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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Why More Money Doesn’t Equal More Happiness With Tal Ben-Shahar [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 432 of Live Happy Now. We've heard that money can't buy happiness. But how does our perception of money affect our well-being? I'm your host, Paula Felps. This week, I'm talking with author and lecturer, Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, Co-Founder of the Happiness Studies Academy and creator of the Master's Degree in Happiness Studies. Tal is here to talk about recent findings that show our perception of money has changed dramatically, and it's damaging our happiness. He's going to break down what this survey tells us and why it's so important to change our view of money for the sake of our well-being. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:42] PF: Tal, thank you so much for coming back on Live Happy Now. [00:00:45] TBS: Thank you, Paula, for having me back. [00:00:47] PF: This is a really interesting conversation to have because as you know, Bloomberg just released a survey, and it had some really surprising results on people's perception about money. It really showed how things have changed dramatically. I wondered, to start it off, if you wanted to talk a little bit about what some of those findings were. [00:01:07] TBS: Sure. So the Bloomberg study very much aligns with what we've been studying in the field of happiness studies over the past few decades, which is that people's perceptions matter a great deal more than their objective circumstances. So what they identified were people who were making a lot of money. They were in the top 10th of the population in terms of income above $175,000. Yet a large minority were feeling poor, and the majority were not feeling comfortable about how much they were making. Now, most people, probably around 90% of the population would say, “What are they about? They're spoiled, and they have so much money. They should be, first of all, grateful. Second, happy. But they're not. They're neither.” Question is why. In the article, the research tries to give the reason. They say, well, things have changed. Many people living in New York, for them, 175,000 or 200,000 doesn't go far. At the same time, many of them have homes that are paid off, so they don't have that mortgage payment. Yet they feel the way they feel. I think what's interesting to do, Paula, is for us to explore why. Even more importantly, what can we do about it if we experience dissatisfaction? [00:02:29] PF: Absolutely. Yes, yes. Because that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you. I wonder too if what has caused that mindset to change because a few years ago, it was saying, okay, if you have an income over $75,000 that that was what it took to kind of get you into a good state of well-being. Then 2021, a study came out and said, “No, we need more than that.” So now, we're looking at really dramatically different numbers. What has changed in the way that we're thinking? [00:02:59] TBS: It's a few things. The first thing is COVID. It's easy to blame COVID for everything, but it really did change the world in so many ways and mostly not good ways. So what did COVID do? It essentially took away people's sense of confidence in the status quo because suddenly this came completely unannounced, and millions and millions of people lost their jobs. Even more extreme, many people lost their lives. The sense of security was understandably affected. If before COVID the question was am I making enough money to live well, the question post-COVID for many people is do I have enough money stashed away to survive a year without a job because that happened to many people. Even if it didn't happen to you, you read about people for whom it did happen. This was real. This changes the numbers because while those who were making $200,000 a year certainly have enough to live off, most of them would not be able to survive, certainly not with the lifestyle that they're leading if they lost their job and did not have that income for a year. That became a reality. [00:04:24] PF: Is there also a sense of fear of, in addition to having that money to live on, feeling like we're no longer being taken care of? I think there was a sense that we would always be okay. Like no matter what happened, someone will take care of us. Something's going to go well for us. Did we kind of lose that mindset? [00:04:45] TBS: I think so. So in the sense that when things are predictable. Well, if we're taken care of in the past, we'll be taken care of in the future. You just induce the future from the past. But suddenly, everyone was lost. I mean, governments were lost. I mean, we're still not sure today. Did we do the right thing? Should have we been quarantined or not? There are different models. The jury is still out, and maybe we'll always be out on it. Yes. Again, people lost their sense of confidence in the authorities, so to speak. Also in their workplaces because even in the most reliable of workplaces, well, they had to lay off people. They didn't have a choice. They did that. [00:05:26] PF: So is it healthy to have that I've got to take care of myself mindset? Or is it unhealthy because we are supposed to be connected? [00:05:33] TBS: So it can go either way. COVID was a trauma, a global trauma, societal-wide trauma. The question is do we grow from that trauma, or do we break down from a trauma? In psychological language, do we experience PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder? Or do we experience PTG, post-traumatic growth? Again, the jury's out on that. Not only is the jury out on that. It's very much dependent on individual perceptions and individual choices. Let's take two examples. One example is of a person who – again, let's use the numbers in the research. They're making 180,000; 200,000 dollars a year. They're saying, “I want to live the same way, and I'm staying in New York City. I'm going to spend as much as I did before and see where that takes me.” They're going to, obviously, be concerned because they know that if COVID happens again or something like that happens again, they are in trouble. Another approach would be the world has changed, and let me live more humbly. Let me maybe not buy a new car or a car at all if I'm in the city, a smaller home. Or maybe I'll move. This is something that they mentioned in the Bloomberg study. Many people are choosing to leave the city. Part of the reason they're moving to Texas, A, because taxes are lower. B, because your dollar goes a lot further there in terms of the home you can afford and even the restaurants that you can go to. So they have, in a sense, learned a lesson and said, “We're not making two million dollars. We're making $200,000.” A lot of money can go a lot further elsewhere. Maybe we can even put more money aside. Even if disaster strikes again, financial disaster strikes again, we don't need to worry for a year or two because we have enough stashed away. So these are two very different approaches. By the way, which one we take also depends on our personality. Are we more risk-averse? Are we more thrill seekers? So it depends on so many – is it possible for me to move to Texas or somewhere in Florida or somewhere in New York, where I may not be in the city, but life is cheaper. [00:07:57] PF: And it's accessible. You can get to the city. I think that's something too. You can find an area where you can access the things that you like about where you live but aren't paying the kind of rents or mortgages that you would pay in a city. [00:08:11] TBS: Yes. You know, I'm speaking here from personal experience. So we moved. Actually, just before COVID, we lived in Brooklyn, and we moved out of the city into New Jersey. We did it because we wanted quieter lifestyle, of course, but also for financial reasons. Not that taxes are not high in New Jersey. They're extremely high. But certainly, when it comes to accommodation, your dollar goes much, much farther when you're in the suburb. Of course, it is important to look at the big picture, to look at it wholistically, W-H, and to understand that there are individual differences. There are people who need the hustle and bustle and the speed of the city. There are people who would feel a lot more comfortable living by a quiet lake, where you hear the water and the birds when you wake up in the morning. Different personalities, it has to do with introversion and extroversion. It also has to do with how you've been raised and what you're used to or where you've spent the past 10 years. Because in a way, for good and ill, we become addicted to whatever it is that we're exposed to. Again, addiction can obviously be a bad thing. But if I'm addicted to the quiet and suns, or I'm addicted to going to the gym three, four times a week, that's not a bad thing. All it means is that we have neural pathways that have been reinforced over time. But there is something else that I want to say here. It's not just what I desire to do or want to do at the moment. We can also bring about change, specifically .We have become as a society addicted to noise, to novelty, to excitement, to the sensational. That is why we keep on checking our messages online because we're looking for something new and sensational. It's also why we get bored very quickly when we're sitting in our room and doing nothing or ostensibly doing nothing. You find more and more kids today saying to their parents, “I'm bored.” [00:10:21] PF: Ow. [00:10:23] TBS: You're right. More and more adults maybe not saying it but feeling it and then immediately filling up that void that is responsible for their boredom with something. Blaise Pascal once said that, “All of our troubles will be solved if we can find peace in solitude, in the solitude of our own room.” There is some truth to that, and the thing is that we can train ourselves to be less of sensation seekers and more at peace, quite literally at peace with ourselves, at peace with the absence of noise, with the absence of distractions. That would be very healthy, and one way to do that is, of course, through practicing meditation or by practicing being bored, by practicing doing nothing. We can actually get used to it. There are many upsides to silence, to solitude, to slowing down. [00:11:24] PF: Yes. It does. It absolutely changes your state. As you talked about, we're a very distracted society. There's a lot of noise, a lot of things going on. How is that playing into the way people perceive their finances and the economic environment around them? What role is that playing, and how then do they step away from that? [00:11:46] TBS: Yes. So in 1954, a leading psychologist by the name of Leon Festinger coined the term social comparison. Again, in hindsight, it seems obvious. Maybe it was also obvious in the 1950s. But we compare ourselves, and we constantly do it. It's part of our nature to do that. It’s not good or bad. It's like the law of gravity. It's a fact of nature. The question, though, is what do we do with social comparison, and how do we direct this need to compare ourselves? Do we, for example, compare ourselves to others, and that may drive us to do better and to improve and to learn from what other people are doing? Or do we become obsessed with what others have and can never be satisfied or happy because we don't have what they have? Right now, because of over stimulation, too much comparison, we, and I say we generalized, of course, not everyone. But in general, we have become, again, addicted and dependent on being better than, having more than. This plays out in terms of the statistics that we're seeing now. Yes, 180,000 is not a lot really when you compare it to someone who's making 1.8 million dollars. It’s nothing, and there are many people who make that. There are also many people who have billions of dollars, and we're exposed to all of them day in and day out through the media, through social media, or through the newspapers that writes about the very wealthy celebrities. Suddenly, what I do, oh, wow, or what I make is so little. Whereas in the past, let's say when you lived in your village, first of all, there was less discrepancy about what people made. But even the wealthy ones, first of all, they were not in my face all the time. The news isn’t in my face. [00:13:39] PF: They weren't on TikTok showing their latest acquisition, right? [00:13:42] TBS: Exactly, exactly. Also, there were many others that I compared myself to. Again, this is something natural. Who had as much or less than I did, so I felt okay when it came to social comparison. Also, you think about advertising. Advertising has one goal, to sell. Now, how does it get you to sell? It takes this tendency towards social comparison and exploits it. Oh, you don't have this new car yet. That means you can't be really happy because look at how happy those beautiful people driving that car are. Then you get that car, but there are always new ads coming on and luring. The sirens are calling you to get the next thing. Then we experience what Nathaniel Branden, the psychologist, called the nothing is enough syndrome. Nothing is enough materially. Because mind and body are connected, nothing is enough psychologically. [00:14:43] PF: Now, what does that do to our happiness when we are focused on what – our lack, the fact that we don't have enough money, even if that's just a perception? How is that undermining our well-being? [00:14:56] TBS: In the exact same way that objectively not having enough for our livelihood would influence our happiness. Because people who don't have the basic needs, of course, that's going to affect their impact. Poverty influences people's happiness. If I know that or if I don't know rather how I will get food on my table, for myself, for my family tomorrow, that I'm going to be concerned. I'm not going to sleep. Well, I'm going to be unhappy, obviously. In the same way, people who actually have enough objectively, even if they have enough for the next year to live off, but their perception is the perception of lack. Their happiness is going to be influenced just the same. Why? Because happiness depends much more on our state of mind than the state of our bank account. Again, with a caveat here, I'm not talking about extremes. Extreme actual poverty will lead to unhappiness. For those who are experiencing it or for us, we have a responsibility to alleviate that condition. That goes without saying. [00:16:03] PF: So what do people focus on? Here's where the professor really comes out. So what are the steps that people can take? How do they change their relationship with their perception of what is enough, and what do they focus on instead to start making a shift? [00:16:21] TBS: Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, who's really the father of cognitive psychology, says that one of the things that we can do is imagine ourselves without the things that we have. We're so focused on what we don't have. Let's think about what we have and imagine ourselves without it. So I have food on my table. Imagine if I didn't have that food. Well, that will make me more appreciative of the food that I do have. Or I do drive a car. Yes, I don't drive the latest model and fastest one. But it takes me from point A to point B, how convenient, how wonderful. Not to mention to become more appreciative of the things that don't cost money such – whether it's friends or family or health or nature, the gift that we received from evolution, God. Take your pick. [00:17:16] PF: So what are ways that people can start creating some sort of practice? Because we're not going to just inherently say, “Okay, those were great tips. I'm going to start doing that,” and everything changes. It gets tough because we are going to slide back in, and we are going to see that friend on TikTok who has a Lamborghini, and we're going to be like, “Come on.” So what are some practices that we can use every day to make this part of our insight? [00:17:43] TBS: I'm going to talk about some of the usual suspects here because I don't think it's rocket science. The challenge is not understanding or knowing what we should do. The challenge is to do it and to do it consistently. I will say a few words about that in a minute. But first of all, what are the things? First of all, regularly express gratitude. The key with expressing gratitude is not just, okay, so I'm sitting down now the end of the day and counting my blessings, writing down what I'm grateful for. We need to do it with what Barbara Frederickson, the psychologist, calls heartfelt positivity. So this is a practice that I've been doing since the 19th of September, 1999. I do day in and day out. The key, especially when you've done it often, is to really feel experience and savor what it is that you're grateful for. So if I write down my daughter. It’s not just writing down my daughter or her name. It's writing it down, and then I shut my eyes, and I imagine her. I see her in my mind's eye and feel the love. [00:18:48] PF: I love that. [00:18:50] TBS: There are so many reasons why this works so much better than just going through the motion. Or let's say if I write a meal that I had with a colleague, which was lovely. I actually closed my eyes and transport myself back to that experience, re-experience it. It's when we experience this heartfelt positivity as opposed to just cognitive positivity that makes a big difference in terms of the impact that it has on us. So this is one practice. The second practice, going back to sensationalism. I'm taking it from the work of Osho, who was a spiritual teacher, but also from the latest research on meditation. We can shift away from the need for sensationalism if we become more mindful of sensations. So if I sit down and focus on the air coming in through my nose and leaving through my nose and this tingling, whether it's in my nostrils or my fingertips, if I focus on that, there's so much happening there. If I learn to focus on it, I become more sensitive. When I become more sensitive, I'm more aware of sensations and therefore less dependent on sensationalism, which is sensations taken to the extreme. Again, this is not just then etymological word play. This actually works, but we need to put time aside for that by living any city. I'm outside, being constantly bombarded by these distractions which is noise, colors. Plus, I have my smartphone with me all the time that is providing me notifications or messages. I become addicted to those. Just like the antidote for taking things for granted is gratitude, the antidote to sensationalism is learning to focus on and become aware of, mindful of sensations. [00:21:03] PF: That's incredible. I love that. I know that we do have to let you go, but I really want you to put in perspective for us how imperative is it that we get our mindset about money in line for our overall well-being? Like where does that fall in importance? [00:21:21] TBS: We have within us, again, whether it's the creator put it in us or evolution put it in us, the need to accumulate. It's understandable because in the past, humans really didn't know whether they would survive the next winter. Or they only survived it if they accumulated. Unfortunately, for many people, this is still the reality. So this is, again, part of our nature; good, bad, both, neither. The question is what do we do with that. Do we take it to the extreme? Then that means even people who are making, objectively speaking, a lot of money still feel that nothing is enough. Or do we write about it, think about it, talk about it, find a more rational evaluation of what we have? So that's the first thing. The second thing, how about living a little bit more humbly? Because really, as we know from a lot of research and, Paula, you've talked about this multiple times before, yes, when we get this new thing, bigger, better, brighter thing, we'll be happy for a week or a month. That's not the path to lasting happiness. So let's be more humble about our acquisitions. Let's be more humble about what we really need. Spend more of our money and more importantly our time on cultivating those things that are free and yet so important, so fundamental for our happiness. Because spending time with my daughter or spending time going for a walk, playing with my pet, or reading a book, these are wonderful sources of what I've come to call life's ultimate currency, which is not dollars and cents. It's happiness. [00:23:18] PF: I love that. Thank you so much for your insight today. This is an important topic because it affects all of us. We all have our own mindsets about it. So I really appreciate you breaking it down for us and telling us how we can shift the direction we're going. We're going to tell our listeners how they can find you online and learn more about you. [00:23:37] TBS: Thank you very much, Paula. Again, thank you so much for all that you and your team are doing. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:23:47] PF: That was Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, talking about money and happiness. If you'd like to learn more about Tal and the Happiness Studies Academy or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: IPPA Recap with Andrea Goeglein [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 430 of Live Happy Now. Every two years, the International Positive Psychology Association holds its World Congress. This week, we're finding out what they were talking about. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Over the next few weeks, we're going to have some conversations about some of the takeaways from this year's event which was held in July. First, I'm sitting down with Andrea Goeglein, who addresses some of the growing concerns about loneliness and the lack of social connections, as well as giving us a fresh perspective on the World Happiness Report. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:38] PF: Andrea, thank you for coming back and talking to me today. [00:00:42] AG: You know that it's always my pleasure. So this is like my happy place, and thank you for having me again. [00:00:48] PF: You just came back from the IPPA World Congress, which is an International Positive Psychology Association World Congress. It has been a minute since it was able to –was this the first one that was able to take place person to person? [00:01:00] AG: Well, they actually had one in ’21, but it was virtual. This is the first in-person for four years. [00:01:08] PF: Because it doesn't happen every year. It's every two years. First of all, going into it, did you have any certain sessions or certain ideas that you really wanted to explore? Or did you go there and say let’s follow what's going on? [00:01:21] AG: Historically, I never really even looked at anything other than knowing, okay, I am going, and I'm going to absorb because I always view myself as an interloper. I think I am exactly like all of our listeners. I'm the person who did not commit their life to doing the research, but I did commit my life to getting the message out. From day one, when I went to the conferences, it was like, “I'll take whatever they've got.” This time, because there had been a lull, and so much seems to have happened, ‘09 was the first conference. There's been 14 years just there of how it's evolved. So here's what I want to give you the difference of where the science has been and where the conference has been. I did actually for the first time, unlike my extroverted personality, when I got the links to what the session programs were, I mapped out who I wanted to see and why, who I wanted to hear. [00:02:32] PF: Who, that's nice. [00:02:33] AG: So to your question, yes, I didn't wing at this time. I felt it was too precious. It had been a while. Think about how many times we're all doing that now. I think we're being a bit more thoughtful when we do come together. [00:02:48] PF: That's interesting. That's something I haven't really thought about, but I do believe you're correct. We are more maybe judicious with how we use our time and how we spend that time together. [00:03:00] AG: So you have just mentioned what the overarching theme of the conference and how the science itself is clearly moving. So the theme of the conference was connect to heart. From the time I was in positive psychology and went to the authentic happiness coaching pre-map, what it was about was the individual learning their strengths and how the individual applies these strengths. Like everything was very individually. Even with one of the founders, Chris Peterson, bringing out the other people matter message. I know in my work, it was always that one-on-one. What are your strengths? How do you apply them? How do you get it better? Now, what the science has done is look at the overarching problems. Let's just start with loneliness. [00:04:03] PF: Interesting because the episode just before this that we ran last week is loneliness because it's such an epidemic, so great. Yes, yes, jumping on that place. [00:04:11] AG: Yes. I want you to know, Live Happy Now was very present in my spirit and in actual. I’ll talk a little bit about that, at it. But loneliness, what – they open the conference by basically saying loneliness is at epidemic proportions. I will paraphrase and say and we know what cures it. Okay. [00:04:38] PF: Yes. [00:04:38] AG: So, yes, the science is showing us is that epidemic proportion, and the same science is showing us how to – like I took away the word up-level. The science from me of positive psychology has been up-leveled from the strengths. It is how do I use my strengths and you use your strength so that together everything is stronger. I don't care if it's your community, the workplace, your family. It is that connect to the heart. Well, it's connecting to the heart. Loneliness is resolved. When I connect to the heart of you at a different level than me just having an agenda that, boy, I'm lonely. I want to be with you, you know, the thing. [00:05:34] PF: Right. So what did they kind of recommend as the approach for that? [00:05:39] AG: Oh, well. So, first, let me say there were 130 sessions. I probably went to 15, and I'm like every other carpenter, I pick my nails. [inaudible 00:05:51]. [00:05:52] PF: Right. [00:05:55] AG: So above all, active participation. You must self-initiate to get back out, whether it's at the virtual level, the family level, the community level, the work level. You must know that loneliness is solved and well-being enhanced when you take an action to come together and then the techniques that we were taught a zillion years ago about empathetic listening. I'll use you and I as an example. You and I met years ago at a taping for a show on happiness. We all had our own little bucket. But then you and I spent some time at the airport. [00:06:42] PF: That's right. [00:06:43] AG: Okay. We connected through the person who – Mary Agnes made us both know about that show. What they are finding is that your ability to engage empathetically and listen for the commonality is going to help with all of the various rifts and all of the various communities. So active and active in a slightly up-leveled way where I am listening, first and foremost, for the commonality. But I'm not sharing it. Put, no one needs this more than me, masking tape on your mouth and truly just listen. Don't listen to jump in, that type of thing. Doing those small steps actually helps increase what the relationship is, even if it's in a shorter time period because we're going to be meeting for shorter time periods face to face. There are certain changes that 2020 gave us that we are going to be using techniques better because we have to use them faster. [00:08:11] PF: Oh, that's interesting. Let me ask you one more thing related to that, though. In a world where most of us are on social media, people have gotten so used to sharing their message, promoting their brand. People consider themselves a brand now, not just a person, and they're so busy sharing their message that we're forgetting how to listen. So how does someone reacquire those listening skills? How do we start doing that empathetic listening and learn to step back and not interject? [00:08:44] AG: The one thing about science knowing the answer is we still have to do the activity. It’s so interesting. We actually have everything we need to have better levels of life satisfaction. What we miss or what we don't commit to as strongly is applying it, doing the steps such as coming together. One of the suggestions, this came up a lot in work, texting, emailing, not the best way to build the relationships. Go back to more phone calls. This medium works. Whatever time you're taking, so many times what you put in an email doesn't need to be an email. It's not fact points or a report. But we're using email or texting. Pick up that call. Do re-initiate. Just because social media has become more brand-oriented, we are giving up or sacrificing and forgetting we control everything. We have the choice. This science gives you the strength, no pun intended, to engage at that level. So it's an action. [00:10:20] PF: Yes, yes. I love the idea of picking up that phone once in a while and getting more accustomed to that. Because I was joking with a friend within the past week because she had texted me to say, “Can I call you?” It's like remember when we actually like had to take a chance. You picked up the phone and hope it's somebody you wanted to talk to. I think we've lost a lot by not having that ability to just pick up the phone and call someone. The fact that we do feel we're intruding if we call them out of the blue. So I do love that of making it a practice to pick up a phone and call somebody. It's amazing how much more enrichment, how much more information you get out of that. [00:11:01] AG: Yes. Well, and I'll give you two points on that. One, it's actually a sign of what I call evolved respect. Do you have the time? Because I do that with my friends because we know how crazy we allow our schedules to become and we – what you're really asking is do you have time to pay attention to me if I call. [00:11:22] PF: Oh, I love that. I love that framing. [00:11:23] AG: Okay. So as a habit to actively engage more, I use that technique because then I can say no this time or schedule. But I'll tell you a funny thing that just happened to me yesterday. I have a very diverse background. I've lived in all sorts of parts of the country and done all sorts of things. I have a media platform, yada, yada, so a lot of people in my life. One person from 40 years ago kept coming to mind, and I'm in contact with them maybe twice a year. We had a 12-year period where we were really together. I originally was going to text them but decided – when I knew I had some time, I picked up the phone. Funny thing, I couldn't leave a message because his voicemail was full, which is something that happens a lot. So I text him instead and just said, “Hey, I'm just thinking about you,” this, this, and this. Next thing I know, he calls. Well, I ragged on him about the voice message. He said, “What is it? You want to make sure that like please don't call me?” So I would urge your listeners to check that habit because I know that I encounter that a lot, full voice messages. I will also tell you, I've done a very funny thing on my own voicemail, which I like to use to make people smile. So my voicemail currently says some version of please leave your number. Then, “I'm making a lot of changes in my life. If I don't get back to you within 24 hours, you happen to be one of them.” Now, I got that from Joe Dispenza, but I love it. Then I say, “I hope I made you laugh,” because that's always been a goal for me that my ability to respond is going to increase. This goes across the board for all of us. So this is actually we will respond to people who made us feel lighter, who made us feel like more vulnerable, more receptive. So I make that statement in a way to say, okay, lighten up because don't think I won't get a text about like, “Did you not return my call because I no longer matter,” kind of thing. It's great. [00:13:39] PF: Exactly. I love that. I love that. So you talked a lot it seems like about loneliness and connection. What would you say was another thing that really made a big impression on you at that IPPA? [00:13:51] AG: Okay. So know that we started with the World Happiness Report, and one of them – [00:13:55] PF: Oh, yes, yes, which we talked about here a while back. [00:13:59] AG: Right. Okay. So one of the great things, now, if you take the theme of up-leveling the science, going from strengths of the individual to strengths of the group. Then one of the respectful things we were asked as the audience. For those like that are listening to us that are practitioners and disseminators of the information in your audience, what they said is one of the greatest problems, the theme was how do we get this message out to the mass audience in an accurate way. Because as you probably know, when the World Happiness Report comes out, what's the thing the world knows about? What's the – [00:14:39] PF: All they know is the happiest countries in the world. Some of them will know that US isn't doing that great. We cannot crack the top 10 to save our lives. They know that the Scandinavian countries are crushing it. That's what we know. [00:14:52] AG: Bingo. I know that I don't even look at the list because Norway, Finland, Sweden can be the happiest places in the world. [00:15:00] PF: Denmark. Yes. [00:15:01] AG: But they're also the coldest ones in the world. I'm not going there. That’s all there is to it. I’ll visit. But, no, no, I'm not to stay. So we – taking in information, it's an example of how the media uses us and how we have to take back control. I'd love to read the part of the World Happiness Report. True to my statement, if you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem. The World Happiness Report is free. Type in World Happiness Report. Download the sucker. Although the media talks to us about country rankings, and then we get unhappy because we aren't able to crack the code, here is an interesting finding that they have, under happiness, the very first agenda item. Once happiness is accepted as the goal of the government, this has other profound effects on institutional practices. Health, especially mental health, assumes even more priority, as does the quality of work, family, life, and community. Now, you talk in our language. Well, we have problems in those areas. So if our government would make it a focus, not make the focus mental health only. But how do we up-level the components of not happiness the emotion, which is different from me and you, but that overarching well-being, life satisfaction, all of the components that are truly governmental and community issues? What the conference did was take a report that a lot of us know the top line of but say, “Wait a minute. What action can I take?” The action is start working towards your community, looking at mental health not as a social dilemma and a social disease but as a component that needs to be solved in a connection way so that overarching our community and our policies work better. [00:17:20] PF: That's interesting because how then does an individual that's such a huge problem to solve, and that shift is not going to turn around quickly. So how does the individual who's listening say, okay, I can be a small part of this, and how do they do that? What action was it determined that they can take? [00:17:39] AG: I'm going to use an analogy that my dad used to use with me, and it had to do with I may not be able to clean up the junkyard. But I've got a broom, and I can clean my stoop. [00:17:52] PF: I like it. [00:17:52] AG: The problem media does to us and we've done to ourselves by accepting it. Don't try to solve the world happiness problem. I don't even give a flip about the world happiness scale. I do care about my square block. I do care about the policies that impact how safely I can cross the bleeping street. I do care that if I get safe crosswalks that other neighborhoods that may not be as affluent have equally safe crosswalks. That's how you do it. You look at what does my square block need and how can I do that. Then build on it from there. Don't fall into the trap of globalizing because catastrophizing and globalizing are two of the things that take away our optimism. It works at every level. [00:18:48] PF: So it really comes down to looking at your immediate tribe and saying, “All right, what are my strengths? What are theirs? How do we do make this small difference together?” I love that. [00:18:58] AG: Okay, and I'll give you another one. So meaning and mattering. The up-level station was, historically, we talked about meaning meaning. Again, that's a very individualized how do I find meaning. Well, what we found the mattering part, the new up-level is the mattering part because I find meaning when what I do at every level of work, life, family, when actually I can sense the impact on you. That went across the board. That became the nuance. That's just one of those aspects that it seems like we're talking about the same thing, meaning and mattering. But it's the difference between individual and then realizing that the satisfaction you get is from how others are impacted. [00:20:02] PF: Interesting. Boy, we could do a whole episode on that. That is really, really – [00:20:05] AG: Oh, and do I have books for you. [00:20:07] PF: Yes. [00:20:10] AG: Do I have books for you. [00:20:11] PF: Yes, you do. [00:20:13] AG: Yes, yes. I walked away – having this conversation, as I said, 130 different things about schools and well-being and the isolation, the use of psychedelic drugs. I mean, the topics were deep. If I was to leave anyone with anything, the things that I cared about the most was the shift from the meaning to the mattering and strengths, the importance of strengths at a different level. One of the many researchers that I love a lot is Ryan Niemiec. [00:20:47] PF: I love Ryan since [inaudible 00:20:48]. [00:20:48] AG: Okay. How can you not love Ryan? A man who has devoted his life to values in action, and he lives it. From his Positive Psychology Goes to the Movies books, what Ryan and his teams have been finding out is that when you add the strengths, the difference between adding strength to the mindfulness. Your particular strengths apply to the mindfulness in all the various things that you do in life is what then increases the life satisfaction aspects. Again, seems like we're saying the same exact things, but we're not. They've up-leveled it. They have found the deeper way for the things such as mindfulness and enhancing your spiritual connection because spirituality is that attribute where there is a oneness mindset. That oneness mindset builds on the same theme. That whole we're in this together. They took that theme, the wearing this together theme of 2020, and have looked deeply at what does that really mean when it's in action. [00:22:09] PF: That's what really needed to come out of the pandemic because there were a lot of lessons learned about ourselves and our relationships and both good and bad. To have that new application, I think, is really important for us to be able to take away. It's like we have to have learned something from that. We have to have changed something because of that. [00:22:33] AG: For me, that is the greatest. I think it opened up some of the greatest potential for the future, starting with the most obvious of how we valued certain jobs in our society and what it will mean for us going forward to keep valuing. The US is a service economy. We know that those jobs and satisfaction in those jobs helps build the economy because I know I'm to the point. You do too with the tipping. There's lots of articles right now on tipping and the backlash. I'm going to say I'm a very generous tipper, and I'm getting cranky. [00:23:16] PF: Yes, I know. I don't want to start at 18%. [00:23:19] AG: In ’20 and ’21, I was wanting to make sure you could pay your rent. Now, it's like, “Could you at least be accurate on the stuff when we’re interacting?” [00:23:28] PF: I know. [00:23:29] AG: It is there but they're in lies, what we are learning. We go through. There was a great line by the man who heads the Center for Good Science in Berkeley. His last name is Hanson. I think it's Rick Hanson. [00:23:46] PF: Oh, yes. [00:23:48] AG: Yes. One of the greatest challenges that we have is our brains on bad things is like Velcro. On good things, it's like Teflon. [00:23:57] PF: Exactly. [00:23:58] AG: Okay. [00:24:00] PF: I would say relative to the lessons that 2020 gave us the opportunities is we have the choice of holding on to the good stuff and continuing to up-level the stuff that was a problem because we'll be refining our economy and our ability to interact in it in a more positive way than when we were making widgets. [00:24:27] PF: I love it. Andrea, that is so insightful. I do want to ask you before I let you go. [00:24:33] AG: Okay. [00:24:34] PF: Positive psychologists, we've talked about it's a relatively new discipline, and it's maturing, and it's changing. How have you – since you've been in it a long time, you've been there. [00:24:45] AG: Long time. [00:24:46] PF: How have you seen it mature, and where do you see it being different right now? Not just the conference but positive psychology as a discipline. [00:24:55] AG: Yes. So this is really interesting. The scientific model forces an artificial. We've got to have a sample that has a known outcome that we can say this about this group. What I heard, particularly from the president of IPPA, because her background is in genetics, our ability to individualize the findings, whether it be on life satisfaction, what causes happiness, how to overcome the loneliness, our ability, what well-being is to me, I mean, they have a zillion definitions. That's a problem for science, except it's not. They're working towards not making that the hurdle. That you can continue to create work that, in fact, helps impact people and also do good science. They're now staying in what I see is a more both lane. They're not going to give up the good model of what how you study science, but they are also looking to and respecting the individualized differences along the sphere. That matters a lot. [00:26:16] PF: Yes, it does. It does. That's terrific. Andrea, you know we'll come back and talk about more of this later. [00:26:22] AG: We will. [00:26:23] PF: Later. But I appreciate this. I did. I wanted to do a follow-up. I knew you'd be a great person to talk to about it, so I appreciate you spending this time with me and telling us about it. [00:26:33] AG: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:38] PF: That was Andrea Geoglein, talking about her takeaways from the International Positive Psychology Association's World Congress. If you'd like to learn more, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Rediscover Your Sense of Wonder With Monica Parker [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 413 of Live Happy Now. We're all born with a sense of wonder, so where does it go? This week, our guest is going to tell us and help us rediscover it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm sitting down with world-renowned speaker, writer, and authority on the future of work, Monica Parker. Monica has spent decades helping people discover how to lead and live wonderfully. Now, she's sharing what she has learned in her new book, The Power of Wonder: The Extraordinary Emotion That Will Change the Way You Live, Learn and Lead. Monica reminds us of the wonder we once felt, explains why it's so important, and then gives us great tips on how to reclaim it. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:51] PF: Monica, thank you so much for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:00:55] MP: Thank you, Paula, for having me. I'm delighted to be here. [00:00:56] PF: You have written such a remarkable book, and I'm really excited to dig in and talk to our listeners about it. So, I make sure that we're on the same page. Can you explain what you mean, when you say we're talking about wonder? [00:01:09] MP: Absolutely. So, wonder has a couple of different meanings. It's sort of a shapeshifter as a term. We have wonder as a verb, to wonder, which is sort of curiosity. But then we also have wonder as a noun, which would be, a wonder, which might be something that would cause us to have awe. So, what I did is I wanted to link those two into an emotional experience. So, the way I describe wonder is it's an emotional experience that starts with openness, moves into curiosity, then into absorption, and then into awe. It's actually almost like a cycle. So, the more that we experience any of these different components, the more likely we are to experience them in the future. [00:01:51] PF: It's something that's very overlooked, and it's undervalued. One of the first things that struck me as I was getting into this book is wondering what made you decide that you wanted to study it. Can you take us back to why this topic? Because next we're going to talk about why it's so difficult to study. Why? Why did you want to do this? [00:02:12] MP: Sure. So, my whole life, I have been helping people manage big change, existential change. My work as a homicide investigator, obviously, helping people deal with the fact that the state wanted to deprive them of their life. Working with parents who have children with disabilities, and that is a big change in their expectation of raising a child. And then even working in corporate environments where people are losing their job. That is an existential change. It’s a huge ego blow. So, I actually set about to research and to write a book about change management, which in retrospect, is pretty freaking boring. So, I'm glad I didn't do that. And then when I started doing the research, and also reflecting on my own life, I don't think I had the language for it when I was observing it through time. But I realized that people who held their world in a sense of wonder, were more buoyant. They were more resilient and able to handle what life threw at them. So, that just sent me down wonder rabbit hole, and four years later, here we are. [00:03:08] PF: Well, it was four years that was well spent, because this is a wealth of knowledge, and you touch on it in ways I had never even thought of. We'll get into that later. But one of the things you do bring up is why it's so difficult to study wonder. I found this really interesting. Can you talk about that? Because that might explain why no one else is – I'm not saying no one else is doing it. But there's not a lot out there about it, and tell us why? [00:03:35] MP: Well, for starters, because it's a component emotion, right? It has a lot of different elements. Most people, if they wanted to study, say wonder, would just study awe. but I felt that that was too narrow. Because in fact, awe, it feels like something that is brief and fleeting. But more research shows now that we can have awe in everyday life. The other challenge is that just to study the catalyst of big wonder. So, awe, it's very difficult to find something in a lab that will give somebody a sense of actual awe or wander. In these lab environments, either they're putting somebody through an MRI machine, which is like the big doughnut where you have to stay totally still, or they put on this tentacle helmet for an EEG. So, it’s all very stilted. It's very difficult to study. What you end up studying is people's perception. So, they report to you how they feel. Of course, that's how a lot of psychology research is run, but it just becomes quite difficult to pin down the detail of why people are feeling these things, the intensity that they're feeling, the consistency. So, it's really difficult, in fact, a study any emotion and particularly difficult to study one that is meant to have such a grand reaction in our brains. [00:04:56] PF: Right. I love how you put it in the book, because you say, wonder is part science, and part soul, and I absolutely love that. Can you help us understand how you came to that conclusion through your research? And then what does that mean to us? [00:05:12] MP: Absolutely. So, there were a few questions through the research where the scientists would either demur and say, “That's not something that's really in my purview.” And some of them would just say that's not an answer that a scientist can answer. That is for the philosophers. I talk about the big questions, so we can answer something like, “Why do I feel pain when I put my hand on a stove?” But we can't answer using science at least, why does matter give rise to consciousness? Why, as humans, are we conscious? That's when we start to get into philosophy, religion, that's the soul part. And I was really conscious that I didn't want this book to be woo. I grew up in a household. It was great. But I wanted there to be enough science that people understood that there was something real here. But there is a point at which the science just doesn't explain everything that we experience, and that's when we get into the soul. [00:06:08] PF: Yes, and I think that's something that's so important about this book, because live happy as always science base, and there's so much science in it, but it is such an enjoyable read. It's very funny. I love your friend in the first chapter. He was amazing. So, it is. There's a lot of levity to it. But it's all backed up by science, and I really love that about the book, just as an aside. So, when we're talking about wonder, are we all born with a sense of wonder? Because I think about – I really thought back to childhood when everything was new, or when I'm now with, like a friend's children or grandchildren, and everything's exciting. Is wonder something we all have when we come into this world? [00:06:48] MP: Absolutely. Wonder is a universal emotion. The scientists have proven this. It is something we've all felt, and absolutely, when we're born, babies are little wonder machines. I mean, you can see, their eyes are wide open. It looks like they're tripping out all the time or just absorbing, and what's really happening as they're doing that, is they're building what's known as schema. So, schema are the building blocks of how our brains react to the world. It's basically the lens through which we see the world. As the schema build up, then our brains start to say, “Oh, I've seen that. I understand that.” And they try to put it into a box and explain it away. But when you’re children, everything is new, and so everything does create a sense of wonder. Everything does re-path your neural pathways and build the lens through which you see the world. But the problem is, is as we become older, we get a bit calcified. We feel that we don't have as much to see that has wonder in it. And that's one of the challenges is getting people to really be present enough to see through the eyes of a child, to see like a beginner. I love – [inaudible 00:07:52] says that, “Always be beginning.” [00:07:56] PF: So, are there people who maintain that? Because some people seem to have a greater sense of, “Oh, my gosh, look at that.” Even though they've seen that sunset hundreds of times, and they've seen things, but everything sparks them. So, is it kind of like a character strength? Or what is it? [00:08:11] MP: Within the wonder cycle, you've got openness, which is an openness to experience, which is a personality trait. Openness to experience, as a personality trait, one of the big five is going to be half set by your genetics, and half set by your experiences, by the time you turn 25. That latter set is really important. It's why the way we teach our children, literally forms their brain, et cetera. But by the time we're about 25, our personality is pretty set. Curiosity is both a state and a trait. So, what that means is that it can be dialed up based on what we're experiencing in our environment, or it is also – it has some elements that are just who we are, as in our personality. Absorption and awe appear to be just a state. So, it's what happens in our environment. There are certainly people who are more prone. But one of the messages that I want to deliver is that wonder is not about a moment. It's about a mindset. So, there are some people whose mindsets are going to be more naturally wonder prone. They're going to be much higher in openness to experience. They're going to be higher in trait. Curiosity will say, but certainly we can build a mindset that makes us more wonder prone. [00:09:25] PF: Let's talk about that. How do you create a wonder mindset? And how do you know if you have one? [00:09:31] MP: Well, there's actually an assessment that people can take on my website to see how wonder prone they are. It's based on the science, but it is just for fun. So, it will give you an indication. I haven't been able to test it and do all of that yet, but it is based on, and you'll be able to see the different scales that it's based on from different scientists. How can we build a wonder mindset? One of the first ways and the ways that is really primary is through what I call slow thought. This is any way that we can slow down our minds to be more present, to be more observant, in our environment. Those are things like meditation, narrative journaling, gratitude, nostalgia, any of the things that get your mind out of the rumination and into the present moment. That is one key element. We can practice novelty and trying to grow our openness to experience. Now, I say the openness to experience knowing that our personality is set, but the subset of openness to experience that actually is connected to wonder is openness to new ideas, to new thinking. So, if we can expose ourselves to new ideas, new thinking on a regular basis, that's very helpful. Novelty, just going to new environments, meeting with new people, taking a new route. I love to talk about museums or wander factories. Those are great environments. Reading, so exposing yourself to new thinking that way. So really, novelty is another great way, and then priming ourselves. So, priming is a very powerful mechanism, very easy. It's sort of when people talk about like, the secret or manifestation, a lot of that from a scientific point of view is just that you're telling your brain, I want to find this, and therefore it does. So, priming can be as simple as a one sentence. I'm going to find three things to make me feel wonder today. And now you've told your brain, there's a reward for this. I want you to go find it. It's just a little bit like, a bloodhound, go find it. Go, fetch. That’s what it does. It's now been told that it's something worth finding, and it will. [00:11:34] PF: And then as you do that, well, most people hit a point where their brain automatically starts looking for that, because I know that's how gratitude is so effective. When you start writing down, what you're grateful for, your brain starts looking for gratitude moments throughout the day. Does the same thing happen with wonder? [00:11:50] MP: Absolutely. There is an expression that says that when neurons fire together, they wire together. So, the reality is, is that any activity you do with enough practice will then become a neural pathway for good or for bad, right? This is how we have habits. So, it's really about just building that habit, building that muscle, in order to have your brain react in that way. We know that, we can see that from master meditators, how their brain has actually changed. It literally changes the structure of their brain. So, we know that with slow thought, with novelty, these things when practiced enough, and with priming, then we can actually change our brain and it becomes a mental rut that we follow, and a positive one. [00:12:36] PF: One of the challenges that, I think, people will have with slow thought is most of us feel like we don't have five minutes of silence and getting away. I know one of your tips for experiencing wonder is to let yourself be bored. So, I love that tip. I want you to explain why that's important, and then how do we hit that point? Because we're so inundated with information, with noise with everything, right now. [00:13:05] MP: It is a noisy world and our lives are noisy. It's really interesting. I spoke to one scientist who was doing research on happiness, initially, and then she started doing research on awe. She says she doesn't want to research happiness anymore, because she doesn't believe it's very attainable, because people don't know what makes them happy. They miswant what makes them happy and so that's a challenge. But she went to a kite festival. It’s a beautiful day. Everybody was flying these kites and she asked them, on a scale of 1 to 10, how busy do you feel right now? People were like seven and eight, at a kite festival, on a weekend. [00:13:38] PF: Really? [00:13:39] MP: She’s like, “This is a problem.” She says, “Because in our brains, we just think we're busy all the time.” Even though you know with technology and everything, we really don't need to be as busy. So, some of this is that we fill our life with a lot of activity. One of the challenges is as well, we have that expression to twiddle our thumbs, right? The idea of being bored. Well, it's almost anachronistic now. We don't twiddle our thumbs. We use them quite carefully on our phone, right? Pick up our phone the second we feel bored. I remember as a child sitting, and I'll probably date myself, sitting in the doctor's office and like flipping through the Highlights magazine to try to do the different puzzles. We don't have that anymore. So, I think just feeling a sense of boredom and letting that uncomfortable sort of itch, creep up our spine, and then questioning how we react to it. Instead of reacting to it with the way many of us do, which is to pick up our phone, instead react to it in a way that is going to fill our brain with something that gets us closer to wonder, with something that makes us epistemically curious, or with something that helps us with slow thought. But I want to be clear, I'm not good at this. So, I know, physician, heal thyself. I'm not good at it. I know what I need to be doing. But I'm still also on the journey with every other wonder seeker. [BREAK] [00:15:00] PF: I'll be right back with more my conversation with Monica Parker. But right now, it's time to bring back Kate [inaudible 00:15:05], to talk about the adventures of Kittles. Kate, welcome back.   [00:15:09] K: Thank you, Paula. [00:15:11] PF: So, how is Kittles loving his cat tree from Mau Pets? [00:15:15] K: He absolutely loves it. [00:15:17] PF: I wanted to talk to you about style because you have a really beautiful home, and sometimes it's hard to work a cat tree into your home decor. [00:15:26] K: I will just say, this cat tree, I cannot tell you enough how gorgeous it is. It just worked so well with our decor. We love neutrals and whites and it's not obnoxious looking. It looks like a work of art you would never even guess, “Wait a second. That's a cat tree.” It is so beautiful. But I also love that it gives back to animal welfare and environmental conservation. [00:15:53] PF: Oh, that's right. Yes. Mau Pets gives 5% back for every purchase, and it also uses sustainably sourced wood. [00:15:59] K: That's really important to me, Paula, and they also plant a tree which is incredible for every purchase. So, it's such a good way to give back. [00:16:07] PF: If you want to upgrade your kitty’s furniture, and save 5% off your order, visit maupets.com/livehappynow. That's maupets.com/livehappynow. Now, let's get back to my conversation with Monica Parker. [INTERVIEW CONTINUED] [00:16:24] PF: Yeah, it's such an incredible challenge. Because even if we go out and we say, “I'm going to seek wonder, and I'm going to look for three things that make me feel wonder.” For myself, I feel like still in my brain, it's like, “Okay, get that list checked off, because you have stuff to do missy. Get back to the computer.” How do we kind of balance that, because we want this, but shutting off that busy timer in our head? [00:16:51] MP: I think, carving out time for it. I mean, there's a lot of evidence around the power of wonder walks. So, what makes a wonder walk, a wonder walk, you decide it is. I mean, it's simple as that. There was research where they sent people, two groups of people on a walk. One group just said, “Go on a walk in nature that is beautiful.” The other group, they were primed with one sentence, find things that make you feel wonder during this walk. And the wonder walkers came back having not ruminated about their life. So, they had carved out that time just to feel wonder, whereas the other walkers were ruminating about I've got a pack for a trip. I have this project. And the wonder walkers experienced benefits that the regular walkers didn't. So, stress reduction that lasted for a week, lowers stress hormones, yeah, all of that. So, there are a lot of benefits. But how do we carve out the time? Well, there's sort of an interesting irony or paradox to wonder, and that wonder actually makes us feel like time is stretched. It actually gives us a sense of time slowing down. So, we can make the time for it, it will actually make us feel like we have more time. It really becomes an additive process. If we allow ourselves that time, then it will give us that time back in our own brains. [00:18:02] PF: That's terrific. It’s kind of like when you make time for exercise, you actually have more energy, so you get more hours in your day. So, that’s same of kind of – I guess, maybe we've convinced ourselves like, “Hey, if you want your time to last better, then go experience wonder and we’ll come back and do that.” That's great. One thing that you talked about that I'm really interested in, I don't know if this is something you develop, because I'd never heard of it before, and that is wonder bringers. [00:18:28] MP: That is my word. I definitely had to add to my dictionary when I was typing it. [00:18:34] PF: I love it. I love this whole idea and it makes it so simple. So, explain to us what wonder bringers is, and then how we find them in our lives? [00:18:45] MP: Absolutely. So, wonder bringers come in many shapes and sizes. What we know is the different elements that bring us a sense of our curiosity. They can come as nature. Nature is one of the chief areas where we feel a sense of wonder. They can also come socially. So, social wonder bringer would be like watching your child take their first steps. And then, we can have cognitive wonder bringers. And that's the idea of like, maybe studying the folded universe or something like that. Or the question I said, why does matter give rise to consciousness? That can be a cognitive wonder brainer. Then, under that, there's so many different strains of the way that we can find wonder and they may overlap. You and I might go to the Grand Canyon, and for you, it'd be a natural wonder bringer. And for me, maybe it'd be cognitive, because I'd be thinking about the geology and the first people who saw it. These are necessarily discrete categories. But one of the things that I encourage people to do is just to consider what gives them wonder, and one of the ways to know that is what gives you goosebumps? Or what gives you those little tears that spring to your eyes? William Brown called them tears of wonder joy and I love that. These little tears that start to – and you think, “Well I'm a little bit clunked.” So, that kind of idea and what are the things that do that to you, and then do more of them. I also want people to feel comfortable using the language of this brings me wonder, because I feel that so much of what brings us wonder, we may be put in the category of like a hobby, and I don't think that that's fair. It doesn't give it enough gravitas. So, if you and your partner. We’ll use an example, I think it can almost be like a love language. If you're a person who for you, your wonder bringer is going on long hikes in the woods, and your partner's idea of a wonder bringer is going to the opera. If the two of you say that, and you don't share that, then you're going to think, “Oh, that's just a hobby. They like the opera. Oh, they just like to be outside.” Whereas understanding that it's more than that is fundamental to who they are as a human. I think that that, understanding that, giving it the respect and the gravitas that it deserves to say, “No, this is a wonder bringer. This is actually what builds my mind and helps me see the world through the lens, through which I do.” [00:21:02] PF: Is this something people should sit down and consciously examine and say, “What are my wonder bringers?” And really identify them? [00:21:09] MP: Absolutely. Because I think the more that we identify it, then we can say, “Okay. I only have so many hours in a day. I have this much time. I have one night to go out. What am I going to do with it? Am I going to go out and have some margaritas? I love margaritas. Or if I know that music is my wonder bringer, am I going to try and go see a gig?” In that prioritizing, then you get the benefits of it. And it still can be obviously a pleasurable activity, most of the time. But recognizing that I think – and sharing it. Wonder shared is wonder multiplied. So, sharing it with your friends, even telling the story of something that brought you wonder with someone else will then amplify that experience. So, I think it's really about using the language of wonder bringers, sharing that with other people and then prioritizing it in your own life. [00:21:56] PF: Yeah, as you mentioned, if you share it with others, I think what a great weekend experience to have like a wonder weekend and you're going to go out and you're going to all do these things that bring you wonder, either individually or collectively. [00:22:09] MP: And then sharing it. I think that would be amazing. I'm talking with a friend about even trying to put together some small like wonder weekend trips that help people find that, and tap into it, whatever that might be, maybe a cultural one, a natural one. Because I think that we get so busy. And sometimes we don't honor those things that give us wonder. We think that they're just nice to have as opposed to being fundamental to our spirit. [00:22:36] PF: Yes. Or we think, well, you know what, I'm going to put that on the shelf for now and I'll do it when I'm older. I'll do it later. I'll do it whenever it loses its magic. [00:22:45] MP: Absolutely. [00:22:46] PF: So, we talk a lot about like, how we find it, and what to do with it. But you have some amazing research on all the ways that benefits us. I mean, this book, if you sit down with this book, you can't not want to explore wonder, because it changes everything. That's what amazed me, like all the different areas of your life that it affects. I wanted to start by talking about health. And can you talk about what wonder does for our health? [00:23:14] MP: It's really incredible, physiologically, and I think this is probably one of the things that struck me the most in writing the book was the physiological impact. I think I understood cognitively that it would have an impact psychologically. But physiologically, it decreases our stress hormones. It decreases our pro inflammatory cytokines, which is fascinating. So, I'll talk a little bit about that. So, when we're sick, our body releases pro inflammatory cytokines to try to make us well. It's a protein, and it releases this, and then our body counters with anti-inflammatory cytokines, and the two of them balance out, and that helps heal us. But the problem is, is that when we're not injured or sick, and our body releases pro inflammatory cytokines because of stress, or because of some condition in ourselves, then it actually creates problems for us. So, too high pro inflammatory cytokines have been linked to Alzheimer's, to heart disease, to diabetes. This is a mechanism for balancing these pro inflammatory cytokines in your body, and it's really – this is not junk science. This is really founded, fascinating work. There's also evidence around the connection between wonder and biophilia and what biophilia does for pain management, for helping in recovery after surgery. So, a lot of healing that can occur from the wonder of nature as well. [00:24:42] PF: That was so interesting to me, because first of all, I thought, “Oh, my gosh, if more people had had – if we had had this during the pandemic, people could have been exploring the world so much differently, because that was so difficult.” And also, as we're looking always, we're inundated with news about like, okay, Alzheimer's, and how to prevent this, and have to present that. It's so much simpler that without taking a pill, without having to do with these other things, like you have a very compelling argument for using wonder as a wonder drug, type of thing. [00:25:15] MP: Yes. I think, obviously, I'm not saying that wonder is going to cure Alzheimer's, but I think it opens a door into understanding. So, what we do is say, “Okay, there's some disease, we just don't really understand. We do everything. We can we know exercise is going to be good for us. It's always good for us. We know that meditation really helps our brains.” And I think that wonder is another way that we can just say, “All right, this is calming the reactive systems in my body. And we know that it's connected to the vagus nerve, which really manages that rest and digest, as opposed to the fight and flight.” So, if we are able to activate the vagus nerve, and we're able to calm our reactive systems, then that's good for us, and that will certainly help stave off certain diseases. There's no promises that this is going to cure anyone. And I say that. I say, “This is not going to fix everything. But what it does is, I believe, it opens a window for us to have a discussion about different methodologies and approaches to healing.” [00:26:15] PF: Yeah. Overall, it's a pretty easy arrow to put in your quiver, because it's not like, you know, meditation is challenging for a lot of people. Exercise, people don't necessarily want to be doing that as much as they should. Eating right, same thing. And wonder, is, you're getting an incredible benefit and an incredible experience out of it. [00:26:37] MP: Absolutely. I think it's so accessible, and I know that your podcast is about happiness. But I do keep going back to it's so accessible, even in dark times. This is one of the things that I found most heartening about it, is that happiness really is hard for a lot of people to find. There's this thing called affective forecasting. It's where we miswant what we think will make us happy. We're not very good at knowing what makes us happy. Frequently also, our goal, and our desire for happiness gets wrapped up in consumerism, and stuff and the idea of hedonic happiness. Whereas wonder, we can feel in the dark times and in the light. We can maybe look at the war in Ukraine and say, “That's terrible, I can't feel happy about that.” But you can be in a state of wonder. You can be in a state of wonder at the resiliency of people. You can be in a state of wonder at the people that are helping. You can even be at a state of wonder at the magnitude of what's happening there. And that, I believe, holding – I know, the research shows that holding mixed emotions, the positive and the negative, the yin and yang together, at the same time, is incredibly helpful for our resilience, and it really helps us manage traumatic experiences. So, holding wonder, I think, especially during difficult times, like COVID, and the war, and all of that is really helpful. It's really ameliorative for us. [00:28:02] PF: One of the points that you bring up is to stop chasing happiness. And I really love that, because the kind of happiness that we talk about at Live Happy is not the happy, happy, joy, Joy. It's the long term. It's our wellbeing. It's how content are you, overall. So, talk about how the pursuit of happiness is not making us happy. [00:28:23] MP: There's a term that I learned happychondriacs and I think that’s a really – [00:28:28] PF: I need a minute for that one. [00:28:29] MP: Yes. I think that that was – I read that and I was like, “Oh, my goodness, I know these people. I probably grew up with some of these people.” Or they're like, “No neggies and everything's positive.” It's like, no, everything isn't always positive. The world sucks sometimes. It's just the reality. When we engage in toxic positivity, we are losing out on the richness of our full emotional spectrum. So, we know that people who have greater emo diversity, which means they're able to call up a number of different emotions, so it's not just happy, sad, angry, you a really robust multivariate number of emotions that that's very good for resiliency, we also know that mixed emotions. So mixed emotions, like wonder, like curiosity is a mixed emotion We've sometimes are driven to be curious about things that aren't very positive. Nostalgia is another mixed emotion. Gratitude can be a mixed emotion. Sympathy. So, any of these mixed emotions where there is bitter sweetness. What's known as existential longing. Susan Cain wrote a book about that. Anything that combines the happy and the sad together, the positive and the negative, that dual experience we know is very, very good for us and it's much more attainable. So, I found it fascinating that this researcher, Melanie Rudd, who I talked about at the kite festival, she said I just don't study happiness anymore. I study awe, because I think that it just makes more sense to study that. It's more achievable. So, I thought that was really fascinating and the benefits are significant when you look at it. The quantum of benefits for people who experienced wonder are much higher. In fact, sometimes the scientists will compare happiness to wonder when they're testing it. They'll compare happiness to awe. And awe has a quantum of benefits that's greater than happiness. [00:30:13] PF: I think that's great for people to hear, because we put pressure on ourselves, the whole, I should be happy. I have this wonderful home. I have this life. [00:30:21] MP: Ad then, you feel guilty. When you put guilt on top of it, it's not helpful. [00:30:27] PF: Yes. Exactly. I would love to talk about, as well, how wonder affects our relationships, because that's the biggie for everybody. When we start practicing wonder, we experience wonder, how is it going to change our relationships, both romantic relationships, relationships within our families, and our relationships at work? [00:30:48] MP: So, that was one of the things I started to study as well. And I think of wonder, almost like a love language. I think that it's something that we should be talking about with our friends, with our partners, to say, this brings me wonder, so that that is something that then we value, and that we protect, and nurture within our relationships. I think that having wonder in the workplace can be really powerful. It makes our teams more bond in a different way. It makes them more inclusive. So, we know people that experience wonder are more welcoming to outsiders. Inclusion becomes easier. Leaders who are more wonder prone or who lead in a wonder way, are more communicative. They're more empathetic. They're more humble. They're more ethical. They're more authentic. So, all of these elements that we know we seek in the workplace, and frankly, in friendships as well, there is a fascinating piece of research that showed that people when they experienced wonder, not only did they feel more humble, but their friends thought they were more humble. So, it actually changes are an affect. I thought that was fascinating. Or people who are genuinely curious. So, if you show genuine curiosity about another person, which really is the basis of empathy, right? Empathy is being genuinely curious about the human condition about someone else. People who are genuinely curious and ask questions in that curiosity, the person that they're asking questions of will find that person more friendly, and also more attractive. So, anybody out there who's dating on the dating scene, ask genuine questions to someone with authenticity, and they will find you more attractive. [00:32:25] PF: I love it. So, we're going to give our listeners a free chapter of your book, and we're also going to, on the website, we're going to direct them directly to the Wonder Quiz. But where else can they start? If someone's listening to this and decide, “I need more wonder in my life.” What are a couple of things I can start doing right now, to make that change? [00:32:46] MP: Number one, you can take a wonder walk. Really, again, what's the wonder walk? You decide it. You try things that help you find wonder. A new route, anything that gives you a sense of vastness. So, anything that makes you feel like a smaller component part of a bigger system. And then also, slow thought that's just even taking five minutes to allow yourself to be bored, and just question what's happening in your brain. That's another great way. And then, I love nostalgia or gratitude or prayer. Any of those, just five minutes to reflect back on a happy time, to think about that, to journal about it, also helpful, narrative journaling. So, any of those. Just start with five minutes and see what it does and how it makes you feel. [00:33:32] PF: Hat's excellent. Monica, thank you so much, first, for writing this book. It's a book that we need. We needed it sooner. But that's all right. But it is remarkable. [00:33:41] MP: It’s here now. [00:33:41] PF: You are here now, and it is remarkable. I really hope people check it out. And thank you again. Thank you for coming on the show and talking about it. [00:33:50] MP: Thank you so much, Paula. I really appreciate the kind words and it's been delightful chatting with you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:33:59] PF: That was Monica Parker talking about wonder. We invite you to check out her new book, The Power of Wonder: The Extraordinary Emotion That Will Change the Way You Live, Learn and Lead. When you visit our website at livehappy.com, we'll tell you how to download a free preview of the book, as well as a free wonder walk poster. You can also take her Wonder Quiz or sign up for Wonder Bringer newsletter. We'll also tell you how to find her on social media. To add more wonder to your daily feet. Just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tap. 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: Celebrate the Women in Your Life with Linda Allen [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 407 of Live Happy Now. We're celebrating International Women's Day this week, and it seems like a great time to talk about how we as women can support one another. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and today we're talking about how we can use this occasion to remind ourselves to celebrate the women in our lives. International Women's Day celebrates the diversity and achievement of women, gender parity, and inclusion, and that begins with how we as women support one another. Today, I'm being joined by Linda Allen, a Texas business woman who has realized that the best way for her to leave a lasting mark on the world is simply to touch one life at a time. She's here to talk about why it's important for us to truly focus on making sure that the other women in our lives feel seen and how she does that in the workplace and in the world. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:59] PF: Linda, thank you for joining me on Live Happy Now. [00:01:02] LA: Well, thanks for inviting me. [00:01:05] PF: One reason that I wanted to talk to you is a few months ago, we had a guest on, and she talked a lot about how women really don't have each other's backs and what a big problem it is like not just in careers but in social settings. Honestly, as I was having that conversation, I was thinking about you because you are the antithesis of that, and you're very good at making women feel seen. You make everybody feel seen, but you're very good about acknowledging women and promoting and supporting them. So that's where I really wanted to start is how do you see the world. Do you think that women really are bad about having each other's backs? Or is that your experience? [00:01:44] LA: Trust me. I've had my experiences with maybe the backstabbing or the snide comments. But I don't see it that way, that it's all women are out to get women. Who isn't a little bit jealous? Who isn't a little bit competitive? But that's not the way I see it. I don't see that way at all. I see it as women, we like each other for the most part. I think we're very curious about each other. But sometimes, we don't want to ask questions or we don't want to be supportive because we don't know what to say or how to say it. How will that woman accept it? So that's the way I see it. Maybe I'm a little Pollyanna, but that's okay. I like the way I live. [00:02:23] PF: Yeah. This is – We've got International Women's Day coming up this week, and that's all about inclusivity, equitability, equality. We want that gender parity, and it's important to talk about how we need to start by getting support from other women because it's not that the men – I mean, it's not just that the men need to recognize our value. We as women need to recognize our value and one another's value in our lives. [00:02:50] LA: No. That’s so great. I don't know about you, but I think of a woman's support, for me, is more important than a man’s support. I'm not talking about it in a personal way but in a professional way. Because women, we identify with each other. We know what makes us tick, sometimes what makes us not tick. So when I get a compliment from a female or a supporting comment, that's bigger to me than a man's comment or compliment. [00:03:23] PF: Yeah. That makes sense. [00:03:25] LA: Because I think we know we tick. For a female too, I think about – we struggle. And I don’t wanna put all women in one bucket here. But women are trying to wear a lot of hats. We're trying to be everything to everybody, including to ourselves, and that's a lot of hats. Most men don't try to wear all the hats that we do. We only have one head, but we try, what, like eight hats on at a time? Well, that's ridiculous. Who are we fooling? And it's going to be hard to keep them all on the head at one time. But it's a struggle, and I don't know why women feel like they've got to be superheroes at all times. But, hey, that's the way we're wound, and we are what we are. [00:04:07] PF: Well, is that why you're so diligent about making women around you feel seen? That is just your nature? Where did that come from, and why is that so important to you? [00:04:18] LA: Paula, as much as I hate to admit this, I don't think I've always been this way. But let me tell you how I think I got here. When I was much younger, I always had this idea in life that I wanted to be famous. I didn't know how I was going to be famous, but I wanted to leave this gigantic mark, that when I walk off the face of this earth, I wanted to leave the big mark. So my first career, I was in broadcasting. The reason I wanted to do that was because everybody would know me. Linda Allen's on the air. Linda Allen, Linda Allen. I wanted to be known. I wanted to be relevant. I wanted to be a part of history. I got into that business, and it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I don't think I was going to leave my mark in that business. So I said, “Okay, what am I going to do to leave my mark?” So I got into corporate America, which was great but something that’s not going to make you famous, leaving that big mark. No matter what big job title I could grow into, I feel good about getting the new job. But then after that, I'd be like, “Did I really make a difference? Am I a part of somebody's story in life?” [inaudible 00:05:25] really. So then I jumped out, and I left corporate America, and I said, “Okay, maybe I can make my story. Maybe I could leave my mark by owning my own business.” So I jumped out. I opened my own business after being in corporate America for a long time, which was a little bit scary. What I've quickly discovered is, don't get me wrong, I do well in my business. So I really feel like where I can leave a mark and be a part of somebody's big life story was with my team members. When you own a small business, you get to know your staff, your team members very well. I really was feeling like I was making a difference in their lives. They would fall into a hole, sometimes. I was able to help them recover because you're never going to be able to climb out of a hole. You need somebody to help you get out of that hole. I was able to help my team members not just be the best at their job, but to help them to make good money, to feel good about themselves, which ultimately helped them be the best mamas if they were females, the best daddies if they’re dads, husbands, spouses, wives. I thought, “Wow, this is where I can really leave a mark in this world and be relevant in life.” So I've been in this business for almost 14 years. I really think, Paula, that's where I made this transition to find. I mean, I'm in the insurance business, and don't get me wrong. That's not a very sexy business. Okay, fine. But it's needed. [00:07:04] PF: But we all need it. [00:07:06] LA: Glad to do it. But that's not going to leave the big mark. But where I leave a mark is with the people that I touch. My staff is a big piece for me. Then if I got – Just I realized I could see the difference I can make in their lives. I started doing with other people. I mean, I would meet people, whether it be come to my house. I'm in a lot of organizations, and I would find ways to build them up. Not just try like, “Oh, your hair looks cute today.” Oh, that’s nice to hear. Don't get me wrong. But I would look for things that I felt I could say or do or contribute to them that I knew would make them feel better that day or perform better, to help them to see their value. Man, I'm going to tell you how I go to bed at night, and I sleep well because I feel like I am truly relevant in this world, and it is the coolest feeling. [00:08:01] PF: What differences do you see in women when you do make them feel seen, when you acknowledge their accomplishments and just the simple fact that they show up on a tough day when they've been up all night with their kids? What difference does it make for them and the way that they move through the world? [00:08:19] LA: I can speak, first of all, to the people that work with me and for me. They come to work some days, and you could just tell they don't want to be here. [00:08:28] PF: We've all had those days, haven’t we? [00:08:30] LA: I mean, sometimes, they look like they don't need to be here either. I love my team. Just by either acknowledging something that's going well, something that can help them with, as little as an extra spring in their step. As cliché as that may sound, it's noticeable. I'll hear them get – As the day goes by, their chatter builds up. The excitement in their voices is better. So I know when they leave here because I'm only eight hours of their day. They got a lot more hours, and they're going to do things and see people. It's going to help them to be possibly better with all their contacts that they make throughout the day. [00:09:13] PF: How does that change them, as they walk out into the world? Have you seen differences in people in terms of like how they start dealing with customers, with their family, things like that? [00:09:24] LA: Oh, 100%. My motto in the office is when you look good, you feel good. When you feel good, you do good. I learned that from a great mentor early, early on in my professional career, and I have made that my mantra and everybody that's ever worked for me. They hear it, they have to live it with me, and it shows. It absolutely shows. The energy is good. I always tell my folks here. I said, “Guys.” I said, “You know, you're going to spend a lot of time in this office and a lot of times with these people that we all work with, me and the customers. You got to make it your best, and you got to attack it as if you own it, just like I do.” It's really cool to watch the way my staff operates because they feel that sense of pride and ownership in the business, in the customers, and the success we have. It’s hard to leave that at the door, which is a cool thing. So they take it out with them. They achieve bigger things at home. They take on board positions with their booster club. They take on new positions in their churches. It's really cool how that just follows them out here when they leave here. [00:10:39] PF: I remember several years ago talking with a researcher named Shane Lopez, and he was talking about work and was saying that if you don't get things to line up for you at work, it's pretty tough to get things to line up outside of work because work is such a consuming big part of your day. So your ability to create an experience where they feel supported, they feel encouraged, they feel happy to be there is changing their life once they leave that office. It's also changing the lives of their kids and family once they get home. I mean, have you ever really sat down and thought about that kind of ripple effect that it has, simply by going to the office with the intention of making everyone feel welcomed and happy and encouraged? [00:11:25] LA: It is amazing when you think about how it multiplies? Absolutely, yes. Because I know if they leave here, and they've had a good day, and they feel valued, and they feel good about themselves, that their kids will have a better night, their spouses, their friends, their other family members. It’s crazy. So I don't touch just nine people. I'm touching nine times eight, probably, and that's powerful. That's just in one day. [00:11:50] PF: That's an incredible reach. I wish more people would stop and think about it that way, where this one interaction is going to change these multiple lives today, and you can get up and do the same thing again tomorrow. That's so much power that we have. [00:12:04] LA: It is. It's really kind of scary sometimes, and then what's sad is we don't actually use that power to build people up. [00:12:11] PF: Right. You had a Facebook post a few months back, and it stopped me in my tracks. It was so powerful, and it was about an encounter that you had with a homeless woman as you were leaving a store. I wondered. It really struck me in such a profound way. Would you talk about that? Would you tell us what that experience was and the outcome of that? Because I thought this was an incredible example of really your kindness and uplifting someone else. [00:12:37] LA: I have to give you a free story because I didn't put this on Facebook. I wasn't having the best day. I was already irritated with the store I was at. Things weren't going the way I thought they should go. So then I walk out to the store, and I say hi to most everybody because that's just what I do. [00:12:57] PF: Right, it is. [00:12:59] LA: When you're in other countries, they think you're a fool, but that's okay. I don't care. So I say hello to this lady, and she didn't have any shoes on. She's pushing a cart. So you could kind of probably determine what her lifestyle is. She looks at me and she says, “I'm better than you,” and she calls me a name, and it wasn't a very nice name. At that very minute, Paula, I was like, I wanted to call her a name back because I thought that was absolutely unnecessary. I'm being nice. I’ve been [inaudible 00:13:32]. But I said, “Nope, that's not the way I roll.” So I just asked her. I said, “So why did you call me a name?” She said to me, “Nobody is ever, ever nice to me.” I said, “So what is it that you need?” I will tell you my first thought. She's going to say, “I need some money. I need food.” You could tell she paused for a minute, and she goes, “You know, I'm homeless. If you couldn't already tell, I'm probably crazy. But I'm happy.” She said, “I just want to be at peace. I want people to leave me alone.” I asked her. I said, “So would you make me a deal? Just make me a simple deal, if I ever, ever see you again.” I think she hangs out in the area that I live in. I said, “Would you just say hello to me next time and not call me a name, and I will show you appreciation and value?” She looked at me, and she reached over, and I'm like, “Oh, here it comes. It wasn’t about to happen.” She gave me a hug. I was a little bit surprised. Then she just walked away. You know what? I thought a lot about her, and it was profound to me as well because I thought, “Oh, my gosh. Did I just put myself in terrible danger right there at the moment?” I cared about making a connection with this woman. But I really thought a lot about her, and I thought she's no different than me, in the sense that we all just want to feel appreciated in some way, and we want to be at peace. That is huge in life. I can't think of anybody, whether you're a female or a male or whatever. Who doesn't want to feel appreciated and be at peace? It was such a cool moment for me. I mean, even when I was talking on Facebook, I teared up because I can't believe that just happened. But it felt so good that I felt like she walked away feeling a little bit better about herself. I thought, wow, what a difference I could have made in her life. I'm just so glad I stopped and even said hello to her and took the time to do it. So I think that's a lot of it. We don't take the time, in most cases, to build people up, to say hello, to acknowledge what their needs are. We just are too busy with our own space. [00:15:47] PF: How do we really start adjusting our mindset to be more about supporting other people, even if it's strangers, even if it's women that we don't know? [00:15:57] LA: I think for me, and I'm a really big believer on a couple of golden rule type things, you get what you give. As I just said, how many people – We all want to feel valued. We all want peace. If we give that off to other people, if we give that feeling, those emotions to other people, we have a greater chance that we're going to get that in return. So that's part of the way I think we can be more, I guess, present, if we think about what it is that you want because karma will tell you, if you get it, you're going to get it back. [00:16:37] PF: So be careful what you give away. [00:16:38] LA: Exactly. So I live like that. I feel like if I give you something, I may get it back. Maybe it's a feeling. Maybe it's a thing. To me, that has made such a difference of getting this mindset really, I guess, kind of locked in for me. [00:16:58] PF: Let me ask you. I know when you start practicing gratitude, your mind then gets used to looking for things to be grateful for. There are so many cases where when you start focusing on something, your mind automatically does that. Do you find that is true with you now, where you are constantly looking for the good in someone? [00:17:15] LA: You know, I do. I absolutely do. Sometimes, you got to look. I mean, sometimes, you have to really be more mindful of what people are doing. But that's a big part is get out of your head and look out of what's going on around you. [00:17:30] PF: Are there any daily practices that you use to keep your positive mindset? I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen you without a smile on your face. You are always so positive and so filled with joy. So are there practices that you do on a daily basis to keep yourself in that mindset? [00:17:48] LA: I pause and just reflect on the day before. I am a very spiritual person, so I do believe that good things come to those who do good things. So that definitely drives me as well. [00:18:00] PF: I love it. Linda, you are a delight, as always, to talk to you. I appreciate you coming on the show and just chatting with me for a while. [00:18:08] LA: You are so welcome. And you as well are a delight, so it was my honor to be in your presence. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:18:19] PF: That was Linda Allen, talking about International Women's Day and how we can support and encourage the women in our lives. Now, International Women's Day isn't the only thing that we're celebrating in March. This is also our month for celebrating happiness with simple daily actions that we call Happy Acts. Visit our website or follow us on social media to discover new happy acts that you can do every day to make your world a happier place. Of course, we'd love to have you celebrate the International Day of Happiness with us on March 20th by hosting a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school. To find out more, just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the Happy Acts tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Discover Joy with the Unicorn Challenge from Andrea Goeglein, PhD [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 403 of Live Happy Now. Would your life be better if you are a unicorn? This week's guest invites you to find out. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm sitting down with Andrea Goeglein to talk about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. Andrea, who is also known as Dr. Success, holds a PhD in organizational psychology and hosts the Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast. She created the 60-day Unicorn Challenge to offer small daily tasks that will help you take steps toward reaching your goals while making yourself a priority. In this episode, she tells us how the challenge came about, why she picked the unicorn, and how you can get started on this free challenge. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:48] PF: Andrea, thank you for coming back on to Live Happy Now. [00:00:52] AG: It is me being allowed to live happy. The amount of information that your podcast enriches my life with, even though this is my field, you're one of the podcasts I personally come to to learn from. So anytime I'm asked to share what new inventions I've come up with, it's an absolute joy for me. Thank you. [00:01:14] PF: Well, thank you so much for saying that. Because, obviously, we at Live Happy, all of us respect who you are and your opinion, and it means so much. I so appreciate your support. You have something so fun, so unique that you're doing. I was on LinkedIn and saw it, and I immediately reached out and said please come on the show and talk about. So tell us about your unicorn challenge. [00:01:40] AG: Yes. My 60-day Unicorn Challenge is as much an expression of how I work with my clients and in turn work in my own life, how this came to be. But I will just start with one of the opening quotes, and I have to read it. If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately, William James. Now, William James was a psychologist whose work grounded a lot of the work that I was first introduced to in psychology and how the unicorn challenge came to be. I want our audience to really think about this in their own lives. They're going about their daily life, doing their jobs, doing the same things that they always do. Then one thing happens that inspires another. So I'll just start with that one thing to pay attention to the average things you're doing. Here was mine. Every year on Halloween, I have some sort of a costume. I actually generally go and give out candy downtown. I would dress up and all these different things. It was just a way that I loved being in my community because I live in a condo. People don't come to my door, yada, yada. Well, on this particular Halloween and for the last few years, I've been a unicorn. I have this fabulous unicorn head that I bought at some party city or something like that a few years back. I had a business lunch. A very high-powered Hollywood executive and I were going to be having a conversation, a check-in conversation, and they were planning out some fairly big moves. I showed up perfectly dressed for the restaurant, however, with my huge unicorn head in tow. [00:03:36] PF: Of course, you did. [00:03:38] AG: Of course, I did. It sat down right next to me. What I realized in that moment was that I was feeling joy, the person I was with was feeling joy, and we had some pretty heavy business things and life things to discuss. So I went home. I did my post. That was the beginning. I didn't have in that moment the idea to create the 60-day challenge nor the e-book that people can get for free. That was the next thing I want people to pay attention to. You don't have to know everything at once. Be inspired by something, flow with it, take a step, and then see what else happens. [00:04:24] PF: Oh, that's so well put. So tell us what a unicorn challenge is. Yeah. Let's just start with that. What is it? [00:04:34] AG: So what it is, one of the many positive emotions. Well, the top positive emotion that I work in in order to help people achieve their next level of success is the overarching emotion of love with the 10 most research attributes of that. One of which is joy. Now, I am a really – My image meant a lot to me, especially businesses. I've owned businesses. I work with people that own really big businesses. My image has always meant a lot to me. So joy and being joyous and being silly may not have been in the criteria. But like the rest of the world, the last 36 months has allowed a shift in my thinking, bigger than any other shift before. So it was me taking the one emotion, positive emotion, joy. I went from remembering the feeling of this one little lunch to the next day setting a personal challenge. There’s things within my work and many people that are listening may need to use social media as – I'm not a social media expert. I am an expert in the application of positive psychology. But social media is very critical. So there are things I am challenging myself with to learn. Of course, I don't like learning them. Not what I do for a living. I'm cranky as anybody else. So joy, how do you add joy to the work and the tasks specifically that you have to do so that, in fact, even those mundane things, even those things that you don't want to do, you can move forward? So I focused on that, and I'm going to be straight. I was doing it for me. I was setting me a challenge. I went to lunch with someone. I did a post for my work, I. There's nothing wrong with that. Every second of our days, we are informing ourselves of what new opportunities may lie ahead for the things we do, and I made a choice to focus on the emotion of joy. Unicorns happen to be – The legend around unicorns happens to be about joy. William James told me to start immediately and be flamboyant. I succeeded. So then I became thoughtful about it. I started doing one of the sets of tests. That's one of the many things I want to share. This did not all come together like in one big thought and all of a sudden – Honestly, it was this. First, I did one thing and did a few steps towards it. Then I did another thing. Then by the time enough pieces came into being, I said to myself, “Well, wait a minute. If I'm investing all of this energy doing this, in what I was doing –” One of my challenges was to put a one minute short on YouTube, on my YouTube channel, every day because I think that's a silly way to spend my life. Not silly in a good way. I think it is a time suck. The only way something can't be a time suck is if I'm helping someone else. That gets me personally over the hurdle. All of us have that thing, where not my choice. I always categorize certain things like cleaning toilets are not my choice, but I do like a clean house. So maybe I'll clean the toilet. [00:08:18] PF: Cause and Effect. Yeah. [00:08:20] AG: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's what the unicorn challenge is about, taking time in the smallest bites to shift a habit in a joyful way that adds to your success. [00:08:36] PF: How did – At what point did you realize this was not just a set of tasks you were doing for yourself, that you saw this is something that will generate real good for other people? [00:08:48] AG: Yeah. Feedback. I had my little list of why I was doing it. But then all of a sudden, I started getting feedback because people who have worked with me or who are working with me knew that this was the same exact work. All of it grounded. All of the tips in this free e-book are the exact tips you find in every reputable resource on how you do habits and how you take care of yourself, all those things. However, it was done in a different way, especially for me. So it caught their attention. Once I realized – What they were saying was, “That was so fun. I love seeing you do that.” They were telling me that that little one minute showed up at the right time for them. So as I said, for me, in my work, the impact on another is my return on investment. Always has been, always will be. So it was the feedback that others were feeling joy. Others were being moved in a way. That's what hooked me, and all of us have those things. I would say know your thing and start looking for it. [00:10:07] PF: So it's for anything that we want to improve, want to change in our life. It's not a I'm going to lose weight. It's not a I'm going to exercise. It's a whatever you need it to be for you. Is that correct? [00:10:20] AG: Yes. First and foremost, it's a commitment. So in one of the many things that I put out online for years, I have said, “If you don't do the free stuff, my fee is not the problem.” [00:10:36] PF: There you go. [00:10:37] AG: Okay. So what I will challenge everyone, hey, it's free, if you don't start there. What is free? It is a systematic thing that is helping you nudge you each day in one minute to see. Is this an action I want to take, will take? Is it one that eats at your brain after you hear it? Because what we know in human development is you don't have to do all 60 days. You may do one day and spend the next six months working on that one task. Just the one step get you closer to what it is you're trying to achieve in whatever area of the life you're focusing on. [00:11:23] PF: Yeah. You say something very interesting about why you chose 60 days. I wanted you to really explain that to us because we see all the time all this 21-day challenge a 30 day challenge. We don't see 60 day challenges, and I think that's because we're like, okay, we're lazy people, and who's going to last for 60 days. Like imagine if you had to do dry January and February. [00:11:47] AG: Thank you. Thank you – [00:11:48] PF: Why 60 days? [00:11:50] AG: Therein lies the reason. I want to get you out of the conversation that there's really a time limit on it. I actually somewhere in the last week or so put up another video out in the playlist on my YouTube channel, but it’s not linked in this, where I basically say, “So you think 60 days is too long, eh?” This is about 60,000 days of your life. This is about you, taking the moment to make you most important. I start with a 60-day challenge. But when you really look at it, I'm saying take 60 seconds. The same way that my fee is not the problem if you're not doing the free stuff, if you're not taking 60 seconds to pause back and say, “Is there something I can do to make my situation better at this moment,” if you aren’t willing to give yourself 60 seconds, I could have put 60,000 days up there, it would not matter. [00:12:54] PF: Absolutely. So really, you're just resetting the way that we think and the way that we're looking at things. [00:13:01] AG: It's all an illusion. At the spiritual level, I work in the concept that we make everything up. Now, 21 days has been researched. So we have good solid research about 28 day things and 30 day things and 21 day things. What we don't accept is that's the beginning of these processes, not the end. This unicorn – Like joy should be in your life forever. It is not a 60-day challenge. [00:13:30] PF: Right. Don't check that one out the door when you're done. [00:13:33] AG: Exactly. And it is that kind of a thing that the more we can appreciate, the more breaking down of the illusions, these artificial barriers that we've put around, that success looks like this, and I've got to wear a suit jacket if I show up at this lunch with an important person, and I've got to work in an office 12 hours a day. Otherwise, I'm not productive. Illusions, illusions, illusions. So break them down, but rebuild it with habits based in joy, working towards you paying attention to what does matter in your life. [00:14:12] PF: Love that. So we'll talk, first of all, what it did for you before you even launched this course. What did it do for you? Because of your experience, you then knew that was going to work for other people. So talk about your experience with that first place. [00:14:26] AG: So as a business person, as I said, I have a team of people that work with me, with social media posts and videos and things of that nature. One of them came to me. The video person came to me, and he said, “You really need to do a bunch of shorts.” The minute he said the algorithm likes it, the minute you tell me an algorithm likes it, my New Yorker comes out. You would not be able to put it on this podcast. I do not live by algorithms. However, I do live to engage audiences because the work you and I work in and all of the people you have on the show work in works. It shifts the quality of your life, no matter who you are or what you're doing. So he planted that seed. I got snotty. That's why normal – I'm going to tell you something. [00:15:17] PF: Things don’t work sometimes. [00:15:19] AG: Know your learning pattern. When I am resistant, when I catch my resistance, when someone makes a suggestion, I am trained well enough in my own psyche to make note of that. So what this did was I started challenging myself. The challenge was get a video up. It started out with the proverbial one day at a time, and I already knew from past experience that trying to do something every day doesn't work in my work schedule or my life. What does work for me is blocking out time and doing a few things. So that's what it did for me, it caused me to examine my resistance about a goal and then create a system that works in the way I mentally and physically like to work. [00:16:15] PF: That makes so much sense. So then you put this together. [00:16:19] AG: Right. So the first thing – [00:16:21] PF: Like how did it all come together? Because you've got so many parts to it. [00:16:26] AG: Yes. So probably around the second week of me doing, working through the process of I went from every day to then one day, like I built on that. Then I thought, “Oh, gosh. It’s silly to let this all just go away after these 60 days.” I will have learned what I need to learn about putting videos on YouTube in a consistent fashion, but that means the people I care the most about in this process, those that engage with me, I know that it goes away. The thing about habits, the thing about repetition is that it's the most important thing for us to achieve next levels of anything. I wanted to create something that, in fact, solidified the work, and that was satisfying to me. I needed to see something because numbers on algorithms do not satisfy me. One of the many other things that I am known for in my social media post is that I would rather have my name on your heart than my name on a building. That's my legacy. I don't have visions that you're going to remember me after I'm gone, and I'm good with that. That is a very deeply grounded spiritual belief for me. It is not one that most people I work with align with. I work with a lot of people who have lots of names up on lots of buildings, and we talk about that, though. So I wanted something that left joy, respected the work I had done, is helpful. So by about the 15th, the 20th day, I had made a commitment that I was going to do the draft. [00:18:16] PF: So let's talk about these tips. Let's tell people what kind of tips they can expect to find. I think I'm just sitting here smiling as we're talking because I've looked at the book. I've been through it. It just makes me smile, even thinking about it. So talk about the tips and what people can expect to find in there. [00:18:35] AG: Okay. So the very first one, I love the very first one because this is the one we generally don't do and tortures us the most. I made a dump list. One place, all of the notes and ideas, all of the things that you think you have to do, want to do. Make it in one place. Then the other tips actually start taking you through. Okay, what do you do with the stupid dump list? Like I am a person trained in org dynamics. I was to be a consultant in companies and to build reports and have the one, two, three, four, five steps. But I was resistant to that because I knew he didn't use it. So a lot of the other steps will call you back to the dump list because I know you really didn't stop and do it like, “Oh, this is cute. Let me watch the video.” [00:19:23] PF: At some point, it’s just like, “Oh, man. I better go do that.” [00:19:26] AG: That's exactly right. I'll tell you very functionally how it worked today. I was having a conversation with a millennial who's part of the tribes of people, who have decided to relocate their work and their entire lives to a geographic different location. But in the process of doing it, and they realized that they were becoming overwhelmed by all of the things from childcare to where's the work going to come from, to where are we going to live, all of those things, who's going to be my tribe in this location? Everything that we do that keeps interfering with our thoughts on what I want to achieve today. They said to me, “I stopped, and I decided to make a list of everything.” We had a conversation. I said, “You have just lived a dump list because that's all it is.” Then from that point, you have a record of all of these crazy thoughts that we know through research just blocks up our minds. You've got a landing place for them. Then you can start to put it into procedure of, okay, what do I really have to do? Like do I really have to start buying Christmas presents in March so that I’m set up at the end of the year? No. I may need a new place to live. Or I may need new clients, that kind of thing. Yeah. [00:20:47] PF: Then as you went through, I like that you bring in other people. Like we have to think about what other people mean in our lives and how they affect it. Can you talk about that? I really – [00:20:56] AG: So what I did was merge the functional. How do you create a habit repetition? Have it written down, categorize, with all of the psychological skills and physiological skills that we know work through good research. So I did the daily habits that you should have, whether you ever want to achieve another goal or not, such as the reading, the writing, the meditation. Things like pick someone 10 years younger than you and go play with them for a day. Then another tip may be pick someone 10 years older than you and go play with them for a day. All the time trying to take what the crap that's going around in your mind and apply it to the process. Because once you step into the possibility that you can be joyful as you go through the angst of figuring out what you're going to do next and creating a habit, that alone helps. So it is a merging of the functional tests that we know works in creating good habit, with the spiritual and psychological tasks that research has shown us as you add them into your life that helps. [00:22:13] PF: Yeah. I could see this being applied in so many environments because I could see workplaces using it. Like if you're a manager who wants to enact change, this is a fun way to do it. But I also could see it being really effective for families to do together and make something fun and be able to create more joy and make a real difference in their dynamic. [00:22:38] AG: So here's one of the things that actually cause this to come to life. In the same exact first week, when I had done the lunch with the business person and I had my unicorn, a few days later, I was asked by a classroom, a fourth grade classroom, with Teach For America school to come in and do a career day. What is a success catalyst, and what is an applied positive psychologist? I showed up in this fourth grade class with my unicorn. I walked in, and I said to them, “Did you ever think you could have a job where, in fact, you could do this, and that job have a very serious aspect to it?” So it is your point about the spectrum. I have right now a one sheet being prepared because one of my many loves is the one-hour Zooms that I do, especially for hybrid teams now. I've always done it on the language of success and all the things in positive psychology, the tips that you apply to make the workday better. This is the next iteration or an additional iteration. So one sheets being prepared for my corporate clients, where when you're calling your people together, and they're all on these different schedules now, they'll have the factual stuff to do in a way that is more humorous. [00:24:01] PF: That's so huge. There's just not enough levity in the workplace, and we understand business is serious. But sometimes, we take it so seriously that we suck the lives out of ourselves and others. [00:24:12] AG: Yep. [00:24:12] PF: We're going to tell the listeners how they can find you and get this free book and start doing their 60-day Unicorn Challenge. I feel like this has so much potential to really put a smile on people's faces, like it's done with me, and really make a difference in how they live their lives every day. [00:24:28] AG: Okay. I'll challenge you to just pick one of the 60-day things. And when we get to talk again, let's come back, and we'll compare notes on what worked and what didn't. [00:24:37] PF: You got it. I love it. Andrea, thank you again for sitting down. It's always a treat to talk to you, and so looking forward to sharing this with our audience. [00:24:45] AG: Thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity as always. The more happy, joyous people succeeding in our world, the better our world is going to be. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:24:57] PF: That was Andrea Goeglein, talking about her 60-day Unicorn Challenge. If you'd like to download your free Unicorn Challenge e-book, learn more about Andrea and her other books, follow her on social media, or check out her Hey, Boss Lady! Podcast, visit us at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. Now that the month of February is here, we're starting to think about our annual Happy Acts campaign, and we'd love for you to do the same. Throughout March, we're offering a full month of daily suggestions to help you make your world a happier place. It's kind of like an advent calendar for happiness. We invite you to visit the Happy Acts section of our website, livehappy.com, to learn how you can be involved and how you can host a happiness wall in your home, office, church, or school to celebrate the International Day of Happiness on March 20th. 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 have to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Create Your Fun Habit With Mike Rucker  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 398 of Live Happy Now. It's a brand new year, and we're all thinking about creating new habits. So why not make yours a fun one? I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm talking with Mike Rucker, an esteemed organizational psychologist whose new book, The Fun Habit, looks at how the pursuit of joy and wonder can change your life. He's here to talk about how we can learn to prioritize fun, and how that can make us both happier and more productive. And as you'll learn, it can also improve the lives of those around us. Let's have a listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:39] PF: Mike, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:43] MR: Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:44] PF: We've been talking about this for a while. We had to wait for your book to get out. Just talking before the show, there were so many delays because of COVID. So first of all, congratulations on release of The Fun Habit. [00:00:57] MR: Thank you so much. Yeah. It's been a long time coming, so I'm excited to be – [00:01:00] PF: Yeah, it has. It has. I feel like we've been talking about it for a couple years, at least. [00:01:04] MR: Yeah. The pub date’s gotten moved twice. Once, it was like a soft one. Then this last one, June to January, was a hard one. You know, like – [00:01:13] PF: But we’re here now. [00:01:15] MR: Yeah. That’s right. [00:01:16] PF: What a great way to – [00:01:16] MR: [inaudible 00:01:16] are, right? [00:01:17] PF: Yeah. What a way to kick off the year. It's so interesting because you have such a distinguished background, including being a charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association. So from the outside, we would expect that you'd have the whole happiness thing down. But as we learn in your book, that was not the case. So can you kick us off by talking about how you learned to recognize the distinction between happiness and having fun? [00:01:43] MR: Yeah. I'm still a believer in happiness, right? So I’ll explain that. But the backstory is I was a charter member. Positive psych could have been something prior to that organization coming together. Csikszentmihalyi wrote Flow years before. 2009 is when that kind of came together. It was really Marty Cyclamen that kind of created the movement, him and Ed [inaudible 00:02:08]. I think authentic happiness had come out the year prior, and there was this need for it, right? The movement was doing something positive. Up until that point, clinical psychology was really just to treat deficits, and there are some amazing tools for folks that are living a life well to create things to make it better. So those tools were certainly fairly useful to me during that time, up until 2016. I still benefit from gratitude journaling, I still keep a mindfulness practice, and I still value happiness. What had gone awry was I had become overly concerned with my own happiness. So I'll explain that distinction, and that is really when something goes wrong. In my case, it was the death of my younger brother quite suddenly and just having to process that all at once. Then these two aren't related. But a couple months later, after years of being an endurance athlete, not professional or anything, but really just enjoying that and that way to mitigate, I've always had low level anxiety. I haven't needed medication. I've used fitness to mitigate anxiety. I identified as a runner, for sure, and I was told I had advanced osteoarthritis, probably due to an injury. It wasn't genetic. But it probably tore my labrum and just a 220-pound guy doing a couple Ironmans. [00:03:38] PF: Right. That'll start doing some [inaudible 00:03:39] there. [00:03:40] MR: Yeah. But because it happened at such a young age, I was told I shouldn't run again. So I lost my younger brother, found out that this identity I had as a runner was destroyed, and then this third thing happened. It wasn't really misfortune, but I just finished my doctor [inaudible 00:03:56] and graduated. My wife, who had supported me through those six years of academic work, we had two children during that process, so you can only imagine. [00:04:05] PF: Wow. That was home. [00:04:07] MR: Yeah, right. Again, over optimizing for a lot of stuff. She got an amazing opportunity, and this amazing opportunity manifested and wanted to have her back. But I was still going through a lot of stuff, and that essentially moved us away from our support network of family and friends. So I wanted to figure out how to will myself to be happy, and the more I was doing that paradoxically, I was becoming really unhappy. Because I am a researcher, I identified fairly quickly that something wrong was happening, and I was getting close to probably low-level clinical depression. But I understood that there was some sort of awareness that I was doing it to myself, and I don't know if I would call it serendipitous. It was just more happenstance and good timing. Emerging research was coming out that you're probably familiar with. A professor I liked a lot is Dr. Iris Mauss out of the University of California Berkeley. But her work has been replicated now that here in the Western world, folks like myself, how I found myself in 2016, that are kind of just always chasing happiness, have a pretty direct line to being pretty unhappy, paradoxically. So, wow, okay, so here's sort of empirical evidence to suggest what's happening to me. But if that's the case, what can I do? Because I really want to get back to being happy. Over time, it started to change my perception. Like, okay, life can suck sometimes, but I have more control over sort of shifting my life to the good side, rather than kind of wallowing in this act of rumination and introspection, which is essentially wasting energy, waiting for happiness to come, when I can kind of move in that direction and not necessarily chase it. Just live a joyful life that things that enrich me like pro-social behavior, hobbies that really connect me to things that I like, make me realize that it's not just about myself. Again, just understand that I do have some autonomy over my time. [00:06:09] PF: As adults, even though we all want to have fun, we don't make it a priority. So what in your research did you find is keeping us from doing that? [00:06:19] MR: A lot of it's rooted in the Puritan work ethic that's still pervasive here in the West. Quite literally, we think our self-worth comes from how we can contribute, right? What's unfortunate is there's been this kind of fast evolution from what Daniel Pink calls algorithmic work to heuristic work, whether – You could call that the knowledge economy, whatever you want. Unfortunately, in this new paradigm of work, we don't know where the goalposts are, right? Also, because of advances in technology, we're always kind of connected to our workplace and that – [00:06:54] PF: Yeah. Our workdays do not end, where like we just fall asleep. [00:06:57] MR: Yeah. I mean, from the moment we wake up till our head hits the pillow, there are a lot of people that are always on their phone. If they get a notification, they feel like it's a prime to have to answer it. Because of that, even when we think we're in a state of leisure or a state of our domestic duties like enjoying time with our wife or our kids, half the time, it's still an extension of work because if our phone buzzes, we pick it up. What we know is that, subconsciously, that essentially just becomes an extension of work. We've never created this transition ritual from work to leisure. So the rub there is that the same way that we champion people that lived in a state of sleep deprivation in the ‘90s, like – [00:07:44] PF: Oh, yeah. I remember that. [00:07:46] MR: Yeah. I fell victim to it. I never took down the post because I didn't want to be inauthentic. But if you search deep in my website, I think I was like, “Oh, Gary Vee is amazing.” And like, “Yeah.” [00:07:57] PF: If I can do four hours of sleep a week. [00:07:57] MR: That’s right. Yeah. So we now know that's asinine, right? Like the research is in. If you're not getting sleep, a year later, you're not even going to be able to work, right, because that is a direct line to all sorts of physiological and psychological ills. We're now finding that that is true. This is emerging research. So I like kind of being on the forefront of it. Emerging research is suggesting that when we're not engaged in leisure, so whatever that means, if we're really being honest, there's two to five hours a day that we could potentially recapture, depending on where we are in life. We're not doing that. What we're doing is essentially pacifying that time, a lot of times. If you don't believe me, just look at the health meter on your iPhone or your Android and see how much time you're on social media apps or some sort of mobile game. Ultimately, we know that those seem to be fun. But when we look back and ask ourselves, how did you spend that time? Tell me what you saw on social media between the hours of 4:00 and 6:00? Your phone says that you're on that. There will just be a shoulder shrug because that essentially displaced boredom or discomfort, or it wasn't something that really added to your betterment or attracted joy. [00:09:14] PF: How do you build in little pieces of fun? Because it's not like you have to take a vacation. It's not like you even need to take 30 minutes. You can do something in five minutes to add a little fun to your day, and that's going to really change your brain. Can you talk about how we work that in? [00:09:31] MR: You need to start by creating space, and then we're going to get into play model. So we'll discuss how to do that. But I think, first, you need to look at activities that aren't adding anything to your life, right? In the book, I call them the nothing, like this time that's just contributing. Because I think where positivity kind of got off the rails, now we term it toxic positivity, is that everything needs to be additive, right? So kind of falling back on my understanding of system design, it's just so hard for us to remove things, right? Because that's just – We inherently think that adding stuff on is always better. So we start by figuring out what are those moments that we can capture back. So a simple one could essentially just be your lunch hour, right? Like a lot of us will just kind of hang out. If we're working in a workspace, we'll just kind of hang out and let that hour pass. So I like this metal frame of like if you can't go on holiday, maybe you can take a whole hour, kind of playing into your point, right? [00:10:32] PF: That’s great. [00:10:33] MR: So can you schedule a time with a friend, if you're more of an introvert? Because fun doesn't have to be a high arousal activity. Like I love [inaudible 00:10:40] in this area, right? Like it could just be enjoying a book, but recapturing something so that you can enjoy yourself in a pleasant way, rather than just kind of trying to get through the next hour. So you're exactly right. Like, what are those opportunities, especially if you – A time for where you can add in elements. Now, I will be careful on that. I talked about this in the book that task switching is definitely another way to become unhappy, right? We know that if you're kind of just always moving around from task to task, even if they're pleasurable, the cognitive load of that can just zap your energy. We don't want to over optimize your life, but we do want to create the space so that you can exchange things that really aren't adding anything to your betterment, and figure out how you can have more joy in those spaces. [00:11:28] PF: Yeah. I think that could be a fun exercise in itself to kind of step back and say, “What is it that brings me fun? What are things that I want to do?” Because I think so many of us jump on this treadmill. If someone says, “What do you do for fun,” it’s deer in the headlights. They're like, “I don't know. I haven't had fun for a while.” So I think too there's that part, just that brainstorming of what brings me joy, what is fun for me. [00:11:55] MR: Yeah, exactly. You're spot on, and that's like another one of those interesting headwinds that I mentioned, like the resistance to that, because it does seem super silly, right? Like so many of us, I know how to have fun. Yeah, you know. But you need to remind yourself. [00:12:08] PF: But what do you do for it? Yeah. [00:12:10] MR: Yeah, that's right. So being premeditated and just making a simple list, one, it's fun if you approach the activity with curiosity, right? Like not to stay and like, “Ah, I can't believe I have to do this to have fun.” But like, “Hey, let me remind myself of what lights me up,” right? So that exercise of brainstorming can be fun in and of itself. Even if it's not fun, it's sort of a quick, necessary step because you want to remember. What are the things that really did bring you joy before you had all of this responsibility? Some might not suit you anymore. So you can get creative with this list and make it expansive. Then figure out what is it that you can incorporate and start figuring out, with the space that you created, what to do. [00:12:53] PF: One thing you mentioned in your book, and this can really help people out, it’s like what's your fun type. That’s great because you actually can go onto your website, and there's an assessment quiz, and it's very easy. It's not like you have to study for it. Then you figure out like, okay, this is your fun type. So maybe these are the kinds of things that you should look for when you're creating your little fun list. [00:13:15] MR: Yeah. I think that one was – I did graduate in sciences. I think everyone is all for fun types. It just kind of points to where you seem to really enjoy yourself. [00:13:25] PF: What’s your dominant? [00:13:26] MR: Yeah. But to your point, you could use kind of whimsical tools like that. Or you could identify, in the chapter on fun and friends, who are your fun friends and see if you can create more opportunities with them. Because, generally, if you've identified them as fun friends, they can be great mentors in getting you to have more fun, right? [00:13:46] PF: Absolutely. [00:13:46] MR: What are they doing? Because I do believe it becomes problematic if you're overly marketed things, or if you're mindlessly scrolling social media, and just kind of going, “Oh, I wish I could do that. I wish I could do that.” Because that's just incoming stimulus, right? It's not really an inward like, “Oh, I really identify with that.” Some people are mindful. Like if you're into crafting and you only follow crafters, like there's always the exceptions to the rule, right? But a lot of us are sort of – If we don't do it with our own interests at heart, we’re sort of like, “Oh, they're having so much fun.” Well, they are. But is that what you would find fun, like if you were really in their shoes? Do you really want to be on a yacht? Because the last time I remember, you would throw up every time you’re on a boat, right? So – [00:14:33] PF: That is a trap of social media because you're like, “Oh, that looks like so much fun.” But then, yes, when you break it down, it's like do you want to do that? It's like, “Oh, heck, no. No.” [00:14:40] MR: Well, and it’s curated, right? Like these are post photos of people that are trying to gain your attention. It's called the attention economy for a reason. But, ultimately, if you fall victim to that, and you think that that's real life, that can become problematic because, again, it goes back to what I fell victim to like, “Oh, my gosh. Happiness is here on Instagram, and I'm way back here in reality.” All of a sudden, that gap between normal reality and this fictional reality becomes like – You start to identify like, “Well, I'm not where I want to be,” and that can slowly become identifying as an unhappy person, which isn't necessarily true. It's the subjective reality you've created, and it's clear from the evidence that it's kind of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy. You now have these negative scripts that you're not even necessarily consciously aware of. They're leading you to believe that you're unhappy, when that's not necessarily true. [00:15:38] PF: That's why your play model is so fantastic. It's a great way to assess how we're spending our days. Can you talk about that? Explain what it is and how we can use it, so we can incorporate more fun into our lives. [00:15:50] MR: It’s essentially a sorting mechanism. So it helps you identify like things that really have gone off the rails, right? So play stands for pleasing, living, agonizing, and yielding. Pleasing activities are activities that are really easy to do, right? Like walking your dog, taking a nature walk, engaging in pro-social behavior with the friends that you enjoy. The living quadrant takes some energy, but ultimately leads to really engaging activities. So that can be mastering a new skill. That can be a vigorous hike, like if connecting to nature is your thing. That can be a spiritual practice because mindfulness becomes hard if you – So etc., etc. But things that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do all the time because they do take some energy, people are now classifying that as type two fun. I think that's a playful term for it. [00:16:40] PF: That’s great. [00:16:42] MR: Agonizing are the things that we have to do. So, again, in the book, I make it clear that we can't engineer all of those out of our life. There are things that we need to do as humans that are hard. [00:16:52] PF: Like our taxes? [00:16:53] MR: Exactly, yeah. I mean, that's a common one, right? But a lot of times, when people look at like things that are really agonizing that happen week after week, there's generally ways to improve them. So looking at those critically and thinking what is it? If you get creative, things that kind of suck for you, you could potentially change them, either by changing the activity or outsourcing, if you're in a place that you could do that. The last one we've already kind of talked about, but it's the most nefarious, is the yielding, and that is things that don't bring us joy. But because they don't take much energy, we kind of do them mindlessly. Oftentimes, especially in this modern life we live, they're engineered to make us believe we’re enjoying our time, but they really don't. So social media is an obvious culprit. Again, I don't villainize watching TV. There are shows that I certainly like that are fun to watch because I'm watching them either with my kids or my partner. But what is a common routine for people is they’re so burnt out from work. They plop down on the couch and just turn on whatever is there. If I were to ask you the next week like, “Hey, I know you watched TV Wednesday from 7:00 to 9:00. What did you watch?” They’re like, “Ah, I don't know.” [00:18:06] PF: Then you're frustrated. When you're done watching television, you look back, and it's like, “I wasted this time. I could have done something.” Yet we haven't identified what we would have done. So we just keep doing. That's why we need our fun. We need to like figure out what we do for fun because we would have done something differently. [00:18:22] MR: That's exactly right, and that identifies another headwind. That is in those moments, it is hard for you to believe that you could go out and do something, right? So what I've seen, and this has to happen with multiple people that I've worked with, is that there's two things going on. One, for a lot of adults, for whatever reason, there's this notion that you can't do things on a school night. We've just been programmed to believe that we can't go out and have fun Monday through Thursday. That’s fundamentally not true, right? [00:18:52] PF: Right. [00:18:54] MR: Then the second headwind is, I'm just so tired. Like let's say dancing because, surprisingly, but in a fun way, like dancing seems to be one of those really fun activities that a clear majority like. I would say like 60 or 70 percent. We just don't do anymore, right? So, okay, try taking a dance class during that time, right? For the folks that really do want to reconnect with dancing. The first couple of weeks suck because you're still tired. You're still in that state like, “Oh, plopping down on the couch would be more comfortable.” Not necessarily more fun but it’s more comfortable. By the third week, it's such an invigorating activity that they realize, okay, now they're looking forward to it. And, two, they're a better person when they show up for work. Then three, oftentimes, once you get a taste for that, like, “Wait a second. I am a better version of myself. I'm also more productive,” then it turns into this upward spiral, and you start to figure out what are those boundaries. I was good at work. I'm going to stop now and go take time off the table for me. Now, it's not just a dance class. It’s a comedy club with a friend and it's – Again, all the things start to fall into place. It's just that initial nudge, like how can you break the inertia of this kind of habituated life that we lead. [00:20:13] PF: You bring up a really good point about our productivity at work. A lot of times, when we think of having fun, we don't think of it improving our productivity. If anything, we think, well, it's going to cut into my time, and I'm not going to be as productive. So how does it actually make us more productive? [00:20:30] MR: So the first is I always explain this with a simple math equation because I think it really highlights it, and it's easy for people to understand. When we're living the best version of our self – And this is clear, you can go to Google Scholar, and there's plenty of studies that back me up on this. When we're living with vitality and vigor, then we produce more, right? So think that if you're living a life where you're actually capitalizing on your leisure and feeling like you're fulfilled in all areas of your life, that you can produce two units of output per hour. So you're working a simple 40-hour work week, but you're – For each one of those, whatever you're doing, creating widgets, or making websites, or writing manuscripts, whatever it is, you're creating two units of that output. People that are working 60 hours a week, so they think they're working hard, but they're really just busy and aren't taking time to recharge their batteries, are working a lot longer. So that might feel good, but each one of those hours are only producing one unit of output. So the person in scenario A is producing 80 units of output and living a really fun life and just kind of happy with how everything is going. The person in scenario B is creating 60 units of output, thinks they're a hard worker, but isn't having fun at all, and is on a fast track to burnout. Again, that's not just an assertion. That's been backed up. So that's why I think, again, leisure and fun are going to – We're going to start to understand that making sure we protect that is as important as protecting sleep. Again, no one now is telling you not to sleep, right? Like even the most staunch supporters of healthy culture, right? [00:22:13] PF: So absolutely. [00:22:15] MR: The second is their amazing research coming out of social science, the person I really liked in this area, her name's Caitlin Woolley, is that when you make activities more fun at work, one, you just do more. Two, obviously, you enjoy going to work a lot more. So there's all sorts of creative ways to do that, and it can be as simple as if you really enjoy the people that you're with during that meeting that needs to take place, just taking it outside of the office, and doing it as a walking meeting to creating like gamified aspects of your work so that you enjoy it more. It's really going to be specific to how you engage in work, but there's all sorts of really neat ways to make your work more fun. So figuring out what that means to you, so you don't dread it that you're actually like, “Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to do this activity because I've figured out a way.” Another great method is exploring it as an anthropologist like, “Wait, I've done this work the same way for five years. It’s so habituated and boring. That's probably why it's not fun. Could I do it in a totally different way?” Whatever that means to you. A lot of times, just that curiosity of approaching your work in a new fashion can be enough to make it fun. [00:23:26] PF: That's excellent. Mike, this book is so engaging. It gives us so many entry points to rediscovering fun in our lives. We're going to tell our listeners where they can find it, where they can find some of the great quizzes, so they can identify their fun type and learn more about themselves and having fun. But before we let you go tell us, why is it so important for us to get back to having fun and not put this off anymore? [00:23:49] MR: One, for our own wellbeing, right? There's a clear path to psychological and physiological benefits, especially as we start to age. Not only that, but we know from Bronnie Ware and others that when we index joyful memories throughout our life, we tend to really enjoy our later years because we have so much to look back on, and we generally have better social nets too, right? Because we've made friends through this amazing thing. We also know through social contagion theory that when we’re fun, we make everyone around us have more fun and live more joyful lives. So we're not just doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for the ones that we love. So even if we live this dutiful life, where I want to be selfless because that's not necessarily a poor trait, you could do it for the ones around you because when you're more joyful, you just spread that, right? So it's similar to kindness. Having fun is going to affect all those around you. Once you really master it as a method, you can start to contribute to the greater good as well. It’s not just about you, but it's really about the world at large and making the world a better place. [00:24:53] PF: I love that. That is a great place to wrap this up. Thank you so much for coming on the show, explaining it to us, and for writing such a wonderful, insightful, and necessary book. [00:25:05] MR: Thank you for those kind words, and thank you for having me. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:25:14] PF: That was Mike Rucker, talking about his new book, The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life. If you'd like to learn more about Mike and his book or follow him on social media, visit us 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 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: Setting Boundaries for the Holidays With Melissa Urban  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 391 of Live Happy Now. It's beginning to look a lot like the holidays. For many of us, that can look more like walking through a minefield than a winter wonderland. I'm your host, Paula, Felps. This week, I'm so excited to be joined by Melissa Urban, whose best-selling The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free is changing the way people learn to say no. She's here today to talk about how we can set boundaries this holiday season with our friends, families, and coworkers to make it less stressful and more manageable. Believe me, once you've tried it, you'll realize these are habits you want to carry with you into the New Year. Let's listen. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:43] PF: Melissa, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:46] MU: Thank you so much for having me. It's really great to talk to you, Paula. [00:00:49] PF: What perfect timing to be able to talk to you because we have the holidays coming up. You have The Book of Boundaries. Oh, my God. Those two things go together. [00:01:00] MU: Don’t they, though? [00:01:01] PF: Or don't go together too often. Once I got this book, I really wanted to talk to you and especially wanted to do it with a holiday theme. Before we dig into all that, tell us how you became the boundary lady. Is that who you are? [00:01:14] MU: Yeah. It is now. At least that's how a lot of my followers spouses know me on Instagram. “Oh, you got that information from the boundary lady, didn’t you?” I've been helping people set and hold boundaries since the earliest days of the Whole30. So I'm the Whole30 co-founder, and I founded the program in 2009. If you're familiar with the Whole30, it's a 30-day elimination program. So you're eliminating foods and beverages for 30 days kind of as a self-experiment before you reintroduce them and compare your experience. For those 30 days, you're saying no a lot to break room doughnuts and your mother's pasta and the glass of wine at happy hour. I quickly discovered that people were uncomfortable saying no, especially in social settings, especially when faced with peer pressure or pushback. So I started helping people say no, in the context of their Whole30, around food and alcohol and talking about their diets and the food on their plate and their bodies. That naturally led to them asking me, “Okay. Well, what do I say to my mother-in-law who's always dropping by without calling, or the coworker who's always gossiping, or my nosy neighbor who's always asking if he can borrow power tools?” My boundary conversations just very naturally spilled over into that arena, and they really kicked into high gear when the pandemic hit. Because I think we all realize during the pandemic that we lacked healthy boundaries around work and home and kids in school. It was all starting to run together. Especially women and especially moms were really burned out and exhausted. So I've been doing this work really in earnest since then. [00:03:01] PF: This book is amazing. It is so comprehensive, and it covers everything imaginable. I was just so knocked out as I was going through it. In that book, you offer such a great definition of boundaries. I just loved it. It's like I was underlining it. H many times can I underline? Because we talk about boundaries, but we don't necessarily understand what they are. So can you tell us what you mean when you're talking about boundaries? [00:03:26] MU: Yes. I often think there's a misconception. Boundaries are about controlling other people or telling other people what to do. Or putting these big walls up between you and other people or holding people at a distance. None of that is true. So I define boundaries as limits that you set around how you allow other people to engage with you. So a boundary doesn't tell someone else what to do. It tells others what you are willing to do, the actions that you are going to take to keep yourself safe and healthy. Ultimately, boundaries improve your relationships. They're an invitation to the people in your life to say, “Hey, I have this limit. And you may not have been aware that I've had it but I'm going to communicate this limit to you clearly and kindly as an invitation. Because if you can show up in my life in a way that also respects this limit, our relationship can be so much more open and more trusting and more respectful and feel good to both of us.” [00:04:33] PF: So it improves relationships, but it also really improves our mental health. [00:04:38] MU: Yes. [00:04:38] PF: Can you talk about what does it do for us to be able to set and maintain those boundaries? [00:04:44] MU: So I want you to think about a situation in your life that brings on this idea of dread or anxiety. Maybe it’s – [00:04:51] PF: How many would you like? [00:04:53] MU: I know. Let's just start with one. Maybe it's a particular person, where every time you see their name come up on your phone or they walk by or you know they're going to be at an event, you just cringe like, “Oh, I do not want to be with this person. I don't want to engage.” Maybe it's around a particular conversation topic, where you know that if the subject of your weight or your body or politics or religion or when you're going to have a baby or your chronic illness come up, you just feel this sense of real anxiety or dread. Those are all signs that a boundary is needed. When you think about how a boundary can protect our mental health, boundaries are what help us eliminate or at least dramatically reduce that sense of dread and anxiety, resentment, mistrust, all of the things that cause stress and cause us to show up not as our full selves in relationships. They really help us reclaim our time, our energy, our capacity, our physical space, our sense of safety, and our mental health. [00:05:59] PF: Yeah. Your book really emphasizes how important it is to be able to create healthy boundaries. If they're so good for us, why are they so hard? Why? They should be easy, right? [00:06:10] MU: Well, first of all, and I'll speak for myself, but as women and then especially as moms, we've been conditioned our whole lives not to have needs. As a mom, I am praised the most when I am selfless, having no needs, having no wants, no desires of my own, and putting everyone else's comfort and sense of security and happiness above my own. Then when we do have needs and we express them, no matter how politely or kindly we do, we're told we're selfish or cold or that we have too many rules. Often we're told those things by the people who benefit the most from us not having any limits. I think there's a lot for us to unlearn before we think about setting boundaries. Then on top of that, I’ll acknowledge, it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable to advocate for your feelings, to point out a way in which someone you truly care about was overstepping. Even if their intentions were good, it's uncomfortable to advocate for yourself, and that does make the idea of boundaries feel challenging. [00:07:20] PF: So do you recommend that somebody starts with like small boundaries and then kind of works up to the bigger stuff? Or do we dive right in and tackle the big issues? What's the best way to approach this? [00:07:32] MU: I think there are a ton of entry points here. So for some, I'd say starting with boundaries around food and drink, whether you're doing a Whole30, which is essentially a boundary like boot camp, or whether you're just going into the next event, practicing saying, “No, thanks. I'm not drinking right now. No, thanks. I'm not eating gluten right now. No, I'm good. No, thank you.” Practicing that, I think, can be incredibly empowering because, A, you always have control over what you choose to eat or drink. Like I doubt anyone at that party is going to like sit on you and pour alcohol into your throat. Saying no to foods and drinks that you know don't serve you also brings you energy and better sleep and a happier mood and improved digestion. So that has a spillover effect into other areas of your life and can really help build confidence. In other times, when people read the book, they go, “You know what? My relationship with my coworker or mom or best friend has been bothering me for so long. I'm just going to go in and I'm going to like go in hard. I'm going to set the one limit that is going to bring me the most relief in my life. It's going to help me reclaim the most time and energy and mental health, and I feel prepared, and I have the script, and like I'm going to go in strong.” It kind of just depends on like what you're up for and how big you want to go. But I don't think there's any one way to start a boundary practice. I think the important thing is just to start practicing. [00:08:59] PF: Yeah. You just mentioned the script, and that's something that I love about this book because not only do you say this is why you should do it, and this is how you do it. You actually give a script to talk us through that. How did you come up with those because you have something for everything? [00:09:16] MU: I do. I have more than 130 scripts in the book, and each script has three different levels of boundary conversation. Your green level, which is sort of the kindest, gentlest. The yellow, which is, okay, you're getting some pushback, and you really need to reinforce the boundary. Then the red, which is like, “We are at code red here. The relationship is about to be permanently damaged if I am not able to hold this limit.” I started writing scripts many years ago because my Whole30 community would come to me and they'd say, “Okay, I need to set a boundary around going to my office happy hour but not drinking.” I'm like, “Okay, how can I help?” They were like, “What do I say? I know I need to set the boundary. I know how it would benefit me, but I don't know how to say it.” So I started helping people with actual scripts that sound very natural, very conversational. They don't sound like therapy speak. But because this is so uncomfortable, I find arming people with a script that they can practice at home. Tell your shower wall, “No, thanks. I'm not drinking right now,” right? Repeat it to your car, to your dog so that your body absorbs it somatically, and you get really comfortable with the phrase. I think it makes people feel more confident heading into the boundary conversations and makes them feel less like they have to wing it. It tends to help them not water down their boundaries so much that it's ineffective. Or come out of the gate so strong, too strong that they do end up damaging the relationship in an attempt to set the limit. [00:10:44] PF: What’s so great about it is the fact that you do give pushback, like if this is happening, instead of – Too oftentimes, if you're doing like a role playing type of thing, the other party is like too easy. They make it too easy on you. So that's something that's so great about that. People can really practice really setting that boundary. [00:11:02] MU: Yes. I want you to go into the conversations, assuming that the other person just didn't realize that you had a limit. Once you express it, they will be happy to meet it. Because most of the time, that's what happens. So you don't have to go in geared up for battle. I want you to assume the best. Also, of course, I'm going to prepare you if you do encounter pushback or peer pressure, or the people in your life continue to forget that you set this limit. I want you to have the words to be able to enforce it at the same time. [00:11:34] PF: That is so terrific and one area. This is why I wanted to talk to you. You've created scripts about the holidays. Oh, my gosh. There are so many minefields in the holiday season that I wanted to talk about. Can we start with families? This is so tough because the holidays are already challenging. Then we go home, and we start slipping back into these old family patterns and routines. So like, first of all, why do we do that? Why don't we remain the adults that we are when we go back home? [00:12:04] MU: I've never felt more like my 16-year-old self than when I sit down at my mom's dining room table. I think it's just childhood patterns and relationship dynamics run really deep. We absorb a lot of who we become as a person from our parents. So like my family, we didn't model healthy conflict. We kind of practiced avoidance. I'm going to want to keep the peace at all cost. I'm not going to want to bring up things that are uncomfortable or say something that I know someone's going to argue with. I'm going to want to be the peacekeeper. If your parents grew up fighting and always wanting you to pick sides, you may withdraw in family situations. There are so many reasons why setting boundaries with family and family dynamics can be really challenging. But at the same time, it's never too late to be the change agent in your family and start to create new relationships. The holidays can certainly feel like a perfect storm of boundary oversteps. I do want people to be prepared to go into all of these challenges thinking about, okay, what are the limits that I need to set specifically, and how can I communicate those effectively? [00:13:13] PF: Do you start setting those before the holidays? Do you wait till you're right there? How and when do you start unpacking all this? [00:13:21] MU: Anytime you can have a boundary conversation well ahead of the situation, when you are not enmeshed in it, when in the moment. Of course, I want you to set boundaries in the moment if needed but if you can set the expectation ahead of time. “Hey, mom and dad. Really looking forward to seeing you for Christmas this year. Just so you know, we're going to spend Christmas morning at home, just the three of us. We really want a quiet morning, and we'll come by at around noon before dinner.” Whatever boundary you need to set. “Hey, really looking forward to seeing you over the holidays. I know we disagree on politics, and it would make our visit far more pleasant if we could all agree just not to bring it up. Is that something we can all live with because it makes none of us happy when we have those discussions over the table?” Whatever the conversation seems like, if you can anticipate a boundary challenge and set expectation ahead of time and get buy in, that makes holding the boundary in the moment even easier. [00:14:17] PF: So what happens if they buy in in advance? But then in the actual situation, things start denigrating. Here come the political comments. What do you do then? Because you've already said it, and now they're breaking the rules. [00:14:30] MU: This is why I give you yellow scripts. You've already set the expectation. They say, “Yeah, we understand. It's not fun for anybody when politics come up.” Then you're at the table, and Uncle Joe brings up immigration. This is where you say, “Oh, oh. Wait, wait. We agreed. No politics at the table, Uncle Joe. But, hey, I know you just went on vacation. How was it? I don't think I even saw any photos. How did it go?” So you address the boundary overstep. You say, “I am not participating in this conversation,” and you quickly change the subject to allow everyone to move on gracefully. If they continue to talk over you and talk politics at the table, your red level boundary is, “I already said I won't participate in these conversations. Please excuse me.” You leave the table. You go for a walk. You step outside to make a phone call. You go in the other room with your kids, whatever that looks like. The red boundary is you holding the boundary by saying, “I am removing myself from this situation because it does not feel healthy to me.” [00:15:26] PF: You are teaching everyone at the table such a fantastic lesson because whether they want boundaries in that moment or not, there are other things in their lives that they're going, “Oh, I wonder if I can use this?” [00:15:38] MU: Yes, yeah. Often all it takes is for one person. It's a hard job to be the change agent in a family. But if you can do it, there's a really good chance that other people in the family have felt like you too, and they just haven't wanted to say anything. I have absolutely watched in my community the ripple effects of you setting your boundary trickle out very quickly to everyone else, who will then back you up in this limit. [00:16:03] PF: How can it change families if all of a sudden, gosh, we're not getting together, and we're not ripping open old wounds, and we're not fighting about our differences, but we're looking for ways to actually get along and be together and find commonality? How does that change your whole dynamic that time and going forward? [00:16:20] MU: Imagine what your upcoming holiday would feel like if you knew that when you showed up at your family's house, nobody was going to bring up politics. Nobody was going to comment on the food on your plate or talk about your weight loss or their weight loss or their diets or your bodies. Nobody was going to try to make you feel guilty when after the meal, you said, “Okay, it's time for us to go to dad's house now. It was so nice to visit with you. Thank you so much.” The sense of like immediate freedom and relief that you would feel, knowing you could go into these holidays with not only these preset expectations but the words to hold the boundaries, should you find in the moment that people overstep, I think would just absolutely feel tremendous. It would give you a sense of self confidence. It would remind you that you are in control and take responsibility for your own feelings. It gives you the power to actually hold the boundary because you're not relying on anyone else to kind of hold that for you or to join you. If they decide that they can't or won't hold this healthy limit, you know the action you're going to take to keep yourself safe. [00:17:29] PF: You also talk about managing that guilt of not spending enough time with the other side of the family. Once you're married, once you have children, it gets even more complicated. I've seen so many of my friends go through this, where they are just run ragged by the end of Christmas Day because they feel like they have to give both sides. Sometimes, it's like four sides because you have divorces with the parents and then the grandparents. Nobody's happy the end of the day because everyone's just exhausted. So how do you manage that kind of guilt and everything that's going on with separate sides of the family? [00:18:05] MU: This is what psychologists call unearned guilt. This is not guilt because you have done something wrong, and it is biologically serving you and your community by you feeling bad and remembering that you did something wrong, so you don't do it again. This is unearned guilt that we are choosing to take on. So in the simplest way, you don't have to feel guilty. You can just say, “No, thank you.” What I am doing now is creating traditions for my family. This is a time-honored tradition that my parents did when they had me and their parents did when they had them. We are creating a new family unit now, and I want to create traditions with my children the way that my parents did with me. There's a chance that your mom didn't feel comfortable setting boundaries with your grandmother. That might be a big part of the reason why they get so upset and defensive and hurt when you set boundaries with them from this sense of like jealousy that they wish they could have done this with you when you were kids. You're doing it now. That can be very challenging for older generations. But I think it's perfectly acceptable to think about and decide as a family together, what do we want our holidays to look like? Then to notify other family members what you are and are not willing to do. [00:19:24] PF: That's terrific because I know in our family, my partner's uncle, it was tradition. Christmas Eve was at his house. What was very funny is everybody complained. Nobody wanted to go there. For years, everybody has to go to Uncle Bobby's, and we're just like, “They're complaining the whole time.” So about three years ago, probably about five years ago now, her brother's like, “We're not going to do it,” and everyone's like, “Wait a minute. We don't have to do this?” “Let’s just say that's no longer a family tradition.” It’s amazing because it's like you get time back, and you get this freedom that just didn't seem to exist prior to that. [00:20:00] MU: That's such a good example of one person. Like everybody thinking it and just one person being willing to say it. Yes. I like to remind people, you can do it any way you want. So we have this nontraditional approach to Christmas with my parents, where it's like, “Hey, whether we celebrate it on Christmas Day or January 29th, it kind of doesn't matter. We're going to have Christmas in a way and a time that works for all of us.” They'll keep their tree up late, and we'll hold presents for my son. But we get to celebrate in a way that doesn't stress everybody out. So you can have those nontraditional celebrations. You can choose to not go anywhere at all, and you don't need an excuse to stay home. It doesn't have to be, well, we're going to take a vacation this year. It can be we just don't want to travel, and we want a quiet Christmas at home, and we're not accepting visitors, and we're not going to go anywhere. We'll happily FaceTime with you. If we celebrate Christmas in July, then that's fantastic too. But I encourage people to think outside the box because you can create traditions any way you choose as a family. [00:21:04] PF: We're just not used to thinking we can do that. We're just not used to thinking that we can go, especially in the holidays. That we can just say, “Yeah, we're not participating in that tradition. We want to create our own.” But how important is it for our children to see us taking that initiative and for them to understand like, “Yes, I can create my own boundaries going forward.”? [00:21:25] MU: Yes. It's so important for your kid. People often say, “How do I impart this idea of healthy boundaries with my kids?” It's setting and holding healthy boundaries on behalf of you and the family and modeling that for your kids. You're also doing this on their behalf. My son does not enjoy being in a car most of Christmas day, as we travel hours and hours between all of the families. But he loves that he gets four Christmases, one with us, one with grandma, one with Grandpa, one with his dad. He loves that we get to spread it out over the course of a month. So it really does make everybody's time easier, and you can acknowledge your family members’ disappointment, “I'm sorry that we won't be spending the day with you,” while still holding the boundary. We'll make sure we have plenty of time to visit two weekends from now when we come, and we'll do all of the Christmas things. We'll sing carols, we'll sit around the tree, we'll play games, and it will be just as festive. [00:22:21] PF: That is such a wonderful way to approach it. The other thing that really interferes – Not interferes. That can take some time is our work place during this time of year. You've got holiday parties, and those are often obligatory. How do we set boundaries around that? Because we're walking a fine line since it is work, and some things might be required. [00:22:43] MU: It is challenging, of course, to set boundaries in the workplace because of the power dynamics in play. I think a lot of times, companies sometimes – It’s not that they leave it until the last minute, but you've got projects. You've got deadlines. You've got goals kind of that you want to wrap up by year end. Again, setting expectations ahead of time is key. If you are going to be taking time off during the holidays, it's requesting that plenty early, reminding people ahead of time like, “Hey. Just so you remember, I’ll be out. I would send this email out like December 1st. I'm going to be out from this point to this point around the holidays. I will not be checking email or Slack. I will not be participating in meetings.” Make it very clear that you are out of office. If we need to have meetings ahead of time to set deliverables, let me know. I'm going to have XYZ cover my deliverables during this time period. So everyone knows who to go to. Those little reminders along the way can really help to set the expectation so that when somebody does send an email or text to you to ask you a question, you can say, “I am out of office and not responding to text. I'll be back in the office on this date.” So I think that's really important to communicate very clearly. But then you also have to set the boundary with yourself that if you say you're out of office, you're not checking email. You're not responding to just like that one Slack message really quick because now you're changing the expectation, and people will take as much as you are willing to give. [00:24:04] PF: Yeah. You have some great illustrations in your book about that. About the poor woman who was on vacation. [00:24:10] MU: That was my sister. That was my sister. It was – [00:24:13] PF: Oh, my God. I was horrified. [00:24:15] MU: Whose boss is like – [00:24:15] PF: [inaudible 00:24:15] story real quick because that's just horrifying. [00:24:18] MU: She worked in a very toxic workplace environment, where her boss tracked her down on her first vacation in over a year and like called her off of her paddleboard in the middle of the ocean for something that was absolutely not an emergency. Though my sister tried to set boundaries a number of times in that organization, they very clearly demonstrated that this was not a place where boundaries would be respected. So she did all she could to create a healthier workplace environment and could not and ended up finding a new job. But at least she tried. That's what I say to people in the workplace. Your only options are not to let your employer or coworkers continue to run you over or quit and get a new job. There are a number of options in the middle where you can try at least to set and hold boundaries around your work time, your personal time, your ethics or values or your personal space. If they don't hold and you're not able to maintain those boundaries because the workplace is simply not amenable to them, at least you know you've done everything you could to try to make your workplace culture healthy. [00:25:22] PF: Yeah. That is so terrific. Can you talk about what happens to us when we start practicing setting boundaries? Because it seems like once you've kind of mastered it, you're probably going to get pretty good at it in a lot of different areas that you didn't even think about going into it. [00:25:37] MU: I think you do. Boundaries kind of bring about this sense of inertia, where an object in motion stays in motion. What happens is it becomes like this self-affirming prophecy. So you steal yourself and you say, “I deserve to set this limit. My needs are worthy. My comfort is worthy. My feelings matter, just as much as anybody else's, and I am going to set this limit because I know it is for the best for my health and safety, and I know it's going to improve the relationship.” You set the limit, and the other person respects it, and your relationship improves. Now, you're like, “Okay. Now, I have the self-confidence to seek out other areas,” and you feel more comfortable setting them. You feel more comfortable holding them. Other people in your life experience this real sense of safety around you because they know that you mean what you say and that you will take responsibility for your own feelings and your own needs. That is a very comforting and reassuring place to be, and you're allowing other people in your life to say no to you. So now, you're both showing up where you want to, how you want to in a way that feels good to both of you. It has this tremendous cascade effect, this ripple effect that will move through all of your relationships at work, with family, with friends, with total strangers on the street. It really is such a powerful, transformative experience that anyone can start literally right now. [00:27:02] PF: That's so excellent. This book is absolutely incredible. It is so informative, educational, inspiring, and funny. There's just so much that we can take away from it. This is terrific. We are going to – In the wrap up, I'm going to tell people how they can follow you on social media, where they can find you, where they can buy your book. But as they enter the holiday season, what's the thing that you most want them to keep in mind? [00:27:27] MU: I want you to keep in mind that your comfort, your joy, the sense of magic and wonder that the holidays can bring are all at your disposal this year with a healthy boundary practice. [00:27:41] PF: I love it. Melissa, thank you so much for coming on the show, for writing this book, and for sharing this with us. [00:27:47] MU: Thanks so much Paula. It was a joy to talk to you as well. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:27:54] PF: That was Melissa Urban, author of The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free. If you'd like to learn more about Melissa and her work, follow her on social media, or buy her book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Becoming a Happy Leader With Tia Graham  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Thank you for joining us for episode 389 of Live Happy Now. Not everyone feels that work and happiness go hand in hand. But today's guest believes that not only can you find happiness at work, but you must. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm sitting down with Tia Graham, a certified chief happiness officer, Founder of the company Arrive at Happy, and author of the new book, Be a Happy Leader.   Tia has multiple certifications in neuroscience, positive psychology, and leadership coaching, and she works with executives and teams to help create happier workplaces. Today, she's here to teach us how we can find more happiness at work. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:45] PF: Tia, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now. [00:00:48] TG: Thank you for having me. [00:00:51] PF: Work has long been a challenge for people, and it's so important because it's something that we spend most of our time doing, and there's a lot of unhappiness in the workplace. I wondered, in your studies, in your research, what made you decide to focus on leaders in the workplace? [00:01:10] TG: Yes. So prior to starting my company, Arrive at Happy, I was a director of sales and marketing, a leader in the luxury hotel industry and different places in the United States and Europe. So I was a leader of teams for 14 years. Positive leadership was always very, very important to me. I took it as an honor, leading people. In my 14 years of leadership in the hotel industry, I had some incredible inspirational happy leaders, and I also had the complete opposite. I had some toxic, very negative leaders. One of my big missions is to have more happy leaders in the world of work. Then when I started researching the levels of disengagement with leaders, that was another big motivation. Also, the science of happiness isn't extremely well known within corporate America. So, yeah, lots of motivation to bring this into work. [00:02:12] PF: What is the difference between unhappiness at the leadership level and unhappiness at the employee level? Have you seen any differentiation? [00:02:21] TG: So it's actually quite similar, and this is all of the Gallup research. There's a little bit more disengagement at the employee level, but it's pretty close. In terms of people who are actively disengaged in both groups, it's around 13 to 15 percent, so really everyone's interconnected. [00:02:42] PF: Because you tend to think that leaders, at least from an employee standpoint, employees think, well, they should be happier. They're making more money. They get to take some time off for golf. Whatever it is, it seems like leaders should have it a little bit easier when it comes to happiness. They're in a little bit more comfortable position. [00:03:00] TG: Yeah. There is some correlation, like how you reference being able to play golf. There is some correlation between how much money you make and how happy you are and having less stress and anxiety about money. Really, some leaders have more time affluence, right? They have more time for friends and family, for hobbies, etc. Also, though, with leadership comes more stress, more anxiety, more pressure. So there's different challenges as well. [00:03:31] PF: The leaders that you have worked with that you've seen, is that happiness kind of an innate thing, that they are naturally happy people, and they bring it to the workplace? Or is it something that they've had to work at? [00:03:43] TG: So the research shows, and this aligns exactly with all of the companies that I've been working with over the past six years, is there's a group of people who are more genetically predisposed to be happier, and life circumstances do play a part. But there are some leaders who actively make choices that increase their wellbeing and create sustainable wellbeing. Then there are some leaders who do not, right? Who do not prioritize their own happiness and focus on whether it be their physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, mental health, psychological, investing in their relationships. As I said, little bit genetically predisposed. But then there are some people who truly make this a priority and focus on it and others who don't. [00:04:40] PF: What kind of outcomes do you see in the leaders, and what are the differences in the outcomes they see in their workplace? [00:04:47] TG: So a leader who is happy at work is more productive. So they work faster and they work smarter. They are more creative and innovative, as their brain broadens and builds with more positive emotions. They have higher rates of employee, team member loyalty, less unwanted turnover. Motivation within the team is higher. Sales are higher. There's a direct correlation between sales, and the customer service scores are higher as well. That all translates to the engagement scores, which most companies do engagement surveys once a year. [00:05:27] PF: There’s actually a cost to the company of unhappiness and stress in the workplace. [00:05:32] TG: Yes. Yes, absolutely. Whether it be the cost of recruiting, hiring, training, the cost of knowledge drain, when people leave, the cost of customer unhappiness or customers not being satisfied, and then putting that out on social media or choosing not to come back to that business as well. There's this huge phenomenon happening called quiet quitting, where people are doing the bare minimum, right? You think about the cost of productivity there, which directly relates to engagement. There is also the cost of potential revenue. The research shows that when sales or business development professionals are happy while they're working, they'll sell 37 to 45 percent more. So if you have a lot of your sales force that isn't feeling that great, they're not making as much money for the organization as well. [00:06:36] PF: So interesting because I think if more people equated the financial outcomes with happiness, they might kind of change the approach. So how do people start changing that mindset? Because, obviously, this has to start at the top for you to change the organization. So how do they start changing that? [00:06:57] TG: Yes. So the world of work is changing fast and for the better. I'm actually very optimistic about where it's going and how it's going to benefit humans globally. There are some organizations. Like Deloitte, for example, has achieved wellbeing officer at the very top, Jen Fisher. So leaders at the top, if you think about the CEO and the executive team, is first to understand about positive psychology, the science of happiness and the neuroscience behind happiness. Also understand and be motivated by the direct connection between happy employees and business outputs. To see the correlation, how it directly affects the bottom line, right, just what we were talking about earlier. Then be committed to creating a positive work culture and focusing on supporting the whole being all different aspects of people's lives. In addition to continuing to focus on productivity and output and driving results, focus equally as much on the relationships and how people feel, cultivating a sense of belonging, making sure that people have psychological safety, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and so on. Really investing in leadership training and development, as well as measurement to make sure that people are feeling happy, they're feeling engaged, and that the executive team can see, can be proactive, if there's an area of need, if there's a leader that's not creating this type of culture. [00:08:41] PF: So what do people do in situations, where maybe you have an organization, and the top leader or the CEO, owner, whatever it is, is not happy, is not going to be happy, is not going to buy into this? How then does a team underneath that start making it happen? Because that's something I have seen a lot of, where you have a leader who is a bully, really. It's a situation where they want things done a certain way, and they don't care about happiness. They don't care about wellbeing. They just want it done. So how does the rest of the team then create an environment that can kind of override that? [00:09:21] TG: Yes, such a great question. I was in that exact situation when I worked for five hotels in New York City, and the leader above me was just as you described, and then I had a team that worked for me that I truly wanted to create a bubble. So the first step is to know that even though everyone at the top might not be a happy positive leader, it doesn't mean that you can't create a positive culture within your team and to never underestimate the ripple effect that you have with your coworkers and with the people that you work with because emotions are contagious. Mirror neurons in our brain have us feel the way that other people are feeling around us, whether it be virtual or in person. So just to remember that you truly can have a positive effect on people, and to look at strategies and tools for you to contribute to make the team happy, as well as make yourself happy. There's a wonderful book by Dr. Annie McKee called How to Be Happy at Work. So for anyone listening, who's not necessarily a leader but really wants to increase their happiness at work, there's a lot of great actions in there, proven actions in there for how you can increase your wellbeing, even if maybe the CEO or executives aren't that happy. [00:10:49] PF: That's great, and that's great to know there's a resource out there for that because that is becoming more and more important for people and especially with Gen Z entering the workforce. I think that's really going to change the way that leaders have to create an environment because Gen Z places such an importance on mental health. You think that is going to help turn this tide too and help us realize like we really need to foster a culture of happiness and creativity? [00:11:19] TG: Yes, absolutely. I mean, the levels of anxiety and chronic stress, overwhelm, burnout with different generations, even including teenagers, that it's bringing to the forefront and need to focus on mental health. Of course, there's been so much focus on physical health over the years, and yet mental health now is really, really coming into the foreground. Leaders and people need to go farther than maybe suggesting meditation or saying, “Okay, here's a discount to a yoga class where you live,” or that sort of thing. But to really actually create safe spaces, where people can have vulnerable conversations. I can't help but think of the wonderful Brene Brown of talking about having hard conversations at work. Recently, I heard the CEO of Microsoft speak at this conference called The Future of Work, and he was talking about he shares with his team when he's not doing well mentally. I'm like, “Okay, if the CEO of Microsoft can talk about this when he's feeling extremely stressed or he's feeling very anxious, everyone should be able to.” So the old paradigm of it's sort of like game face for work, do not show emotions, be strong, have your work face is not working for people right now, right? I don't think that people need to be authentic. Of course, they’ll be professional, but to be authentic and to have vulnerable conversations about how people are really doing. [00:12:58] PF: Yeah. That is a big shift to turn around, but it is slowly listing toward that side. [00:13:04] TG: Yes. That will take time. [00:13:06] PF: It will. What about people who are workers, but they're working from home? So they have a different kind of struggle. How do they apply these things? [00:13:20] TG: Yeah. So for people who are working at home, there's benefits and, of course, there's challenges, right? So a lot of people are loving that they have more time back, don't necessarily have to commute. Maybe they can get a quick workout in at lunch. Maybe they can eat lunch outside, give their kid a kiss and a hug when they get home from school, etc. So first up I would say is savor and recognize and have gratitude for the blessings that are in your life with that working from home. Also, recognize that the challenges include feeling more disconnected and some people even feeling isolated, so being intentional about creating human connection moments. So human connection is the number one driver of happiness, right? Spending time with people you care about who care about you. So whether that be video calls, walking meetings, sending little video chats, having that human connection piece is really, really important. Another potential driver of unhappiness from working at home is sort of that work scope creep. It can creep into every part of your day. So having very clearly defined boundaries of when you’re work and when you're not working and making sure that the habits that help us stay healthy like good sleep, good food, meditating, exercise, time for hobbies, time for learning, spending time with friends and family, loved ones, etc., that you honor those. I recommend scheduling them. I joke of like I schedule everything. I schedule meditation. I schedule date nights with my husband. If not, it's very easy to just keep working. So, yeah, and I would say at home, as much as you can also incorporate if you can get a standing desk, if you can have a little more movement and keep your body healthy at home, to do that as well. But really focus on the human connection piece. [00:15:20] PF: Whether you're working at home or in an office, how do you then reach out to someone who is working remotely or another coworker to help them have that same experience? How do you help them along in their happiness journey? [00:15:33] TG: Yes. So I mean, one just resource that pops in my head is if you have someone on your team who or that you work with that you see is struggling or maybe could use some more happiness and wellbeing, I would highly recommend people take the free Yale Happiness Class by Dr. Laurie Santos. It's a great resource of sort of this introduction to positive psychology or the science of happiness. Another great resource is the book Happier by Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, who I actually studied with for a year. He's a fantastic teacher. I speak on this multiple times a month, and most people aren't that familiar with the science of happiness, so really just starting to share those resources. A very simple question is when you're connecting with people to say, “How are you doing really,” and truly being present for someone that you know is not doing so well, and they're kind of like, “I'm fine,” is I would say open up and share maybe some challenges that you're going through right now. By being vulnerable, they might feel safe to do the same. But I think just checking in with people is really, really important. [00:16:47] PF: Yeah. It’s something we got away from during the pandemic, and it feels like a lot of people are having trouble going back to that, that check in. Would you say that's what you're seeing? [00:17:00] TG: Yes, yes. I mean, during the height of the pandemic, when everyone was so isolated, right? It was like this constant, “Is everyone okay? Is everyone okay?” Even though life is more open now, there are a lot more experiences that we can do, there's still a continuum of people feeling lonely and feeling isolated. So I would, yeah, say reach out as much as you can. [00:17:28] PF: Obviously, technology has made all this possible, our ability to work remotely and connect remotely. But how does technology also negatively affect our happiness and our stress levels? [00:17:41] TG: Yes. Thank you for bringing this up, such a great question. Yes. So the research shows that too much technology, and especially too much time on social media, increases human anxiety and increases levels of sadness and depression. So it's about being very intentional and cognizant about how and when you're using technology. So in my keynote talks, I talked about being very intentional about the content that you consume. Obviously, this podcast is a fantastic piece of content. This is a great type of content for people to consume. But if you are watching and checking the news throughout the day on your smartphone, it's going to make you less happy and more anxious. So maybe you have one or two times a day where you check. I tell people never watch the news on television because it makes you 31% more negative for the rest of the day. But stay informed. Read about the news. But it can consume you, and it can make you feel very negative and anxious. Also, in terms of email, right? Having – Setting boundaries for yourself that – For example, my two young daughters go to sleep around 8:30 PM. I try to have connected time with my husband and not sit and do email from 8:30 to 10:00 at night. I really try and have that as focus on our relationship time. Again, it's being very intentional and also noticing how you feel engaging with the different technology pieces. I tell people, if you get on Facebook and you're full of anger, maybe you need to unfollow a lot of accounts. Or maybe you just need to not get to be on Facebook. [00:19:39] PF: Go watch a cat video, right? [00:19:40] TG: Exactly. So, yeah, I say nourish your brain the way you nourish your body. [00:19:46] PF: It’s so important, especially the emails. I'm glad you brought that up because that gets overwhelming. Being able to put limits and boundaries on that in itself is just a huge thing to be able to do. As we let you go, where do people start? As they walk away from this, what is the one thing that they can do today to apply one of your principles in the workplace to start making it a happier place for them? [00:20:11] TG: Yes. So one place to start is to increase the amount of specific appreciation that you give to others. People, adults are not acknowledged enough in life or in work. When you give specific appreciation for something that they did for you, a way that they took care of a customer, whatever it is, they are going to be filled with happiness, and you're going to feel happier because you deliver that information, whether it be verbally or written, etc. I would say whatever team you're a part of is increase that type of communication, where people are appreciating each other more, and everyone's happiness will rise. [00:21:07] PF: That's terrific. Tia, your book gives us a lot to learn. I'm going to tell all our listeners how they can get it. We'll have something on the website about it. But thank you so much for sitting down and talking with us today. You're doing some really important work, and I'm glad you took 30 minutes out of your day to be able to spend this time with us. [00:21:25] TG: Oh, thank you. You can't see me right now, but I have a huge smile on my face. So thank you for having me. [00:21:30] PF: Thank you. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:21:36] PF: That was Tia Graham, author of Be a Happy Leader. If you'd like to learn more about Tia, follow her on social media, access some her great tools online, or buy her book, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast tab. As we begin November and enter the season of giving, Live Happy has a whole new way to share your happiness with others. Brand new in Live Happy Store is our giving plate, which you can use to pay it forward to others. Just fill it with your favorite treats and share it with a neighbor, your kid’s teacher, a coworker, or anyone else in your life you'd like to show appreciation to. The poem on our Live Happy giving plate encourages them to spread joy by doing the same for someone else. You can find it right now in the Live Happy Store at store.livehappy.com. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]