that. [00:13:55] PF: I love that because you know I've talked about that, like I said, for years about how – if people would catch on to how good it feels to make others’ lives better, people would really be jumping on that bandwagon. Something that I found surprising in this report, I guess I had never even thought about it. But it said that science shows that even watching someone perform an altruistic act, watching them do something for someone else can boost your happiness. Then it'll encourage them to do their own act of kindness. I didn't even think about that. So from a science standpoint, you are great at the science of this. It's like why. Why does just watching someone do something for someone else give us that same hit? [00:14:39] DB: Well, I'd like to equate it with this is an unscientific answer, Paula. But I like – [00:14:43] PF: Are you going to say it's like a contact high because we can't use that? [00:14:46] DB: Well, yes, a little bit. But I'm going to say it's kind of like when you go see that movie. Or take movies out of it since most people don't have long-form attention spans anymore. How many news reports do you see that show people giving back and doing good in the world? People want to believe there's good in the world. It makes them feel good to see other people doing good. I had something happen to me yesterday. I got out of a cab and left my phone. I'm in the hotel lobby, trying to check in, when I realized my phone's gone. I go into an immediate panic. While the hotel desk was trying to figure out which cab I got out of, the cab driver comes back around the block, has a passenger in the car, gets out of the cab, runs into the lobby, and hands me my phone, and leaves. You could kind of see like the hotel desk was like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he did that. That's so great.” They felt good about the fact that he did that, right? [00:15:37] PF: Yes. [00:15:37] DB: I felt good about the fact that he did that. Of course, I was the beneficiary in that regard. But we feel good when we see other people doing good. It reaffirms there's good in the world, and it creates a positive outlook for us is what I think. I don’t know. [00:15:51] PF: That makes sense. [00:15:52] DB: How many movies have you watched where somebody did something great, and you're like, “Wow, that's amazing.”? It just gives you that good, elated feeling and seeing other people good. But the other thing I do think it does do is it motivates you to recreate that good feeling by doing something yourself. If they did that, what can I do? I think that that is a benefit of things that we do like our Happy Acts campaign. That’s the goal with other people out there doing good things so that people see it. [00:16:22] PF: So there's so much in this report that we could dig into. We could just do like a whole year-long series based on it, but we're not going to. I wanted to find out what you thought the most interesting takeaway was from this volume. [00:16:37] DB: I think a lot of people will be shocked. My most interesting takeaway, and I think from talking about it with you, it's probably yours as well, that happiness in the Ukraine actually went up. Isn't that crazy? [00:16:51] PF: Yes. When I saw that, honestly, I went to the charts. I kept going back because I'm like, “I cannot be reading this right.” [00:16:59] DB: Right. [00:17:00] PF: It was. [00:17:01] DB: It’s startling. Ukraine actually moved up a few spots. I don't want to believe it's because the rest of the world moved down. You could take that negative approach to it. [00:17:09] PF: Everyone else is just sadder. [00:17:13] DB: But that's really not what the report showed. What they attributed it to was really interesting. It's that even though they're in a war-torn region, and certainly that would have an effect on overall well-being, specifically, in the people who live in the areas that are where the conflict is. Our news makes us think the entire country is completely in conflict all the time, and it's not. But what they’ve – yes, it's horrible than it's tragic. It's a horrible thing going on, and people are certainly negatively impacted. But why they are overall up, the report attributed really to the fact that they are united in a common goal at this point, which is really interesting that, once again, we're talking about population well-being, not individual well-being. But it really is interesting how that feeling of being united has put them in a higher position. I correlate this back to why do the Scandinavian countries typically dominate the top of this report. It's always been because there are homogeneous populations that look at the world the same way. So there's very little social conflict in those regions. In Ukraine, there's a ton of conflict but not among the Ukrainians because they're very united in their outlook right now. So I found that really interesting. [00:18:28] PF: Yes. The other thing about Ukraine because I went – I'm just geeky enough to go look at the actual little graphs in the report, and it showed that one of the areas where like they had dipped down prior to last year, they had dipped down in their confidence in their government. We know that's one of the measures that the council uses when they're doing the report is like your faith and your confidence in your government. Well, in the past year, their confidence in their leadership has escalated. So you think that's got to affect their happiness as well. [00:19:01] DB: It does, and it's interesting. I think it's interesting to point out that when we're looking at the Happiness Report, we are looking at the well-being of the overall society. Certainly, confidence in your government, your feeling of security that nothing is going to surprise you from your government. A lot of that is important. They do look at that, so yes. But that is interesting, and it's particularly interesting in our country, the United States. I know that people outside the United States listen to this podcast. I've met a few of them this week in Australia, and it's wonderful. Conflict that we see in our government, I think, and I think it shows in those geeky graphs you're talking about, negatively impacts overall well-being in the United States, the fact that we don't trust our government right now. We're very untrusting of where it's going. That shows up in these reports, and it's something that we struggle with because it's in our face every day. It's on the news every day. You and I have talked about this before. Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, you can’t deny that there's a huge gulf and there’s polar opposites going on right now. That does impact where the US ranks on this report. [00:20:10] PF: So do you think we as a country can become happy if we don't heal that divide? [00:20:15] DB: I think that there's a lot of factors that contribute to it. I also – I'm Pollyanna optimist. You should know that by now. [00:20:22] PF: I like the way the rainbow sprouts over your head every once in a while. [00:20:25] DB: It does. It does. But I think that like everything else, I think that we will come back together at some point in time. I don't think it's unhealable. I think that you do see some steps towards healing all the time. It's just not overwhelmingly obvious to everybody. But there are things that people agree on that are better. But there's also a lot of conflict. I think that overall, it will always impact our sense of well-being as a nation, until we can get some of that resolved. I don't see how it wouldn't. But I do think that family conflict and more immediate conflict has a more significant impact on us as individuals. So it's one of those things that we're going to struggle with. When you have free thought and free speech, sometimes you really didn't want to hear what the other person thought. [00:21:12] PF: Yes. We’re finding that out a lot. [00:21:14] DB: Yes. It is challenging. But what's interesting is despite that, the US has moved up a spot, again, for the second year in a row. [00:21:22] PF: Yes, we're climbing that ladder. We're going to be in the top 10 like in three years. [00:21:26] DB: If we keep going that direction, which I think the first time I looked, we started at 17th. So we're getting there. [00:21:33] PF: This is great. I wish you had been in Dallas for International Day of Happiness. We could have celebrated it together. But we'll get it next year. [00:21:40] DB: So there’s more on the World Happiness Report we probably need to discuss in future podcasts. We have to geek out every now and then on the science. I'm always excited to be able to do that with you. So thank you for everything you do for us. [00:21:51] PF: Well, thank you. Thank you for letting me and thank you for geeking out with me today. [00:21:56] DB: All right. You take care, Paula. [00:21:58] PF: You too. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:22:02] PF: That was Live Happy Co-Founder and CEO, Deborah Heisz, talking about the 2023 World Happiness Report. If you'd like to read more stories related to the report or read the report itself, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. As we wrap up the month of March, we'd like to thank everyone who was part of our annual Happy Acts campaign. Just because the campaign is ending, it doesn't mean that your daily acts of happiness have to end. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired with ideas to make your world a little bit happier every day. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: How Pets Improve Your Brain Health as You Age With Brittany Derrenbacher [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 409 of Live Happy Now. We know that pets and happiness go hand in hand or maybe hand in paw. But did you know that your pet could also be improving your brain health as you age? I'm your host, Paula Felps. Today, I'm once again talking with Brittany Derrenbacher, a mental health counselor and certified grief and pet loss specialist to talk about how pets can change the way we age. Today, Brittany explains what pets can do to keep our brains and bodies healthy, as well as how we can use our pets to create happiness for the older people in our lives. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:41] PF: Brittany, thank you for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:44] BD: Hi. It’s so good to be back. [00:00:46] PF: We have so much to talk about today because brain health, super important for our happiness and our well-being. Now, there's a new study that talks about how pets affect that. But before we get into the pet portion of that, I wanted to find out from you. Can you talk about what the connection is between brain health and cognition and our happiness and well-being? [00:01:08] BD: Yes. So it's kind of like the neuroscience of happiness. I feel like happiness is – it's so difficult to define and measure because it is subjective, right? [00:01:21] PF: Right. [00:01:22] BD: But what I will say on a personal level is that we feel joy in our bodies because of the release of dopamine and serotonin and those two types of neurotransmitters in the brain. Both of those chemicals are heavily associated with happiness. So our brain health, just by virtue of that, is usually linked to our mental health and well-being. That's our happiness. [00:01:48] PF: There you go. What are some of the things that are scientifically proven to improve our brain health and help with our cognition? [00:01:57] BD: Yes. There's a handful of things. A recent study on older adults identified particular habits that are shown to improve cognition in humans and basically slow down the rate of memory decline. Some of those habits are exercising. I feel like these are going to be really self-explanatory, and we will go into those more in-depth. But basically exercising, socializing, healthy eating, no smoking and drinking, brain exercises, things like that, just to name a few. But essentially, what we're saying here is that intellectual engagement, social interaction, physical activity, and having a sense of purpose in our lives slow risk factors for cognitive decline and things like Alzheimer's and dementia. [00:02:47] PF: Interesting. Again, we talk so much here on the show about nature and biophilia. Does that help our brain cognition as well? I mean, I know it makes us feel good, and it really helps us mentally. But does it help with our actual cognition? [00:03:02] BD: I would imagine that it does just by virtue of when we're out in nature, we are living in our conscious mind, rather than our subconscious. So we're really bringing that mindfulness intentionality. We're basically bringing our brain back online. So we're – [00:03:18] PF: I love the way you put it. [00:03:19] BD: Yes. We're actively bringing it back online and bringing it out of autopilot. So there's a lot of power in that. It's building new neural pathways, just by going out into the woods and being more present. [00:03:32] PF: Yes, especially if you get lost in the woods, and you're being chased by someone. [00:03:35] BD: You got to use that big brain. [00:03:39] PF: You got to run. So pets help us in so many ways. When you look at the things that you just mentioned about exercise, well, obviously, they can't help us with not smoking or drinking. But there are several points that they could help us with. Can you explain some of the ways that they're encouraging better physical and mental health for us? [00:03:58] BD: Yes. In one of our last conversations together, we talked about the power of pets in our lives. Not only is pet owning scientifically shown to improve our well-being, our socialization, and decrease stress. Now, through research and data, we can see how pet owning has brain-boosting benefits as well. So this conversation that we're having today really allows us to dig a little bit deeper into those layers and consider the long-term benefits of being a pet owner. I say long term because I feel like a lot of the studies that we're going to be talking about today really explain that it has to be consistent years of pet owning, right? You can't just go out tomorrow and adopt a dog and in a couple of weeks, show all of the benefits, right? So this really has to – [00:04:45] PF: Just like any other health habit, right? [00:04:47] BD: Yes, yes. So this is really a lot of what we're going to be talking about today. I do think it's important to acknowledge that this is about long-term benefits of being a pet owner. It's also like a PSA like, “Go out and get you your animal,” [inaudible 00:04:58], right? What really stood out to me is just how many of the healthy brain habits mentioned earlier are covered by being a pet owner, so exercising, socialization, stress reduction, brain exercises, routine. This really suggests that our relationships with our animals, our companionships with our pets itself can increase connectivity in the brain and become a protective agent against aging. I feel like that's pretty amazing. [00:05:33] PF: Yes. So as if pets aren't doing enough for us. Now, they're slowing down our aging process. So that's – oh, my God. That's amazing. So I wanted to ask you. You mentioned stress reduction. How do pets help reduce our stress? Because sometimes, they are stressors, like when my two guys are like fighting or something like that. But how do they help us? [00:05:54] BD: Yes. First and most importantly, owning pets reduces anxiety and combats feelings of loneliness. So our pets tend to help us self-soothe. They stabilize our nervous systems. That activates oxytocin in our bodies and reduces cortisol level in our brain. So that's what I mean by the stress reduction. So, yes, our animals can stress this out. But our relationship with our animals is so reciprocal that like we're talking about something a little bit bigger here. That this activation of the oxytocin in our bodies consistently and the consistent reduction in cortisol levels in our brains. This is alone known to improve our cognitive health as human beings because chronic stress and anxiety has such negative effects on our brain health. That’s what I see in my field in mental health is that long-term kind of chronic stress that has really built up in our bodies and have a negative effect on our brain health. [00:06:54] PF: That's incredible. One thing you and I had talked about was the study that was recently published in the Journal of Aging and Health, and it specifically focused on people over the age of 65. It was pretty narrow in its focus because not only was it people over the age of 65. It really looked at their cognitive scores and word recall. It showed that people who had pets and had had that pet for more than five years, to your point, it's an ongoing thing. If they'd had a pet for more than five years, they had much higher scores. One thing the study did not show was the cause and effect. So I get so much about what you're saying was stress reduction and helping in that way. Do you have any insight into why that would help with the word recall and that cognition in our brains? [00:07:42] BD: Yes. I want to focus a little bit on the word recall because I think that goes under the category of brain exercise and routine. Pet ownership is so good for working our verbal memory, our memorization in general, orientation to time in place because we're consistently learning how to adapt with our animals and build these kind of new neural pathways through training, right? Through just by virtue of having to take care of them, remembering to feed them, to walk them, to groom them. We have to constantly engage in critical thinking, planning for the future, practicing self-regulation. With patients, you were talking about that, right? With our pets, like for example, I want you to think about how much you have to remember to care for your pets. How much planning and preparation you have to go through just to prepare for a storm. [00:08:39] PF: Yes. In particular, storms take a lot of prep at this house. [00:08:44] BD: Yes. Do you want to talk about that? What do you have to do to prepare for that? [00:08:45] PF: I would love to. We went through it last night. Yes. When we know that a storm is coming in and we don't know, obviously, how bad it's going to be. So it's like we've got to make sure that we've got Josie’s is hemp treat that's going to help calm her down. We make sure that her thunder shirt is nearby. It even affects how we schedule things. If we have a thunderstorm predicted, we might have to change our plans because she really is terrified. You know Josie. You've seen the level of trauma that it creates for her. Last night, we had storms, and we tried something new. We went down into the basement, which is not as horrific as it sounds. It's a finished basement. But we just wanted something that would reduce the sound of thunder because the thunder started. She was shaking. We had her in the thunder shirt. Everyone's huddled together, and it wasn't working. So we go down to the basement. We turned on the television, put on some music that was not going to be jarring for her, and just really did a lot of things to – we were using a lot of brainpower trying to figure out what else we could do to make this situation better, and it did work. Ultimately, it was one of our better storm knights. But, yes, it takes a lot of thought and, as you said, preparation. [00:09:54] BD: That in and of itself is critical thinking. It's memory. It's routine. A huge part of cognitive health in human beings is our structure, is our routine, is our memory. So feeding, exercising, caring for our pets can really help us kind of establish this routine, which it’s just grounding, focusing. It's achieving its purpose. So just these two things alone, the brain exercise and the routine, check so many boxes. [00:10:26] PF: I'll be right back with more of my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher about how pets can help us age better. But right now, I'm bringing in my friend, Kate Vastano. We recently hooked up Kate and her cat, Kittles, with an amazing cat tree from Mau Pets. Now, we're introducing the adventures of Kittles to find out how it's going. Kate, how are you doing today? [00:10:46] KV: I'm doing great, Paula. Happy to be here with you. [00:10:46] PF: Well, last week, Kittles got the most amazing cat tree. I mean, I was so impressed by the design of this. I actually thought about going out and getting a cat of my own. [00:10:57] KV: Right. The one I got, it's called the Cento, and it is gorgeous. It basically looks like a piece of art, and I'm so happy that I finally found a cat tree that actually makes my home look better inside instead of being an eyesore. It is so modern-looking. It's not an ugly cat tree, which is refreshing. [00:11:15] PF: Yes, it is. It is really, really beautiful. One thing I thought was really cool about it is that every purchase also gives back because five percent of the proceeds are donated to animal welfare and environmental conservation. For every product purchased, Mau Pets plants one new tree. [00:11:31] KV: It’s so beautifully made, Paula. I will never put another ugly cat tree in my house again. It’s just gorgeous. [00:11:38] PF: If you want to upgrade your kitty’s furniture, visit maupets.com. That's maupets.com to check out their amazing selection of stylish, contemporary cat furniture. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Brittany Derrenbacher, as she dives into how pets help improve our cognition as we age. [00:11:56] BD: I'd like to dive into this idea of routine a little bit too and kind of go back to that study about folks that are over the age of 65. I’d like to use my grandma as an example because she's now currently in a memory care facility for Alzheimer's dementia. But about 15 years ago, when she was diagnosed, we knew as a family pretty immediately that we wanted her to have her sense of purpose and routine and structure and stay in her home as long as possible. I can tribute her ability to be able to stay in her home as long as she did because of her cat, Tigger. He was such a huge part of her routine. She might forget my name, and she might forget how to work the coffeemaker that day, but she was not going to forget how to take care of him. [00:12:45] PF: Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. [00:12:47] BD: I truly like – I associate that time that she was able to really stay in her home for as long as she was with that routine that she had with her cat. [00:12:56] PF: That's such an important point because, obviously, you are involved in rescue. You've seen these situations where people are reluctant to adopt another pet because they're of a certain age. To me, that's kind of crushing because, oh, man, they can do so much for you. They would be so helpful. I understand that concern. So can you address it? Because you've dealt with it from both sides, both adopting the pet and then seeing a pet that outlives its owner. So can you speak to that point? [00:13:27] BD: Yes. I think in rescue work and something that I hope that it's not unique that just our rescue does, I hope that other rescues embrace this as well, is that we never turned an elderly applicant down. We would work with them to make sure that they had a support system and that they did have a plan. I feel like having an honest conversation about that is the best way to go into it. Like, “Okay. What would your plan be if you passed? Who would take care of your pet?” So having open conversations like that. But also, like we never ever, ever shamed any families that came forward with animals because of having a family member pass away. An elderly family member passed away or, say, a parent. But the reason that we truly believe that these elderly applicants should not be turned away is because they're the best pet owners. They're the ones that are really focusing all of their time and energy on these pets and giving them everything that they can. Also, it's reciprocal. We know that these animals and these dogs that they adopt are going to add years onto their life. So as long as we can really work with them to have a plan and make sure that like that animal is going to be taken care of or returned to us, we would never turn them away. [00:14:44] PF: Yes. It gives so much just in terms of the socialization because as we age, people are less mobile. They're less able to get out and socialize. Loneliness is a huge problem among older people. Can you talk about that and how the pets can help with that? [00:14:59] BD: Yes. Exercising and socialization is a huge part of this conversation. Exercise is the most underrated antidepressant and it's free, right? [00:15:09] PF: You don't even have to join a gym. Come on. [00:15:10] BD: Yes, it's free. Physical exercise is it increases blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain. It’s also directly linked to synaptic integrity and especially in older adults. So that strength of communication between our neurons in our body. So if you think about it, you're out walking your dog every day. This is good, consistent exercise. It's movement outdoors. But it also encourages us to meet other people, right? As a dog owner, you stop. You chat with other people. You run into people at the dog park. You're constantly kind of meeting other people. Other pets can really be a part of this conversation too because pet shops, right? You're meeting people, training classes. You're meeting people. Online groups are huge for pet owners. So this is really good socialization for older folks. Dog agility. We've talked about this before. My mom owns a training and agility facility here in Louisville, and a huge part of the population there is older ladies. [00:16:12] PF: Really? [00:16:13] BD: Yes. They’re there with their dogs. They're working on all of the things that we're talking about; exercise, socialization, the brain games really, the constant movement, the stress reduction. They're doing all of those things, just by attending an agility class with their dogs. [00:16:29] PF: So what about someone who has a cat? Cats are – they're active in their own way. How does someone get the benefit of exercise? Obviously, the socialization comes because of the cuddling with your cat. But how do they incorporate exercise into cat ownership? [00:16:46] BD: Yes. Cats are still mobile creatures. You can get up. You can move around. You can be on the floor with them. You can be sitting with them and moving around. I love seeing those little catnip toys and all the – [00:16:58] PF: Ah, the little ones with the stuff on. Yes. [00:17:01] BD: There are games that you can play with your cats. It's not just dogs that have puzzle games. It can be reciprocal with your cats too. Cats love to play games. They're very engaging creatures. I know we have a lot of assumptions, and there's a lot of stereotypes with cats. But cats come second on the list in these research studies for really improving cognition in humans. So – [00:17:22] PF: We have a relative, and she was wonderful with cats. She always had a lot of cats, rescued all these cats. In the last few years, as they died, she did not get any more because she knew that she was getting older. She's now in hospice care. One thing that's been very hard on her is not having animals around. Unfortunately, she's in a facility where you can take your pets. I thought this was amazing because we were in Cincinnati to visit her, and we took our dogs in there. The dogs got up on the bed. She's able to love on them. We talked to her a week or so ago, and she was saying that, yes, they still talk about when Rocco and Josie came to visit. It was such a big thing for them. They've also even had people bring cats in to visit. Talk about it from that perspective. If you know an older person who doesn't have a pet who is no – and loves them. Let's make sure they love the pet. But if you have an older person in your life who doesn't have access to a pet, how important is that to be able to provide that experience for them? [00:18:24] BD: Oh, huge. We've talked about this too on some of our past episodes that there are service animals for everything. That is literally their purpose is to go and bring joy to other people and provide comfort. I hope that it becomes more routine to establish these type of connections in these places. Not only do we, like with Luna Bell’s, love to do that with our animals, taking them into senior living facilities and things like that. I just think it's such a beautiful reciprocal thing to have happen to be giving to someone while also be giving to yourself and be giving to your pet. It's kind of this beautiful, powerful, energetic exchange that's happening. [00:19:05] PF: Yes. What does the pet get out of it? Because I know Rocco and Josie had a great time visiting there because they got so much attention. It took so long to get to her room because every person stopped and wanted to pet the dogs and see the dogs. What does that do for the pets? [00:19:20] BD: That's confidence building, right? [00:19:22] PF: Ah, okay. [00:19:23] BD: Yes. That’s socialization too. That's just expanding joy for them. It's putting them to work. They love that. They love having purpose. So we've talked about that a lot in this episode too. It's not just important for human beings to have purpose. Our animals need to have purpose too. So I think for them to go into these places and to feel joy and build confidence and connection and both give and receive, that's just so powerful for them. It's huge. [00:19:50] PF: So even as an owner, you might decide like this is really something I want to continue doing with the pet and be able to become a service animal that they can visit and see people. How does that increase that bond between you and your pet when you do something like that? [00:20:06] BD: I don't know. I just feel like we're essentially doing some multi-focused empowerment work here by doing that, helping others while helping ourselves while helping our animals. It just builds this beautiful connection of both giving and receiving. I just think there's just such a unique power in that that we don't get in other relationships. [00:20:24] PF: Yes. Yes, that's so true. We know now from the studies and from what you were just telling us that pets are so good for us. Can you talk about how we can leverage that benefit? [00:20:35] BD: Yes. I think that our lifestyle factors plays such a huge role in our brain health. So having this conversation really, it helps us realize, I think, that why wouldn't we be pet owners? Why wouldn't we actively be wanting to pursue these lifestyle shifts to create a better holistic lifestyle for us? I think that genetics do have a role in determining our health and longevity, obviously. But we do have more control over our future than we previously thought. So implementing healthy lifestyle habits can have a major impact. I think pet owning proves time and time again that it checks all these boxes. We talk about intentionality a lot when we're together, and we talk about the human bond a lot, obviously. But I think just the power of knowing that taking care of our pets can so positively change not only the way that we think about ourselves but our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, our emotional health. There are so many benefits just from being a pet owner. So it's a constant return in our investment. For a lot of people, the most reciprocal relationship that they will ever know in their life is with their pet. So our relationships with our pets are just consistently filling up our cups and allowing us to experience this love and this bond that really is amazing for our mental health. It fosters resilience, and it empowers us to really thrive and live our best life physically and mentally, cognitively. [00:22:14] PF: Yes. That makes sense because I know when you and I talked about grief, and sometimes people have this after the loss of a pet, they kind of feel guilty because it affected them more than, say, the loss of a parent or the loss of a human in their life. One thing that we talked about is like that pet never judged you. Well, maybe if it was a cat, they did. But like they didn't openly judge you. It didn't cause you harm the way the humans that we love and who love us sometimes do it. [00:22:45] BD: Yes. It’s so much more powerful than we give it credit for in our society. I think it's definitely shifting. These conversations contribute to that shift. But owning an animal, being a pet owner, having the bond with our pets, like this deep bond that is really changing over time so beautifully, it affects us in so many powerful ways. I love like this idea that – I don't know. It's like owning pets is really the holistic health care that we need. [00:23:24] PF: It really is. That's a great way to look at it. It's the month of March. It's our happiness month. You're one of our happy activists. So we're really excited about that, and we thank you for that. But there are also several holidays in March to celebrate our animals. There’s National Puppy Day. There’s Cuddly Kitten Day. There's National Terrier Day, which I know you and I think is a very holy day. There's Respect Your Cat Day. Yeah. I know that's actually a thing. What is your favorite way to celebrate your pets and why? [00:23:54] BD: I love this question. I think my favorite way to celebrate my pets, my dogs is by experiencing life with them, living in the here and now, not taking life so seriously, embracing childlike joy, just literally being with them. Because I think our animals are our best teachers when it comes to joy and loving presence. When we actually stop to lean into that, it can be such a beautiful thing. [00:24:27] PF: I love that. Brittany, thank you for once again coming on and talking about this. We're going to tell people as always how they can find you, how they can learn more about all the work that you're doing, and follow you on all the channels. But thank you so much for sitting down with me today and talking. [00:24:43] BD: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:48] PF: That was Brittany Derrenbacher, talking about how pets improve mental cognition across our lifetime. If you'd like to learn more about Brittany and the work she's doing or follow her on social media, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast app. Just a reminder that we are still celebrating the month of March with our Happy Acts campaign. Follow us on social media or visit our website to be inspired by a different happy act every day. While you're there, be sure and visit the Live Happy Store to find the perfect shirt that shows the world how you live happy. 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 Tunes for Happy Kids With Allegra Levy [INTRO] [00:00:04] PF: What’s up, everybody? This is Paula Felps, and you are listening to On a Positive Note, where I sit down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts. Allegra Levy was a rising star on the music scene when she took a little detour. The acclaimed jazz vocalist began noticing that the lyrics of children's classic songs didn't really fit in today's world of equity and inclusion. And she also didn't want to raise her child with songs that had been musically dumbed down. So, she began writing her own jazz tunes children's music with a positive spin on mental wellbeing. And the result is a new album, Songs for You and Me, that drops April 7th. While you have to wait just a couple of weeks to hear that music, you can hear all about how it came to be and what she hopes to accomplish with this fresh take on children's music right now. Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:59] PF: Allegra, thank you for joining me On a Positive Note. [00:01:03] AL: Thanks so much for having me, Paula. I really am happy to be here. [00:01:06] PF: You are doing such amazing things and we're going to get into what you're working on now and the work that you're doing with children. But you really have built your career, up until this point as a jazz performer. I was interested in finding out what is it that drew you to jazz? [00:01:22] AL: Oh, gosh, what is it that drew me to jazz. I grew up in this town called West Hartford, Connecticut, where the public school program had this amazing jazz program, and I went to see the show when I was like five or six. They put on this big show in town. I think I just saw the singer up there and was inspired. And then, my older brother started playing saxophone really young, and I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker records in the other room. So, it just was part of the fabric of our family. [00:01:56] PF: That's terrific. So, at what point did you know that you wanted to pursue music as a career? [00:02:02] AL: Well, I have to say I've always had a lot of eclectic interests and I still do, which is always hard to balance. But I think I really was debating I either wanted to be a human rights activist, a human rights lawyer, or I wanted to be a jazz singer. [00:02:19] PF: Those are kind of ways apart. [00:02:21] AL: They are and they aren’t at the same time. They're both about getting a good message out there, hopefully, to try to make change for the better. And somehow, they converge constantly in my life. But yeah, I think I wanted to do music at a pretty young age. I was singing way before anything else and it's a beautiful practice. [00:02:42] PF: You're doing very well at it, because you can 2021 the DownBeat’s Critics Poll named you a top 10 rising star among jazz vocalists. [00:02:53] AL: I was honored to be in that list. It was an amazing list that year. I'm always honored to be included in any kind of thing like that. But I was also surprised. There's so much talent out there. So, you are being recognized, and probably I would think you thought your career was going to go down the jazz path. And then you had a daughter during the pandemic, and things kind of changed. Can you talk about how that changed your musical focus? I mean, I'm trying to bring the two together, I think. And basically, actually, before I had my daughter, we were all quarantining with my niece who was 18 months at the time, and there were six adults, an 18-month-old, two dogs, and a cat all in one house over the pandemic. [00:03:44] PF: Yay. [00:03:46] AL: It was quite a wild group, and I had my ukulele with me because I was trying –I couldn't play with anybody. I was just coming up with little songs for her and trying to help her not feel too worried about things. So, I wrote this little wash your hand song. And then I realized that I really loved the simple, funny little songs that you could write. And then when we – my husband and I started thinking about having a family, I started getting songs in my head. And then when she was born, it just kept happening, kept growing, kept growing, and she's constantly singing now. She'll be two in April. So, it was really just a natural occurrence. I've always written music about what's happened in my life. I've always have – all my albums are kind of autobiographical in a way. I can't do anything but write what I know. So that's what happened. [00:04:35] PF: At what point did you think, okay, I'm really going to do something with this beyond singing it for my child? [00:04:41] AL: I think after a while, I had had almost 15 songs together that were felt like I wanted to share them, and I started listening to the music that we had options for and you're so tired as a parent and you're just like, “Hey, Google play” – [00:05:00] PF: Anything for a child. [00:05:01] AL: Play anything for children. Please help me with this scenario. And you don't even have the wherewithal to really curate something. The stuff that I was hearing was very eclectic, and constantly, I hate to say it, but there's a lot of stuff. It was disappointing. And there was a lot of stuff that I didn't really know the history and I went back and I dug out the history. And I was like, “I don't know if this should be played for my kid. And I don't know if this is the best thing to play for our family.” So, yes, when I started to have a real book of songs, I thought, well, this could be something great and I want to try to push out a more positive mesh message if I can. [00:05:38] PF: I'm glad you brought that up. Because I know we grew up with nursery rhymes, and we'll talk about it now. That is horrible. The whole ashes, ashes, we all fall down and you go back in here, like the meaning of it, and down will come cradle baby and all. We're singing to this and being joyful little children singing about these things. And you really got into the meanings of the songs. What was it that really made you go, “Okay, I need to look into this.” [00:06:07] AL: There was a situation where I was at a school and somebody was having the preschoolers sing, Jump Jim Joe, which is a historical Jim Crow song. And a lot of the nursery rhymes are from those Jim Crow days. There are a lot of nursery rhymes where the meaning might not be connected to race at all. But it's connected to socio and economic status, or servants of some kind. It's really not necessarily a history that we want to be teaching our children in that context of this is music. This is your exposure to music. It's important to teach the history. It's important to say, okay, this music was a part of history, and this was what people were singing, but music is our culture. We really have to think very, very diligently about what we're teaching our kids and what we're singing to our kids. And yes, when I started looking into the history of some of the songs, the more I do, the more horrible it is in terms of not teaching diversity, equity and inclusion. Not teaching, just equality in general. I really wanted to be a part of a new situation where we're actually looking into a better future and making music for a better future together. [00:07:29] PF: Did it help you during the pandemic to be able to be writing the uplifting, joyful, happy songs, because that wasn't a great happy time for most of us? [00:07:38] AL: I mean, as a new mom, and during the pandemic, I definitely suffered a lot of mental health issues along with everybody. I was definitely like struggling with depression and anxiety and who wasn't? I think it was really important to keep things positive and try to have an outlet, especially because I couldn't play very often with other people the way I was used to, and having collaborators. So, it was important to have some positive music come out of that. [00:08:11] PF: And then also, as a musician, you probably have a really good understanding of how music affects our development in early years? [00:08:18] AL: Yes. [00:08:19] PF: Can you talk about that? And what music does for child development? [00:08:24] AL: Well, I think music does a lot for child development in regards to processing emotions. But I also think it's just healthy – music is the best thing for the brain. But something that I can talk a lot about is what you do as a kid really shapes who you are later in life. So, the music that you hear as a family, all that music that you hear together, that shapes who you are later. If I hadn't listened to jazz as a young child, I wouldn't necessarily be interested later. And it really can grow your mind exponentially. [00:09:02] PF: As you did that, were you thinking, “Okay, I've got to make something that parents will want to listen to.” Because it is a very cool family record. And I don't have children. I don't listen to a lot of children's music, but I got to say hip, hip hooray, it's an ear worm, and it sticks with you. And it's like, okay, I can sing this without shame. I doesn’t matter that I don't have children. [00:09:25] AL: Yes, for sure. I mean, part of what I set out to do was to create something for the whole family for everybody. Because the truth is, is that my husband and I are singing these songs all the time. Whatever song she's listening to, we're listening to, and I think I wanted to talk a lot about music being a family experience. Music should be a family experience. It shouldn't just be this is music for kids and this is music for adults. It's like we're all listening to this. This is part of our family life. So, yes, I wanted to grow beyond Baby Shark, although my kids still loves Baby Shark and she loves Cocomelon. But I wanted to try to enrich her ears with slightly more complex harmonies, but also listenable fun things to sing that are positive and good and not just repetitive mind-numbing, blah. [00:10:21] PF: Right. And something that if someone gets in your car, or gets in their car, and they've got your music on, their friends won't be berating them for having that. They'll be like, “Oh, that's pretty cool.” [00:10:34] AL: Totally. I think it's hard, because I don't know how much crossover there is. But I think there is. I think we ended up listening to – there's so many like, nursery rhymes that aren't so bad that have turned into regular pop songs that we listened to. We just don't even realize it, and that you hear at parties and that you dance to. That was kind of part of my goal. Also, some of it is for moms. One of the songs is called, It's So Hard to be You. That is maybe more for the parents than the kids. I mean, it is empathetic to kids, because there's so many moments where their whole world is crumbling. But it's also for – and you want to take them seriously. But it's also for the moms who just feel like, “God, this is so impossible. This is so hard.” Not only moms but everybody. I mean, who doesn't feel that on a day to day basis? Especially, if you have kids, but also, everybody goes through a lot of struggles. So, there's a lot of catharsis there in that song. [00:11:33] PF: Yes. There's so much joy on this album. One of the things that you talked about is that you really wanted to create something that reflected today's environment that has diversity and inclusion and equity. So, we know how important that was to you. But how did you go about incorporating big themes like that into playful songs? [00:11:54] AL: It's a tricky task. Some of it is how you live, right? Some of it is, if I’m writing this music, this is based on how I'm living, so I'm trying to model this life for my daughter, and then I'm trying to write these songs for everybody. It was it was a tricky task. I always feel like there's more I could do. I mean, it's actually true story that I was sitting in the room in the studio, and I felt like God, there's a lot of white men in here. I always try to be intentional about hiring people who I want to work with, but also hiring people of diverse backgrounds, because I think it makes the music better, and it makes the room have a better energy when you have lots of different perspectives. But I think in this case, I felt like, somehow, I ended up with a lot of new dads. I had a couple of really amazing new moms too, which so essential. But yes, I reflected later on that. And I was thinking, “You know what, I could have done better in that situation.” I'm always kind of thinking that way. I'm always trying to see where I can improve. Hopefully, the music, it might not be perfect, maybe years from now people will find fault there, too. I was trying to think about who is this for? In Hello Song, I was thinking about, that song is kind of like a vibe of it's a small world to the modern age. My husband speaks five languages. My daughter is being raised with three so far, and I just wanted to try to include as many different languages as I could there. She's also growing up with Spanish in the house. So, I wanted to do a song in Spanish and not just have everything from the same perspective. [00:13:40] PF: Yes. That’s great way to approach it. And then from an age standpoint, what age did you want to write this for? [00:13:45] AL: That was a hard test, because I honestly didn't really– I was writing for my daughter at the time, so she was pretty young, early, early, early years. But I wanted to imagine that this would extend to five or six or even seven. I did play a lot of the music for my nieces and nephews and my nieces go from age right now. My nieces and nephews are a baby to nine. And there's a four-year-old and seven-year-olds, and they were all singing it and they were getting it in their bodies and in their ears and giving me suggestions. So, I was hoping that this audience would be a pretty wide range. [00:14:24] PF: Yes. So, are you taking it out? Are you doing live performances with it? Or how are you delivering it? [00:14:30] AL: I am. I'm doing a big CD release show on Mother's Day, actually, which is – [00:14:36] PF: Awesome. [00:14:36] AL: – here in New York at the historic Third Street Music School. They have a really great educational program and one of the background singers on the album works there as a music educator. So, we thought it would be a great place to start. And then, I'm taking it to my hometown at the Jewish Community Center where I grew up, and we're going to do a show on June 4th there. It's a big project. I mean, the band is like 13 people. [00:15:00] PF: Oh, my gosh. How do you get 13 people assembled in one? That's a trick. [00:15:05] AL: I'm working on it. I’m working on it. It's very hard to do. And then, we're hoping to do more widespread shows, once things are released, and everybody knows about it. But it's new territory for me. [00:15:19] PF: So, how does this fit in with your jazz career? I mean, you're talking two different, very different audiences that you'd be appealing to. [00:15:29] AL: It is and it isn't. I mean, I think the only way for jazz to survive is if we get the youngest members of our society involved. And some of this, a lot of the record is jazz based, and everybody on it is a jazz musician. So, it's hard to get the jazz out of me. I think, it's so part of who I am, that it just comes out no matter what. But I really want to encourage improvisation and jazz to young children and young people and families. So, I think that's part of it. But it is definitely different in terms of like, where you're going to see these performances. I tried to get some jazz clubs. I was like, “Hey, do you want to do this kids thing?” [00:16:19] PF: They're really great for the bar tab. Lots of milk. [00:16:23] AL: I mean, I’m a bit surprised. Nobody was like racing for it. But I think they're wrong, because I think the only way they're going to keep butts in seats, if I can say that, the only way you're going to keep people coming to their club, is if they really invest in the younger generations. [00:16:40] PF: Build habit early on. Especially, if you're making it a family thing, that's terrific, because parents are looking for ways to go out and enjoy. If they can do it, and not have to pay for a sitter, and their kid can be entertained, winner, winner. [00:16:53] AL: And they hear the sound of it either. I'm hoping that there will be some likeminded people who will get the idea. It is very different, and I do worry – I have worried that maybe it will impact the critics or my colleagues and music, maybe they won't take me seriously. But I took the music seriously, and I really put a lot of time into it. So, I'm hoping that people will hear that and it will be a positive thing. [00:17:20] PF: Because they're not little ditties. If people are thinking they're just little songs that are made up. That's not it at all. The musicianship is there. The songs are there. It's quality writing. I think that's really what anyone who loves music is going to lock into. I used to listen to the group Trout Fishing in America, and they would release both kids and adult albums. As I was learning more about you, I really thought about them, and how they were able to craft this career that had two very different age groups. But then what happened is the kids grew into their adult audience. I can see how that would work with the music that you're doing. [00:17:59] AL: Yes, I think that’s definitely the goal. Some of the songs on there aren't even entirely just kids’ songs. I don't know. I mean, I hope that it will grow an audience. That is the hope, for sure. [00:18:13] PF: So, do you have more songs that you're working on? Or where are you at now in your process? I know you're working on shows. You're getting your live shows together. But also, as a writer and a musician, you probably always have new things percolating. [00:18:27] AL: Always. I always am writing new stuff, either in my head or otherwise. Right now, I am trying to spend time to just get this music out there and really make sure that that it gets a good, give it its all, I guess. But I am potentially going to record other jazz albums soon. I also have a dream to do kind of like it an all moms big band. [00:18:53] PF: Oh, my gosh, that would be so cool. [00:18:55] AL: Yeah, I think it would be awesome and I I've been dreaming it up for a while, kind of back to the days of, I don't know if you're familiar with it. But there's this, all this Ella Fitzgerald big band arrangements of things like Old MacDonald and they're just incredible. I would love to recreate something like that for live audience. [00:19:16] PF: That would be really exciting for people, because you take that familiar song, you give that kind of orchestration to it, I think people would get really excited about that. [00:19:23] AL: Sure. I mean, I think it's the best way to teach about improvisation. It's the best way to really get this more rich harmony into people's ears. Also, I just like the idea of all these women on the bandstand, of all different backgrounds and ages, and just what would it be like if you showed up to a concert as a young person and you were inspired by that? How would that change your worldview and your future? Because it's so much as impacted at a young age and if you didn't just see like the guys doing it. [00:19:58] PF: Right. Yes. See what you're opportunity is as a female to be able to get up there and do that. [00:20:03] AL: Yes. I mean, I also do a lot of work with the women in jazz organizations. So, that is part of my mission all the time and part of what I'm working on thinking about. [00:20:15] PF: That is so much fun. This is a fun journey. I'm going to be very excited to see where it goes, and how it unfolds. I appreciate you coming on this early in the game and talking to us about it. [00:20:25] AL: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I hope that the people listen to it and enjoy it. And if anything, it just makes people happy. [00:20:33] PF: That's what it's about. Thank you so much for being here. [00:20:36] AL: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:20:44] PF: That was Allegra Levy, telling us how she is literally changing the tune of children's music. If you'd like to learn more about Allegra, check out her music, or follow her on social media. Just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next time. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Bounce Back from Burnout With Dr. Mary Sanders [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 408 of Live Happy Now. Do you ever feel like you've hit a point of burnout that nobody else can fully understand? Well, today's guest knows exactly what you're going through and what to do about it. I'm your host Paula Felps. And today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Mary Sanders, who specializes in energetic healing with an emphasis on positive psychology. Dr. Mary is on a mission to empower women over the age of 40 to bounce back physically, emotionally and energetically from the stresses of balancing work and life. Today, she talks with me about how burnout affects women? What warning signs we need to be aware of that indicate we might be burning out? On what steps we can take to reclaim ourselves from burnout? Let's take a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:54] PF: Mary, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:58] Dr. MS: Thank you, Paula. It's my honor, sincerely, to be a guest of yours. I am so looking forward to today's conversation because I have a feeling that you and I are going to tap into some really interesting topics. [00:01:10] PF: We are. And I've been looking forward to having this conversation too. Because, oh, my gosh, there's so many things that you and I could talk about. And I guess that's why you have a podcast because you have so many things that you can teach us. But today, I really wanted to focus on the topic of burnout because that's something that you address, something that you handle. And I know that burnout can mean different things to different people. So just make sure we're on the same page, can you talk about the clinical definition when you are describing burnout? [00:01:42] Dr. MS: Sure. Sure. It's a great place to start. From a scientific perspective, I follow Maslach's Burnout Inventory. And this researcher has done a phenomenal job breaking down burnout in into essentially three different categories. And the first category is what we are most familiar with, and that's called emotional exhaustion. You hear people – you hear women specifically saying, "I'm so tired of being tired. I am just – I feel like I have no get up and go." That's the physical exhaustion. The second component to burnout, clinically speaking, is cynicism, where somebody is experiencing a distrusting feeling. Or they're, overall, just feeling really pessimistic about what is happening within the traditional work environment. That's another category for burnout. Then the last category is all of revolving around the professional efficacy. And what I mean by that, Paula, is are the women working for organizations in which they feel valued for their skills, and their strengths and how they contribute to the overall success of the corporation? When you look at this – and I know, Paula, there are many, many listeners that are saying, "Yeah, but I'm not in the corporate world. How can I still experience burnout?" You absolutely can. Ladies, we are the primary caretakers of our entire families, whether that'd be our aging parents, or whether that be our children, or our spouses. It is very easy to experience burnout on a personal level as well as professionally. But characteristically, people identify burnout as being something related to the work environment. Those three categories that I just talked about can be measured independently. Meaning that you can be experiencing the physical signs where somebody is completely exhausted. They have reoccurring illnesses. Their central nervous system is not firing up. Their immune system is compromised. Maybe they're experiencing blood sugar issues. All of those physical symptoms are associated with the first category, being the physical exhaustion. When you take the survey, if you're reading high within this one category, then we know how to address those issues. We know to bring it right back to the physical body. You may be a person who is rating really high on the cynicism and the pessimism. And so, then maybe we need to be working on the mindset. Maybe it's something that we need to be working on finding more pleasure, joy and happiness within your life to decrease the level of pessimism that you're carrying on a daily basis. Then that's another category. Third category is the professional efficacy. If we know that somebody's reading really high or really low within this category, then maybe we're addressing, "Hey, if you don't feel valued as a team member, maybe we just need to find a different department within our organization that you align with. Maybe we need to find you a different team in which you feel like you can show up in your strength N." That's why I always use the Maslach Inventory to kind of get a baseline, "Where are you? How can we be of assistance?" [00:05:07] PF: That's important. Because I think a lot of times when we feel burned out, we don't even have the skills to say in what area I feel burned out. It's exhausting. And if you're burned out at work, it's pretty impossible to be there for your family. It's just this big overall feeling. Can you talk about how big, how prevalent a problem burnout is right now? And have you seen it since the pandemic? How has it changed? [00:05:31] Dr. MS: Huge, Paula. Huge. Right now, with the pandemic and going through what we're calling globally the great resignation, people are now awake. They're saying, "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Time out. Time out. You mean I don't have to do a nine-to-five job every day? You mean I don't have to do my commute every day? You mean I don't have to do face-to-face engagements anymore? Plus, I didn't really like that. Maybe I want to do something different with my life of all." Because there's a greater purpose that they want to align with. Absolutely. The trend right now is that over 50 – and again, depending upon the statistics that you look at, 50% to 60% of people at this given point in time are going to say, "Yep, I feel like I am burnt out on some level." And if they're not currently in that position, they can honestly say, "You know what? I resonate with that because I have been through burnout." And Paula, when I went through burnout – and, again, my greatest – the peak of my burnout was 15 years ago. And I'll be honest with you. I was so embarrassed that I was experiencing burnout that I didn't want to share it with anyone. [00:06:42] PF: You have an interesting story. Let's talk a little bit. I was remiss in not asking sooner. This is something you know firsthand. Tell us your journey into burnout and why you're so passionate about helping others with it. [00:06:55] Dr. MS: Yeah. And you know what, Paula? I'll share my story for the sake of it being received in a light that I have learned a lot of information from going through this life experience. I do believe that we have divine timing. And I do believe that I received these lessons at the time that I did in my professional career in order to really motivate me to shift and to pivot. I'm going to share the story. And goodness gracious. I was a practicing chiropractor. And to make a long story short, I had a large practice, a central practice. And then I also had a satellite office. I was managing not only my current patient load. I was also managing various different doctors and a big staff. I went into chiropractic because I knew that I wanted to have my hands-on people. I believed in the healing modality of the physical adjustment. I believe that the body had the innate ability to heal itself. And because I had such a strong philosophy, and a good set of hands and a lot of perseverance and resilience, I created a successful practice. It looked beautiful on the outside. Aesthetically, it was gorgeous. But what was happening underneath the surface that people didn't realize is that I was thinking miserable. I was so unhappy. I literally put myself in a complete adrenal exhaustion. The one thing that I I did for my stress management at that time was exercise. I could no longer exercise. What I could do was wake up. I could get down to my office. Treat the number of patients that I had for that day. Come home and fall asleep. That's all the energy that I had. And that's not a life. There was no work-life balance. There was no vitality. There was no spark in my world. It was really dull. And so, I used food. I used alcohol. I used sleep. I used all the coping mechanisms of avoidance. I withdrew from my family and my friends. I isolated myself even more. And I know this doesn't paint a pretty picture. But that was my world. And my husband sat me down, and I was notorious for starting a conversation over the dinner table and then forgetting that I was having a conversation and stop and just like space out for a moment because I couldn't really complete a sentence, complete a complete thought. And he looked at me and he was like, "Mary, how long are you going to do this?" And I'm like, "What do you mean how long am I going to do this?" And he's like, "Well, if you don't make a change, you're physically going to go down a downward spiral. You're going to get worse. You're going to create some kind of a life-threatening illness. If adrenal exhaustion is not enough for you, then the universe is going to create something more." And he's like, "Furthermore, I don't know if our relationship is going to survive." And so, I was like, "Okay, you have my attention. I'm listening. What do I need to do?" And he said, "I have a question for you." And I said, "What's that?" And he said, "Do you think that you could leave all of this?" I'm like, "What? What do you mean leave it?" And he's like, "Do you think that we could leave everything that we have created and move to the other side of the world?" And I said, "Oh, no. No. No, that's not happening." Because, I mean, really, I have put all of my blood, sweat and equity into growing this practice. I was miserable but I didn't want to leave it, right? Time passed and my husband acquired a position in Ho Chi Minh City and he says, "Are you on board?" And I said, "Okay." We sold the practices. We sold the home. We sold everything that we had. And I ended up on the other – waking up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, on the other side of the world, wondering, "Paula, who am I? What am I here to do? What's my purpose in life?" And I went through these huge identity crises and tremendous amount of depression. I did what any logical person would do. I ran away from my husband in Ho Chi Minh City and I ran down to Bali, Indonesia and I finished up my yoga teacher certification. [00:11:04] PF: Oh, that's fantastic. [00:11:05] Dr. MS: I know. I know. But for the first time, Paula, I was able to think for the first time in my life. I had time on my hand. I learned to meditate. And let me tell you something, I was like, "Wow. Wow. Let me wrap my head around this." I know the human body incredibly well from the neck on down. Obviously, as a chiropractor, I was very familiar with the neurology. And then I'm like, "Okay, something really magical is happening with the space between my ears, the space within my head. What's happening mentally as the result of doing meditation?" The curiosity got the best of me, and that's when I went and studied with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar because I wanted – [00:11:47] PF: We love him. [00:11:47] Dr. MS: Yeah, I know. And he has such a beautiful way of just breaking down the neuroscience behind meditation. Now I had the experience of what meditation was doing. And then I also had the intellectual knowledge. And so, then, as fate had it at that time, my husband and I decided to create a non-profit organization in order to support teachers and the tools of positive psychology so that they can embody them and role model them into the classroom. We left Ho Chi Minh City. Went to Bogota, Colombia. And that non-profit organization went gangbusters. We thought we were producing a product for the United States. And then, once again, I'm finding myself in kind of a stressful situation. How fast can I produce? As fast as I was producing, it was being translated into Spanish and then it would put into the classrooms in not only Colombia, but in Peru as well. I was like, "Okay. Okay. Okay. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me wrap my head around this." So then, I'm now running the same neurological pattern that I was running when I was in my business. I haven't learned a darn thing. Even though I'm meditating and taking good care of myself, something's happening here energetically. We left our Bogota, Colombia. Went to Bali, Indonesia and spent a year. And it was kind of a sabbatical. And so, again, here I am doing yoga and meditating every day, eating vegan. I was just really just wanted to clean up and I wanted to get online energetically. And then that's when I started my training at the Academy of Intuition Medicine. I was like, "Okay. Well, I got the body. I got the mind. And now I need to understand the energetics." And so, here we are combined now – Paula, I literally could not have planned the sequence of events that I just outlined for you. It had to happen because I had to go through burnout and I had to blow up my world in order to hit rock bottom in order to come out in a full holistic 360 perspective as to how the human body and the spirit operates as one. [00:13:57] PF: What happens to women who don't have the resources you do? Who don't have a husband that pulls him out and says, "Hey, you've got to save yourself?" What do you see when women – we'll just use women because I know they seem to be more prone to burnout. What do you see with the women who come to your practice who are just past what you had gone through? [00:14:20] Dr. MS: I believe that every woman that is listening to this audio right now, this beautiful podcast, who is somewhat aligned with the idea of burnout. Chances are there's a high probability. I'm talking about 90%, 95%, 98% of these women have received signals. [00:14:38] PF: Do we recognize those signs? [00:14:40] Dr. MS: Yeah. And I can talk about these signs. And that was the second part of your question. And I alluded to some of the physical signs. We know that you can literally have a hormonal shift within your body physically as the result of long-term stress. And that comes from the adrenal glands, which are small little glands that sit on top of the kidneys. And the adrenal glands are responsible for producing – when you really truly are in a fight or flight demand, they are responsible for producing epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, DHEA to name a few. And when we are under long-term chronic stress, those hormones create – they get produced on a continuous basis and they create what is called a negative feedback cycle that travels through the entire endocrine system. And the endocrine system is essentially the system that governs all of the hormones that you produce. I'm talking about serotonin and melatonin. How are you sleeping? You know? [00:15:50] PF: Yeah, because that's one of the first things people lose, right? I know so many women who say, "I cannot get to sleep. I'm exhausted. And I go to bed and I cannot sleep." [00:15:59] Dr. MS: Or they pass out before their head hits the pillow, right? And then three o'clock in the morning, like clockwork, they wake up possibly due to a sugar burn off from the wine that they drank the night before or some kind of sugar imbalance. I believe that the hormones and the physical body talk to us in beautiful and mysterious ways. Maybe their metabolism slows down because their thyroid is not working. Maybe they're starting to feel sluggish and that they're having weight gain. Maybe the pancreas is out of balance and they're starting to see blood sugar issues. Maybe the hormones that they're producing – and it's a precarious time for women as they are going through perimenopause, and menopause and post-menopause. But you add those changes hormonally and couple it with the chronic stress, then you're really feeling a little whack-a-doodle, Paula. Just your body talks to you in so many beautiful ways. And those are the signs and the symptoms that I'm inviting the women listening to really pay attention to. [00:17:06] PF: Isn't it often the case you might go to your doctor and they say, "Well, it is just hormones." Because that often happen. Women, they're not being listened to by their doctors. They're told, "Well, it's just hormonal. You can't really do anything about it." Or they give them a prescription for something that's going to help them sleep or help them not be depressed. And then they're sent on their way. [00:17:26] Dr. MS: We live in a society, Paula, that we have been taught from our mother's generation that when we go to a physician, that they are empowered to tell us what to do and they are empowered to tell us what's happening within our body. And I'm here to say that, I'm sorry, there's no other physician that lives outside of your body that can possibly feel as to what's going on in internally for you. Really, the power needed to be given back to the women to be able to understand that there needs to be an integrative approach. Very rarely is a low back pain just a low back pain. There's going to be a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, chemical foundation to that low back pain. And very few physicians have the knowledge skill set to treat from an integrative standpoint nor do they have the time. I really encourage women to take that power back and to really say, "Timeout. Timeout. I know that my weight gain could be hormonal. Yes, I think that there is a chemical portion to the hormones. But I'm telling you that I live in my body and these are other symptoms that I'm experiencing simultaneously. And, oh, by the way, do you have a referral for a good psychotherapist? Or do you have a referral for a good nutritionist or somebody that can talk about the elements of food?" I believe that we as women got to really empower ourselves. I keep coming back to that word empowerment. When we are, unfortunately – and I'm going to go into another branch of what possibly might be showing up as signs and symptoms for women. And maybe you might understand a little bit more clearly why the challenges for women to advocate for themselves, is that when somebody is going through a burnout, I don't care if it's professional or personal, it really messes with their sense of self-worth. [00:19:26] PF: Nobody brings that up. [00:19:28] Dr. MS: Oh, my goodness. Self-worth, there's a component of learned helplessness. Thank you, Dr. Seligman, for educating us on learned helplessness. There is a lack of motivation. People just energetically and emotionally just feel flatlined. Okay? And this creates a trigger, an emotional trigger, which is very similar to a trauma response within the body. All of this, neurologically speaking, there's an imbalance as to the get up and go kind of sympathetic dominance. And then there's a lack of function within the parasympathetics to auto-regulate the central nervous system from the emotional standpoint. We absolutely are not thinking clearly. And now here I am saying we need to be empowered to ask for what it is that we need. It's hard to do that if you're not thinking clearly. Behaviorally, you're like isolating yourself. You're withdrawing yourself. You're not reaching out to your girlfriends and your support team. You don't have your cheer squad on your side. I see how it happens. I understand and I have so much empathy for people that are going through burnout. [00:20:44] PF: And you take an integrative approach. And we're going to talk about that in a second. Before we do it, what is someone to do when they know intrinsically there is so much more going on? And they go to a doctor and the doctor says, "It's just you're stressed. Or it's emotional. Or it's hormones." Where do they then go? [00:21:01] Dr. MS: Yeah, that's a legitimate question. Quite honestly, Paula, that's why I have created my signature program. Because there are very few people that are truly taking an integrative approach. And I believe, and I know and I'm thankful that there are integrative physicians that can address the bulk of the problems. But most of the integrative physicians are not taking in the energetic and the spiritual component. I do think that there are people that can help serve, support and help facilitate the healing journey. But from my perspective it really does require an integrative approach. [00:21:37] PF: Yeah. Tell us what you mean by an integrative approach and then what that looks like? [00:21:44] Dr. MS: Yeah. In my world, an integrative approach is incorporating the mind, the body and the spirit. When I'm talking about the mind, I'm talking about mindset behavioral and conditions, limiting belief patterns, tapping into the subconscious through meditation. That is the mind. The body, we're all very familiar with the body. And so, sometimes that's the chemical component of the body. Is it something structural that is happening? Oftentimes, I have women go through a functional blood chemistry analysis. From a functional standpoint, we look at the biomarkers, we look at the indicators and we look and compare highs, and lows, and medians and average. And then we compare whether it'd be three months, or six months, or year down the road. And then we look at your pre and post blood markers to see where normal is for you. [00:22:46] PF: Yeah, it's so important to point out. It is. Each person is different. And you have to find out what's right for you. [00:22:52] Dr. MS: Long gone are the days where medicine is cookie cutter. I believe that the next evolution of medicine, literally from the integrative standpoint, is to transition into energy medicine. The energy medicine that I'm alluding to takes into consideration that, within all of us, there is an electromagnetic current. And surrounding our physical body is also an electromagnetic current. And we're going to call that the subtle energetic body. It's known to some people as the aura or is known to others as the bio field. And so, essentially, this energy that surrounds this is like the layers of the onion. It's intended to be protective. Protective of the energy that come at us within our environment. I mean, energetically, we have so much information coming at us at all times, it's hard to live in a dense boundary type of way to reflect all of these energies either way. I'm talking about 5G energies. I'm talking about energies from other people. I'm talking about frequencies, X-ray frequencies. You name it, those energies are coming into our bio field once it enters into our bio field. Depending upon the direction, it will enter into an energy center, also known as a chakra, within our energy body. And these chakras have themes. They have life themes. They have emotional themes. They have nerve plexuses that are associated with them. They also have an endocrine gland that is associated with them. You can see where, energetically, if we're not protecting the field coming into our physical body, it then can turn into an emotional disturbance, or a physical disturbance, or an endocrine disturbance. That integrative approach, the mind, body and spirit gets to address all three of those systems simultaneously. And to provide you, the consumer, with the tools, the resources so that you can empower yourself to do your own personal healing. You start to look inward for support instead of outward. [00:25:20] PF: That's so powerful because that's not a prescription you're going to get from your doctor. And you are just really big proponent of meditation. You talked about that earlier. How big a role does meditation play in all of those things, in the mind, the body, all of it? [00:25:36] Dr. MS: Paula, I can almost feel some of the ladies listening to the podcast cringe. I can feel their toes curl, "There's that meditation. That word meditation. I've tried it. It doesn't work for me. I simply just cannot relax my mind. I have too much going on in my world. How can I possibly take the time to meditate?" And I am an advocate. I do believe in a formal sitting practice. But I also believe that mindfulness can be bought into various different daily tasks, such as washing your dishes at night, loading your dishwasher, making your bed, or gardening, or taking the dog out for a walk. I'm not saying that those activities are not grounding. But what I'm looking to do in meditation is to shift the various different brain waves so that you can then start to access the subconscious. So that you can leave the space of the ego and transcend into the place where the ego does not exist. Because I believe, Paula, that as women, as human living or spirits living in a human body, I believe that all of us have the capacity to receive information above and beyond our traditional five senses. Information that is valuable to our own personal healing. And meditation opens up those channels for receiving information. [00:27:01] PF: And then once we start receiving that information, we're going to act on it, how does it start changing the way we look at life? Changing the decisions we make? Tell us that bridge between I'm burned out, and I started meditating and now things are clear. What is that link that takes us there? [00:27:21] Dr. MS: Sure. Well, first and foremost, I'm going to openly admit that just because you're burned out and you start meditating doesn't mean that there's going to be an overnight shift. It's not a quick pill. It's not a pill. It's not a quick fix. This is something that takes time, and repetition and commitment to really see the benefits. But in my own personal experience, I started meditating receiving information intuitively. I didn't trust it. I still didn't trust the information. I just kind of ignored it. You ignore it once. Yeah, yeah. You ignore it twice, oh, maybe there's something to this. You ignore it the third time and you're like, "What am I doing? I clearly am receiving signals about what path, or direction, or decisions I should be making. And I'm not even following the own internal advice and wisdom that's coming from within." I think that most women have to go through that distrust period before they completely can surrender. And what I have heard over and over, Paula, is women saying, Oh, my God, Mary, you wouldn't believe it. I have boundaries now. I feel full of myself. And not from a really standoff-ish place. I'm coming from it from a really heart-centered, heartfelt way." It's like these transitions that women are learning to say, "No. No. Thank you. Let me think about. It I'll get back to you. I'll circle back with you." Once women can understand that they have this power, this life force energy surging through their physical body and their energetic body, they blossom. Blossom into something magnificent. [00:29:03] PF: If women are listening to this and they're saying, "Okay, I know I'm burned out. This all makes sense. But I don't know where to start." Where do they start? I know you offer some great resources on your site. You've got a wonderful podcast that people can tune in and listen to. But what is the next step? After listening to our conversation today, what is their next step? [00:29:23] Dr. MS: Ask for help. [00:29:25] PF: And who do you ask? [00:29:26] Dr. MS: Well, I would love to be a resource. I would be honored to be a resource. If I find that I am not the right match or intuitively that the woman is like, "Okay, you're nice. But you're not giving me exactly what I need." Then I'm going to help find that person that provides you with exactly what you need. One of the things that I really do enjoy about being a podcast host in the field of energy medicine is that it is developing and widening of my referral base. I've got a lot of cool friends and a lot of cool places. [00:29:59] PF: That's terrific. As we wrap up today, what is the one thing that you hope everybody that hears you today will take away from our conversation? [00:30:08] Dr. MS: I really want people to embrace the fact that they're not alone. And that there are people that are experiencing burnout all – it can be a different facet of burnout. But they're not alone. That nothing is permanent. And it that if you are experiencing burnout, whether it'd be depression, anxiety, physical discomfort, know that all of those symptoms are transient. They too shall pass. [00:30:35] PF: That's excellent. I thank you so much for being with me today. We could talk for hours. But I appreciate this conversation and everything that you're doing to help get us through these phases and these difficult times in our lives. [00:30:47] Dr. MS: Thank you again, Paula. Sincerely, it is my honor to be here today. Thank you, listeners. [OUTRO] [00:30:57] PF: That was Dr. Mary Sanders, talking about how women can manage burnout. If you'd like to learn more about Mary, download her free Boost Your Energy Guide, listen to our podcast or learn more about what tools she offers, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. And just a reminder that the International Day of Happiness is just around the corner and we would love you to celebrate it with us. You can do that by hosting a happiness wall in your home, office, church or school on March 20th. And if you'd like to learn more, just visit our website, that's livehappy.com, and click on the happy X 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]