Podcast

Take Back Control of Your Clutter with Pilar Llorente (E6)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast –episode 6

International sensation Marie Kondo has helped millions of people tidy up and find joy. Today’s guest, Pilar Llorente from Neatly Awesome, is one of 8 Konmari consultants in Australia. She joins us to explain why Konmari is about so much more than your stuff.

Transcription

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer, speaker and change and resilience expert, and my co-host is Pete.

P: Hi there. I’m Peter Furness. I’m a remedial massage therapist, dance and movement practitioner, yoga loving global adventurer. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness. Now, Marie, you’ve also got a blog on this topic, right?

M: Yes, you can find my podcast at happiness for cynics.com or visit marieskelton.com for articles and resources on change and resiliency as well as happiness and finding balance in today’s busy world. The site talks about a lot of the same research we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life.

P: So let’s get into it. Cynics the world over. It’s time to suck it up get happy.

[Happy music]

M: Today we’re going to talk about clutter and stress. Many of you would have heard about the international sensation Marie Kondo, who’s helped millions of people tidy up and find joy. I’m excited to welcome our guest today. Certified Konmari consultant Pilar Llorente is the founder of Neatly Awesome, based here in Sydney. She uses the Marie Kondo method, which is a holistic approach to help clients get rid of clutter and chaos in their life. You can find her site at neatlyawesome.com. So, Pilar, you’re one of only eight Konmari consultants in the whole of Australia. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means?

Pilar: Sure. So after reading the books, well, one day I came to my husband and I say I’m going to learn them for a week, so could you please to stay with the kids for a week. I chased… yeah I chased Marie Kondo to London to attend a seminar to be able to become a Konmari consultant. It was 110 people there from 33 different nationalities and it was really good. It was a great experience. It was very intense; and then I have to submit a lot of reports and photos with my clients and I’m very proud and honoured to say that I’m one of just eight Konmari consultants in Australia. So what I do is motivate my customers, my clients in their journey and I like to think about like I am the connector between their belongings and the hidden essence they represent.

M: And what kind of lessons do you teach then, what do you uncover or unhide?

Pilar: Well, the thing with clutter is that there is always something behind that, right and the method makes you confront your belongings and you really need to think and be really honest with yourself and think about why you bring that thing in your life and into your home in the first place. And in the end, you are able to understand the purpose that thing in your life. You are able to understand why it is difficult to let go or while you bring in the first place. So there is always an ‘unmask’ recently having every single thing in our home and that’s a very important part off the process is [to] learn all those lessons.

M: OK. So, can you tell me about what you do when you go into someone’s home? How does it work?

Pilar: Well the Konmari method, it’s basically we work by categories, not by locations, so we start with clothes and then books and then papers, komono [miscellaneous] and then we do the sentimental items. We discard those items that no longer spark joy in our life and we keep those things that really speak to our heart and those things with that we are letting go, we thank them for their services. And this is a deeply personal work and it requires confronting your past, in vision your future and taking action in the present. Okay, so the first thing I do when I get my clients is to understand why they want to do this process and it has to be a very powerful on good reason behind it. So, if you just want a clean home, it will not do because you need to be very clear, because that’s the thing that will help you when you encounter all those challenges, or when you feel that is just too much.

You think about that, about that way, and you will be able to get through that. So that could be something like, I want to spend this time cleaning and spend more time with my family with people with a person I love and it will take you through that. So after we are very clear in our vision way need to start going through every single thing in your home and you need to ask yourself ‘Does this spark joy to me?’

We need to try to keep this very positive. So it’s not about discard, discard and take to the rubbish bin, but it’s more about keeping the focus on the things you’ve really love and appreciate those things. So it’s like opposition training. Okay, so one of you wants to decide between the red top and the pink top and you decide, Okay I’ll take the red one. Then you do that for 50 or 100 items, and then you go to your books and then you think OK, this one, I have read just one page, this when I read a chapter, but I’m hook[ed] with the book. Or you think, Oh wow I didn’t even remember having this book in here and then you do this with every single thing in your home. So when you get to the sentimental items, which is the most difficult part and you find that great [item] or that person that you love, but it is no longer in your life. You will know the answer, would you keep it or would you let it go? Because the answer there would be in your heart.

M: Aahh… So there is method to the madness. You do the easy stuff first.

Pilar: [Laugh] Yes.

M: So, the reason that I was really interested to talk to you is that our podcast is about happiness. And there’s a lot going on in the world today and a lot of stress that people are feeling in general. And I’ve recently read an article that says that clutter and mess can really impact our stress levels. Have you noticed, while working with your customers, whether stress has gotten better or if anyone has anyone said anything to you about stress levels after they’ve worked with you?

Pilar: Oh, yes, definitely. So thing is that all that physical clutter becomes mental clutter as well. So if we have things in our home that we don’t need, use or love, our minds are probably full of those things too, right. And this method is about the idea that everything has a purpose and when you think about that, you can see the big picture. Okay. When I first started doing this method it was because big things that were established were taking a big role in my life and I spent too much time worrying about those things. But then, because part of the process is the gratitude power, when you are able to feel this gratitude to things it kind of re wires your brain and you can focus on the joy on what you love. So for example, the morning I can see that some of my clients they rush in the morning, it’s really bad, so there are things on the floor, everything is a mess, you can see all the laundry that you won’t be able to do today and probably not tomorrow and you start worrying and then your kids are yelling “Where is my backpack, where is my homework!”

[Laughter]

Pilar: All that stress is building and building and then you are late and then you are in front of your closet thinking ‘Oh gosh, I have nothing to wear today’, so you end up putting [on] something that doesn’t fit you, you don’t feel comfortable with that. And then you run to the bath[room] stuff and you are already late. You are already all sweaty. So you go from the bath[room] thinking. ‘Oh, wow I already have a fight with my husband. Everything is a big mess.’ And you get to work and then in your desk, you see all those papers, you just procrastinate and you think ‘I will never be able to go through these things.’

So it’s like a big snow ball that grows and grows until you feel like you are not in control of your life or your stuff and this is very stressful. But when you are able to go through this method and then your space is clicking not just the physical space but your mental space. You can start focusing really on what’s really important and you will be able to concentrate on really do a stuff because your mind is in the right state to do this.

M: This is great. It’s like a little intervention if you’re feeling too stressed or too overwhelmed with busy lives. It is a great way that you can get some, I think you said it perfectly, some control over a small thing in your life which can become so big, but it also has flow on effects to your mind and your wellbeing. Magic.

[Laughter]

M: Okay, Can you tell me about one of your success stories. Can you tell us a client’s story? Feel free to give them a fake name. But can you, can you think of someone that you’ve worked with, where they came from, and maybe what the outcomes of working with you have been?

Pilar: Okay, so I think the impact of the method is more in a spiritual and emotional level, OK. And because those prostrations teach us about ourselves. And is not about anymore hiding things using storage, but really confronting this stuff. So most of my clients get to those points of ‘Oh wow, this is powerful.’ I remember having a client we were doing the Konmari cat -the komono category, sorry, and we were going through all the dinnerware and she has lots and lots of plates. And I say, what do you have like so many plates here? She say ‘Okay, those are very important, people, when people come to my place and they’re very special, I don’t want to use them every day’ and then she has like lots plates that they were like, a bit old and chipped and, and I say, OK, I say how you feel about using your special dinnerware every day and she say ‘No, no, no, no, no. I’m scared that if I use it every day it may break and you know all those memories I have it would be broken too. And then I think No, no, no. The memories will always be there. You don’t need the actual object to remember those beautiful feelings when you used a dinnerware. How about instead of keeping that for special occasions, Imagine if you use that dinnerware every single day, every single day you will remember all those memories, those precious moments and when you say this is just for special people, it get me thinking. Don’t you feel special enough to use this every single day and her eyes they just light up and she was ‘oh you are right, I will use every single day!’

M: [Laugh]

Pilar: So it’s that change in your in your perspective of things on what is really important and to give you that power. That decision power of thinking to think ‘Ok, I bring this into my life with this purpose, so I’m going to use for that purpose.

M: Yep. Okay, so you seem so passionate about this.

Pilar: Thank you.

M: How did you get involved in it? What made you buy a ticket to London and go halfway around the world?

Pilar: Um, I have to be honest. I have never been a particularly organised person and I used to blame everybody for it. So back in Colombia used to blame my sister for it. Then I got married and everything was my poor husband fault. And then when I have my kids, it was very easy to blame it on them because they could not defend their selves, right? So everything was their fault and then, when I read the book, I discovered that the problem was not them. The problem was my relationship with my belongings and how I didn’t appreciated them enough, um… and then I realised also that I used to blame people for my mess. I was blaming people as well for the things I have failed at or getting it to do. And that was very powerful. So when I did the Konmari process at home, I have real changes in my life. I remember my husband saying ‘Women what is happening to you?’

[Laughter]

Pilar: And then he’s like, suddenly you’re a very confident woman that just want to try everything and do everything and I say yes because I have the mental space to think and dream about big things. So that’s why I decided to do this because I cannot keep this to myself. I want to share the joy of living and this feeling of lightness and freedom when you are able to go through this process.

M: Wow, that’s really powerful. That’s something else that I imagine was pretty powerful. I see a photo of you with Marie Kondo. Did you meet her and get to? I know that she doesn’t speak English very well, but maybe through a translator did you did you get to speak to her while you were on your course?

Pilar: Yes. The first time she came into the room, it was amazing. She’s quite small, I’m not that tall and I look like a giant next to her, but she has this presence and this energy and when she came into the room, everything was so peaceful. Some people was crying. I tried not to cry –

M: [Laugh]

Pilar: -but she started speaking in Japanese and it was another person translated to any of it. But I swear I felt like she was talking directly to me just to me, because of the power of the, of the method of her voice and what she preaches. So it was a great experience and because everybody there was, like in the same page. It was an unbelievable experience. She’s very sweet, she is.

M: All right, so we’re, we’re just wrapping up with time here. But before you go, you’re based in Sydney, and you do take, are you looking for new clients?

Pilar: Of course. Yes. I love to help as many people as I can, so yes.

M: Okay, so we’ll leave your website address in a way for people to contact you at the end of the podcast, and we’ll also put it on our website. But before you do go, can you leave our listeners just with a little taste, maybe three little tips that can help them get some control over the clutter in their lives.

Pilar: Of course.

So the 1st one I think, is the folding. I think the folding is very important because when you fold things with the Konmari method, you can see everything you have. Everything will be a glance. So because we tend to use the clothes that are at the front or at the top of the pile. But when they are just there, you will be able to use all your clothes and that’s the first tip.

The 2nd one is definitely act in your intuition. Follow your intuition and things will begin to connect and it will bring greater things into your life.

The 3rd one is honour all those things that you are saying goodbye to, so keep up with the lessons, stay sure. So next time you see a size six dress that is 70% off, go back to that time where you found the dress and you hold in your hands and you say ‘Dress, thank you so much for showing me I’m not a size six, but more of a size 10 or 12 and now you can go and serve someone that we look amazing in this dress and you will remember that and that would be very powerful in your buying decisions. So organised clutter is still clutter so we need to get rid of all those things.

M: Yes, absolutely very wise words. Thank you very much for your time and for talking to our listeners and we’ll definitely put your contact details at the end of our podcast so people can reach out to you.

Pilar: Thank you very much. Thank you.

M: Thank you.

Thanks for joining us today. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast. And if you’re in Sydney and need a bit of a de-clutter yourself, you can find contact details for Pilar on her site at neatlyawesome.com

Thanks until next time.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Marie Skelton is an Australian writer, speaker, and change and resiliency expert. She started her career in journalism before working in public affairs and then specialising in organisational and culture change for some of the world’s largest tech and financial services companies, both in Australia and the U.S. She also played volleyball for Australia and on scholarship at a D1 university in the U.S. and she captained the NSW Women’s Volleyball team in the Australian Volleyball League.

Following a motorbike accident that nearly took her life, and leg, she began researching change and resiliency to find out how people cope with major life changes and why some people are really good at dealing with whatever life throws at them, while others struggle. She is passionate about mental health and writes about how to cope with today’s Change Storm and maintain mental wellness.

Peter Furness is just plain awesome. He loves unicorns and champagne. Pete is the owner of Max Remedial, and a qualified remedial therapist and has worked all over the world with professional athletes, dancers, sporting organisations and medical professionals. Peter’s practice is influenced by his interest in Eastern philosophy and he works closely with Chinese and Ayurvedic practitioners, approaching the body from the principles of ancient medicine.

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

What is Flow and How to Find it (E5)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

Today we’re talking about flow, a concept made famous by one of the pioneers of positive psychology Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Flow is about being truly engaged in the moment. Being in a state of flow means you’re completely focused on the task at hand, so happy in the moment that you forget yourself and the world around you.

Want more on flow? Check out our article on What is a State of Flow and How to Find it or download our infographic on finding flow.

Subscribe so you don’t miss out! We’re working on new episodes as we speak. Check back here, or subscribe.

Transcription

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and change and transformation expert, and my co-host is Peter Furness.

P: Hi there I’m Peter Furness Remedial Therapist, ex-performer and happiness junky. We aim to bring you the best in research and personal experience in topics that generate that state of happiness, which we all want to get more of. The 101 of how to get happy. Marie, you have the links to all this info on your website? Yes?

M: Yes. So you can find me at marieskelton.com and that’s a site about major life changes and transitions and how to cope with them. And the site uses a lot of the same research we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. You can also find me on Twitter. My handle is @MarieSkelton. So on today’s episode, which is all about flow.

[Happy music]

M: Today we’re talking about flow, a concept made famous by one of the pioneers of positive psychology.

P: Here we go Muz, come on we know you can do this. [laugh]

M: A guy who happens to have 16 letters in his last name. So please forgive me if I miss-pronounce this Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

P: Oh well done Muz

[Laughter]

P: I’m not sure what nationality he is. He’s Jewish isn’t he?

M: He is and unfortunately… like so many others. Viktor Frankl would be another so many others who experienced the atrocities off the Second World War and the camps. A lot of people came out of that experience with a lot of questions about life, the meaning of life and happiness and, you know, why we’re here. So he is definitely one of the pioneers of the positive psychology field or movement, if you want to call it that. And he coined the term flow, and that’s what we’re talking about today.

P: What is Flow? We have a definition here.

One of the quotes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is ‘The best moments in our lives and not the passive, receptive, relaxing times. The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.’

P: I think this is talking about that moment where you are so obsessed with a project or a performance or an article that you are in that lovely little zone that we all talk about where everything around you is extraneous and you’re not even thinking about your own personal life or anything like that.

It’s all about the task at hand.

M: To take it further it could be something actually quite mundane, but it’s about that moment when you lose time, right?

P: Yeah, there’s a couple of points in here where people talk about what/how to achieve a state of flow and of them is that you actually lose track of time, so I’ll get to the others here:

When you’re in a state of flow, you are completely focused on the task at hand; You forget about yourself, about others and about the world around you; You lose track of time; You feel happy and in control; and you are creative in the productive moment.

P: I particularly like that last one

M: [Laugh]

P: I feel like I have a particular authority on this one, being an ex-performance artist because that state of flow that state of complete obsession, where you are completely in that little shimmering moment it’s kind of the focus of the performing artist. It’s what you train for so that you don’t have to think about putting your foot in a certain position or holding the violin in that certain way. That’s all trained into you. You practise so much so that when we come to perform, you completely immerse yourself in that performance and you go with the flow.

M: Yeah, I don’t agree with you there Pete

P: Oh excellent! I like it when we don’t agree, this is where we get good.

[Laughter]

M: Absolutely and being an ex-athlete, I completely understand. With training so that your body remembers without you having to put thought and effort into remembering. So I get that, the moment as an athlete where you’re on and everything is working and it flows. I get that, for me flow as Mihaly talks about it in the positive psychology arena is completely separate from necessarily being a creative or sporting endeavour and the best moments of flow for me have been at work, and I think that everyone around the world can achieve flow and get the satisfaction that that rings.

P: Yes

M: And it’s not just for the elite few who are dancers, performers, athletes, et cetera. It’s something that people should be striving to bring into their lives in general because it comes with so many benefits. So, like last week when we spoke about awe bringing benefits, the science behind this one is again, like with awe and like with the default mode network or DMN that we spoke about when your mind’s on autopilot, we spend most of our time in that space, whereas flow brings you out of that space just like a awe does, and so does meditation for some people. It brings you out of that space into a less ego-centric space. And there’s some real positive benefits to your sense of satisfaction with life that come from that.

P: Definitely, I could definitely support that and I don’t mean to say that you have to be an elite athlete or anything to experience that level of flow and just to qualify what I said in terms of capturing that it doesn’t always happen in performance. And I guess for me because my dancing was my work, that was my work. So it’s exactly the same I achieved in work, but it didn’t always happen on stage sometimes it happened in class. As a dancer you walk into the studio, the first hour of your dance day is spent doing as a contemporary or classical dancer you do class every day. And it’s incredibly indulgent way to start the morning because it’s all about you. You walk into that space and the teacher or ballet mistress or whoever it is that’s taking the class, starts an exercise and you lock in and off you go and that could be [laugh] a slight negative because having that attitude being all about you. “Don’t talk to me before I go to class!”, so I would get there 45 minutes before class and do my little warm up and people are coming in, and it’s like “No, I’m in the corner you don’t come near me’, particularly in a small group of people. There’s about seven people in this company. And you don’t come in and start chatting straightaway, I would have my earphones on and be in downward dog or whatever I chose to do and you don’t come near me. And then that carries through into the class a little bit, where we’re standing next to each other and sweating. No talking. This is my class. This is all about me.

[Laughter]

P: So that aside again it brings into play the focus. So where you sharpen that focus and you exclude the outside world. It brings you into that state where flow can happen, and I have had experiences in the past where you do, you come out of a class and it’s just a normal class it’s something you do every day but you’re like “OMG that was amazing!” and then you think there’s no way I can reproduce that, I can’t reproduce that, or I hope I get to reproduce that and that’s an interesting subtext in there about this concept of flow is how do you hang onto it you and in a way like everything Zen you can’t hold onto it you’ve just got to try to aim for it again.

M: I think the research shows you can create the environment that enables you to find it.

P: Yeah, you can create the environment but you’re not guaranteed on finding it each time. And that’s where the discipline comes of trying to tap in to/creating that environment where the flow can happen. But it might happen today. It might not happen tomorrow. You can’t want that and go “well I’ve got the environment ready why isn’t it happening, come on this is supposed to happen now. You can’t necessarily predict that, or expect that to be… again expectation come into it, expect that to be the result.

M: Yep and I think the way that the workplace has changed in the way that society and the world is changing with, you know the pinging of our social media and our phones and open office plans where people can walk past even if they’re not actually coming up and talking to you, in an office they can walk past and they’re in your peripheral. And so your ability to have a few hours of uninterrupted thinking time where you put your brain to solving a problem or two, doing work is, it’s so much harder to find that nowadays –

P: – in a corporate environment

M: in a corporate environment but also at home, if you’ve got kids, you’ve got your phone on, there’s so much technology and so many demands on our time right now. And I think you nailed it when you’re talking about your mornings and telling everyone to leave you the f – alone.

[Laughter]

M: It’s one of the key things that you need to do to find flow.

It is: Stop the distractions. Right?

So it is definitely a moment for you, with you.

P: Yes, I like that. For you, with you.

M: Yeah, that you need to protect in order to ever get anywhere near that and for me I find writing, I can definitely find flow, and I’ll look up and the suns set. [Laugh]

P: Oh yeah.

M: and ‘Oh, where did the day go’ [Laugh] and I’ve been really lucky recently to have some time out of the corporate world to explore other projects, and I’ve been finding flow left, right and centre. I’d like to call them rabbit holes normally.

[Laughter]

M: I’ve been learning/just recently watched a blog as you know we mentioned the beginning of the show and I’ve been learning about search engine optimisation and about security of my site and the information there and Ecommerce, and I can find that I’ll go down that rabbit hole and be learning and applying this information and again I’ll look up and 10 hours later, I forgot to have lunch and I’m really busting to go to the loo [Laugh] you know, where did the day go? I think that it comes from me having an environment here at home where I’m working where, you know, apart from my cat who will vomit (in previous episodes as well), I have a calm environment, where I can sit on my balcony, feel the sun and not be interrupted for hours and hours on end.

P: And as you say it’s easy when you can create the environment to do that. It is harder to achieve that status flow when you are in a communal environment for example. However, I think sometimes it’s easy to access it if you can control certain elements. I remember when I was writing my major essay for my degree, I actually went into cafes to write. It was the thing I had to write about had to do with café culture, so I was actually sitting in cafes and writing essays. But that controlling mechanism was to have earphones on, have music playing, and it doesn’t have to be Mozart or these things that everyone say about taping into the creative it can just be a drone, but that drone can create a sound barrier which sharpens the focus. The other thing is coffee.

[Laughter]

P: If I can have a coffee in front of me, it was like right I’m engaged and I am engaged in the activity at hand and it brings me into that focus and I could go for about an hour, hour and a half just with that moment. And the owners of the café were probably thinking ‘Is he going to order anything? Get out of the way, we’ve got lunch service coming up.’

[Laughter]

P: I think if you could control certain elements of the environment, you can harness that flow and like any good activity you form a habit. The more you do it, the more you can take control of certain elements the more you can pull yourself into that space where flow can happen.

M: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a great app, just a circle back with what you’re saying. There’s great app called Coffitivity, which a lot of writers probably already know. Rather than playing Mozart the app plays indistinct coffee shop noises. So there’s a murmur of voices, but you can never quite work out what they’re saying. You can’t actually wrap your head around a word. There’s people talking and there’s coffee cups chinking –

P: – It’s like that scene out of Madagascar “Someone left the ambiance on!” and they turn it off and it’s just the sound of NY City in the background.

M: [Laugh]

P: So why flow? Why have flow?

M: Why have flow. You know it was like as I was saying before it’s, it’s like awe and meditation. It gets you out of that autopilot part of our brain and into using and engaging, the key word there is engaging, with the world in a really deep way.

So, apart from the satisfaction of spending time on a task and completing a task, it also increases your productivity. So we all know whether we believe it or not, or whether we follow it or not. But if your phones constantly pinging and you’ve got people saying, Mom, what’s for dinner and phone rings and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Whatever it is that you’re doing is constantly being interrupted is not going to be the most efficient use of your time. Your productivity won’t be at its peak because of those interruptions, so flow optimises your productivity and from that you get a huge amount of satisfaction, so it reduces stress, you enjoy yourself more when you’re lost in that task, you get things done obviously, and you achieve things.

P: I’m going to jump in there with a slightly different take on that. Some of the research that I’ve been reading from people like Nelson and Rawlings from the Oxford Academic journal, University of Maryland. They talk about floating a very Zen concept. So bringing Zen concept of mindfulness into play. It’s about harnessing your immediate focus and training yourself to be perfectly in the moment, sharpening your mind and your focus to rid yourself of extraneous thought and basically filtering out the noise. I can see you formulating an idea here Marie and I can see we are going to disagree again, I love it!

[Laughter]

M: I got nothing.

P: WeII, It’s funny because these guys also talk about Zen practice is taking the rational and intellectual mind out of the mental loop. So that’s why you [disagree] because you’re so rational and intellectual. [Laugh]

M: No, no, no, I fully agree with mindfulness. I just don’t think that it’s tied to flow.

P: Interesting.

M: I do not practise mindfulness. I find personally, and not that I don’t think that it has benefits. I just haven’t ever gone there. There’s limited time and too many things to do as we’ll discover when we get to Episode 557 of happiness.

[Laughter]

M: There’s so much that you can do in your life, and you do have to make choices for me my mindfulness comes from exercise in the gym and I get the mental resilience and mental peace and Zen centring from hard exercise.

P: There’s loads of schools of thought supporting, so we’ll look into that.

M: And that’s me and if I didn’t do exercise or couldn’t do exercise or didn’t want to do exercise maybe I’d try and find that mental centring from meditation or any of that kind of thing. So mindfulness and being mindful in the moment and being focused. Absolutely, I agree with. Meditation. Haven’t, haven’t gone down that route and I guess to circle back to your original statement, I find flow often and regularly when I can just tackle a difficult task that I know I can do. So it can’t be too difficult where I’m overwhelmed with and give up, but something where I can tackle a difficult task and do it.

P: Yeah, and that taps into another quote by Csikszentmihalyi regarding flow and its, I like this, ‘when your skill level and the challenge at hand are at an equal level.’

And I think that that is something that everyone can tap into

M: So there’s one other thing that I do want to mention and it’s the idea with flow of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation and Mihaly again talks about, about this. So there’s a great book out there [a] couple years old now called ‘Drive’ by Daniel H. Pink. He talks about motivation and motivation one point o [1.0] was: me hungry, me eat, you know, cave man; drive two point o [2.0], which is very much how a lot of corporate is still set up is: I will pay you, you will do things.

P: [Laugh] Yep

M: You will want to do things, right? Your motivation is tied to, you know, or Pavlov’s dog, I’ll give you food so you’ll go do stuff. What Dan argues in his book is that we’re far more complex beings than that.

P: [Laugh]

M: There isn’t such a one on one relationship with motivation and drive and flow is a great example. I’m not getting paid for my blog at the moment. You know, I’m very excited that there’s people out there who want to read it and not just my mom.

P: [Laugh]

M: But I have great satisfaction and find flow often in writing and researching those articles, and it’s an intrinsic motivation that is driving me to do that. It is not the possibility of being paid for it because that doesn’t exist right now. And so there’s an intrinsic part of this flow you’ve got to want to dive into the task your performing.

P: You have to be invested –

M: – personally, and it can’t be others that are telling you to do it. So the second you lose your love for dance you’re not going to find your flow.

P: Exactly. Yeah definitely.

M: You’re not going to be productive and happy all of a sudden in your job. If you hate your job and you’re only there because it gives you a wage.

P: Yeah, absolutely. I see that all the time actually.

M: Yep. Absolutely. All right. We’re running low on time, so we should probably wrap up. But I’d be really interested in hearing from our audience on this one. What do you think, Pete?

P: How to harness flow. How do we do it? When have you achieved it? And How? Have a think about it.

M: Write into the podcast and we will have a read, maybe next week of anything that’s come in. And I’d love to hear what it is that you’ve done over the next week and let us know what you did, whether you found flow. You know, maybe you shipped your kids off to the neighbours, told your husband to go out for beers or something. And what did you do? Was it cooking? Was it writing? How did you find flow in your day to day life? Let us know.

P: Nice, we’d love to hear from you.

M: All right. Well, that’s all we have time for today, as always thanks for joining us. If you want any more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast, we’ll see you next week.

P: See you next week, bye.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

Bringing Awe and Inspiration into Your Life (E4)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 4

Experiencing awe is about being engaged with the wonder of life. Tune in to hear why you need more awe in your life and how to find it!

Want more on awe? Check out our article on awe-inspiring activities or download our inspiration infographic.

Subscribe so you don’t miss out! We’re working on new episodes as we speak. Check back here, or subscribe!

Transcription

P: Hi there. You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Peter Furness, remedial therapist, ex dancer and happiness aficionado. And each week, we’re bringing you news and research in the world of positive psychology and happiness. My co-host is Marie Skelton.

M: Yes. Thanks, Peter. Hi, everyone. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer, speaker and change expert. I also write about this topic at marieskelton.com, it’s a site about major life changes and transitions and how to cope with them, the site uses a lot of the same research we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. You can also find me on Twitter at Marie Skelton.

P: So on to today’s episode, which is all about all awe and inspiration.

[Happy intro music]

M: So today we’re talking about awe and inspiration. I guess we should probably start with what is it?

P: Absolutely, let’s go for it.

M: So experiencing awe is about being engaged with the wonder of life I like to think of awe as life’s exclamation marks. They punctuate our lives in rare and special moments. So Collins dictionary if we get to what everyone else is saying, the definition –

P: Let’s get some scientific references in there Marie, you know you love it with science references.

M: [Laugh] Collins dictionary says awe is the feeling of respect and amazement that you have when you’re faced with something wonderful and often rather frightening.

P: I like that they put frightening in there. [Laugh]

M: Yeah, there’s less in our lives that’s frightening now. But if you take a wider view of the definition of frightening, I think you can expand it to those moments where you’re just standing somewhere that makes you feel small and it’s frightening and its vastness or its size or greatness.

P: I guess what I like about frightening is that if something scares, you should give it a crack, [laugh] it’s taking you outside of your comfort zone, taking you outside of your known sphere.

M: Seize the day, right.

P: Come on, let’s change this stuff. [Be]cause change comes from doing something I haven’t done before. So for me frightening is a great letter. I’m not necessarily scared of being frightened. That’s not a very good use of tautology.

[Laughter]

P: Fear is good lever, it’s a good lever that pushes you forward.

M: Absolutely, so I think it’s worth noting that it’s a very subjective thing awe or inspiration. So some people find awe and wonder regularly and small things and big things around them, while others are only experiencing awe occasionally and it’s different for every person.

P: Very much I find that awe can be the big moments, but it can almost be those small moments when you’re walking through the street, and one of the things that I’m very aware of is our ability to disconnect, disconnect from our phones and from our tablets and from our laptops and so forth and just look around you. Sometimes there are really inspiring amazing moments happening and we miss them, miss them all the time. It’s about finding those daily ones. So one of the great examples is walking through the mall and hearing a beautiful piano accordion with a violinist playing by some buskers. Sometimes you can actually stop and listen and be semi inspired by them, not even semi inspired, sometimes completely inspired. It’s just taking the time to notice those little moments and go ‘Wow, that’s really quite incredible.’

M: Yeah, so it’s about being mindful, firstly, in a way and mindful is word that comes to mind there it’s really easy to just go through life and not take the time to notice those things.

P: Yes

M: There’s also some really great research that I’ve read into our perceptions of time and how, as a kid, I don’t know if you remember a three hour car trip as a kid just felt like –

P: – EEuuggh.. So many six hour car trips with my Father in the Bedford in western New South Wales with no iPod no iPhone thank you! Not even a book.

M: And no air con

P: [laugh] Oh my god, yes!

M: And you couldn’t wind the windows down because we were on the highway.

P: The 200 kilometres stretch from Nyngan to Cobar that is a dead straight road.

M: [laugh] So, that just felt like forever and nowadays, you know we’ve just passed into 2020 and I don’t know where 2019 went. It feels like the whole year just flew by so quickly. And there’s some great research into how humans perceive time and one of the things that they look at is as kids everything is new. Everything is new and so we notice everything.

P: Yes

M: And our days are filled with new things to learn about a notice and as we get older, we spend a lot more time I think, on autopilot.

P: Yep, it takes a lot more to impress us.

M: Yep or we’re not being mindful with the life that we do have

P: True

M: As you were saying, so awe for me is about being a kid again. It’s that wonder as a kid.

P: Getting that moment and admitting to yourself ‘That’s wonderful’ I’m going to spend the time and actually –

M: – Enjoy it.

P: Yeah enjoy it. Notice it. Clock it.

M: Yeah. So what are some other moments that you can refer to Pete in your life that have brought you awe?

P: It’s also about those big moments as well so one of the one of the moments for me was when I first started working on my own. So I transitioned from being a dancer into a remedial therapist and I was working for a company and I was pretty much starting again. So I spent about three years, three and 1/2 years working 6 to 7 days a week on no holiday. And I was on this loop of just keeping on going, through each month. Just going, Yep, keep going. Keep going. It was only until my business coach, Wally Salinger, said to me, “Pete, when are you having a holiday?” I’m like I don’t do holidays. “Oh, you really should.” [laugh]

M: There’s a recipe for burnout. [laugh]

P: Exactly, completely and It’s interesting when I got into that rotation, of just keeping on going, keeping on going. I wasn’t stopping and smelling the roses. I wasn’t necessarily going ‘oh isn’t this beautiful.’ I was living in Sydney and so forth and it was lovely and I wake up living in Pott’s Point looking out at the harbour thinking isn’t this pretty. But then I was like right work go and back into my routine. So Wally actually insisted that I take a holiday… I needed a break. So he bought me my 1st 2 night’s accommodation in the Netherlands. So I got to Amsterdam on and I had time and space and I was wandering around Amsterdam, riding a bicycle and doing yoga in the Park.

M: Of course you were.

P: [Laugh]

M: Let me just say, by the way, how many life coaches buy you two nights in the Netherlands?

P: [Laugh] Yeah, it’s not bad. It was amazing because I remember having time to go into museums, and walking into this room and seeing this 20 foot high painting, a Rembrandt, and thinking ‘I feel amazing’ that’s what awe can do.

M: Yeah, So let’s maybe take a look at the neuroscience or the science behind it. So what’s going on when people are experiencing awe?

P: OK, so when you’re going through a normal day your brain is on autopilot, you’re in default mode you’re going to the normal actions. You getting your coffee, going past the newsstand that you go past 20 times a day, all that sort of stuff. There’s not much going on and the older we get, the less often our brain is distracted with the new distracted by inspiration being around awe inspiring events or sequences. This shakes this up. It makes us see things that take us into a new experience. We’re taking notice of more things. There’s more ‘Oh Shiny’ moments.

[Laughter]

P: Research in the Netherlands has actually discovered that when we’re fully immersed in experiencing awe it switches on our brains so we engage more with our external world and less with ourselves and I think that’s a really important point. It draws our focus outward. All our worries about the mortgage, the electricity payments, all that sort of stuff that seems to get a little bit softer when we’re in a scene that is overlooking a cliff face into an ocean.

M: There’s also a lot of research into the importance of experiencing awe and the benefits. And it’s both physical and mental benefits here. So according to researchers, the state of immersion in awe enhances your wellbeing gives you more satisfaction in life it sharpens your brain, and it makes you feel less impatient and more time rich. There’s also additional studies about the impacts to physical health. There were studies where University of Toronto, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Berkeley, showing that experiencing awe reduces inflammation in the body. So it helps you deal with infection, inflammation and trauma, amongst other things. Also back to what we were talking about last time gratitude. So experiencing awe leads to people being more generous, more pro-social and more willing to volunteer. Maybe it’s as a result again, going back to that frightening, but as a result of people feeling humbled by things that are much larger than themselves.

P: Yeah, so there’s a perspective.

M: Absolutely. It does change your perspective. It makes you feel insignificant in a good way.

P: Yes, it draws your… draws your worrisome nature away from the small things. It’s the small grains of sand that you don’t need to worry about maybe.

M: More than that, I think it makes you realise that you’re one cog in a very large wheel and that’s not a bad thing. You do con[tribute], rather than it being all about you, or your worries and your stresses and how you are going to pay the mortgage and how you know, buy the kids, Christmas presents and all of that other worry day to day worry. It places you in the world as one of many billions of people on and when you think about that way and it’s not just about you, we start looking at how we can help others around us and contribute more to the society that we live in.

P: And that comes back to that generosity word that we talked about in the last podcast is putting yourself in their perspective. Generosity makes you more appreciative, which then makes you focus on more of the positive aspects of what you can achieve as opposed to what you can’t.

M: Yeah, so it’s all interlinked, all of this stuff, right?

P: Definitely.

M: So experiencing awe makes you more generous.

P: Yeah, I like that.

M: According to research.

P: So Marie, what brings you awe?

M: I like to refer to the goose bump test.

[Laughter]

M: Right?! If I look back on my life, there’s a few moments that I have experienced goose bumps, live performance.

P: yet definitely.

M: And I love ‘America’s Got Talent’ –

P: – [Laugh] Reality TV shows!

M: The moment where the underdog gets laughed at by the judges and the crowd and then comes out and kills it.

P: Yeah it’s the Susan Boyle moments –

M: The Susan Boyle moments, they get me everytime.

[Laughter]

P: They do, they tap into that unexpected pleasure because you go ‘Yeah, you go man!’ –

M: And you get goose bumps. But for me the one that really sticks in my mind is a holiday I took back in 2015 to India. It was probably the second week of a three week trip, and we finally got to the Taj Mahal and I remember walking underneath the arch way as you come into the big Taj Mahal area and seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time, through the haze, through the thousands of people, and just feeling the goose bumps of that moment, and it is just the grandest proclamation of love.

P: [Laugh]

M: If I can be romantic… that building beats Romeo and Juliet by a mile.

P: [Sharp intake of breath] [Laugh]

M: I got goose bumps, and that was awe to me, and I stood there being jostled by everyone and really took the time to take that moment, and that has stuck with me years later.

P: I’ve got a similar story where I was taking my niece through Italy and we went to Riomaggiore on the Cinque Terre trail. We decided to get there and Alex was 16 and all eager and she said “what are we going to do today Uncle Peter?” and I said we’re going for a walk and she goes where? And I said we’re going to go left. [Laugh] So we walked out of our accommodation and we walked left then we took another left and we ended up at some random sign post in Italian that said Nunnery, and I said ooh let’s follow that. So we’re trudging up this hill and my niece was like Uncle Peter where are we going? I said “we’re going to a nunnery” and she went “right…” and we’re walking up random goat tracks. We ended up going past bushes that were filled with hornets. And Alex was not amused, she was not happy. And then she turned around to me at the halfway point and goes Uncle Peter you do realise I don’t like hills. And I’m like well it sucks to be you right now. Anyway we’re going through these goat tracks and she’s constantly bemoaning, getting upset because we’re walking in this hot weather. And then we got to the nunnery. And God bless her she turned around and said “so where’s the nuns?”

[Laughter]

P: “No, there’s no Nuns here darl[ing], they’re all gone”

We walked around the back of the Nunnery and were on the cliff. We’re looking out over the ocean on and I turned her and said how goods this? And she went “Yeah alright, you win.”

[Laughter]

P: And that was a goose bump moment so that’s the thing of not necessarily planning to have one. We weren’t going to a specific destination, but we found something and it creates those moments where you do. We sat there for 20 minutes, and she did sit there for 20 minutes and just took it in and that creates a certain amount of perspective and brings it all home to you.

M: So you mentioned there you didn’t plan for it, but I think that the good news is you can plan for awe in your life, but it is a very subjective thing. So you know what works for one person won’t work for another necessarily. Do you have any tips for our listeners on how to plan for awe?

P: Aaahh… Well, for me it’s become go on a holiday. Wally got it right all those years ago. So every year now I do plan a holiday somewhere. It doesn’t have to be a big destination or and overseas holiday it just means taking time out. Getting time to have those walks outside, and that’s another good way to find awe as well is spending quality time outside and about. Take yourself out of your known sphere. Go somewhere that you haven’t been before. Walk around or take a boat ride or take a bike ride and stop somewhere. And if you find something that’s inspiring and sit in it for a while, setting those times aside to indulge in inspiration is really important. And I like the fact that you mentioned live performance because obviously being an ex-artist that is one of the big moments for me I’ve had so many moments where I literally gasp going that was amazing!

M: [Laugh]

P: When I’ve watched someone do something incredible or heard someone sing. It’s those are really important and easily accessible ways to get some awe and inspiration. There are free concerts around Sydney at the moment, with the Sydney Festival and one of the ones I’m looking forward to is the Opera in the park. You could go and here world class performers do amazing things and you’re just sitting in the park.

M: I think the key is to find someone that does something that inspires you. And that might be performance or it might also be someone who thinks in a way that inspires you. Ted is hugely popular, and I think it’s because people can sit there and go, Huh? And they have ah huh moment, right?

P: Yeah

M: That I’m actually going to go and take what you said to make change in my life. That’s how inspirational it was.

P: Yeah, and accessibility to that now is so much more.

M: Absolutely. You just need to go online. And speaking of going online there, there is no substitute for getting out all right, getting out into nature and seeing live performance, etcetera. But there are two things you can do if you are short on time or energy, and one is to relive your inspiring moments, so simply reliving them can have a positive impact on your well being. So take out photos of trips you’ve taken the birth of your first child. How many of us have taken videos or photos off our wedding and they sit in a cupboard for the rest of our lives?

P: [Laughter]

M: It is so worth it — you know, as long as you still love your significant other…

P: Well even if you don’t, I mean, it was a happy point in your life.

M: [Laughter] … To take the time to actually put it on the TV and watch it and that can actually bring you a lot of joy, just reliving awe inspiring moments. And then the second thing people can do is to start an awe inspiring playlist or album or journal. So there’s some beautiful pieces of music that for me always just.. [inspire] I like Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. Love that music.

P: Very lovely piece.

M: Absolutely and that would be on my list. You can also just start taking cuttings out of magazines or travel magazines printing stuff from online. Things that bring you awe and just start a journal, and one day that might be your guide to your holiday book.

P: [Laugh] Very true, we’ve all done that.

M: In the meantime, it’s something that can bring you joy and a really great resource that I do want to point you towards is, and on its online, Berkeley has an awe video experience, so we’ll pop that online so that people can find the link. It’s a beautiful video of awe inspiring scenery around the world, really worth checking out.

P: That’s where sometimes the old Google chrome cast can come in really handy as well. If you can find those images that either recall beautiful moments like whenever I see the Great Barrier Reef, I’m instantly transported back to when I lived in North Queensland went out there for the first time and dove amongst the coral. Or placed that you want to go places that you have a desire to visit. Those, those images can be very important to keeping our focus and changing it if we need to.

M: Absolutely.

P: Okay, well I think we’re out of time, we’ve gone on long today.

M: Yep

P: Thanks for joining us. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast.

M: Thanks.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

The Importance of Gratitude (E3)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

Who knew? Practicing gratitude can actually make you happier. We take a look at some of the latest research into why gratitude makes you happy and how you can bring more gratitude into your life.

Want more on gratitude? Check out our article on Why and How You Should Practice Gratitude or download our gratitude infographic.

Subscribe so you don’t miss out! We’re working on new episodes as we speak. Check back here, or subscribe to be find out when we launch new episodes.

Transcription

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and change and transformation specialist, and my co-host is Peter Furness. Peter.

P: Hi there. I’m Peter Furness, and I’m a remedial therapist, ex professional dancer and happiness aficionado. Each week we will bring to you the latest news of research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness. Now, Marie, you’ve also got a blog on this topic, right?

M: Yes, and you can find me at MarieSkelton.com. And it’s a site about major life changes and transitions and how to cope with them. The site uses a lot of the same research we talk about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life. You can also find me on Twitter at Marie Skelton. So on to today’s episode, which is all about gratitude.

[Happy intro music]

M: So, Peter, why gratitude?

P: Gratitude make us more in tune to our social groups. Gratitude encourages us to be more happy. It covets more feelings of wanting to engage and be generous and all those lovely feel good fuzzies that you should be getting and if we can focus on gratitude it brings about the other elements that end up making us more happy.

M: For me in particular, I had a pretty bad accident a few years ago, as you know, and I’ve found myself being more grateful for what I do have. Maybe that’s growing up a little bit as well [Laughter], I’m out of my terror teenage years. But being more grateful has allowed me to find a bit more inner peace and is just a far more healthy mental state to be in/

P: it brings your focus in as well. It narrows your focus when you can identify the things that you’re grateful about. You realise how much you have, as opposed to looking at the things that you don’t have. You know, it’s about that, that shift in mentality that makes you go ‘Oh, I’ve got some good stuff going on here.’

M: Absolutely. And let’s be honest, we live in Sydney which, you know, is one of the top 10 most liveable cities in the world. Year after year after year, always better than Melbourne, by the way. [Laughter]

P: I apologise to our Victoria listeners.

M: I don’t [Laugh]

P: I am an ex Melbourne-ite, and I always get a little bridled when someone mentions that, so go Melbourne.

M: You chose Sydney, just saying.

[Laughter]

M: but you know, and we’re both very blessed with the careers that we have and the income that they provide us, our ability to even partake in the careers that we’ve chosen. Then there’s so many things to be grateful for in our lives. I guess the question is, so many other people are in similar situations to us, and yet they’re not feeling grateful and they’re not practicing gratefulness. So maybe we start with what is gratitude.

P: What is gratitude?

M: I think you had an Oxford dictionary quote for us Pete.

P: I do, we’re amazingly in sync here because I’ve been doing some writing and reading on this for myself towards the end of last year. So according to the Oxford Dictionary, gratitude is with the quality of being thankful, readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. And I guess something that’s worth pointing out is that polite.. gratitude is often mistaken as a sign of politeness. Sorry, for everyone listening at home.

[Laughter]

P: There’s a cat crawling over Marie’s shoulder.

M: I wish you could see [Laugh] we are sitting in my lounge room which is doubling as our sound studio and the cat has decided to sit on my shoulder.

P: She was doing a very good job there remaining poised as a cat perched on her head.

M: I’m grateful for my cat, I’m grateful for my cat..

OK. So gratitude, thank you for that excellent Oxford Dictionary quote there, Peter. But it’s also worth noting that gratitude can be mistaken as being polite, something that parents teach their kids in order to be better respected in society. And we’re not talking about that.

P: No, we’re talking about conscious gratitude. So actually spending time being grateful for the things that you do have and investing in that this is something that ah, a lot of religious doctrines have done and being someone who’s more interested in Buddhism in the eastern forms of religion it’s something that is very much in the practice of religion and that is identifying the things that you can be grateful for no matter how small that creates a sense of thankfulness, which then leads into kindness and compassion and all those other lovely elements that lead to a happiness state.

M: And I’m not religious by any means, but it is also similar to Christian praying.

P: Yes, definitely.

M: So at night you spend time thanking God for what you have and for people

P: and it’s a focus thing and you’re drawing focus to the things and you’re recognising. And this is what some of the research talks about is actively recognising, either by writing it down or saying it out loud. What am I grateful for? What are the good things in my life? Just by making that switch? Sometimes that can create a good generator of happiness is a good word to use?

M: Yeah, I’ll give it to you.

[Laughter]

I’m just not allowed to say begets apparently.

[Laughter]

M: It’s pompous

P: It’s Stephen Fry!

M: OK, he’s got a lovely English accent so he can get away with it.

All right, so let’s maybe talk about some of the benefits and some of the studies and stuff. So, what are the benefits of being grateful?

P: Well, studies show that practicing gratitude leads to being more honest, patient, having more self-control and that then helps you to achieve goals, achieve the things that you’re aiming to get out of life.

M: I think you mentioned this before. One of the other important things is that particularly for perfectionists there is a tendency to concentrate on learning from mistakes and that’s a really noble and valid thing to do. Don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it can make us focus too much on what goes wrong and not enough on what’s going right in our lives.

P: Definitely, there’s some stuff out there from… [Laugh] I can’t remember the guy’s name [Laughter] I’ll have to come back to that one.

M: It doesn’t exist if you can’t reference it.

[Laughter]

P: Yes, it is great to learn from mistakes. It is great to learn what you’ve done wrong, but it is also brilliant to hone your focus on the things that you do right and that is to… Ahh it was Matthew McConaughey. It was Matthew McConaughey’s speech at ah… I think it was the University of Texas [actually University of Houston]. One of the 13 rules he made for a simple life and he talks about are honing your successes. So breaking down your successes and going this is why it worked. Because in the same way that it’s good to learn from the mistakes. If you know what works, you can implement that again the next time.

Matthew McConaughey’s address to graduating students at Houston University

M: Yep, so it’s about paying attention to the good things so that we don’t take them for granted. And in that way it makes us more attuned to the sources of pleasure and good people and things in our lives.

P: Yes, which we will then seek out further and use more in the future.

M: Yep. Okay, so give me the proof.

P: [Laugh] It’s always about proof, this is the science in you.

M: [Laugh] This all sounds really nice. Gratitude makes you rich and smart and beautiful and all the rest of it.

P: It does make you beautiful there is a link that gratitude defies age. I’m going to go to my book here [Laugh].

M: Alright well, while you’re looking through your book.

P: Flipping through my book posthumously ‘Kindness slows ageing.’ There we go.

M: Nice. Okay. So I’m going to actually reference real research here, Not just Peter’s musings in his book. So a study by Emmons and McCullough to publish in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2003 nearly 20 years ago now showed that participants who kept a Gratitude Journal weekly for 10 weeks or daily for two weeks experienced more gratitude obviously, they also experienced positive moods, optimism about the future and better sleep.

And there’s also study and I’m going to apologise to these wonderful researchers but I’m about to butcher your names. There’s a study by Mϋce Idili, Erdil, Akgϋn and Keskin in 2015 which, from the cultivating gratitude towards the workplace, can help alleviate negative emotions and attitudes at work. So really worth focusing in on this if you’re in HR or if you’re a manager of people. So it found that employees with high levels of gratitude towards work are more likely to excel by going above and beyond in their job tasks. So there’s a real productivity benefit. To cultivating a grateful workplace that will impact your bottom line. That’s stats for me Pete. ROI can’t beat that.

P: [Laugh] We all have a little bit of statistical data. In contribution to that, I’m going to talk about Northeastern University professor David DeSteno, whose comes up a lot in a lot of the research in terms of studies that he’s done. He has proven that not only does gratitude increase kindness, it helps people succeed in their goals. So talking about how gratitude can make you more focused can bring you more into a positive light, which then helps you actually achieve more.

I’ll also talk about U. C Berkeley’s Summer Allen, Ph.D. She writes in ‘The Science of Gratitude’, which is a white paper that she published, that grateful people are happier, more satisfied, less materialistic and have better mental and physical health. And, we’ll talk about that in the context of what we can actually do for gratitude later on.

M: That’s fascinating, isn’t it? There’s so much research coming out now that links mental habits and mental health to physical health.

P: It’s the new what they call the wellness perspective. People are becoming much more conscious about what can they do in their daily life to create lasting change.

M: Yep. Okay, so we’ve got studies, and that’s, that’s just four that we’ve mentioned plus Peter’s scribble, So five.

[Laughter]

M: and look all you have to do is Google gratitude and gratitude studies, gratitude research. There is so much out there that shows that practicing gratefulness has huge repercussions for your life.

P: Definitely, I’m going to say this, although I’m not sure if Marie’s going to let me do it. It’s a compounding interest of influence.

M: [Laughter]

P: Gratitude creates things that have their own energy and it brings about things like kindness and positivity. So it’s a real key to unlocking barriers that we might have that we don’t even know that we’ve got and I’ll reference a personal story here, that when I was a young Arts University student down in Melbourne, the world was so bleak and dark and difficult, dancing my little heart out and putting all my emotion into these dark pieces and it wasn’t until I actually left Australia about 10 years later and I moved to London and I made a conscious decision to stop being so bloody miserable. Life is okay. You know, I was earning a career and so forth in my chosen profession and again coming back to that point, you were saying earlier about the opportunity that we’ve got to pursue careers that we choose and to actually make a living out of them. So I turned my mental focus around and started concentrating more on what I had as opposed to what I didn’t have or what was good as opposed to what was negative about the day and living in London as those of you who have lived in London in the middle of winter, it’s a desperate place to live

M: Yeah, I lived in D. C.

P: It’s hard. Yeah, that lack of sunlight. It’s the constant drizzle. It’s the greyness.

M: It’s the cold! Everything’s cold!

P: It’s hard yakka, so to turn your focus around in that perspective, during that time, I found that to be very empowering and it made me appreciate so much more of what was going on and actually got me more active in my own life and going out there and seeking things and finding things so that when I woke up and didn’t have work, I’d be ‘that’s okay. I’ve got this this, this and this and this to do and I’d be very forthright in going out and going into the city and doing more classes or going and meeting people and seeing what opportunities were out there.

M: So that’s a great Segway into the next question I have for you. How do you practice gratitude? So what did you do to shift your mindset?

P: Well, it was interesting because one of the things that Summer Allen talks about from UC Berkeley is journaling. And for me, this came about in the form of a journal. I managed to get one of my old journals from when I was a student and looked at it at went ‘Oh my God, this is a book of sadness.’ [Laugh]

M: But actually, you were journaling the bad stuff.

P: Yeah, completely.

M: And so when you decided you’re going to shift to your mindset to being more grateful, did you start journaling about that? Or did you just stop the negative journaling?

P: No. I consciously started journaling about positive. So at the end of every entry, I made it commitment to myself that I was going to find one positive thing in the day on that was what I would end on and I found myself doing that generally throughout the entries, there’s no longer was I writing about the negative, the negative washed off. I let it go, whereas it was the positive stuff that I was focusing on.

M: Well, that actually aligns with what the research shows. So the research suggests that translating your thoughts into concrete language can make us more aware of them, and it deepens there emotional impact. So, it also shows you don’t need to journal every day but journaling two or three times per week using that time to reflect, particularly on the smaller, more frequent things. So, someone holding the door open for you or stopping the lift from going when you get into work in the morning.

You know those people who press the buttons?

[Laughter]

M: We can see you!

P: Waiting at the traffic light and continuously hitting that button. Yes I’m sure the computer chip received your information. Pushing it harder won’t make a difference.

M: [Laugh] Yes, anyway, so we ah focus on the good, not the bad. [Laugh look at us focusing on the bad] but people who hold the lift for you or hold a door opened for you, or who offer you some of this snack at lunch or say thank you in an email or those little things they’re worth taking time to notice.

P: Definitely.

M: Writing them down, again only two or three times a week. Is all it actually takes. And then there’s a whole lot of other stuff you can do to take it further. Things like writing an email to a colleague to say thank you or writing a letter to someone. Oh penmanship it’s a lost art.

P: E mail or pen. It doesn’t matter. This is something that Allen also talks about. It’s one of her primary two gratitude interventions, and whilst journaling is one. It’s this identification of people that have helped you to achieve that is the other and writing that down or physically putting that into practise. So saying this person did this for me and acknowledging it. You don’t necessarily have to send the email or the letter, but writing it down helps you to identify it and that again becomes a good feeling vibration that permeates everything else because you start identifying more positive things.

M: Send the bloody letter [Laughter] if you’ve written the letter, send the letter.

P: [Laugh] It comes back to, you know, people sending little gifts. Or you sending something to your client because they’ve been good to you for the year. Having just had Christmas, that’s something that a lot of people may have forgotten. I remember as a kid Mom used to always give the garbage man a six pack. She would, she would wait out there at six o’clock in the morning for these garbage-men to make sure that they got their six pack of beer and she gave one to the Post[-man]. She would give one to the Milk man. It’s those little things that matter.

M: You know what I think that, having lived in the States for eight years, it’s something I noticed over there. Americans have got gratefulness and gratitude down pat. They’ve got Thanksgiving, which is a four day holiday centred around thanking people for what you have and they have a tipping culture, which has a whole raft of other issues that we don’t need to go into. But a culture of saying thanks above and beyond and..

P: identifying it.

M: exactly. So you always send your kids off with a Christmas present for the teachers at the end of the year, we never really did that in Australia at my school, and some kids might have had a different experience. Thanking the garbage-man or the, the people that provides services to you on a regular basis for their time and their commitment it’s such a powerful thing that is really not part of our culture in Australia as much as it was over in the States, and I think that’s what made it stand out to me. But it’s such a beautiful thing that it’s one of those things that is such a selfish thing. Be grateful people because the benefits to you

P: come back

M: absolutely. And the best part about all of this stuff is when your doctor sits you down and says you need to quit smoking. You need to stop drinking. You’ve got to go exercise three times a week, if he says ‘Go be grateful.’ It’s the easiest bloody thing in the world, and it’s cheap as well, it’s pretty much free. If you do it certain ways.

P: You can buy in. [Laughter] Go on Marie, buy in, buy in.

M: I’m buying this one because it’s such a no brainer. It’s simple and easy. It is so easy. You don’t have to journal. You have to write it down. That’s just what the research says really solidifies it for you. But you could just take time every evening before you go to bed to think about the good things that have happened that day and be grateful for them.

P: It’s a wonderful way to get yourself a good night’s sleep as well.

M: Yeah. There you go. All right. So that’s all we had time for today, Peter.

P: Awe, so quick.

M: So if you were listening to us I want to thank you for joining us again today. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe. And like this podcast.

P: And there are a range of additional resource is on your site aren’t there Marie.

M: Why, thank you, Peter. Yes, there are. [Laugh] Yeah there are. So there’s a whole lot of articles and links to a lot of the research that we talk about. Again you can visit Marieskelton.com for more articles and research on happiness.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

Happiness at Work (E2)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

We spend an estimated 90,000 hours at work over our lifetime, so it’s important that we’re happy at least some of that time, right? Here’s the latest research on how to bring happiness to your workplace.

Subscribe so you don’t miss out! We’re working on new episodes as we speak. Don’t miss out!

Transcription

Okay, Welcome back. You’re here with Marie, and Peter and this is Happiness for Cynics.

P: I’m the happiness, she’s the cynic.

M: [Laugh] Today, we’re going to talk about happiness in the workplace. Unfortunately, most people have to go to work.

P: [Laugh] Some of us choose to go to work because we’re happy.

M: [Laugh] A lot of us go to work because we choose not to live on the streets.

P: Aahh fundamental choices, we’ll talk about that in another episode won’t we.

[Laughter]

M: And I am I think that there’s a lot of discourse right now about choosing something that you’re passionate about and something that makes you happy.

P: Well, we do spend what, 30% of our time working or something like that.

It’s interesting because I made those choices many years ago not to follow the money path, to follow passion and it’s funny these conversation keep coming up and I’m “Hey, I’m already there, I’ve done it! Yay for me!

M: It’s funny you should say that because as much as I love you, I have to say, I feel like it’s an elite privilege to be able to make those choices.

P: I’d agree with you on that. Yes.

M: Not, not trying to judge you or anything but I think that a lot of people especially living in a large city like we are in Sydney. You don’t really have many choices, if you’ve got two kids and a husband or a wife or a partner, you have to make some career choices that may not be solely driven by your personal happiness.

P: Yes, completely agree. The ability to be able to choose passion over career or over a more logical choice is determined by your situation and your circumstances eg. Children, mortgage all that sort of stuff. You can choose to deny some of those but some of those you can’t and that will inform what you choose to do with your occupation. I agree with you on that one. Hey, we agree on something, how nice.

M: [Laugh] It won’t last.

P: [Laugh]

M: There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about millennials and the shift in millennials’ expectations for the work place and the fact that traditional corporates have been struggling to hire millennials because they’re not offering purpose and passion – or they traditionally haven’t – and they’re having to now look at what they offer to that generation if they want to hire them. Things like flexible work, purpose, meaning and in fact, there’s a great article that we just read called ‘It’s Time to Take Culture Seriously’ that we found on ChiefExecutive.net and in that article.. look I’ll quote something to you Pete, if you’ll bear with me. I’m really keen to discuss this idea of meaning and purpose, and whether it really is an organisation’s or company’s job to help employees discover their meaning and purpose and then provide that to them, or whether their job is simply to pay wages for work done.

P: Yeah

M: I’ll read this quote.

‘It’s time that we stopped thinking that culture happens to us and instead take responsibility for designing inclusive environments, collaborative ways of working and humane incentive systems that bring out the best in ourselves and in others. It certainly helps when a culture is modelled at the top, like the change that Mandela is sparking at Microsoft. But we’re all capable of making more positive choices that create meaning and shared purpose regardless of our official role or title.’

Now I find this fascinating, so meaning and purpose and the reason why I want to talk about that right now is that they’re so critical to happiness.

P: Definitely, I definitely agree.

M: If you’re lost and you’ve got no meaning, no purpose, it’s very hard to be happy. And so given that we spend so many hours a week out work, Do you think it’s the organisation or boss’s job to make someone’s role meaningful? What do you think? You’re a small business owner Pete?

P: I am and I have battled with that concept actually. I remember in my own career, in a former career, I remember one of my bosses turned to me, saying, “it is not my job to make you feel good my job is to create art.” So you would walk into the rehearsal room and you knew that it wasn’t that person’s job to make everybody feel good about themselves and have a nice time. They were like no, we have a job, we have to do this and we have to get this product made and we’re going to do that and it’s tough.

I don’t think that we can be mushy mushy and have all these fuzzy feelings in terms of CEO or leaders of business or business owners having to take responsibility for other people’s happiness. However, I think it is an interesting conversation that is coming around now that we are identifying that the workplace has a role in that and that if you read the people who have gone through the self help world and have come out the other side. The book that comes to mind is ‘The ‘Monk who sold his Ferrari’ by Robin Sharma. It’s a book about a guy who was a hot shot corporate lawyer then sold it all and moved to the Nepal and came back to his workplace and shocked everybody with his transformation. Our employees and our employment has the capacity to give our lives meaning, and I think there is a role that senior people can have in identifying that, but in that quote that you read there was a personal responsibility for everybody to ensure that they have meaning in their lives. So you can’t just give that over to somebody else there’s a bit of personal responsibility as well.

M: So I think it’s a bit easier in jobs where you’re using your brain and there’s flexibility for creativity. Where I think that this new idea falls over is in areas like the service industry or more blue collar work, to be honest. So if your job is to turn a widget 100 times every hour, how is the owner of that factory meant to give you more satisfaction, turning that widget 100 times per hour? How can they?

P: I think that comes down to the value of your worker and making your worker feel that they are part of a bigger cog or a bigger system that if that widget doesn’t turn then that’s not going to allow other people to achieve the high-end of the product if you like. So if you look at it from a watch maker’s perspective, if they ignore one cog, the whole system doesn’t work the watch doesn’t function and therefore, you can’t call yourself a watchmaker or repairer because you’re not doing the job. If the person in the chain is not aware that they are contributing to the bigger product, then that’s a failing of the person who’s in charge. You’ve got to empower the smallest of people to feel they’re making a difference. Take a janitor in high school if he doesn’t clean the rooms, then it is not a clean school. And that has huge implications on the students, the people who are using the product and the teachers who are coming in and expecting the science room to be clean on its not but that does that janitor have a clear line of sight to the affect that their work has. And maybe that’s where people who are in charge, CEOs and business people have more of a role to make people more informed of the value of what they actually do within a structure.

M: I think that’s a really good segue into a lot of talk right now about purpose of an organisation. Everyone always talks about the importance to motivate your employees of having a strong vision, it’s leadership 101. We’ve all known that for ages, but in today’s day and age, where technology and social media makes even the smallest mistake viral within 24 hours, the smallest leadership mistake can bring that down, and Uber is a great example that.

P: Absolutely, and we can look at some of our insurance corporations in the most recent rounds of the royal commission and see examples of that as well.

M: Yeah absolutely. So if an organisation in a capitalist society is there to make money and this is the cynic in me again, right. Like an organisation with shareholders, its primary purpose is to make money for its shareholders. You can also talk about the importance of your customers, which a lot of companies do, and one would argue that they’re intrinsically linked. You could also, then, if you’re really on top of it, talked about how valuable your employees are. And again, one would argue they’re all intrinsically linked. But when push comes to shove the purpose of a public company — we’re in Australia, so we would call them public — so shareholder owned company is to make money. So, how is it that an employee who turns 100 cog – even if it is for a watch maker and they understand that their watches help people tell time – Get it? How are they meant to feel that sense of purpose or meaning or pride, more than anything, I think if really all an organisation is there to do is to make money. And are we seeing a shift of bottom up ground swell that our employees and our customers are expecting more from corporations with all the corporate social responsibility? It was a fad 10, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, and now it’s becoming far more intrinsic to the way people operate.

P: I think you hit the nail on the head there in terms of the social aspects of corporate business and corporate identity because people are mindful investors now. So you have more people interested in supporting businesses that have a social network that have a social fabric or a social identity. Mining is huge, a lot of people don’t like mining, it’s dirty, it’s polluting and all that sort of stuff. But Australia makes its back off it, so we can’t just negate that huge influx into our economy. So mining companies are doing things like supporting local communities and doing indigenous development programmes to try and up their social value if you like. And I think that this is a change in what we’re seeing in terms of corporatisation, maybe you’ve had more to say on this but definitely since the industrial era, it’s no longer enough to just make more money and we’re seeing that in Geopolitics as well where the culture of wellbeing is informing our policy. Look at the recent release of New Zealand’s wellbeing budget that’s just been rolled out.

M: I just have to say, Jacinda Ardern [NZ’s Prime Minister] is just killing it, love it.

P: She is but what she’s doing differently with this is that this is a concept has been around since the 2000’s with lots of countries like Sweden, Wales, Ireland, even the UK and Australia have had these phrases in the treasury policies, and things have been out there. But what Jacinda is doing really well is that they’re taking it further, and now they’re putting in actual critical measurement stakes off the five areas they want to improve and they’re giving it value and giving it goals. So this is a reflection of maybe what’s going on in corporate culture as well is that no longer is it enough to just make more cash.

M: For those of you listeners who haven’t been following what little New Zealand has been doing over here in the pacific. Recently New Zealand announced a new set of goals for government essentially, and rather than just focusing on GDP, they’re focusing on wellbeing measures. So it’s not enough for the country to get richer and the people get poorer. And it’s not enough for the country to get richer if the people don’t have access to education and health care. So it’s really interesting to look at that. And if you want to read more on that, there’s a whole lot online around the sustainable development goals. And they’ve definitely aligned up to some great..

[pause]

P: I’m just looking at the reference actually

[Laughter]

M: Pete’s typing it you can hear him..

P: I was told I wasn’t allowed to type.

[more laughter]

M: There’s no getting away with typing with two microphones in a podcast.

P: There’s a great article on TheConversation.com that talks about New Zealand’s wellbeing budget deliveries. If you just put that into the search engine there they will come up with a whole heap of references to that website which is really pro-actively promoting the new Ardern agenda.

M: Yeah, definitely worth looking at. So back to happiness in the workplace, though. So what are the takeaways here. Is it an organization’s job to make sure it’s employees are happy?

P: It’s in its best interest, surely. A happy worker is a good worker. I’m going to come out with a personal story I have here where I was working in a hospitality job in Adelaide. We were having a little bit of fun on a Sunday was a big Sunday. We were getting slammed and it was hot. Everyone was wanting all this stuff and I decided I was in a silly mood and started taunting this waiter from across the cake counter. Doing little Peter Rabbit noises across the cakes. And she began to lose her flow for delivery to the table, to the point where she actually had to come behind the counter to give me a little slap and then we fell on the floor laughing. We were working for four hours really hard’. The business owner’s father walked around the countertop. Saw us both on the floor behind the cake counter, laughing, and simply looked at us and went, ‘well a happy worker is a good worker’. And I think that that’s a real little gem there is that happy workers will work hard for their employers if they can see the direct influence that they’re having. If your employer comes to you and says, Marie great job on this aspect of that presentation, it really helped give the company a certain leg up or got us forward in this, in this aspect of our business, that’s going to give you a little bit of feeling of well being and self esteem and self esteem is a huge bonus in terms of prerequisites for happiness. It’s going to make you feel good the next time that a difficult product or a difficult question crosses your desk. You’re going to do a better job again. That direct feedback is really important. And in that way, looking after your workers in that way is vital for a functioning company.

M: Yeah, Look, I definitely do agree, but the cynic in me just wants to reiterate that it’s not about having values plastered on a poster that you trot out any time you are interviewing someone.

P: Which comes down to a great quote in the article that we mentioned.

‘Clear communication is critical, but words are empty without follow through.’

P: You need to action things up. You can’t just be seen to be supporting wellbeing and supporting your work.

M: All right, well, we are out of time.

P: That was awfully quick [Laugh]

So we might circle back on some of the other developments in happiness at work. I know that the greater Good Science Centre, over at California, Berkeley. They do some great work and have even got an ed-X course titled ‘Happiness at Work’, which is a good free primer to all of the research out there. And there is a lot of research out there on the importance of happiness at work and also how to help your organisation or your business to have happy employees. There is also a lot of science behind this and the importance and benefits down to ROI [return on investment] and bottom line dollars for having happy employees.

P: So is a very big field. But all for another time.

M: Well, thank you, Peter.

P: My pleasure

M: I never call you Peter… and Thank you listeners, we will see you next time.

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

What is Happiness? (E1)

15/03/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

In our first episode, meet Marie and Pete and learn a little about what we mean by happiness and its history. Learn about why you too should be asking the question: what is happiness?

Subscribe so you don’t miss out! We’re working on new episodes as we speak! Don’t miss out!

Transcript

[Intro]

M; You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer, speaker and change and resilience expert, and my co-host is Pete.

M: You can find our podcast at HappinessForCynics.com or visit MarieSkelton.com for articles and resource on change and resiliency as well as happiness and finding balance in today’s busy world. The site talks about a lot of the same research we talked about here on the podcast and has some really practical tips for bringing joy and happiness into your life.

P: So let’s get into it. Cynics the world over. It’s time to suck it up and get happy!

[happy intro music]

P: Ah the happy music. Don’t you love it?

M: That’s going to be so annoying after the hundredth time.

P: Every time I hear it, I bop my head.

M: Well it does make me smile, that’s why we picked it.

P: Exactly. Okay, Welcome to Episode one. Today we’re talking generally about happiness.

M: I guess we should. That’s why we’re here, right?

P: But before we do that, why are we here and who are we? Marie?

M: I’m a cynic. It’s true. I’m naturally curious and generally positive. But I’m definitely a realist, and I have no time for fluff. It’s why I’ve spent my entire life quietly, scoffing at the headlines like ‘Five Ways to be your Best self’ or ‘why mindfulness is so important at work.’ But then, a couple of years ago, something happened that since made me question everything I thought I knew about living life. I had a motorbike accident a couple of years ago, and I nearly lost my life and my leg. And I’ve spent years recovering both physically and mentally, but something strange has happened along the way. I started reading those articles with the bubbling brooks and the five stones stacked on top of each other. And to be fair, I still haven’t really gotten on board with the whole Yogi movement. But the weird thing is that now I won’t automatically rule it out.

P: We’re getting to you see, It’s a Revolution!

M: It’s a cult

P: I, however, come from a much more creative background, dredged up in theatres and stages, school drama rooms and music halls. I even have a degree in dance performance, much to my mother’s despair. I’ve never worn a suit to work, so my background is perhaps a little more, shall we say, alternative?

M: Yes we shall.

P: My friends often referred to me as the universal, angel loving believer in the karmic gods. They would joke that Pete would always throw it up to the sky and let the angels guide me. Now, I’m sure that somewhere along the path of being a creative, dramatic thespionic devotee and performance artist, I also managed to pick up a belief that the world will throw what is right at you in the right moment. I’m probably more of an ethereal than a realist, in contrast to Marie, but believing in the ebbs and flows of energetic poles and some well reasoned, fatalistic surrender. But I’ll admit that over the years, a little bit of the dark side of logic has permeated my unicorn laden realm.

M: uh huh, each to their own.

P: [Laughter]

M: now, because I’m a cynic and still coming to terms with admitting I buy into all this New Age stuff, I also started studying it because that’s what cynics do. You know, to make sure it’s actually legit.

P: You need the statistics and the research. You don’t just go believing.

M: Yeah. No. I’m really not throwing anything up to angels. So the weird thing is, I never knew this was out there. Even though the field of positive psychology is still relatively young, there is a huge body of research out there! Absolutely massive. Which brings me to why we’re here. This stuff is real and cynics all over the world are missing out.

P: Too, right. Okay, So we’re here to talk about happiness, and when we talk about happiness, there are so many permeations of that word. We are here to talk about how to approach happiness and our own approach to what makes us happy.

M: I think what Pete’s trying to say is…

P: shut down!

M: We’ll present the research and case studies…

P: because it’s all about the research

M: Well, yes, with a heavy dose of cynicism from me and maybe even we’ll try some of these ideas out. If you want to follow along at home, I promise I won’t tell anyone, so you don’t feel silly.

P: And those people who are more like me, we’ll just go along because it’s fun.

M: So let me just start by saying I’m not buying it.

P: Oh Muz.. [Marie’s annoying nickname that stuck sometime around 1998]

M: I admit I’m more than a little bit sceptical, but I’m also curious. And surely the huge amount of real research out there can’t be wrong.

P: I’m a buyer Muz. I’m the one waiting for the doors to open at five AM on those Boxing day sales. I’m primed, shoulder pads ready to go, plucking my way through the bargain basement offerings of the happiness stock pile. I don’t know why, but one day I just decided to buy into happiness.

M: I think that’s why this will work. You’ve got the cynic and the buyer. So, we should probably start with a bit of history about happiness. From my side it’s going to be short history, you see, even though philosophers have been writing about happiness and meaning for centuries, psychologists have traditionally been more focused on the negative aspects of mental health. So it’s only been in the last couple of decades that researchers have put any time into studying what happy people are doing, rather than why people are sad.

P: Yeah, Eastern and Western philosophers have all debated and tort apart the search for happiness and what that indeed means to us, as in mankind, us. The concept of happiness being a thing to strive for is a relatively Western ideal.

M: So happiness is not momentary emotions like fun enthusiasm or pride. It’s not about being always cheery or without stress, anger, grief or sadness also not about having a continuous stream of positive emotional experience.

P: Unendingly happy people are so boring.

M: [Laughter]

M: It’s also really hard to attain, right? And in fact, as long as it doesn’t last too long, being sad or angry can be a positive thing and give your life more meaning and happiness afterwards.

P: Completely. Happiness is not about pleasure and hedonism. Unfortunately. Sadly, it’s not achieved by gratifying all of your desires or by having decadent, luxurious experiences. Happiness isn’t a tireless climb towards achievement or status, and it isn’t the result of getting everything perfect all the time.

M: Okay, so we know what happiness isn’t. But what is happiness? I think my favourite definition comes from the pioneer of scientific research on human happiness Sonja Lyubomirsky. She’s a professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and she defines happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment or positive wellbeing, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful and worthwhile.”

P: It’s interesting because the origins of the word for happiness actually relate to the meaning of luck for cultures that had to endure plague, invading armies, famine or the wrath of others. Happiness was luck. Pure luck. There’s a great quote by English Buddhist monk Gelong Thubten that says, ‘the mind that seeks happiness is telling itself that it is unhappy.’ He would argue that happiness, fundamentally, is an emotional response to an outcome. It’s result reliant.

Academics, self-help Gurus, Monks all seem to agree that joy and well being are vital elements of happiness. The message is often that joy is the thing that we should seek, for out of joy comes happiness. If you can find joy in the doing, then you will achieve happiness. Wellbeing is a similar prerequisite for happiness, as when we are well and healthy, we are more disposed to enjoying free time with fulfilling actions that ultimately bring about contentment and meaning. So, short, what all the ancient wisdom warns us against is simply striving for happiness. It is an empirical irony in this way, unlike other goals, it cannot necessarily be attained simply by striving for it. It shouldn’t be the goal. It’s the added bonus. It’s like at the end of an Oprah Winfrey show “you get a car, you get a car!”

M: [Laughter] OK, free cars aside why bother with this hippy New Age happiness stuff? A lot of older generations were quite happy to suck it up in boring, unfulfilling jobs and mediocre lives without complaining the whole time. This all seems a bit indulgent don’t you think.

P: Not at all, Marie. Because Unhappy people die!!!

M; Okay, that’s true. Studies find that when you’re less happy, you’re more vulnerable to illness. You’re more vulnerable to different kinds of disease. You also take longer to recover from illness, and you actually have a compromised life expectancy. Researchers Dacher Keltner and Emiliana Simon-Thomas, who teach course called the Science of Happiness so that people who are happy in life have an easy time feeling good and recovering from adversity. They have close, supportive social connections, and they believe their presence in the world matters.

P: Absolutely, there’s a huge body of research out there that shows that happier people live longer, healthier lives. There’s a wonderful research project in Harvard University in Boston that was started in 1938. It followed 724 young men from diverse backgrounds. Their findings are so conclusive that happiness has a direct relation to your life expectancy and your quality of life, especially in your later years.

M: So what you’re saying is this is the part where we all go wake up at five AM do yoga, drink green tea and are sickeningly happy, right?

P: [Laugh] Well we know not all of us aren’t morning exercise people. But it is about buying in Marie. When you go to a Tony Robbins presentation over two days over the weekend, you walk in on that first morning and you’re in an auditorium filled with thousands of people and you don’t see Tony first. Out comes the fluffer the dude who primes everybody before hand, he fluffs the crowd gets people out of their chairs. He gets them active he gets them physical. It’s like, How do we get you to the level that we need you so that when the dude walks out, you’re ready to receive his words and there are a lot of people who go to these presentations and they spend a heap of money and they’re standing there go[ing] “why am I jumping around like a Baptist preacher? Why am I doing this?” and the dude on stage is so encouraging. You’ve got to believe in this. You’ve got to buy in. If you don’t, you’re not going to get the benefit of the presentation.

So you do the first day and you come out going “Wow, that was amazing. That was really cool.” You come in the second day and you do the same thing, the fluffer comes out and he’s ready to get your pumped. But this time you’re ready for it. And you understand. I have to buy into this. I have to be a part of this process and jump around and clap my hands. Because I know that if I do that, I’m going to be ready and receptive to what magic is about to come at me from the stage.

M: Okay? So even though my entire body is fighting against jumping around in order to be receptive to your message, I’m here. We’re here. I’m in, and I’m really excited to see where this will take me, despite my cynicism. So I think it’s really interesting that a lot of people live their lives, live successful lives, but they’re not necessarily satisfied. And that’s really what I want this podcast to be about. How to be satisfied? And for me that means how can you be happy? So I’ve always looked at you, Pete, and seen a very happy person.

P: Oh dear [laughter]

M: Tell me, Are you happy?

P; That’s a huge question. Yeah, I like that question. Actually, we all have different moments of happiness. We have different moments of feeling good and feeling great. I think that for me I know that happiness is there when I’m walking down the street and I’ll smile at something innocuous. There’s a dog peeing up against a lamp post. I smile, I think, isn’t the world a wonderful place? I think that’s the perspective for me. When I’m in that happiness state, I can actually look at things and you look at two people holding hands, walking down the street like an old couple walking their dog and you go ‘Yeah, that’s pretty cool’, because you’re in that space where.., it’s that awareness of taking those things in and going the world is good I’m in a happy space, so I’m seeing happiness around me. It’s like when you go to buy a red car on all you see are red cars. All of a sudden your brain is switched on to see more red cars. So if you’re in that space where you’re relatively happy and going along with life and things are good, you start to notice the nice little subtle things that make you go. Yeah, that’s a good, good thing in the world. That’s a good egg.

M: It’s, it’s funny you say that, Yes. So all I can think is you’re talking about this is mindfulness. And there’s been so much discussion recently in the last decade or so about mindfulness and being mindful of being in the moment and to me, you’re talking about (and sorry. And also so much research about how mindfulness can help with happiness.)

P: Yes.

M: Right, but what you’re talking about there are moments of mindfulness. When you’ve stopped and you’re in the moment and you’re enjoying life, what it is. And it doesn’t have to be cakes and glitter and parties and Champagne, it can be an old couple holding hands.

P: Yeah, and you’re right it is mindfulness and I’ve done a bit of work on that and around that for many years because of my eastern philosophy reading. It wasn’t training, I didn’t go into a monastery and sit down and cross my legs for 20 hours. You know, I just read about it and I went I can do this. I can start journaling, and I can start making the most of moments and recognising those moments. So, yes, you’re right. There is a lot of mindfulness in there.

M: Yeah and a few years ago, I never would have had this conversation with you about mindfulness.

P: It comes to each of us in its own way. And I think that’s something you’ve got to understand with happiness. You can’t force it. You can’t just go I’m going to be instantly happy straightaway. It is a process. It takes time. It takes investment. It takes being open to it and then buying in as we said.

M: Yeah, yeah, and I think for me, my journey is different to yours in that I followed that path of success. That was what my parents instilled in me. Work hard at school, get a good job, get a house. You know, follow all the major milestones that everyone, society, just said you should. And it took a pretty significant event in my life for me to reassess my life, which had, until that point been successful.

P: Yeah and within that success you were happy because you were ticking the boxes.

M: Well no, I wasn’t that’s the whole point. So there’s definitely something to be said for those moments of achieving success. I mean, they’re great who doesn’t want to win? Right?

P: [Laughter]

M: But since the accident and since I’ve started exploring a lot of these positive psychology concepts, and Eastern and Western philosophy now, ideals and ideas; I can say that I’m that person stopping the street and going aww when the old couple across the road are together holding each other’s hand, you know, and I’m such a happier, more relaxed, less stressed person than I was and I 100% credit that to nearly dying. Let’s be really honest. It’s the ‘ah ha’ moment that on a lot of people, a lot of people who go through significant trauma have that ‘ah ha’ moment and reassess how they live their lives.

P: Definitely

M: But it’s such a shame and such a waste that it takes that to happen to, I don’t know, the 1 to 5 to 10% of the population, I’m making up numbers here, for them to reassess their lives and go surely there’s more to life than having a house and a job, a stressful job at that. There is so much more out there and again that’s why I think this podcast is so important. I don’t want people to have to nearly die to realise that this mortal life.

P: It is about talking about it and having the conversations with people and I think that’s where I was maybe a little bit lucky in terms of the world that I lived in in my creative, artistic world is that you come up against those people so much more often than you wouldn’t know corporate environment. There’s more. There’s Mohe. There’s more need for cynicism in a corporate environment in the arts world, it’s the opposite. So I think maybe that’s where I was fortunate in my experiences up until that point. So it allowed me freely to explore that a little bit more.

M: But on that you don’t need to be a cynic to be in a corporate environment. You can be happy and you can be happy go lucky even and a little bit carefree and still get your job done well.

P: Yep, I would agree with you there.

M: And that’s where my balance was off before and I hope that just by debunking a lot of the weird, hippie, new age ways that we often talk about this. We talk in platitudes, you know, be positive and all that which really turns a lot of people off. Australians in particular we are so cynical, so so cynical.

P: [Laughter]

M: So, I hope that by us having a good balance and a bit of a laugh between us, we can help some people to realise that there’s so much more life. And you’ve only got one life.

P: Make the most of it while you’ve got it.

M: Be happy.

P: [Laughter] Damn it! [sarcastic tone]

All right. I do just want to say before we go that we are launching this podcast on International Happiness Day, 20th March.

P: Yay

M: So thank you for your listening today, we’re very aware that there is a lot going on in the world today with the Corona virus or Covid 19. And it’s making a lot of people particularly anxious, and for the right reasons, so be kind to each other. Try and have a bit of a laugh.

P: Be part of a community, not part of the self.

M: Yeah, definitely.

P: It’s time to be mindful of others as well as looking out for yourself.

M: And definitely as part of the research that I’ve been doing from my book one of the recurring themes that comes up with people who are resilient and happy in their lives is those social bonds and social relationships. So I know this might sound a bit weird to the millennials out there. The rest of you, you’ll remember the day when you used to pick up the phone and make a phone call with it. So I’m asking you all out there to pick up the phone, particularly if you’ve got elderly relatives or friends who are self-isolating. Pick up the phone. Have a chat with someone today. That’s my challenge to you all.

P: Call your Grandma.

M: Yeah, exactly. Call Mom. Call you Grandma. Have a bit of a chat. It could be just five minutes but take the step to just keep those relationships going because it could be a very lonely time in general in today’s world, but particularly if we’re self-isolating with all that’s going on with the corona virus.

P: Very true

M: Yeah, not a good time to be sad.

Alright, We’ve gone over time for our first episode already. [Laughter]

P: Oops, that’s probably me..

M: So Pete before we go, our listeners, I’m sure hooked already. That’s really arrogant, I’m going to take that back.

P: [Laughter]

M: But do let us know. Can you give us just a really brief heads up for what people can expect in future episodes? So what are we going to cover?

P: Lots of different topics.

We’re going to talk about Awe and inspiration and how important is to be inspired by things. Take the time out for that. We’re going to talk about mindfulness because it’s part of one of the pillars of happiness. And we’ll talk about joy. We’re even going to talk about meditation.

M: Yeah, that was a big one for me. I don’t know about all that.

P: We are going to be meditating and ohm-ing and doing singing bowls and bells, people so get ready.

M: We also have some great interviews with people, amazing people to bring to you.

P: Inspiring people.

M: Yeah, So don’t forget to subscribe so that you can stay abreast of all our future episodes and thank you for joining us.

P: Thanks for coming along, look forward to seeing you again. Bye M: Bye

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Peter has practiced Asstanga Yoga for 20 years and combines these principles with his approach to health.

Peter was also an award-winning contemporary dancer in Australia and in the UK.

Podcast

Take Back Control of Your Clutter with Pilar Llorente (E6)

Happiness for Cynics podcast –episode 6

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

What is Flow and How to Find it (E5)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Bringing Awe and Inspiration into Your Life (E4)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 4

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

The Importance of Gratitude (E3)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

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Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness at Work (E2)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

What is Happiness? (E1)

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcript

Meet besties Marie and Pete

About Marie

Podcast: Happiness for Cynics

Book: Self-care is church for non-believers

Podcast

Happiness for Cynics podcast –episode 6

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 5

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – episode 4

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 3

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcription

Meet besties Marie and Pete

Happiness for Cynics podcast – season 1, episode 1

Transcript

Meet besties Marie and Pete

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About Marie

Podcast: Happiness for Cynics

Book: Self-care is church for non-believers