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Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Singing Through the Pandemic With The Marsh Family  [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:04] PF: Thank you for joining us for On a Positive Note. I'm your host, Paula Felps. Each month, I'm sitting down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts. Music is a great tool for bringing people together. During the days of the lockdown, the Marsh family from Kent, England began sharing song parodies to express what they were going through. As it turns out, they were exactly what we needed. Their viral videos now have received more than 30 million views. They were dubbed the Von Trapp Family by the New York Times. Today, I'm sitting down with parents Ben and Danielle Marsh to talk about how their family's humorous approach to the pandemic helped them keep their own sanity, while turning their family into a global sensation. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:52] PF: Danielle and Ben, welcome to On a Positive Note. [00:00:56] DM: Hi. [00:00:57] BM: Thank you. [00:00:57] DM: Nice to speak to you. [00:00:58] PF: Oh, I'm so excited to have you here. I've been watching you on YouTube all through the pandemic. You really changed the pandemic experience for so many people. The world has fallen in love with your family. I want to know, to start it out, was your family already singing together before the lockdown? [00:01:17] DM: Yes. Not to the same degree and not with a camera normally. It was just something that we did from when the kids were really little, actually. Yeah, I think I've said it before, but it was always a very cheap Christmas present for grandparents. We rally them to do some such as, there’s so many musicals, wasn't it, that we got them to do in the days gone by, when they were little. It's lovely to look back at, because none of them could say any of the words. It was just for us. It was our family album. [00:01:44] BM: Yeah. It started off with playing songs with the kids, singing along, like lots of people do bad guitar playing and that sort of thing. Then it grew into something that we'd occasionally share with family on Facebook. Then we made one of them public, I think, on Facebook, because some of our family were saying, “This is really good. You should make it available.” That was when everything really kicked off at the start of the pandemic. [00:02:06] DM: Yeah. I think, we were just right at that moment when there was nothing to fill the airwaves, and everyone was really scared and at home and not knowing what to do. The week before everybody lockdown in England, we pulled our kids from school and said, “Right. Okay, what are we going to do?” There was nothing. Yeah, we just got the instruments out and had a bit of a go at a song, and then it seemed like a nice thing to do for my mum's birthday, which we realized we weren't going to save for. Then, yeah, that was it, really. We went to bed one night and you were supposed to be in the States at a conference, and a friend that you had been planning to meet said, “Oh, that song that you put up, it’s brilliant. Can I share it?” We went, “Yeah, okay.” Went to bed, woke up the next morning and there were millions of views. It was totally bizarre. [00:02:50] PF: You truly were an overnight sensation. Talk about that song. It's that One Day More from Les Miserables. Tell us a little bit about crafting that song and what you did with it. [00:03:02] BM: Oh, well. I mean, it's such a rousing song from such an iconic, amazing musical for us. It was always listening to Les Mis was great, because that ate about 5 hours of cardio around the UK. You have to put it on. We always had to explain it to the kids when they're a bit young, because obviously, there’s some sensitive material in there to do with prostitutes, all sorts of stuff. We'd make up these stories around it. There was always a bit of humor in that, and people would take in turns to sing songs, like All Females, I think. I Dreamed a Dream and there's so many. We take in turns in the car. We always loved One Day More, because it's such a brilliant chorus piece that brings all of the genes together, brings all the characters together. It’s been on our radar as one that we'd always sing along to anyway. Then when we thought we could give, you know what? This is exactly what we're all living through, this idea of one day more. Suddenly, our world had been completely and utterly destabilized, because we didn't know where the shopping was coming from. In the UK, we had all the panic buying of toilet rolls. Nobody knew what – [00:04:03] PF: We had that here, too. [00:04:05] BM: All the advice was frantically being cobbled together, because no one quite understood what was happening. In a sense, we were all glued to our televisions in quite a traumatic way. Glued to the news. We just needed to restore something at home and have something to do. Yeah, the song became a way of putting that experience into one piece that we needed a laugh. You were ready to be shocked that everything that was arriving, trying to figure it out. It was part of our parenting, really, which is just to try and make something fun and less frightening. [00:04:37] DM: Also, relatable, because there's big, massive things going on in the world. Here, I couldn't get a delivery slot for some food to be – You can't panic about everything out there. You bring it back to what's happening with your lives. Ben disappeared off for a bath and came back and said, “I've written some words.” We sat round the table and I vividly remember singing it through the first time. As we reached the end of it, we all went, “Well, that was good, fun.” We said, “Well, let's have a go.” I think, we came back from the double – the kids, it's always, the half the videos that we've put up on YouTube, there's been various states of pajamas and things, because it was always after bath time, or after tea time, we'd say, “Well, let's give it a go and see if we can manage it.” Yeah. We just sang it through. It wasn't perfect. There's an argument in the middle, the beginning, I think of Thomas and various people. Yeah, we just did it because it made us feel better. I think, fundamentally, that's why we've always done it. It gives you a reason to all get in a room together and talk about something other than what was on the news, or what you’ve done today. Yeah. It was really good fun. Then very quickly, we realized, it was quite important to other people and that seemed quite startling that you could be locked in your own living room and other people were feeling the same as you across the world and appreciating the stuff that you were doing. Yeah, it made the world smaller at a time when everything felt partly big and scary. [00:05:58] PF: Talk about, Ben, the lyrics for it. Talk about the premise of the song for those who haven't heard. [00:06:04] BM: Well, say that in the original, Valjean is the character that ties all of the plots of Les Mis together, and in our house, it’s mommy is the heart, the beating heart of what goes on. If something's wrong, you hear her from whatever room you're in. If everything's fine, you hear her laughing in whatever room you're in. It made perfect sense for her to be. In terms of vocal range, it went really well as well. She opens up the song and talks about the prospect of the next day. She's been shopping for online delivery, but we don't know when it's going to happen. We’re not allowed to go to supermarkets. Is the material going to arrive? Are we going to be able to eat? Are we going to get what we ordered? All that sort of stuff. Then one by one, the other characters come in. In this case, in our pandemic version, the characters are arriving with our own individual problems. Because Thomas is really grumpy, for instance, youngest son. We've got two boys, two girls. He's the second and he loves football. He's really into football. We're all Watford fans in this house. I should say soccer for an American. [00:07:07] PF: Thanks for the translation. [00:07:10] BM: Yeah, he was gutted, because all the matches got canceled. He couldn't play with his friends. He was stuck indoors. He plays Marius and start singing about problems with football. Then piece by piece, each of us come in and add a different dynamic for where we're suffering. Elle is missing her friends and she's trying to find them on the phone. We've got problems with Internet signals and how much – [00:07:32] DM: Grandparents who can't use Skype. [00:07:34] BM: Yeah, trying to reach out to grandparents who we're not going to see for a while, who is struggling. Then I come in already with a bottle of beer open, I think, just with the nightmare, which we all faced. Anyone with kids. In fact, grandparents as well face it like, how do you entertain children? Then try and pretend that you're schooling them as well. It was that realization at the start of pandemic that all these people that our society generally just gets on with their jobs and rather overlooked, like binmen and teachers and nurses, suddenly, were absolutely at the center of what's important in society. That's something is depressing that we've moved so quickly away from all that, because there was a moment where we realized how interconnected we all were. I think, that's a little bit what we wanted to channel during the pandemic. [00:08:21] DM: Yeah. Then it ends with as all such as waiting to see what tomorrow brings, I suppose, but hopefully, in a slightly rousing way. It certainly wasn't the best. There were a few duff notes and there were bits and pieces that we could have done again, but it captured that moment. We did it. We walked away and we thought, “Oh, well. Grandparents will like it.” Off we went. [00:08:40] PF: Oh, my gosh. Because you did. You captured what everybody was feeling. There's each character, or a person in that song, there is someone who feels that way in your house. Sometimes you felt multiple things of those. [00:08:54] DM: I think, what was quite surprising and I think this is what really cut through right in those early days is that there were six of us in this house and there were a lot of people sat at home by themselves, or with a couple of people, people who loved to sing, people who ordinarily would have turned to groups, like choirs and things. You just couldn't make that volume of noise. We were thinking, where am I going to get some quiet and some peace? Because everybody's in the same room. You realized other people are watching, going, “I wish I had that. I wish I had that volume and that capacity and those people around me, because I'm alone.” It was nice to recognize that the things that make you tear your hair out when you're thinking, “How am I going to feed you? Can't want to eat again.” Surely, it’s just being lunch time. [00:09:33] PF: I fed you yesterday. [00:09:34] DM: Exactly. There are other people watching from Australia and New Zealand in America saying, “That reminds me of what my house used to be like, or that reminds me when my kids were young, or when I lived back at home with my brother and sister.” It was completely overwhelming and delightful and terrifying, all in one go. Yeah, and we started very quickly getting lovely messages from people saying, “I work on an intensive care unit. I came home this morning and this made me smile for the first time.” Those messages really cut through. You think, yeah, maybe I'm just sitting in my living room and that's the best I can do to not be out and about and not put pressure on health services and everything else. If we can add something extra, if we can add a bit of a smile and then that quite quickly became a bit of a focus of ours, I suppose. It was nice for the kids to feel like we were making a difference for some people even if we weren’t going anywhere. [00:10:26] PF: I mean, you were really putting into words what a lot of people felt, and you were doing it with humor and levity and beautiful music. I mean, those things combined in one package, you could not find it anywhere else. How quickly after that first hit, after that first viral video, how quickly did you start doing more? Did you take a breath, or did you say, let's jump on this? [00:10:49] BM: Well, it was a bit. I mean, it was a bit overwhelming, to be honest, to begin with. Because suddenly, we had all of these – We were trying to do our jobs remotely as well and homeschool the kids. Then suddenly, we had all these messages from international media, wondering if we could perform this, or could we go on this show. We didn't want to say no to anything, because we didn't think that we can make any difference to how anyone was feeling. We thought the best thing we could do is just get out of the way and let the people deal with the pandemic you were in the best place to. Yeah, for a week or two, it was – we had headaches through the whole thing. It sounds really weird to complain about. [00:11:23] DM: I know. I've never been that exhausted. I've had four children and I was more exhausted in those two weeks. [00:11:29] PF: Really. [00:11:29] DM: We felt a real weight of responsibility and we were scared. The British press are renowned for putting somebody up on a pedestal and then deciding that they don't want them there anymore. We were very aware that we didn't want to do – we didn't want to say yes to some people and no to others, and we didn't want to look like we were – we didn't want it to look like we were profiting out of anything that had happened. We didn't want to look like we were – Yeah, the pandemic has been brilliant for us. We were really minded that all we wanted to do was talk to people that wanted to talk to us. We actually said, we'll do two weeks and then we'll go away, because we want to say no when people felt that we mattered and we've made a difference to them, but we really didn't want to be there going, watch us again. We did that. We drew a line. I think, it was about the Thursday of the second week and a couple – lots of other messages would come inside, but we'd moved from being a news story to, I suppose, being would you like to come on this show and chat about something different? We just felt that wasn't our place and we didn't feel comfortable and we were exhausted and we just said, “Thank you very much.” We turned the last things down and we said, that will be us. Then, because of these messages that we've had, the few people that cuts you, many of whom are still messaging now, we didn't want to completely shut off. Because I got one message from someone who'd been at their father's funeral that day. He said not, “I came home when I watched this.” It felt like, if we could keep a window open, I suppose and at that point, we just set up this YouTube channel. We didn't tell anybody about it. We just put it up, and we put the One Day More song on it. And a couple of other songs that we've done previously. We did one right at the beginning of the pandemic, a version of the Rapunzel song, Tangled song, and a couple that we'd done before any of this happened. We just left it at that. What was nice was because there weren't many people, subscribers, I don't think we've ever said like and subscribe, but we had very few people apart from those small number who found us, we could then just keep going in a quite quiet and down play way. We just kept using it as our therapy. Each time we put out a little song, maybe a few more people watched it, or shared it and it built quite slowly from there. Over the first summer, we did a few more songs. As with most of the things we do, they weren't necessarily – we weren't thinking, what other thing can we say about the pandemic? We were talking about a lot of things that were going on in our lives, and that we were talking about with the kids. I think we did some, yeah, Black Lives Matter was a big thing at that point in time. Then we did one about going back to school or not going back to school. It just built very slowly, until we got to, I don’t know, the Christmas of the first year and the Hallelujah song happened, and I have the new job happened. Yeah, basically after that, it increased incrementally, I suppose, but it was not something that we were seeking. [00:14:18] PF: Right. You were providing a service, an emotional service for so many people. The first time I heard Totally Fixed Where We Are, I lost my mind. I'm like, that is the most brilliant parody. I'm such a huge fan of parody. I was like, “Oh, my gosh. That just killed it.” I probably listened to it five times back-to-back that first time, and it was just amazing to me. That one really went viral. That one, I saw everywhere. Did that kick things back up for you? [00:14:51] BM: Yeah, it picked up again, I think in January 2021 with have the new job. But with a song which is about vaccination, a real urgency in the UK and lots of concern, like there has been all over the world. Obviously, vaccines are a complicated subject matter. People have very strong feelings one way or the other. This was at the point of a big second wave in the UK and really, the only outlet for us is sadly, the death toll was really driving up. Once again, we were back in full lockdown with these new vaccines. We chose to present a pro-vaccination song that hopefully, had some humor in it, but it was part of this bigger idea that has grown with us, I think, over the course of the pandemic, which is that we are connected to people that we didn't realize. People in America who aren't just early American – my early American historian, peeps and friends on my network, but people in New Zealand and people in Finland and reaching out. Suddenly, there was there was an odd sense that actually, we were going through the same thing because of the pandemic and we were in touch with them. Yeah, we tried to build, I think, on that sensibility and then totally fixed. I mean, we've always loved parodies. We've listened to, besides musicals, which we've talked about, and the other stuff that we've always laughed along with the kids, too. People like Weird Al Yankovic. There's that side of songs and humor. Really what happened with totally fix where we are is these two things came together and it's a power ballad that is so – I mean, it's so weird in the first place. It didn’t time alike. I think the original was 12 minutes long or something, the full version. We'd always loved this ridiculous video that was created at some point in the 80s, in a Gothic house. [00:16:33] PF: Yeah, the little shining eyes and otter flying around. [00:16:37] DM: Children of the Damned. As well as being an iconic song that everyone knew, it already felt one that you could take the mickey out of with it. Because it's so long and because the way the lyrics sit with it, I think it just offered itself up to a whole set of reflections about what it's been like to be stuck again in this second big lockdown. [00:16:57] DM: I think, the second time around, the first time, obviously, there's a rising panic. This has never happened before. What are we going to do? The second time around, there was a grim familiarity. We knew what this was going to be like. I mean, this time is winter and it's cold and there's nothing. It just felt a bit bleak, especially by the end of that January. When we did the song and we did record, I mean, I vividly remember saying, “Look, if we're going to do it, we'll have to do it now, because I've moved the sofa.” We just stood there. I think we knew. We did about two runs through. We did the second one and we knew it had gone – You can tell when they've worked, because we all feel a bit like, “Yeah, that was a good one.” We all look at each other, as if to say, “Did you make it?” “No, I didn't.” I think I made it. I think we're all alright. Then we walked away again and Ben did his magic by putting the video together. Again, and the thing about viral videos is that you lose control of them. They're not yours to just give out to whoever chooses to see them. Yeah, that one was a perfect example of that, because we were both working. I was working. It was a Thursday afternoon or something. I kept getting messages from people I haven’t spend with for a long time saying, “It's brilliant.” I was thinking, well, I can see on YouTube that it's had a lot of likes, but not that many. Obviously, somebody had taken it and it had gone wild, but it ended up in a format and a way that we couldn't keep hold of. It was a shock again, because people were saying, “It's been sent to me by someone from Australia.” We were thinking, what are you talking about? Then very shortly after that, we got a message from a Richard Curtis's team who organizes big charity over here, a Comic Relief, and they asked us if we would perform it on their show. Yeah, it went from being we're stuck in our house, what are we going to do to, oh, my goodness, we might actually have to do something outside of our house. [00:18:38] PF: You wore your pajamas for it. [00:18:40] DM: Oh, yeah. [00:18:41] PF: That was amazing. [00:18:43] DM: Yeah, they supplied the pajamas. Yes, that was slightly ironic. Yes. We finally get out and I'm still in slippers. I think, whenever the kids are asked now, because of course from Tess's point of view, so much of her life is being now taken up with all of the pandemic and everything else. If you ask them what their most amazing highpoints were, going on Comic Relief and doing that song was definitely up there. [00:19:04] PF: Once you did that, you did that performance with Comic Relief and you've done some other things that have changed the direction. You really used it to send some positive message you did something about prostate cancer. You were going to talk about your new song here in a minute. How did that change to like, we want to get these causes out there and we want to make people aware? [00:19:25] DM: I think, with all the stuff we've done, we've come at it from our own personal point of view. We had some lovely messages quite early on with people saying, “Would you write a song about?” We've generally shied away from that, because we didn't want to parachute in on somebody else's issue, or something else and start telling people how to deal with it, or talk about it. What we realized when we did have the new job song is that what we were able to do that a lot of people couldn't, was we were able to start conversations that people would sit around a table and say, “Have you ever had your prostate checked out? Or, why don't you want to have a vaccine? What do you think about it?” We cut through in a way that I suppose, when we're becoming more and more entrenched in our opinions and more and more polarized in our world, we could cut through in a way that a lot of other people couldn't. They might be incredibly angry and disagree entirely with what we were saying, but they would still say, “But the girls sang beautifully.” Or, “I really liked how you did that, but I don't agree.” I suppose, it challenged people in a slightly different way. Rather than being entirely defensive with a lot of their opinions. They might listen, maybe ask a question that they wouldn't have asked and certainly, the have the new job made us realize that obviously, you set yourself up for a lot more vitriol. People will also say, actually, I did ask that question, because I wasn't sure about that. When Prostate Cancer UK came to us, we’d spoken to them way early on, because we'd written a song where my dad got the all clear for prostate cancer, which we'd done well before the whole pandemic singing thing happened. We put that on the YouTube channel and they'd come to us, because they've seen it, prostatectomy song that we did for my dad's Christmas present, the year that he had a big operation. They said, “Would you would you do something for us?” Again, it was a personal thing for us. [00:21:08] BM: I think, it’s one of those where music consists of softened things and satire and parody can often sharpen things, and you get into a really interesting terrain, especially with science messaging, or science communication and health issues and health communication, because it's quite a different place to be thinking about the subject matter, or sharing the subject matter, or whether sharing personal experiences, or talking about much bigger issues. I felt, it's quite a rich area as well to stray into. As usual, with us, it's partly also just about teaching the kids about discussions about vaccination, or about cancer, or hormones, or whatever it may be. It's a great place to channel some of that thinking that's not confrontational. It feels at the moment, especially when you look at social media or something that everyone is drawing their little Venn diagrams of their people that they don't like taking a step beyond that. This is a way of ourselves doing it. Yeah, it felt like it's something that maybe other people don't do, because if you're a professional artist, if you make your living from entertainment, or whatever, then it suddenly becomes a lot more complicated what you're able to say and what you're not able to say. Because we're not, it's something that we can, yeah, we can do as long as we don't end up sounding massively preachy, or – [00:22:27] PF: Right. Yeah, because I had a great writing mentor who taught me that humor can open someone's heart, and then that gives you the doorway to put your messaging in. That's really what you guys did. You make us laugh and you also make us think. We're more welcoming of a different mindset, because of the humor. [00:22:47] DM: I think, we weren't trying to give a message and tell people that we knew best. We were simply saying, especially with this prostate cancer one, these are the people who you should talk to. If you haven't, if you're not sure, if you're worried, if you've put things off, if you haven't asked the question, then go here and get yourself checked. Ask the question, because you're important. It doesn't matter that everything else going on in the world, because this is something that you need to make a priority. I think, if we were trying to do it and tell people something because we want them to know it, because we have the answers, that would be, I suspect, a lot awful and a lot more preachy. Whereas, this was simply us saying, ask the questions, go look out for yourself. Yeah, coming at it, you found out an awful lot more about the prostate than you had ever known yourself. We are now of the age that those things are definitely things that you expect someone's going to tell you and then you realize, no one's actually going to come up and give you that lesson. Yeah, it was came from out in that instance being asked to do it. Then our experiences and everything else and being able to talk about my dad and he’s a medic and he was still nearly too late. He put things aside and didn't ask the questions when he should've done. Yeah, there's a lot of things we've done that have been lovely, because people have felt they were important to them. This felt like it was important and that was a definite incentive to do it. [00:24:13] PF: That's fantastic. You have a new song, which hits very close to home for me, I must say. Tell us about that. [00:24:22] DM: Yeah. Just before the first lockdown, I was diagnosed with a form of rheumatoid arthritis, which I had known it was coming, because my dad had it. They put me on a form of medication that can be used in higher doses as a chemo drug. I was put on this new drug in January 2020. Immediately, it transpired, was then pushed into menopause, but didn't really know that was what was happening. Then the lockdown happened. All the way through that first two-week chaos and everything, I was thinking, I can feel right if there's something going on, this is all very peculiar. Yeah, as an undercurrent, everything else has gone in the past two years. I was told, “Yes, you are definitely menopausal. Yes, you've got this and you've got that and you're going to need start this and that.” We thought, yeah, you either just get on and pretend it's not happening. You say to the kids, “Look, I'm not going to cope as well with life today, as I might have done previously. This is why.” It felt like we don't do that enough. I suppose, having done that, the prostate cancer thing, we were talking at Christmas, you and the boys had come up with a great riff that you'd been playing through, just having to go out and you said, “Look at this song. What's going on in our world?” [00:25:31] BM: Yeah. This was one with the music, because this is one we write ourselves, the music and it came together separately from the concept and the lyrics. Then, once we felt that it fitted, actually a song about the menopause, you imagine, needs to be a certain way. Actually, there are lots of great parodies about menopause. There’s a musical about menopause. It's usually, there's a certain style. In our case, we wanted to have something that was able to be uplifting and actually, that you could dance to, because it felt counterintuitive that this is not something you're supposed to – this is supposed to be a tragic, traumatic moment, the change, where all the great things about youth and sexuality and stuff is being transformed. We didn't want to cast it in that light and just poke fun at it. It was a really interesting one to write, because striking the balance, I mean, usually I come up with some lyrics typically in the bath, and I put them in front of the family and people go, “I don't want to sing that. I'm not going to sing that. That should be theirs.” In this case, because the subject matter, obviously, Danielle had complete veto over what she wanted, what could go in and what couldn’t go in. When we first talked about it, I'd never heard of this word perimenopause. I've written a book on gender history, and it was not on my radar at all that there was a thing called perimenopause. It was part of my education and our education and the kids. We thought, well, why not turn that into an uplifting song, a song that you can dance to? [00:26:56] DM: Yeah. I think even though a lot of my friends are a little bit older than me, none of us really knew very much about what was going on. It was just, I think we all assumed that at some point, you would just wake up and go, “Oh, now I need to go.” Someone will inform. No, it’s all this – I mean, I almost feel grateful that might happened so swiftly that I wasn't in that – Is it? Am I not? Am I going slightly? Is it, am I down? There was no question about me. The number of my friends who’ve come to me and gone, “So you did what? You're taking what? How does that work? How do you feel?” You realize that, again, there is no fount of knowledge that you suddenly get introduced to when you hit 49, or 50, or 50. Everybody thinks it's older than they are. Everyone's surprised, I think, when it happens to them. Yeah, why should it be taboo? Why shouldn't we talk about it? Why should we just say under our breath, “Mommy's a little bit delicate,” and just expect wake up when we're through this messy stage and be okay again. It was like, no, actually, it's not all negative. There are moments where I'm not going to like things that are happening, but I don't want my daughters who aren't quite in the first phase of this to look and say, “Oh, remember that time when mommy just lost it?” Everything dreadful happens when you hit your 40s. I wanted them to see it is a powerful move. It's not the end. It's just a new phase. Even if I'm not entirely convinced but myself, we can pretend until we actually believe it. [00:28:20] BM: Fake it till you make it. [00:28:20] DM: Absolutely. [00:28:21] PF: I think too, it's good for men to hear this. It's an excellent song, because I think as much as we as females don't know what is going on with us, oh, my God, I think about the men. They're like “Where's my wife? Where did she go? Because this is a different person.” [00:28:38] DM: Somebody said that. Somebody said, “Oh, I don't think this is appropriate for boys and men to hear.” I was like, “Well, they've all got mothers. They've all got wives.” Maybe not this particular individual who said it. But actually, this is what demystifies a topic. This is what makes everybody feel comfortable to ask questions, because it is different for everybody. There isn't a set start and a set end and a one size fits all type of medication. Some people don't need anything. Some people need lots of different types that they have to try out. The whole point is that we should – it happens to the half the population, so why are we not able to talk about it? Yeah. Why should the kids not know about it now? Why do we take them aside at some point in a hushed voice, say something is going to happen one day and you'll know when it does. No. [00:29:22] PF: You won't understand it. [00:29:23] DM: You won't understand it, and you'll think it's only you and you'll keep leaving rooms and overheating and feeling like you need to apologize for yourself. No, we should be much more comfortable in talking about it before it happens and after it happens and during it. Yeah, the song – [00:29:37] BM: It’s a weird one for us, because we're at the point – because the ages of the kids as well. There's a lot of hormones just flying around the house. I generally have a morning, or have an afternoon. It's made it possible for them, I think, and for us in a way to see this journey that each of us is on. They're hitting spots and puberty at the moment. Then, we're in different phases where things are going wrong and going gray and moving to new terrains. It humanizes everything. I think, we need that in a much bigger way across our societies to do with the workplace and women in their 40s and early 50s. You look at questions of retention, promotion, the glass ceiling and all sorts of other ways, people leaving remunerative work, or switching career tracks. There's a lot for us to get our heads around in a much bigger way about this, but it has to start with, yeah, with those smaller looks and conversations and sometimes escaping the room when it's the right moment for everyone to say through. [00:30:36] DM: Yeah, absolutely. [00:30:37] PF: What are you going to do next? Do you have more parity planned? Are you going to do some more things, like you've done with the biological clock song, or what's your future landscape looking like? [00:30:45] BM: What we'd love to do is be able to grow slightly what we're doing and do some more original songs potentially. Luckily, we've got an incredible support base through a cycle patron of people that can support us each month. We're learning and developing ourselves for now. If in three or four years’ time, there's something that we're doing that's still of interest to lots of people and the kids are old enough to think of it as something that they really want to do as a career, not just something that they're doing on top of other stuff, then we can be in a position to grab those opportunities. In the meantime, we're happy carrying on doing what we're doing. [00:31:19] DM: Yeah, we'll keep going as we are for a while and see where we end up, I suppose. [00:31:22] PF: That is terrific. You have certainly kept us entertained and we so look forward to what's coming. Thank you for sitting down and talking with me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed this conversation and I know that our listeners will too. [00:31:35] DM: Oh, you're very welcome. Lovely to chat with you. [00:31:36] BM: Lovely to speak. Yeah. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:31:38] PF: That was Ben and Danielle Marsh, talking about how their family is using music and humor to bring people together. If you'd like to learn more about the Marsh family, subscribe to their YouTube channel, or follow them on social media. Just visit livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of On a Positive Note and look forward to joining you again next month. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Mental Health Awareness with the Live Happy Crew  [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 363 of Live Happy Now. May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Here at Live Happy, we realize that happiness and good mental health go hand in hand. So we've brought the whole crew together to talk about it. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and throughout the month of May, we're going to focus on tools for better mental health. But to kick it off, our team sat down for a conversation about how the past couple of years have affected each of us and some of the ways that we've coped. Joining me for this special episode, our Live Happy CEO and Co-Founder Deborah Heisz, E-commerce Marketing Manager, Casey Johnson, Web Editor, Chris Libby, Senior Marketing Manager, Britney Chan, and Senior Marketing Specialist, Shane Lee. I hope you enjoy this candid conversation, and be sure to stay tuned until the end of this podcast when we'll tell you about a special deal in a Live Happy store exclusively for listeners. [EPISODE] [00:01:01] PF: You guys, thank you everyone for coming and joining us for this special episode of Live Happy Now. [00:01:08] BC: Thank you for having us. [00:01:10] PF: It's always fun to talk with everybody, the whole gang. We don't get to get together in person, but sometimes we can Zoom it. I know you guys see each other a lot more than I get to see you. But this was a really special talk that we wanted to have because Deb felt really strongly about Mental Health Awareness Month and us doing something on it. So that's how I'd love to start. Deb, why was it so important for you to make sure that we covered this because we're doing – Our entire month is dedicated to mental health awareness. [00:01:38] DH: Well, I mean, obviously, mental health ties into happiness. I mean, if you're not healthy, either physically or mentally, it's really going to impede and impact your happiness. As you know, for us, happiness isn't really about the emotion happiness. It's about, living a positive life, having a positive assessment of how you're doing in life. Really, it is different than the podcast name. Live Happy doesn't just mean, “Hey, let's go out and  have ice cream and ride roller coasters and  run free through fields of green and meadows.” It's not really what we're about. We really are about that positive emotion part of positive well-being. It really is – Happiness is a high perceived sense of wellbeing. What we know is the pandemic has impacted people's perception of their well-being in significant ways. In fact, Jason Dorsey, who does a lot of research on the difference between generations – I forget what the name of this company is, but he’s a phenomenal speaker. He does just a great job of identifying how boomers are different from Gen Xers and Xers are different from millennials. The millennials are different from Generation Z, but they did some research projects on Generation Z that shows that that group that is at most 25.6, 27, and at least 10, 11, or 12, that group has more mental health issues than any other group, any other generation has. A lot of it has to do with what they've missed out because of the pandemic. They've missed graduation. They've missed prom. They've missed going to college. They've missed being in class with their peers. They've missed all of those social things that we depend on. We talked so much on this podcast about how relationships are essential to your mental health and to your happiness. All of that got taken away from a lot of people over the last two years. So I think it's really important that we spend a little time talking about it at Live Happy and on the podcast. [00:03:32] PF: Yeah, for children too below. Let’s think younger than those teenagers and young adults. I had read something about how the level of anxiety in children and also the fact that they've been wearing masks. They didn't get a lot of that interaction. We gain so much interaction from our smiles and our emotions that we convey in our face, and those have been hidden. So there was something I just read yesterday that was talking about the need for that for us to really address it with our children and start looking for the good in the world because the last two years have been really traumatizing for them. [00:04:06] DH: Well, I mean, there's a lot of social anxiety. I mean, I read an article. There's a lot of social anxiety in the under-five set. Typically, my three children, it was always play dates, getting together with kids, going to daycare, whatever you could do to get them entertained. But, no, kidding. But a lot of it was also learning how to socialize with other children and other adults, and a lot of kids just haven't even been exposed to that. I mean, they've truly been with their own families on a daily basis. Or even you get into first, second, and third grade. Can you imagine going into kindergarten on Zoom and having that be your first experience? Or not getting to graduate? The other extent of that, not getting to graduate or start college in person. I mean, there's so much social development that goes on, and it's really impacted mental health from Generation Z. I'm sure Jason hasn't studied the generation after that, whatever they're going to be called. But I'm positive it's had just as much impact there, and that's not even talking about those of us who are used to getting our socialization from our workplace or getting our away time by going to the movies or going out to eat at restaurants. Just how much it's substantially changed who we are and how we live. Even though many of us, particularly in Texas, were back to relative normal, but the relative normal is key. But that still doesn't mean those two years didn't impact our mental health in ways that we may not quite know or know yet. It certainly impacted the health of our children. One of the interesting facts that Jason was saying was Generation Xers – I’m a Gen X. I'm old, yeah. Our big social defining impact is like the challenger explosion, right? Millennials, for the most part, it's 9/11. Those things are ancient history to Gen Z. Their definition, their defining point of their childhood, bring them together as a generation, is COVID. [00:05:58] PF: Wow. Yeah. To your point, we're still dealing with the fallout from it. It’s not completely gone, and it gets frightening for people when the media starts talking about, “Better expect another surge. We better –” They’re kind of like preparing us for that, and I hear those conversations. I hear people already being anxious for what's to come, instead of being able to just be like, “Okay, let's kind of take a breath and be in this moment.” It's like we're not being given that chance. [00:06:25] DH: The media is certainly very good at understanding that what scares us is something we'll watch or pay to read, so they invest a lot of time and energy in that. We've talked about this before, but a big part of mental health is what you allow to have mind space. What do you put in your brain? So if you're reading those negative news reports, I'm not saying we don't need to know about what's going on in Ukraine. I'm not saying we don't need to be informed about what's going on in the pandemic. But it can be overwhelming with a 24-hour news cycle, and you get 18 different emails with different headline news's. Or you click on the app on your phone, or you turn on the television, or you turn on the radio. If you allow that to be the only thing that's entering your brain, it's going to be very hard to keep a positive mental outlook on the world. [00:07:14] PF: Absolutely. That brings me to a question. I'd love to hear what everyone on the team kind of what has been their go to to manage the stress that we've all felt in the last couple of years and how you keep your mental health balanced. I guess the easiest way to do it is alphabetically because that way we're not showing favorites. So I'm going to ask Britney, Britney Chan. What was your kind of go-to solution? [00:07:37] BC: My go-to solution during the pandemic was, obviously, to just try my best to stay as connected as possible, even being at home. So I practice a lot of video chatting, FaceTiming, Zooming with my friends and family. It really almost became like a daily activity for me and something I really look forward to. I know there's always this talk about tech and digital, and it's all over the place, and it's taking over our lives. But in this instance, it really did the opposite. It made me feel more connected, and I was able to see my sister and watch my niece and nephew play. I mean, there would be times where we would just stay on the phone. We wouldn't even talk to each other. We would just be there and be able to see what's going on. So, yeah, video chatting had a really positive effect on my mood during that time. Also, Deb, you just touched on it just a second ago about choosing to put what's in your mind. Like for me, I really made a conscious decision to not overwhelm myself with information about the pandemic or just the news in general because there's not a lot of good news out there. It seems to be very negative lately. So I read enough to stay informed. I read enough to make sure I'm following protocol and doing the right things and all that stuff. But other than that, I stayed away from the information overload when it came to the news or even social media about the pandemic. I would kind of just like scroll past it. So those are the things I really did to help my mental health during that time. [00:09:20] PF: That's really smart, and it's difficult for a lot of people because we know social media is designed to be addictive. So you end up doing that zombie scroll, and it's like, “Oh, my god.” First of all, you're having a panic attack by the time that you're done. It just – You feel horrible. That's a terrific way to do it to kind of curate what you're going to let – [00:09:39] BC: Yeah. That's a good word for it. I was self-curating what I was putting into my mind. [00:09:44] PF: That's very cool. Casey, how about you? Because I feel like of anyone, you and I probably talked the most about all of this and what was going on. We talk about podcast episodes, things like that. So what were some of the things that you were doing? Because you always maintained such a great upbeat attitude throughout the whole whatever we were dealing with. [00:10:07] CJ: Well, thank you for saying that. I certainly didn't feel that way on the inside, sometimes. But, yeah, I mean, just to kind of echo Britney, I'm kind of in the same situation as she is. My sister has two kids. They're young. So I was very grateful that we were able to video chat, and I was able to see them that way. I did find myself being glued to the news and zombie scrolling, like we were talking about. So I kind of had to check myself. I would limit my screen time. I stopped checking my phone first thing in the morning. I even started sleeping with it in the other room, which helped me sleep better. I brought my screen time down, which helped with my anxiety. I even started – I found this like YouTube video. It was like a 10-minute like yoga meditation and it's really hard for me to like sit still for long periods of time. So meditation has always been kind of a challenge for me. But just starting my day off like that, me not looking at my phone. Getting in touch with like my mind and body really just helped me maintain my sanity throughout that whole thing we experienced – [00:11:03] PF: Whatever it was. We don't even know what to call it. [00:11:06] CS: Yeah. I’m like blocking out but yeah. [00:11:08] PF: Thing. That’s really good, and it worked. Because, again, you were always like you've always been very positive and able to like see the good in whatever we had going on. So that's been super cool and super fun to work with on you. I'm really interested to hear Chris and then Deb because they have a slightly different perspective because not only were they dealing with their own situation, but they're both parents. That just adds another layer of complexity. So, Chris, what about you? You've got two little girls. How were you working this in your house? [00:11:39] CL: Yes, I do. That easily takes up a lot of time to where you don't have a lot of time to really think about it. But I will say, continuing what Deb was saying earlier, that the pandemic came out, and it changed all of our social behaviors. It created – There were some unintended consequences, although we were able to still keep things moving, working at home, and stuff like that. The unintended consequence was loneliness just skyrocketed. Even if you have a family, you can still find yourself in those times of loneliness. When the kids and everybody else went back, and I was still at home, then everything got quiet. Then you're just working all day. Then that's when it really sets in. You're not talking to anybody. You're not talking to your friends as much, just because of what we've been through the past couple of years. So, of course, pets always are a great option. If you're a pet owner, that's going to reduce your stress. It takes your mind off of things. It keeps you physically active. There's a new report that came out from Penn State actually on this loneliness kind of epidemic that we're in and what you can do to combat that, even if you are at home alone. That is choosing activities that get you into a flow state. Now, we at Live Happy are familiar with what the flow state is. One of the pioneers of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I think I said that right, he kind of introduced that theory. But it's basically when you're engaged in these tasks that kind of where time just kind of goes away, they're meaningful, challenging activities during your free time that it can reduce your loneliness and increase just momentary moments of happiness, but at least it's still happiness. Those are just any activity that you have a reasonably good skill, and it's not too complicated because then you'll lose interest. You just kind of submerge yourself in these activities like playing music, listening to music, even playing video games, different types of sports, writing, reading, painting. Just those kinds of leisurely activities that really take your mind out of it. I live next to a park. I'm fortunate enough to I'm able to go outside and kind of take walks in the park and kind of lose myself in that way or shoot baskets, which is a really enjoyable activity for me. Because you kind of immerse yourself and just play scenarios in your head and think that you are the greatest basketball player ever. [00:14:03] PF: Are you saying you're not? [00:14:04] CL: No, not really. Far from it. But when I'm out there, I am. So that's the good thing. Those are the kinds of things that can alleviate those feelings of loneliness and those feelings of anxiety and even depression. [00:14:18] PF: Yeah. Reframing that's really important. We have a podcast episode coming up, I believe, in June with Eric Barker. He had done some research found that loneliness – Like people who are lonely actually spent the same amount of time with other people, as people who are not lonely. But it's really your mental state. So that's really interesting. The things that you're talking about are great, like being able to employ some of those techniques, so you do feel less lonely. I think that's a great way to handle it. Deb, you were running a company remotely, a couple of companies. You also then have three active children. So how are you keeping all that balanced? Because, obviously, your kids were at home. You were at home. Everything changed for you. How did you keep that going? [00:15:05] DH: Well, first of all, I have to talk about the fact that there were some positive aspects of the pandemic for me, which sounds horrible and people – The pandemic wasn't positive. But because I couldn't travel, and I've been traveling a tremendous amount for the past, I don't know, 25 years of my life, to suddenly be in the same time zone for a long period of time, I got rest for the first time in what I think is forever. So for me, I think it's not just what changed that was difficult. It's also what changed that’s positive. I don't ever want to go back to living the way I lived before, where I was basically  in four time zones, and I'm talking about hours away time zones in a month, and it makes it a bit crazy. You don't realize what you're missing out on. It's like I'd spend time with the kids. I've always been very engaged when I'm with them. But hitting that, I feel more awake than I felt for 20 years before that. I didn't realize it. So there was a positive aspect for me. Of course, there also is that tiny aspect which changed for me. It used to be because I made specific time to be with my children, being engaged with them while they were there was something that was easy to do. Well, suddenly, they're there all the time. I'm there all the time. I have other things I need to do. Setting boundaries became an exercise. I don't want to say in futility, but it was certainly an exercise that took some time to get established. When I truly am on the phone, I truly am working. I cannot open up your Gatorade for you right now. Things that just changed. For the kids, it was far more difficult than it was for me. Initially, those first couple months, we did a lot of puzzles. We took a lot of walks. We have dogs. Our golf course never completely shut down, so we go hit a few balls. I mean, they were closed, but they let you play. It was a weird situation. So we always had things to do, but it was very different for the kids. The kids, when school started in the fall, it certainly was very frustrating for them. We had in-person school starting in the fall of 2021, so our kids have never been not allowed to go to school. But to suddenly have masks, that social distancing, and all of that stuff, it was remarkable to me how quickly they adapted. [00:17:17] PF: Can I ask you, how did you talk with your children about this too? Because you, of all people then in the positive psychology space, doing what you do, you're aware of what fear does, what mental impact this would have on them. So how did you talk with your children about what was going on to keep them from – I mean, I know kids that are just terrified. They're terrified of breathing other people's air. They've been very indoctrinated with fear. So how did you explain this to your kids? [00:17:45] DH: Well, first of all, I think it helps that we're not by nature a fearful family. We are well traveled and somewhat adventurous from whitewater rafting, to hiking off the grid. We're not – My children have a certain element of self-sufficiency and self-reliance already built in, just from who we are as people to begin with. So I think that helped. But the second thing was you can't overemphasize enough that the likelihood of something bad happening is very small, and you can't dwell on something that might happen. We did talk a little bit about driving a car. You have likelihoods of car wrecks. There's fuel. You fly in a plane. But these things don't happen commonly. So we all get sick. We've all been sick. We've all had the flu. We've all had corona virus. We've all had – It’s possible we may get this. But for the most part, we need to make sure that we're doing the hygiene things we need to do and try not to get it because nobody wants to be sick. Or if somebody does get sick, no, it's going to happen. It's okay. You have to tell people it’s okay. We don't know if it's going to be okay. But they’re kids, right? You don’t want to say, “Be careful not hug grandma. She's going to die.” I mean, don’t you think that’s too much? We have to be really careful and put things in perspective. [00:19:01] PF: I'd like to learn what Shane did when he was during – Shane is our quiet one, always. So I'm really interested to hear from him and find out what were you doing with the pandemic? [00:19:12] SL: Yeah. It was an interesting time. I will say all of the things that y'all spoke of I employed in my life. Like Deb was mentioning, just a feeling of being alone like the first year of this. I was essentially living in a one-bedroom apartment by myself. My family, they don't live in Dallas. They live at least four hours away. So really, I just had myself and just people I had I could connect with to my phone. But still, I was pretty lonely. Even though my living situation has shifted since then, it's still a lot of notes of loneliness. But it's okay because through that I've strengthened that feeling of being able to do things for myself. Chris mentioned this earlier but going through these first days. There’s a hobby I started doing, skateboarding, and I've been doing that for about a year now. It's like a big part of my identity, but there's always a new goal with that. I've learned with perseverance and patience. So that's a fun activity I love to do, and I’m excited to do it right after this call. In addition to that, I also just love just going on walks outside, just feeling the warmth to sunlight on your skin. Photosynthesis is really hype. Plants, they really get it. But I would say another thing is just I've really adopted this mindset of just living more in the present, less worrying about the past, or not anticipating the future, but really just valuing the time I spend with the people I talk with in this moment. So for example, time spent with y'all today is always time well spent. So I'm happy to just be talking with you all. On top of all of that, I try to unplug as much as possible. If I didn't have to use it for work, I probably wouldn't be on social media. But I don't feel a need to like post my life on social media because I’m a firm believer in the right people know what I'm doing. Like Casey said too, I've also employed some time limits on my social apps. So really, I don't spend that much time on social media or my phone in general. Yeah. [00:21:23] PF: That's excellent. Yeah. I think we all – [00:21:25] BC: We’re comparing our screen times last week. [00:21:29] PF: How did that go? [00:21:31] SL: I did poorly. I lost. [00:21:34] BC: I worked really hard to get my screen time down to where it is. [00:21:37] SL: Yeah. Not all weeks are winners, but at least I'm mindful of it, at least. [00:21:42] BC: Yeah. [00:21:44] PF: I think we all had such a great advantage because of what we do and where we're working because we have all these tools. Like every week, we're talking to someone who is giving us a new tool, and we have this whole background. We've all been at the company for a while, so we have this pretty good backlog of mental resources of how we can handle some of these things. Like we didn't know we were preparing for what we've had, but I think it was really helpful. One thing that I did was when the pandemic hit, I was living in an apartment downtown Nashville. I loved it, going to concerts all the time. Then it was like, “Wow, I'm stuck in a box,” and I moved out into the country, a huge difference in a lot of ways. But being in nature every day has just been absolutely life-changing. Again, that's something we really learned from Live Happy and the stories that we've written about how much it affects us. I see it. I see it with my animals. I see it with myself. So I do feel like Live Happy has been such a gift for us. I hope other people have gotten as much from it as we have because I think it really helped us have the tools to get through the pandemic more easily. It's been so great to talk to you guys. I love when we get together and do this. We'll do it again soon. One of the things that we know is really good for your mental health is laughter. So that's why I'm sure Chris Libby has a fantastic dad joke locked and loaded. [00:23:03] CJ: I’ve been waiting for this moment. [00:23:04] PF: Ready to roll. [00:23:05] BC: I know. I’m ready. [00:23:08] CL: I don’t know. Did you guys happen to hear that in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month that the United Kingdom is going to officially change their name? [00:23:17] PF: To? [00:23:17] BC: To what? [00:23:19] SL: It’s no longer going to be referred to as the UK. Now, it will be referred to as You Okay. [00:23:26] DH: All right. [00:23:27] PF: That’s why we asked you to join us. [00:23:29] BC: Round of applause. Way to go. [00:23:32] SL: Listeners, the scenario was, that was a solid joke. I just want you all to know. My eyes rolled so hard. [00:23:40] PF: Perfect. Well, thank you all. I appreciate you guys giving me your time today and sharing with our listeners everything that – Not everything you've learned but so much that you've learned and how we can get through this together. [00:23:52] DH: Thanks, Paula. It was awesome as you were. [00:23:53] BC: Thank you for having us. [00:23:55] CJ: Thank you. [00:23:55] CL: Thank you. [END OF EPISODE] [00:24:02] PF: That was the Live Happy crew, talking about mental health. If you'd like to learn more, visit our website at livehappy.com. Click on the podcast tab for some great stories and resources. While you're on our site, you can get 20% off anything and everything in the Live Happy store just by using the code SELF-LOVE 20. That's SELF-LOVE 20. 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: Overcoming Toxic Positivity With Whitney Goodman [INTRODUCTION]   [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 348 of Live Happy Now. We all know that positivity is good for us, except when it isn't. And today's guest is going to teach us how to tell the difference. I'm your host, Paula Felps. And this week, I'm joined by Whitney Goodman, the radically honest psychotherapist and founder of the Collaborative Counseling Center in Miami. Whitney is the author of the new book, Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy. She's here to talk about what toxic positivity is, what it does to us, and how to manage it in ourselves and others. So let's find out what she has to say. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:40] PF: Whitney, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:42] WG: Thank you so much for having me. [00:00:44] PF: Well, this is a terrific topic for us, because it's something we're starting to hear a lot about. And it can be confusing because of course, we always think of positivity as being a good thing. I mean we are Live Happy. So of course, we love positivity. But your book gives so much great insight into toxic positivity. And to kick off the conversation, can you explain to us what toxic positivity is, and then tell us how it's different from healthy positivity? [00:01:15] WG: So toxic positivity denies an emotion and tells us that we should suppress it. And when we use toxic positivity, we're basically telling ourselves and other people that this emotion shouldn't exist, it's wrong. And that we can try really hard to eliminate it entirely. And I really look at toxic positivity as being the unrelenting pressure to be happy all the time no matter what the circumstances are. And when we compare that to healthy positivity, healthy positivity is when we're able to make space for reality and hope, right? So we can recognize the value of seeing the good, but allow people to arrive there at their own pace and to reach their own conclusions rather than sort of like pushing this on them. [00:02:05] PF: And you had your own journey with toxic positivity, which you described very well in your book. Well, when did you start see it becoming more prevalent in other people? [00:02:16] WG: So I think I didn't really realize what it was when I was experiencing it. Especially as women, I think we're used to being told like to smile and to be happy. And there's definitely a pressure to appear a certain way. And after I became a therapist, though, I noticed that a lot of my clients were complaining about this behind closed doors, but they felt like a very similar pressure to show up in the outside world. And I was like, “Wow, I'm not the only one that feels like this. Everybody else is kind of feeling like this is a little bit uncomfortable.” [00:02:50] PF: What do you think is driving that right now? Because I have a friend who's a therapist, and she said she has seen it so much in her practice. And I'm just seeing little things pop up about it here and there. So what's going on with making us aware of it and what's pushing it forward? [00:03:08] WG: I had an article that popped up on my phone today that said like, “10 ways to be happy during the pandemic.” And I was like, “Wow, what an ironic title.” And I think that really speaks to this whole thing that's going on that you're talking about. That we're under so much stress, especially over the last couple of years that it sort of feels like you have to be happy. Keep it all together so that you can keep working so that people won't be upset with you, so that you can be seen as like a good person. And it's becoming so overwhelming for people. I think everyone's really hitting their breaking point of like, “I just can't pretend anymore. It's too heavy.” [00:03:50] PF: And there's got to be some harm involved in faking it. We have all heard the whole thing about fake it till you make it. But there's also a real harm in suppressing or denying those emotions. Can you tell us what it's doing to us? Because you're seeing it in your office every day. [00:04:07] WG: Yeah, absolutely. And I talk about this a lot in the book that suppressing emotions does not work. They typically just intensify when we suppress them. And we see this reflected in the research that if I tell myself, “I can't be angry. I need to get rid of this feeling. I'm going to cover it up.” It just ends up coming out in another way and usually 10 times worse. And sometimes we're not aware of how that is happening. The other thing that happens is that it really makes our relationships very difficult, because if I don't feel comfortable sharing, then neither does anybody else. And we can't connect over a lot of these shared difficult experiences, which is really what makes relationships feel closer. And we end up feeling like alone and isolated in the end and often very like weird or messed up because we're having feelings that we don't see other people experiencing. [00:05:04] PF: And as you mentioned, the pandemic really did exacerbate things. And is part of that because people were at home. They're not feeling great. But then when they get on a zoom call, or they're talking to somebody, it's like, “Yeah, it's all good.” And they don't even have that one on one interaction that someone else can read that things aren't the way that they're saying they are. [00:05:26] WG: Exactly. And with the pandemic, I think one of the ways people coped was by trying to pretend that everything was normal. And this is denial. It's a coping skill, right? And especially a lot of like bosses and leaders that I heard from my own clients, like they were almost demanding that their workforce show up with a positive attitude, because it was too heavy for them to deal with the reality of what was actually going on. And we see this a lot, especially at work. [00:05:59] PF: Yeah, so let's address the leadership aspect of this for a minute. And then I want to talk about it from a parenting standpoint as well. But as a leader, what can you do to make sure that you're not forcing positivity upon your people, and that you're really hearing what they need? [00:06:15] WG: There's a lot of ways that I think we can deal with disruption, with people being upset in the workplace, complaints, things like that, that are really effective. So just showing genuine like interest in your employees’ lives is really important. Asking questions. Showing that you care about them more than just what they can provide for you. And showing empathy. There's a there's a lot of studies that show that people really recall when their boss has been sympathetic versus unsympathetic. And also, really emphasizing the meaningfulness and the importance of the work, people tend to perform better and feel better when there is some type of value within the work. And also just treating people with respect, trust, integrity, all of these really normal human things that I think sometimes get pushed to the wayside in favor of like productivity or numbers. [00:07:10] PF: And did that become more difficult for bosses during the time when you've got a lot – You've got remote workers now, and you're not doing that one on one interaction. So is it easier for them to kind of not see them as a human, but see them as a performance machine? [00:07:26] WG: Sure. And we have to remember that the bosses are also dealing with all the same things as their employees during this time. And I know, I felt that as a therapist, it was this weird moment of like I'm living through the same problem as my clients. And a boss might feel that with their employees that it's like they're under so much pressure as well. That it's hard to always be on. And I think the more humanity we show and feel like, “You know what? I'm scared. I'm dealing with this too,” the easier it is to connect. [00:07:57] PF: And so what about parents, because their kids might be going through the same thing. Or they might even unknowingly or unconsciously be promoting toxic positivity by saying, “Just cheer up. It'll be fine.” So how is it different when we're dealing with our children and helping them get through this? [00:08:14] WG: Yeah, there's such a cultural expectation of like, “I just want my kid to be happy,” right? Or all I care about is your happiness. And so we start instilling this in kids from a young age, and it makes sense. Like happy kids are easy kids. And so parents, I think, have to be careful to not overvalue one emotion, like happiness, and try to encourage kids to show a wide array of emotions and model those emotions themselves, because they all have value and meaning. If we felt happy all the time, we would get nothing done. And it really wouldn't be that great of a life, to be honest. [00:08:55] PF: What are some of the signs that we can see in ourselves that we might be falling into that toxic positivity trap. [00:09:02] WG: So some of the biggest examples are when you are trying to talk yourself out of feeling something, being upset about something. That's legitimate. And some examples of this would be like I shouldn't be over this by now. Or I should be happy. I should be grateful. I know I shouldn't complain about this. But it's like adding these caveats before we talk about something that is upsetting us, or that is a legitimate issue in our lives. [00:09:30] PF: So what should we be doing instead? [00:09:33] WG: So instead, I recommend that people try to really get to the root of what's going on and validate their emotions and also figure out what they need. So I talked about this in the book that we need to figure out if we need like validation or a kick in the butt, right? And sometimes we can over validate ourselves and get stuck. And then on the other end of the spectrum, we aren't giving ourselves any validation. We're just using toxic positivity and we don't get anywhere. So I recommend that people look at like, “Okay, what am I feeling? Where might this be coming from? Is there something that I need right now?” And that might mean more encouragement? It also might mean more rest? And that's going to differ depending on the situation. [00:10:18] PF: And how do we work through that? Do you suggest like they journal it? Or how do we unpack what we're actually feeling as opposed to what we should be feeling, or what we think we should be feeling? [00:10:30] WG: So whatever you're feeling, it’s just a response to either like incoming stimuli or something you've been more comfortable feeling. So I want people to kind of approach their feelings with just like a neutral view, right? There's not anything like good or bad. Then you can start to figure out like what is this like in my body? How do I experience this emotion? Then kind of look at where might this be coming from? And that requires us to take inventory of our day. And sometimes it's that we had an interaction with someone that set us off. It could also just be that like, “you didn't sleep well, last night, and you need to drink more water.” So trying to help people get in touch with like what do emotions feel like for them? How do they typically label them? And what are those emotions telling them? [00:11:23] PF: So it definitely just takes a little bit of getting still with yourself and really going inward, which a lot of people don't want to do right now. [00:11:30] WG: Exactly. And I don't blame them. It's really uncomfortable. It's hard. [00:11:36] PF: Yeah, yeah, it is a lot of hard work. And because we've been through so much, like as you noted in the last couple of years, I think there's a lot that we just were like, “Ugh! I am –” It's like that closet door that it's like you've put all your junk in and it's like everything's just going to come falling out and make a big mess. So I don’t want to do it. [00:11:53] WG: Exactly. And sometimes we do have to go into survival mode. There were points of the pandemic where I was advising people to do that. And it's not a time to unpack like your deepest traumas and emotions when you're in the middle of a crisis. It can be too much. But we also don't have to use toxic positivity to get through that. It's okay to say like, “I'm just surviving right now. I need to get through this. And I'm going to deal with whatever I'm feeling when I have the time and the space to do that.” [00:12:25] PF: Yeah, that's excellent advice. And obviously, sometimes, it's not just us. Like we can accept that for ourselves and say, “Alright, I am just going to do my bare minimum, and make it through this.” So what about when the people we're talking to are the ones with the toxic positivity? And first, you give some excellent examples of phrasing and responses that we might not recognize as toxic positivity. Can you talk about that? Some of the keywords, if you will, that are toxic responses, versus what we really need to hear? [00:13:00] WG: Yeah. So I think it's important to note that positivity becomes toxic when it's used with the wrong people at the wrong time and about the wrong topics. So some of these phrases can be okay in certain situations. But they become toxic when they're not helpful for those people. So some of them might be like, “Everything happens for a reason.” “You need to be positive to get through this.” Or “God will never give you more than you can handle,” can be a typical one for people, especially if they're not religious. So thinking about some of these phrases that we really hear very often, right? Or like, “Be grateful. It's not worse. At least it wasn't X.” We’re trying to put a positive spin on something that isn't positive. [00:13:49] PF: So how do you even respond when people do that? Because I know, I've been in those situations. And my response is usually just like stare at them with an open mouth. Like you did not just say that. After my father died, I came back from – I'd been off for about four days and went back to work. I was working at a newspaper at a time. And my lifestyle editor came up and said, “How was your time away?” And I said, “I was at my dad's funeral.” She goes, “Yeah, but it had to feel good to get out of the office.” [00:14:17] WG: Oh my gosh, yeah. [00:14:18] PF: And it's like, “No. That's not helping.” [00:14:21] WG: What a silver lining. Oh, my goodness. [00:14:24] PF: So how do people deal with when someone responds and it's not helping? [00:14:30] WG: I think it's important to decide what role this person plays in your life. So there have been times where people at like the grocery store say something like that to me, and I might be like, “Thanks,” and walk away. That's an option. If there are people that are close to you that you want to teach, I think it can be helpful to say, “I know you're really trying to help, and that is not a helpful thing to say.” Or to even respond and say, “Actually, it was really hard.” With your example, my dad passed away and it was a sad time even though I was out of the office. And really trying to like teach people what is helpful to you, especially those repeat offenders. You can say like, “When you say these things, it's not helpful. I would really appreciate if you could just listen to me or help me with dinner.” Giving people other suggestions. Because most of the time they think they're helping. That's the really like tricky thing about this. [00:15:27] PF: How do we kind of educate people to pull them out of that and really teach them what we need in terms of support? [00:15:34] WG: Yeah, I think that's the central message of my book, is that these people are not toxic. They're just kind of repeating the same thing over and over, like you said. And so we can teach people that it's okay to not feel happy all the time. That it's actually normal to have negative emotions. And also offer them concrete strategies to help us in the future. So for some people, that may mean, “It would really be great if you could give me a hug, or if you could cook dinner, or if I could just talk about the problem without getting any advice,” and try to be very deliberate and direct about the type of help that you need. Because if we don't tell people, we can't really expect them to know exactly what would be helpful to us. [00:16:21] PF: Right. And sometimes we don't know what we need. So what do we do at that point? Other than read your book, which then we find out. But when we're not really sure what we need, but we just know that I don't need you telling me I should feel better, you know? [00:16:37] WG: Yeah. And that's enough. If that's the one thing that you know in that moment, it's okay to say, “This really isn't helping me right now. And I don't know what kind of help I need right now. But when I figure it out, I'll let you know.” Because I know that overwhelming feeling when you're struggling of like, “Gosh! How am I supposed to figure out what I need and then tell someone.” And you might be in a place where you're not ready to do that. And so it's okay to just tell someone like, “Hey, this isn't helpful,” and stop there. And get to a place where you can kind of learn what might be helpful for you. And that takes time. [00:17:14] PF: And part of it is just releasing the feeling that you should feel a certain way. And one thing that you talked about that I found so interesting is the shame cycle. And I wanted you to talk about why does toxic positivity create a shame cycle? And what does that look like for people? [00:17:35] WG: Yeah. So whenever we use some of these things against ourselves that I talked about, like, “I know I should be grateful.” “I should be more positive.” “I shouldn't be feeling this way.” It creates a feeling of shame, because you're essentially gaslighting yourself. You're telling yourself like, “I know you're feeling this thing, but you shouldn't be feeling it. And I need you to stop right now.” And this makes us feel isolated, alone, and really unable to manage our own emotions. And so we kind of like retreat into ourselves with this shame. What would be more effective is if we could say like, “I'm having this feeling right now. It's legitimate. It's real. And I know that other people have felt like me, too. I know that this is okay to feel this way. And I'm going to get myself through it in the way that works for me, and that isn't harmful to me or to someone else.” [00:18:27] PF: What does it do if we stay in that cycle of shame? What is it emotionally and even physically do to us? [00:18:35] WG: Well, it's exhausting, right? If you constantly feel like you need to be performing, or then it makes you a bad person if you succumb to that negativity. You're always going to feel less than and like you're not doing enough. It also ties back in with the emotional suppression that we were talking about that it's likely going to start impacting your sleep. It can impact your relationships. It can impact your mood throughout the day. It leads to an increased likelihood for things like depression and anxiety. There's a lot of negative consequences to excessive emotional suppression and shaming yourself for feeling. [00:19:13] PF: So what's the quickest way that you advise someone to get out of that when they're doing that “I should” and they're throwing themselves into that spiral of shame? Do you have any tips for getting out of that quickly, kind of like jettison out your little escape hatch? [00:19:28] WG: Yeah. The most effective thing I think is using the word and. So if we use the example of you've just lost somebody, they've passed away, you can say something like, “I am feeling sad, and I have other people around me.” If you're really someone that's prone to going into that positive mindset or the toxic positivity, trying to name your feeling that you might typically classify as negative. Add the word and. And then you can say something good, or neutral, or positive about your life. And what that does is it allows us in our brain to recognize both the good and the distressing, and make room for both and not deny one in replacing the other. [00:20:16] PF: Yeah, that makes so much sense. And another thing that I really liked is you talk about complaining. And obviously, nobody wants to be around someone who complains all the time. But you have great news for people who like to complain. Because as you say, that there are certain benefits to complaining if it's done right. So this is a two part question, is one, we're going to talk about why it's beneficial. And then I'd like you to kind of school us on how to complain properly. [00:20:46] WG: Yeah, you're right. Complaining gets a bad reputation, right? But complaining does show you what is important. It can help create change in the world. It also helps you get feedback from other people, process your emotions. It's also one of the main ways that we gain sympathy, attention, or express dissatisfaction. So complaining has a lot of use, and eliminating it entirely would actually not be very helpful at all. But you're right, that we can get stuck in our complaining and make it very ineffective. So I recommend that when people are complaining, they use facts and logic. They know their ideal outcome, and they understand who has the ability to make that happen. And what the research shows us is that when we use those three criteria, complaining ends up being quite helpful and effective. [00:21:41] PF: That's awesome. Yeah, we should all write that down, like those three little things. So every time we start, it's like we can check it off. Make sure we're doing it right. Because I love that. I love that aspect of it. So I know that we're running out of time. But I've got a couple more things. One, I really want to talk about how do we learn to balance negativity and positivity. Because both of those things are important to have in our lives. And either other too much one or the other isn't good for us. So how do we learn to strike that balance? [00:22:14] WG: I think we really go back to that word and that I was just talking about and trying to allow ourselves to recognize both and make space for both. And also realizing what situations we might benefit from a little bit more positivity or that kick in the butt that I talked about, and what situations are really just hard, and there is no silver lining. I talk about like grief, infertility, parenting, all these really difficult topics where positivity might not be that helpful in some of the situations. And so recognizing in your life, like, “Is this a season where I just need to ride this out? Or is this a time where a different attitude might be helpful to me? [00:23:01] PF: That's really wise to look at it that way. And this book has so much great information. It's really very timely, and very thoughtful, very well written. And what is it that you hope that your readers take away when they put this book down for the final time? [00:23:20] WG: I hope that everyone who reads this book feels human after reading it, and that they're allowed to feel a wide variety of emotions. And I hope it gets people talking to each other about what they're going through, instead of hiding. [00:23:35] PF: Yeah, it definitely has the power to do that. As I said, it's something it's so well written and really takes us on this journey. So I appreciate that you wrote it. And I thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk with us about it today. [00:23:48] WG: Of course. Thank you so much. This is great. [OUTRO] [00:23:55] PF: That was Whitney Goodman, talking about toxic positivity. If you'd like to learn more about Whitney and her new book, Toxic Positivity: Keeping It Real in a World Obsessed with Being Happy, or follow her on social media, visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one. [END]

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: The ‘FUN’damentals of Connecting With Scott Novis [INTRODUCTION] [00:00:02] PF: Welcome to Episode 347 of Live Happy Now. If you're looking to lead a healthier life this year, it's important to make sure you're getting your recommended daily allowance of fun. And today, we're going to tell you how to do that. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week, I'm joined by Scott Novis, a former Disney executive and founder of Bravous, a company that helps businesses improve employee experiences through live and virtual games. He's here today to talk about how he uses fun and games to create happier workplaces, and how you can use those same ideas to deepen connections and create more fun at home. [INTERVIEW] [00:00:39] PF: Scott, welcome to Live Happy Now. [00:00:41] SN: Hey, thanks for having me. [00:00:43] PF: We are excited to have you. This is going to be a really fun conversation, but also very meaningful, because you are all about those two things, really, connection, which is meaningful, and having fun. So, as we get started, tell us a little bit about what it is that you do? [00:01:00] SN: Well, it turns out those two things are related, very strongly related. What we do is, basically we help people play together, our experiences that I've done a lot of research into, particularly for adults, is how do we form friendships? And the way I like to think of it is that we want to host an event where you could make a friend. How do you do that? And so, a lot of, particularly with the number of companies that have gone to remote work, we're seeing people feeling more disconnected than ever. So, what we do is we host fun workshops that improve your culture and help you create healthier teams. [00:01:38] PF: Oh, that's fantastic. That's such a necessary component right now, because it is getting more and more difficult to connect. And it seems really odd that we live in a time where we can connect virtually with anyone, anywhere in the world, and we have never felt so disconnected. How do you start bridging that gap? [00:01:58] SN: That's a great question. So, some of it has to go back to the fundamentals, like how do we see connection? What is it and where's this coming from? And I love this great quote about loneliness is a sadness that comes from a lack of connection. So, we talked about people feeling disconnected, it's really kind of the sadness, like feeling alone. And what we've noticed is that, particularly in the remote work environment, because it's happening in my company. We went remote, like, “Okay, that's it.” COVID hit, everybody got home, got rid of the office, we're like, “This is great.” And then it was all tasks work all the time. The problem with that is, while we were productive for a while, one of my top employees left, and the thing that hit me in the face was none of this has anything to do with me, and it was that lack of personal interaction. I thought about the offices are like engineered to cause people to bump into each other. And the key psychology term that I've learned is called unstructured conversations. It's when we share, when we get to know each other, when we feel like somebody sees us and cares about us. And when we're just busy doing task work, you don't have those opportunities. So, we started setting out like, what do adults need for that environment? How do we create that environment online? What does it look like? And it was this awesome quote, my wife gave me the other day that said, “It's not enough to belong, you need to do things together, so your belonging has meaning.” Right? [00:03:31] PF: Yeah. [00:03:31] SN: So, you're like, well, we're doing housework, but are we really like working together? Here's the big thing, is it safe to fail? [00:03:42] PF: I love this because we did have the watercooler conversations, we had ways of interacting and we had micro moments. Barbara Fredrickson, in her book, Love 2.0 talks about the value of micro moments says, just walking to the cashier, talking to the person in the parking garage, talking to your coworker, just as you pass their cubicle office, whatever it is. And we took all that away and didn't think about what a void that was leaving. [00:04:10] SN: Huge. So, that gets down to like, how do you feel in a micro moment? You can’t, so you can just be yourself. You can relax. But in a work environment where it's task oriented, it's the number one thing and all the surveys of all the companies we've worked with, I'll go through, is your work meaningful? All these other things. And it was a yes, yes, yes. We've gotten really good at those things. They go, “What happens if you make a mistake?” Boom, it's like, “Oh, that's career ending. Nobody can make a mistake.” What happens in an environment like that is you can't be vulnerable. As Brené Brown said, “Vulnerability is the past connection flows along.” So, we need to create a space where you either can't fail, or it's utterly irrelevant, which is what play is about when we play and we can be open. And there's a really interesting thing about play. If I was going to teach you a class, all the science says that you're going to adapt your behavior to my expectations because I'm the teacher and you’re the student. We all got indoctrinated to that. We all went to school, we all grew up with that. But when we play, you can only be yourself. So, when people get together in teams, all of those impressions and that armor goes away, because you're so busy playing, you forget who you're trying to impress, you're just caught up in the moment. And that creates that openness, where people can participate. And so, we really try to focus on games that are either cooperative, collaborative, or really, really try to minimize competition, because competition, and this is probably where a lot of your listener stress comes from, is, we're so focused on excellence and competition and everything else. Well, that is kryptonite to vulnerability, that is kryptonite to openness. And so, we're trying, when we create our workshops in our programs, we do things where it's like, “Hey, we got to have a safe place for you to not worry about the outcome.” That's one of the reasons like we do a lot of stuff with video games, because like, who's going to take that seriously? [00:06:07] PF: Well, this is really an exceptional approach to things because as adults, we naturally start distancing from play. It just is something we decide. We're adults now we have to get serious. And, you know, I know in the past in live happy, we've talked about the importance of play and it's really difficult for a lot of adults to grasp how important that is because we think we're supposed to be serious or we think there's this amount of time for play. Okay, now, let's get back to work. So, tell me about your approach to it and how you've developed your programs for us to interact with one another in a fun way? [00:06:45] SN: I love it. Thank you. And I think for your audience, in particular, women have particular challenges in the workplace today, because they're hit with a couple of different things about expectations of like effortless perfection. So, you have this, I can't make a mistake. Play feels fruitless, I want to be taken as a serious person that can make a difference. And then you're supposed to be perfect. Where's the stress, right? So how do we do it? So first, like one of the number one thing, if your audience takes nothing else away from this would be try to form a fun committee at your office. I've heard it called different things, love enjoys, connection committees, I try to stay away from overly corporate names something just a little silly so people don't think they have to come in with a checklist and a bunch of stuff to do. But what we do is what's embodied in that is we want to create a safe space, where developing better relationships with the people we work with is a priority. And so, when we move that to the front, now, what we're moving ourselves into, and I find this is really effective for a lot of people, especially if they have a nurturing mentality, if they're oriented to taking care of others, the fun committee becomes about how do we help our people connect? What's magic about that is the first people's needs are going to be met by that committee, or the people that most need to connect, that's who's going to volunteer, that's who's going to want to be on it. If their needs are going to be met, because now they're actually spending time not working, but getting to connect with each other. The next layer of that is there's increasing numbers of tools. I could talk about each one, but like you're seeing Zoom is starting to do this now where they've added games to the Zoom calls. How about that? To companies like us where we do a complete turnkey service with professional commentators. Because look, even executives, sorry, you can't host your own trivia. It's too stressful for you, the employees. It's like there's all these complexities of instead of it being this fun things, it becomes this weird, stilted like, “Do I really want to reveal to my boss how ignorant I am about this stuff I don't care about?” Bringing in a host, it's about creating a safe space. The term is psychological safety. We want to create a space where it's safe for you to make a mistake. And we understand that adults need permission to play. They need time. You've got to give them space to sort of gradually walk their way in, it's a progression. Because it's risky. Do you know what everybody else is saying? Other people? Am I going to be judged? How's this going to go down? What's going to happen? And so, the committee is that great step, the best things that can happen because an organization is endorsing. We care. We care about our people. And honestly, it makes business sense, because people are not loyal to companies. They're the people that work with. The people have relationships with. [00:09:36] PF: What does a fun committee consist of? How do you pick one and who's going to be on it and what do they then do? [00:09:42] SN: Great question. So, we had to do this internally. Because we realized we were losing people like what's going on and it’s all about connection, like how do we miss this? So, we started asking our employees. Step one, survey your team, and you probably don't even have to survey them to know who are the extroverts? Who are the people that just love? Like at the water cooler? Or that imaginary water cooler? They would stay on the Zoom call for 10 extra minutes to find out your kid, your dog, what did you do this weekend? When you put the call out, you're going to find somebody who's going to be a champion for this because they're craving that interaction. And then the next step is making sure it's cross department across discipline, is if you're doing it for – if you’re a giant company, it's obviously probably too much. But you know, it goes pretty far, right? So, like our fun committee is from sales and operations and finance, it's about six people cut across the whole company and their focus, and I have a monthly meeting and their agenda is planning quarterly events that will bring the staff together and get them to engage and share. And again, our goal is to create these unstructured, unplanned conversations. So, we're all doing something together. But during that time, it's not so – we’re not trying to hit the dopamine, I got to check a box, get a task done. We're trying to create that environment where there's enough space for people to chat, and people to talk. One piece of advice I strongly encourage is get everybody a camera, got to have cameras. We need to see each other's eyes. And what's so different than Zoom and why we use games, we play games. So, we have a whole host of games that you don't need to install anything on your computer. They're super trivial to play, like, what we tell our people is like your mom has to be able to play this. Right? [00:11:34] PF: That simple or? [00:11:36] SN: Yeah, that's simple, because the game isn't – both, right? Is it's got to feel inclusive, like inclusivity is like our highest value, we say yes, you can play. So, the number one answer to the question is, can I play? Yes. We thought about it, we worked on it. So, your team that's doing this, like one of their next objectives as they're sort of planning events is to start thinking about how does everybody participate, and there's huge opportunity and room for growth, but there's already games and platforms out there. Some of them are a little silly and goofy, but that's okay. The more important thing is, and this is what's different than Zoom, and Zoom, we don't know where to look, and that's a weird thing for humans, like our capacity to see our eyes like we're the only animal scholar, white to the eyes. We watch each other's eyes to know what's important to look at. We're constantly broadcasting nonverbal cues back and forth. And in Zoom, everybody's looking in different directions. [00:12:33] PF: right. Mostly, they're looking at themselves to see like, “Oh my god, can you see that?” [00:12:37] SN: Oh, for sure. And there's a whole unhealthy narcissistic thing about that – when we play a game, I now am directing your attention at an activity, especially if it's a video game, because the graphics are going to fill your screen. And now you're doing something together and you're in sync. Once you get in sync, now the conversations become more natural, they become more, “Oh, alright.” Now, I'm lucky, I work at a video game company. Everybody in my company has a Nintendo Switch. So, we can play really cool games. We can play things like Overcooked or we can play Mario Kart. We could get into these things. The way I rationalize it is, I am in a video game company, and two, do you know what it costs to fly anybody anywhere today? [00:13:25] PF: This is a much, much more affordable way of connection. [00:13:31] SN: Yeah. It's like, “Hey, let's find a way to do this.” Like our tech support supports your game console. How cool is that? If you can’t get in the game, we'll get you in the game. [00:13:40] PF: Some leaders are saying, yes, I know, we've got to do this. We've got to bring people together. But playing games. Yes, it's important, but then we're going to cut it off. It's like, I've worked with a company that does something very similar. They have a monthly meeting. And it's like that one hour is fun. It's done. And so, what about that? How do you continue that keep that kind of mindset going? Where things are yes, we're working, but it does need to be playful, and it does need to be fun and we do need to have some sort of emotional release valve. [00:14:14] SN: So yeah, it's certainly the capstone is a hosted event, right? When you're doing an event, everybody’s like, “Yeah, we're playing, it's fun, we cut it off.” What we are big believers in is habits. One of the things we do at our company and big advocates is the standing Friday coffee meeting, make it if you can. We have basically a dedicated time for people to check in with each other and we're not – work comes up, but what we're trying to do is we've human connection through our communication channels. So, for example, we're a big Slack company. Two super important channels for us are people headlines and raise a hand and I, as an owner, love the raise a hand channel, because they're not like giving me suggestions. People are reasoning and going, “I need help, something's broken.” And it takes a lot of courage, that goes company wide. It takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of every gun, “Hey, there's a problem.” And our behavior is we're going to swarm it and fix it. The person's not the problem. There's a situation that's the problem. Then the person needs help. So, that becomes another way that we support each other. And then the flip side is the headlines channel, as like somebody did an outstanding job, employees can give shout outs that go across the whole company with all these cool reactions and things people do. We're now getting a flavor, a slice of what's happening, what we used to hear in the office like, it boils down to one word, intentionality. Offices were designed and engineered to create social interaction, the watercooler, open planning, yeah, we hated tubes. But what was going on? Those were unstructured conversations that we got to know people's preferences and what they were about and what they did. And so, what we're talking about is, these are some of the tasks that the fun committee can begin to look to be intentional saying, where else can we create opportunities for awareness and connection. So, people feel like, not only they belong, but they are doing something together. The fun activity is a great one. Weekly coffee, share time, and you know, it can be 15 to 20 minutes, it doesn't have to be a lot of time. It's that water cooler time, you can call your water cooler meeting, “Hey, we're having a water cooler meeting show up.” And I really encourage leaders make the time, because there's so much you can't hear through headphones. I mean, just through the work grind, through the meetings, meetings, meetings, meetings, like sometimes you just want to sit back and eavesdrop and listen to people talk to each other, how often do you actually get to hear people talk to each other anymore? [00:16:48] PF: Because when you are working remotely, it does feel like you're just checking off like, “Okay, I just got to get through my to-do list.” And you don't have that natural break in activity and little shift in your mindset that we received when we were working in an office. [00:17:03] SN: And here's the real risk, we're in the middle of the great resignation, is companies are now converting their entire work staff to Fiverr and Upwork employees. Because if I really spend no time with anybody else, and all I'm doing is task work, then I'm happy to do that task for a little more money and slightly better benefits somewhere else. I literally saw that play out is after we had kind of gone through this process and really work through it. Somebody came after our marketing director, super awesome. We'd love him, didn't want to believe. And it came down to the people, is like the team he had built and the connections he had, he just couldn't imagine doing that at the other company and he decided to stay with us. And that was just like, it was such a huge, like vote of confidence and everybody, was a lift for everybody like, wow, we we really do like each other like we really do get along, we really do believe in what we're doing. And how do you put a dollar value on that? I know what it cost me to lose that person in terms of salary and everything else. And if you took just that budget, go pick one of your key people and delete them. There's your budget, what are you going to spend to make sure that doesn't happen? I know that that's easy to say for me, because I can make a decision like that. But a really small level, one of the things that anyone can do, anyone can do is I think make the suggestion, form a fun committee. Do it on our own time, we're happy to do it during lunchtime, and think of other ways to create these channels for people to interact. Especially if you can have events where you get people doing activities and fun things even if they're not fun together. Sometimes even a bad experience could be like, “Hey, we talked about it. Don't do that. That was a dumb game.” We played some awful games. We have sampled a lot of stuff and there are somethings where – [00:18:56] PF: This isn’t working. [00:18:57] SN: They’re like, “What? What were they thinking? They’ve just stolen all of our life, we can’t get it back.” That's one of the resources we love to make available to your office is what's available out there and what they can do, and a playbook for forming the fun committee. [00:19:11] PF: So, I love what you say about like anyone could do it. Because not everyone who listens has a company or is in a position to be like, passing down, here's what we're going to do. So how do you do a grassroots fun committee? How can you start that, whether you're working remotely or working face to face right now? [00:19:28] SN: So, I have to speculate a little bit because in my company, actually, here's what happened. They brought it to me. Right? They're like, we need a fun committee. So, after that first experience for somebody left that felt totally disconnected, and we were all like looking at each other, it was one of my rank and file employees came and said we need a fun committee. We were in a video game business so they were like, “Yeah, fun of course.” We can't be in the fun business and not know what fun is. That would really hypocritical. But we ended up there. It's easy to get there for all the reasons you pointed out. So, bringing a proposal, so I'm an owner, this cost me nothing. It addresses a core concern in the business and the people that are really most affected by it are the people that want to be on this committee and do something about it. That was an easy, “Yes.” Sure, there's times where we've done a lot of things that we're afraid, there's times that come and ask for a budget, but it's always been, I go back to my rule of thumb, what would it cost me to fly one of my employees from Virginia, Kansas City, or Minneapolis to Phoenix for a face to face meeting? Okay, if I use that budget, I can engage my entire team, in a fun activity, done. Why is it so easy to buy plane tickets? We’ll buy plane tickets all day long, maybe it's because it's an expense category. But what about, hey, I'm going to use that expense to create connection. And the part I think some leaders struggle with, and maybe it's because this would be the biggest advice I give to the fun committee, because they did it for me, is the leader doesn't have to do anything, they just have to show up. So, that's where having somebody else has somebody else, why do we hire outside facilitators, it's really hard to be on the team and manage the team. And so, when you do these fun events, is you want to factor that in, is putting the burden on a team member to lead everybody, you can do it. But if you can find somebody outside the organization to do it, it pays bonuses, because people can just relax. They can just kick back and enjoy themselves. [00:21:33] PF: That's awesome. We know that play and fun is good for you. Can you address that a little bit? What does it do for us emotionally, and with our productivity? [00:21:43] SN: So, what I know about play is that it triggers internal motivation. So, we call intrinsic, not extrinsic. Dan Pink wrote a great book on it called Drive if you want to know more. But what play really allows us to do and it turns out, there's actual neural circuitry in our heads to facilitate play. So, this evolved for a very important reason. Play is the system where we find the boundaries of our capability. It really boils down to something Amy Edmondson talked about called impression management, is it's a natural outcome. We want to know what to do, we want to know how to do it. So, what happens when uncertainty hits us, and time pressure? We may not know what to do, and we may not be able to do it, but we clam up and we just get stiff, we choke. Play takes that pressure off and allows us to experiment and explore it. That's actually the space for most creativity flows from it. So, play lets us find the edge, lets us find the boundaries. Play lets us go would it be dumb if – well, let's try it. Where you get in that space is when you get back to play, it really engages that little thing in the back of your head that gets you all stressed out. Because well wait a minute, relax. There's nothing at stake here. Once we're in that relaxed space, our cognitive capacity shoots through the roof along with that our creative ability. We're able to think laterally. There are two types of intelligence and they're orthogonal. They're not related to each other. Linear, this is your classic school fix test. I think Ken Robbins talked about. There's one answer, it's in the back of the book. That's your linear intelligence. But in today's work environment where things change constantly, we need opening or that like, what else could this be? Where else could we go? There's not one answer, there's many answers. Play is the door we walk through to open up into our more divergent, as opposed to convergent intelligence. We're suffering from too much convergent intelligence is that we get tied in a little box, we can't get out of it and stressful. We go into play, we can diverge, and try lots of different things, and that carries over into the work we do. [00:24:08] PF: And this has so many great benefits for us, it helps our work. But it seems like this is something we could also use to bring our friends and family together. Like we could apply this same kind of mentality to connect with our loved ones that we're not seeing. So, how can we translate that into our personal space? [00:24:28] SN: Oh, 100%. I would tell you that what we found and it seems so silly, but it's real. Planning events is hard. And it sounds like, “Oh, we'll just get together.” But what you can do is take the leadership. So, one of the bonuses for like a fun committee is once you start researching what tools are out there to bring people together that do things together, you can take them home because they're not expensive. Some of them are free. And planning a call, setting up a call, and saying we're going to play a game together, we're going to do this together, we're going to structure something we can all share in, I think the big thing that is isn't obvious. Adults actually need permission to play and they get it from their peers. So, one of the other things that you can do is if you can make it safe for me to play, then I can make it safe for you to play. Setting that up being the host and leading that, my experience is people really appreciate it. It makes a huge difference for them and it creates the connections we're creating. [00:25:33] PF: This is terrific. I'm really excited that you're doing this. This is something that we can share with our listeners, I know that you're giving us a download to help them create a fun committee and understand how to do that. Scott as we wrap up, what do you wish for each person out there listening? [00:25:50] SN: The one thought I'd really like to leave your audience with is, you can make a difference, because you care about the people you work with. You can make a difference because you understand how important it is for people to play and get to know each other. You can make a difference because it only takes one person to stand up and be brave, you can make a difference. [END OF INTERVIEW] [00:26:20] PF: That was Scott Novis talking about how to improve your life by adding fun and games to the mix. If you'd like to learn more about Scott, download a free fun committee toolkit or follow him on social media. Just visit our website at livehappy.com and click on the podcast link. A reminder, we still have some great deals on our exclusive Live Happy merch. Through January 14, you can visit the Live Happy store and get 20% off everything in the store. Just enter the code happy2022. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every, day a happy one [END]