Podcast

How Forgiveness Can Make You Happier (E46)

30/11/2020 by Marie

This week, Marie and Pete discuss the power of forgiveness and how it can rewire your brain to be more positive.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, a studious reader, appropriate perceiver and at times, administer of stress reliever. Each week we will be to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low…

P: because you’re not in the show…

M: Or just a little bit out of limbo.

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And take this one step further on our happiness journey, today’s episode is all about forgiveness.

P: Mmm.

[Happy Intro Music]

P: This is going to be a big one. This is a heavy one Marie.

M: It sure is. And it’s surprising that the feedback we’ve had on our book that we launched in October this year available on Amazon.

P: Self-Care is Church for Non-believers.

M: [Laugh] The feedback is that the forgiveness chapter is the one that has resonated the most.

P: Oh Really, oh wow.

M: Definitely. We’ve had some great reviews on Amazon, which has been lovely, and some friends have reached out to me going we’ve picked up the book, and for a lot of people, the chapter on forgiveness is the one that’s really resonated.

P: Mmm. I think we all have to go through a stage of figuring ourselves out at some point in our lives.

M: Yeah, we’re not perfect. We all make mistakes. That’s where the self-compassion comes in. This chapter is more about forgiving others. And I think with that you have to, at times, acknowledge your part in whatever has happened.

P: Take responsibility.

M: Yeah.. But, not necessarily take responsibility, but just acknowledge that there are two people. It takes two to tango.

P: Yep.

M: But this this one is really about How do we move on when someone has hurt us?

P: Mmm, it’s not easy. It’s not an easy path to go through.

M: Definitely not. And especially the younger you are, the more that can really shape the life that you have afterwards.

P: Yeah.

M: You really carry the scars, that the baggage of poor interactions in your childhood and teen years, well through your adult life.

P: Mmm.

M: And all way through life at times. So really, one of the main points that I want to get across in this episode is that just like a lot of other things that we talk about the show forgiveness is not about someone else.

Forgiveness is for you and about you.

P: I love that.

M: [Whispers] I do to.

P: It comes from a personal space I think. The ability to forgive comes from a really personal space I think.

M: Absolutely, and really when we say it’s for you and about you. It is not about making someone else feel better for wronging you.

P: Mmm. Yes.

M: It’s about letting go of grudges and blame and negative feelings that are stopping you from moving on.

So, understanding what happened;

Processing how that made you feel;

Acknowledging the pain or the anger or the betrayal.

P: Mmm.

M: And finding a way to move forward with that knowledge and understanding. You don’t have to hug it out.

P: [Laugh]

M: You don’t have to tell someone I forgive you.

P: No.

M: You don’t even have to ever talk to them again.

P: But…

M: It’s not about them. It’s about you, being able to leave that baggage behind so that you can have a positive life moving forward.

P: Mmm.

M: And for a lot of people who’ve felt that pain and that betrayal of a parent not living up to your expectations, a sibling doing wrong by you, stealing from you, a partner cheating on you, a friend betraying your confidences.

P: Yep.

M: There are so many ways that we get hurt, really hurt by people around us, whether deliberately or not, and for some people they can hold on to that, and it really impacts how they interact with new people as they progress through life.

P: Mmm. It also has a lot to do with the neuro-chemicals that get released into our brain when we’re having these horrible negative emotions, all that cortisol and adrenaline actually gets released into our system. So, we have to combat that with these other thought processes, so that we can stop… WHY ARE YOU LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!?

[Laughter]

M: I’m not it’s just, I’ve got this cat sitting on my shoulder.

P: [Laugh] I’m trying to be all serious and scientific, and you’re ridiculing me with a cat underneath your mouth.

M: I’m not ridiculing you.

P: [Laugh!]

M: Just appreciating the situation.

P: There we go, [laugh]… Right, so the art of forgiveness helps us to undo some of that negative neuro-chemical release that does happen in our brain, when we’re holding on to grudges or past trauma.

M: More than, more than undo. Because you can’t undo that. It stops the brain from producing those negative chemicals, all those chemicals that having negative impacts on you and might even allow for positive feelings and positive chemicals to be released through other activities.

P: It does. I have a bit more science on that, it actually does. There’s a little bit of work that’s being done by a programme in Sydney University, where they’re actually looking at brain wave activity and getting the brain waves to coordinate well, and part of that is training your brain and training those brain waves to reactivate in a coordinated fashion. We might come to that later in the episode.

M: Ok. Um… and not now?

P: [Laugh] We can, we can talk about it now.

M: You always do that to me.

P: [Laugh] I throw to you and you’re not ready?

M: “There’s a really juicy bit of information, and… we’ll talk about that later.”

P: [Laugh]

M: Right? So what are we doing now? Why not now?

P: [Hysterical Laughter!]

M: What’s going on later?

P: We can talk about it now, [laugh] I don’t mind. There is a way that they’re working with, these are asylum seekers and refugees, people that experienced post-traumatic stress disorder. And the way that they’re actually looking at it [is] instead of going to the psychological evaluations and reliving the trauma, the way of dealing with that now is to start training the brainwave activity; Which means virtual reality, using computer generated games to reinforce positive brain associations rather than reliving the trauma and this in a way it comes back to our discussion about forgiveness because you’re letting go of that stimulus by being able to forgive and move on you’re letting go of that continual little peanut that sits in your gut that is going ‘ggrrr’, being negative and angry.

M: Absolutely. And to back that up the Mayo Clinic in the US. They’re a huge organisation and health network in the US. They have done a lot of studies on forgiveness and shown that it definitely leads to improved health and peace of mind and so being able to let go of that negativity, and that stress, and all the negative chemicals you’re talking about Pete and make room for the positive.

P: Hmm.

M: [It] has huge impact to your relationships, it leads to healthy relationships, better mental health, reduces anxiety, stress, hostility, it lowers blood pressure.

P: Mmm.

M: And it also can help with depression and self-esteem.

P: Mmm.

M: On the flip side, just like with many of the things we talk about in the positive psychology area, it can lead to a stronger immune system and improved heart health. So it’s no wonder that letting go of all of that leads to greater feelings of happiness, hopefulness and optimism.

P: It allows the good stuff in. If you’re making less room with the bad stuff, you’re allowing more space for the good stuff.

M: Absolutely. And I think the reason I love this, talking about this episode in December is that a lot of us are heading into a holiday period, and the period with more anxiety, more stress. We’re seeing families, and for a lot of us families aren’t what they’re portrayed as in Hollywood.

P: Mmm.

M: Or maybe they are, it depends on what genre you’re watching.

[Laughter]

P: Not everyone has happy family time at Christmas.

M: Exactly. And for a lot of people, that is a high stress, high anxiety period. Because of how broken some of those relationships are with people that they’re spending time with. So this practising forgiveness is something that I highly encourage people to look into as they head into holiday periods. And if you know that you’re going to be spending time with someone who has wronged you or hurt you and it comes with anxiety and stress, seeing them and being in the same space.

P: That association. Yes

M: Then just going through the steps of practising forgiveness can be a really beneficial exercise to help, you not only cope with the upcoming holidays, but also to cope in a far more positive and better mental health space. With all of those dinners and periods.

P: It puts you in a better position.

M: Exactly.

P: It puts you in control rather than being reactive. You’re in control so that you can choose to steer the interaction in a different direction should it need to occur.

M: Also, if you’re filled with greater self-esteem and less anxiety, you can put up with someone else’s bad behaviour, if they keep doing it. And if you’ve just got a crazy u ncle, who loves to slap you on the ass and you’ve always felt bad.

P: Yeah. [Laugh]

M: About yourself. But all of a sudden, you rock up and your power woman, right? Crazy uncle has no impact on you. Right?

P: Mmm.

M: So it’s about being… Okay that, that’s a weird thing. And crazy uncle should not be allowed to slap anyone on the ass. Let’s be really.. [Laugh]

P: I’m taking notes here.

[Laughter]

M: That is called sexual harassment people.

[Laughter]

M: And it is not okay and it is not funny. And it is definitely not, something we’re abdicating for here.

P: Mmm.

M: What I am trying to say, though, is that if you’re in a strong space from a mental well-being and a mental health perspective, you don’t let a lot of the other people’s poor behaviour impact you in the same way as if you’re not in a good mental health space.

P: So how do we look at forgiveness, Marie? What is the first thing that we start to look at? [When] we’re going to look at getting into a forgiveness space?

M: What are the steps? Yeah. The first thing is, are you ready, and willing?

P: Ooh. Is this the hardest step?

M: Absolutely.

P: Recognising?

M: Yep, well.

P: A little bit of acceptance?

M: It’s, It’s taking the leap of faith.

P: Mmm. That’s-

M: -It’s the buying in!

P: Buying in! [Laugh]

M: It’s the cynics!

[Laughter]

P: Never easy.

M: Yep. And some pain has just cut too deep and has been going on for too long to be easily wiped away.

P: And there’s a real fear of opening that back up again.

M: Yep.

P: I mean we can understand that, we don’t want to go and reopen old scars. There is this period where you’ve got to accept that ‘Ok I’m going to address this.’

M: Yep, and it can take a lot of time. It is not an easy, ‘I’m going to forgive.’ And then you know, an hour later, everything’s all great.

P: Hunky Dory.

M: Yeah exactly. It is a time consuming practise that takes commitment, so the first step is committing to the process, and making that choice means you have to want to do it. You have to commit to do it, and you have to know that it’s not always going to be easy and sometimes you’ll carry scars with you for life.

P: Yep.

M: But you have to make the choice to forgive and be open to the process, for it to work.

P: And maybe not expecting stuff to come instantly.

M: Absolutely, to know that it will not only be painful, but it will take time.

P: Yep.

M: And the deeper those scars run, the more painful it will be, and the more time it will take. And you might need someone to help you through.

P: Definitely. Hmm.

M: So that’s step one.

Are you ready? Willing? And going to commit to the process?

Step two, if you’re going to go through the process.

Find somewhere quiet for some self-reflection.

So if you’re going to do this by yourself rather than with a professional. The next step is to give yourself the space to process the loss or the grief.

P: So does mean if you have to throw things down the corridor, you’ve got space to do that.

M: Yes, be angry, be hurt, grieve, be vulnerable and feel the pain.

P: And be expressive with that pain.

M: Absolutely. And a great way to do that is to write down what happened.

Write done what happened.

P: Yep. Externalise it. Get around the side that’s not inside you and eating away at you.

M: Yep.

P: That’s where throwing, throwing screwdrivers is really good.

M: Screwdrivers?

P: Screwdrivers, forks. It’s really good.

[Laughter]

P: Just make sure there’s no one around when you do it.

M: Don’t hurt other people, yes.

P: No, no, no, no.

M: And make sure it can’t bounce back at you.

[Laughter]

P: We’ve all seen that on funniest home videos.

M: Youtube?

P: [Laugh]

M: Yep.

Write down what happened, and write down then the behaviour that you want to forgive.

P: Get specific.

M: Not the person, the behaviour. So what was it that was done to you that you want to release and move on from.

P: In that way, it’s possibly more about identifying the issue rather than making it personal about the person.

M: Yep.

P: And if you have to change the name of that person, if you have to change the name of that person, that would change the way that you reference them. That could be a really good tool to unlocking that personal attachment to the grief.

M: Yep. Then, once you’ve written down what was done, the behaviour that impacted you;

Write down how it has impacted you.

So what were the repercussions of what happened so look at how you have changed, how you trust others, how you behave, how your life has been impacted because of the thing that happened and also how it has made you feel.

P: Mmm.

M: I want you to take the time here to really explore that, particularly if you’re talking [about] things that happen in your teens that you’ve been sitting with a decade or for a long period of time. Really explore and take the time to explore how you’ve been impacted and how it’s made you feel and name those emotions.

P: That’s going to be tough for some people, to be specific and named those.

M: Yeah, Fred.

P: Yep

[Laughter]

P: Fred, Jasper, Horace.

[Laughter]

M: Yep, So;

Name your emotions and name the impacts of those emotions.

How they impacted your life and take as long as you need in this step, don’t “under bake” this step.

P: Mmm.

M: So it’s about really feeling that pain, acknowledging it. And you might need to do this over a few hours or days or months, and you might want to actually revisit this step for years to come.

P: Hhmm.

M: [Be]cause it’s only with hindsight that we often really get clarity over how these things have impacted us.

P: Definitely, yes.

M: So, firstly commit to it. Secondly, reflect. Thirdly, and this is the hard part, understand?

P: Mmm.

M: So without judgement, you want to try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes, not so that you can forgive them, but so you can hopefully try to understand what they might have been thinking, feeling and doing that led to that behaviour.

P: And I don’t think you’re trying to justify their actions here.

M: No.

P: You are just putting yourself in their position. To understand where that action has come from.

M: Absolutely. And you might come to the realisation that they’re just a mean person, and they’ve got no reason or why you might not get a why. Don’t expect a why, some people behave in ways that we will never understand. Some people are cruel and horrible and mean period. Some people have had experiences of their own that shape their behaviour, and you might end up feeling sympathy or sadness for what led that person to behave the way they do.

P: Yep.

M: But you might not get that why.

P: Mmm. Yep.

M: So this is purely about trying to understand what might have led to their behaviour.

P: Mm hmm.

M: It’s not about condoning their behaviour or agreeing with it. It’s about trying to understand why they might have acted the way they did.

P: Ok.

M: And lastly;

Letting go and moving on.

So then, in the end it’s about choosing forgiveness, so it’s about being able to honestly, say to yourself I understand why this happened. It was painful. But now I choose to move forward with my life, and I’ll work to make sure this no longer shapes me, my decisions or my behaviour.

P: You could do this externally as well, and this is where you can get creative with this part of the process. The pagans used to have a yule log that they used to put their grievances or issues or concerns into, on a piece of paper that was put inside the log on. Then it was a lit, and it was burned and that was a physical way of being able to let go off something that maybe had been an issue or a negative emotion or a negative experience on releasing that out. So, you know, you can be a filthy barefooted hippie running through the fields naked and screaming to release whatever demon is inside of you and this is where it can be creative. And if that works for you, go for it.

M: I’d love to see you do that.

[Laughter]

P: A wailing Banshee with ribbons in my hair. [Laugh!] Visualise it people.

M: Oh, I am. The thing is you’re bald, so it’s not a great visualisation.

[Laughter]

P: I can put on a wig.

[Laughter]

M: All right, so this last step… and look, we’re talking about these four steps like they’re easy and they’re not.

P: Oh, definitely.

M: Their absolutely not. They take time. They take commitment in the end just like we were talking about the beginning of the episode it is purely for you to be able to release the negative energy and negative emotions and the hold that someone else’s behaviour is having on your current life so that you can move forward.

P: Yep. I agree, love it.

M: So before we go, then, Pete, do you have any one that you need to forgive?

P: Yes, I’ve got someone in mind. Definitely.

M: You do.

P: Betrayed the friendship, didn’t trust the friendship.

M: Oh.

P: Yeah, so it ended in a very public display of aggression, which was not warranted and yeah, didn’t trust in the friendship that was there. So that was, and that to me is very deeply hurting when you’ve spent time developing a friendship. Yeah, that was that was tough and I had to understand why that was and I had to let time do its work and give myself time and space where I actually had to remove myself from the situation and that took a few weeks and then slowly reinvest and slowly get back in touch but perhaps doing that forgiveness exercise really helped with allowing me to be free from the hurt that I experienced in that situation that occurred.

M: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

P: And I think giving the time is the really important part.

M: Yep.

P And take as much time as you need.

M: Absolutely, throw things, go out into the bush and yell and scream.

P: That’s a really good one. That’s a brilliant one. Go where no one can hear you. Caves are wonderful.

M: Yes. The echo, [laugh].

P: Really helpful.

[Laughter]

P: Go and sing a really big rock song or something at the top of your lungs.

M: Or just find a punching bag.

P: Some people can do that. Definitely. [Laugh]

M: All right, Well, on that note, we are out of time. So thank you for joining us today. If you want to hear more. Please remember to subscribe and, like this podcast and you an find us and ask us questions at www.marieskelton.com.

P: And if you like this little show, please leave us a review, we would really like that.

M: Yes, that would make us happy. Until next time.

P: Choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article Resiliency Is About Recharging And Self-Care, But Are You Doing It Wrong? , listen to our Podcast When it’s OK to not be OK (E25)

Getting in Touch with Your Feelings (E45)

23/11/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete discuss getting in touch with your feelings and why it’s so important that you express them.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness a toga wearing, butt baring exhibitionist of joy filled indulgences. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey on today’s episode, we are going to talk about feelings.

P: [Singing] Nothing more than feelings… [Laugh, de, de, de, du, du]

[Happy intro Music]

P: Right Muz, this is your episode. This is just for you.

M: Oh it is SO not for me.

P: [Laugh]

M: Before we do jump in though. I do want to talk about a great little news article. A school in Ireland has swapped homework for acts of kindness. Pupils at a primary school in County Cork were told they didn’t have to submit any homework, instead they’re asked to record acts of kindness they had carried out for friends and family.

P: Can you imagine being a kid in this school? You would be like “Yeah, I’m so gonna do this, I’m not doing any homework.”

M: Absolutely.

P: So this is very much like the schools that are replacing detention with meditation.

M: Oh, yes. Look at us softies.

P: [Laugh]

M: I thought you were meant to get more hard-lined as you get older.

P: I think a little bit of the science based approach to life has rubbed off on me Marie in doing this podcast.

[Laughter]

M: Absolutely. And this one I’m going back to my cynical roots.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: And when we were talking about during this episode talking about feelings, you know, I said “[euch] I’m really not good at talking about feelings” and you said, “That’s great because I am.”

P: [Laugh]

M: But we’re really not only going back to our roots here, but we’re taking different, stereotypical gender roles here.

P: We are.

M: Because normally it’s the other way around.

P: In line with that, talking about feelings is very, it’s documented science backs it up, that men do not express their feelings as easily as women, and that’s become a socially conditioned premise that was instilled by our fathers and everybody’s fathers before them. It was push it down, suck it up.

M: It was society.

P: It was, the men were supposed to be strong and not be affected by emotion and look after the women that was our societal conditioning and this has changed dramatically in the last 60 years I think and we’re really seeing that totally being stripped away and men now are being encouraged to talk about their feelings and I think the thing is, if you’ve never had the opportunity to have the language or have those discussions at a younger age, which many men around my generation or a little bit older than I am, didn’t they weren’t encouraged to have those conversations. All of a sudden, it’s very difficult to talk about your feelings and come up with words or come up with the concept of describing your emotions.

M: For a long time I struggled to communicate feelings and because we were just told to suck it up and shove it down and move on.

P: Yeah.

M: Yeah it can have, ah, huge implications for your mental well-being, and I definitely felt the repercussions of not being able to communicate or even have the language or understanding or self-awareness as a teen to understand what I was going through, and I went through quite a rough period in my teens. My sister was very, very ill, and I didn’t know how to cope with that will deal with that, so it definitely can have very serious implications if you can’t talk about your feelings.

P: And we’re going to get to that further when we actually to talk about some of the research that is out there. Not talking about your emotions has a physical effect on your body, and we’ll come to that maybe later on in the episode. But I hear what you’re saying Muz, and I think it’s really important that we learn those lessons young because otherwise you do… People can go through half of their lives without expressing their emotions and not dealing with conversations that are difficult to have and not being able to be happy or be happier or find some sort of calmness or quietness in the crazy world that we all live in.

M: Yep, absolutely. So, what is some of the research that you found?

P: One of the articles that I was reading was on ‘The Conversation’, which is a fabulous website –

M: Mmm.

P: – that does a lot of research-based articles, and it talks about how we are socially conditioned to judge emotions. So as a society having negative and positive emotions is normal, but many of us in a social setting are taught, we instantly judge people who are having hyper emotions so we’re going to accept some emotions and reject others and unfortunately, a lot of those hard to have conversations that involved people speaking honestly and openly and saying things that aren’t comfortable fall into that latter aspect of being rejected emotions.

Having that permission to feel and to express your feelings is something that not everybody gets to develop in their teenage years exactly as you’ve nominated Marie with your example and it comes to us later in life. When you are having very intense feelings of fear, aggression or anxiety. Your amygdala is running the show so the amygdala is part of the limbic system in the brain. This is the part that handles your fight or flight response. So it has a lot to do with adrenalin.

M: It’s the elephant.

P: [Laugh]

M: If anyone’s ever done the neuro psychology of the Elephant and the Rider.

P: Talk about that Muz.

[Laughter]

M: Um… When your emotions are running the show, in the corporate that I’m in right now, they’ve done a lot of neuroscience and psychology based work to help teams perform at their best and we talk about the elephant and the rider. And even though you’re the rider sitting on top of your elephant, sometimes that bugger of an elephant just takes off and does its own thing.

P: [Laugh]

M: And it could take a while to get control of it again.

P: Exactly.

M: And that’s your amygdala, and that is the root of all evolutionary, deep, deep feelings of fight and flight and all that stuff.

P: Yep.

M: All that fabulous stuff that kept us alive and led to us being the top of the food chain.

P: Exactly, absolutely. And the effect of this is shown it’s that fight or flight response. Your amygdala will rule the show and say, “OK, we’re going to be in a fearful situation here, so we need to enact actions, so we need to pump blood to our brains, [we need] to pump blood into our muscles so we can run away. These kind effacts are all ruled by emotions, not only by emotions, but they have that physical response. So it’s really important to be aware of that.

And if you look at some of the research that’s come out of the UCLA, they talk about this limbic system and diminishing the response of the amygdala when you encounter distressing or upsetting emotions, call it ‘affect labelling’. So this is being able to identify issues and give them names. Be specific about the name. So this comes back to a previous episode that we talked about in terms-

M: Fred.

P: What?

M: Like Fred or Mark?

P: Aah.. what?

M: [Laugh]

P: What???

M: You said I was going to name them?

P: [Laugh]

M: I’m naming them.

P: [Laugh] Well that’s a curve ball, Marie.

[Laughter]

P: I’m thinking more about nominating emotions [laugh].

M: Ohhh, like anger.

P: You’ve gone with Fred [Laugh].

M: I’m feeling Fred right now.

P: Horatio?

[Laughter]

P: Okay. So, Lieberman, Eisenberg and Crockett from UCLA talk about affect labelling and how we can diminish this fight or flight response when it comes to experiencing emotions. So being able to be specific with your language helps to downgrade that neuroscience response.

M: Yep, being able to say I’m feeling angry because you took my red car starts to move you out of that ‘elephant zone’ where the –

P: Yep, exactly.

M: – elephant is running the show and into the rider zone and giving you control.

P: It’s that whole thing of being specific with your language it’s like I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m wild with rage, I’m slightly inconvenienced gay man, you know?

[Laughter]

P: But having that ability is really important because it does, as you said, move you out of the elephants space. You start to get more control over the specifics of that anger, and you start to unpack it. And that’s, that’s affect labelling.

M: Yep.

P: And the Southern Methodist University talks about this, Kouros and Papp undertook a study that looked at the effects of holding back thoughts and emotions and what that did to the body.

M: Ooh.

P: The negative feelings became repressions and what they found was that taxes the brain and body and makes you more susceptible to being ill or [having a] downgraded immune system or just feeling bad. Holding onto those negative emotions allows the body to internalise, and it has a physical effect of downgrading immune response and makes you more susceptible to disease and illness.

M: I would love to do a cultural study on this because I, when I went to George Mason University in the States, I lived with a Yugoslavian, well she was Yugoslavian way back then, a Puerto Rican and an Argentinean.

P: [Laugh] Wow.

M: And you could not get more fiery personalities. And I am a descendant from England and we do not talk about health. We do not talk about money. We bottle. We do not confront. We hide and I was, you know very good at all of that. And I remember coming home from class one evening and they were throwing plates and each other in the lounge room.

P: [Laugh]

M: They were that angry. They were going “Blah blah blah!” “Blah blah!” I didn’t know what they were talking about, but they were yelling, and they were throwing, and I just turned right back around and went to the library, I was like, ‘I cannot do this.’

P: [Laugh]

M: And the next day, they were best friends again. We have no crockery anymore [laugh]. But they were good friends. Whereas, you know, looking at that and trying to understand it with an outsider’s view I was completely baffled. If that had happened in my household or with any of my friends that I’d grown up with, we would never have spoken to each other ever again in their lives.

P: Yeah. Well, that’s it because sometimes you need to get it out and there are some people who respond to that. When you’ve got that externalisation of emotions like ‘I just have to stand here and scream!’ and then I’ll be okay.

M: Yeah, well, I think it’s something that Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, anyone who really was colonised.

P: From the English perspective.

M: He he, yeah.

P: Definitely, I think you’re absolutely right.

M: We hide or shy from confrontation as a rule, not always.

P: Yep, definitely.

M: And I think it’s well, as you’ve just shown, it’s to our detriment.

P: Absolutely, yeah it has a physical detriment to us.

M: How do you change that? Because I hate confrontation. Hate it.

P: Well, I think that again if you’ve been brought up in that environment, say, a French environment where you have a mother and father yelling and screaming, and then the next minute they’re making love on the kitchen table [laugh]. Generalising here.

[Laughter]

P: That might lead you to have an –

M: That might scar you too.

P: [Laugh] – understanding that nothing is held on to. So it’s okay to yell and scream because at the end of the day, you come back to that loving space or to that space where everything is accepted.

M: It’s also a far more psychologically safe environment for a child to grow up in.

P: Yeah.

M: Knowing that you can lose your shit and still be loved. And sometimes you might cross a line when you lose your shit.

P: Yep.

M: And sometimes you might need to apologise for not having control over your emotions or things that was said in the heat of the moment.

P: Taking responsibility for your actions, definitely.

M: Yeah, but you’ll still always be loved the next day. Whereas when you come from a family where you don’t talk about these things, the implication is, if you do, you’re not really following the script.

P: Uh huh.

M: And that you don’t know what will happen off the back of that, it’s not a psychologically safe place to be.

P: No. Interestingly enough, I had the same experience as a teenager. I was encouraged not to express my emotions or talk about my emotions and there was a lot of repression that went on and I was a very socially awkward teenager.

M: Oh, I can’t see that, I can’t see it at all!

P: Oh, it was very real. Someone sent me a photo a couple of years ago. My old dance teacher, Judy Joy, sent me a photo going ‘I found this Peter, looking through my, my archives.’ And there’s this sully, horrible teenager staring at the camera going ‘what are you doing taking a photo of me!?’ I was like ‘Oh my goodness, is that me?’ [Laugh] What and unhappy child. [Laugh] An unhappy 16 year old. Getting to the point of getting into university. Getting into an arts environment where it was much more expressive.

M: Mm hmm.

P: All of a sudden, I did have to start talking about my feelings and opening up. And I remember having conversations with people and saying “how do you just come out with stuff like that?” and them saying “You’ve just got to share sometimes.” And I said “but you shouldn’t do that.” “Well, you’ve got to trust the right people.” And I think this comes down to some of that hints and tips that we’ll come to in a second. It is trusting who you share with and finding the right person to share with. But once I started, oh it came out like a flood of torrent.

M: [Laugh]

P: Everybody started knowing everything about me because I was sharing all the time.

M: And now there are no filters.

[Laughter]

P: And that as well is not great because again creates difficulty in social environments [laugh].

M: Yes.

P: And that’s where we do, we start to judge the emotions before they come out. So if we can find a happy medium.

[Laughter]

P: I think you’re right that it teaches us that it is okay to express those emotions and to come out with them at the right time and take responsibility for them when you have lost your shit for example, because at the end of the day there will be in a loving environment. There will be support. There will be ‘it’s okay to have said that. Let’s now, let’s look at it and let’s dissipate the intensity of the emotion, the fight or flight response and let’s get you more calm shall we say.’ [Laughter]

M: And I think… Look there’s an initiative in Australia called R U Okay? where people are encouraged to talk about mental health and I fully support that.

P: Mmm same. The mission statement starts, it’s something simple like this, ‘It’s so important to get people talking.’

M: Absolutely. So, I’m not at all criticising the initiative, and I think it’s done great things for opening up the dialogue in Australia.

P: Mmm.

M: What I do caution against is opening up to people who are just going through the motions on that day.

P: Yes.

M: You need to just, you know, reiterating what you were saying there, you need to open up to the right people.

P: Mmm.

M: If you are going to our someone is they’re Okay, I think you’ve got to take a little bit of responsibility to be there for them if they’re not.

P: Mmm. That comes into one of the tips that I’ve got here is:

Allowing space and time without interruptions.

M: For the conversation?

P: For the conversation, yeah. It’s not just a question, and then ‘oh that’s great bye.’ It is about allowing space and time without interruptions, without distractions, locking yourself away if need be, to have the confronting conversations; And give yourself a time limit like it’s going to 30 minutes and we’re going to talk it out. And if we don’t get to the resolution in 30 minutes, that’s fine. We’ve started the conversation.

M: Yeah.

P: And having that consistent 30 minutes every week. Will tease out those little things every now and then, and that can be a really valuable way, especially for people-

M: [Gasp] Every week?

P: Yeah, it’s confronting, but this is, this is the commitment. You’ve actually got to commit to the process.

M: Why? How long are we talking about? Oh my goodness, Pete!

P: [Laughter]

M: You want to talk about feelings for 30 minutes every week?

P: Yep. It’s just like training the more you do it, the better you get at it.

M: Like, if there’s a problem, right? Not just ‘let’s talk about our feelings.’

P: Well, I will give you an example there. I know some French friends of mine who have a monthly meeting where they discuss their emotions within the context of the relationship.

M: I think I know who you’re talking about.

P: Yeah [laugh].

M: They’re talking about a relationship, so that’s a bit different. So there’s not necessarily something negative they’re trying to, to use your words solve or to get over. I think that’s a little bit of, that’s a relationship chicken, and I love that. I think that’s great. But talking about your feelings, for half an hour every week… oohh.

P: Until you find a point of resolution, if there’s an issue –

M: If there’s an issue? Yep.

P: – that you’re not expressing your emotions and if this emotion is eating you up and causing your physical distress.

M: Ok, I’m on board with that.

P: If you’re wondering why your stomach doing back flips and you’re getting acid reflux every, every time you eat a meal. Maybe look at what’s going on mentally, and these are the kind of signals that I think warn us to be having these conversations and that’s what, you would, you commit to something for a month of 30 minutes a week.

M: I would say, though, just to be careful with that word resolution.

P: Mmm hmm.

M: I don’t think that everything can have a resolution, and sometimes the resolution is that we agree not to talk about this or not to engage on this because we are on opposite sides.

P: Sure.

M: So there’s some great examples of families in America who were pro and against an anti-Trump and it’s torn their families apart because if they couldn’t not talk about that. So I think there are situations where it’s OK to not talk.

P: Uh huh.

M: And maybe if you’ve got lingering feelings or issues that it’s okay to instead of laying it all on a loved one, talk to someone who’s not part of the problem or the issue and go talk to a professional.

P: Absolutely, yeah. This comes up in some of the other tips that I’ve got here is:

Finding a method of communication that works for you.

Now that could be chatting. It could be writing. It could be a person to person, or it could be external. So it is about sharing that burden, and it doesn’t always have to be the same person. But if you’re not getting the right venting that you need from having it with the person that’s affected, then maybe you do need to go on seek external help, such as seeking a counsellor or psychiatrist that could walk you through those places because sometimes for people it’s .. much easier to open up to a complete stranger –

M: Mmm hmm.

P: – Where there is no judgement.

M: Yep, and sometimes that stranger is far better equipped to actually get you through a bad period.

P: Absolutely, definitely, yep. A couple of other things I’ll just throw out here because we are getting to the end of the episode.

Planning your disclosure.

So you don’t have to disclose absolutely everything. Make a list of things that you do not want to discuss and things that you’re willing to discuss in terms of having this conversation about your emotions. If they’re emotions that you… violence or abuse and maybe you’re not ready to disclose those. Put them aside. You don’t have to bring that all to the table.

Come out with a wide vocabulary.

Again we’ve talked about this previously on an episode, getting specific about the feelings and labelling them coming into that concept of affect labelling.

Talk with not about.

I like this one. Keeping about you and your feelings don’t get torn away talking about what so and so did to me and how that what they must be feeling about that bring it back to what’s about you so that you can really think about how your reactions are and how that conversation made you feel, rather than postulating about somebody else’s feelings and the last one.

Letting go of outcomes.

Don’t expect to all come straightaway or easily and that’s where the regular scheduling, sometimes the really important. As you begin to open up, you can start to maybe open up more and disclose a little bit more if you feel it in that safe environment.

M: Yep, I think let go of outcomes is important. But also be clear about what it is you want from the conversation so if you’re going to talk about feelings. Have a idea; Sometimes you just need to talk.

P: Yeah.

M: You don’t need a resolution.

P: No.

M: You don’t need someone to fix things.

P: Yeah.

M: You just need to process it yourself, and having someone to bounce the conversation off is really helpful and useful. But if you find yourself talking through the same thing, we can week out with no outcome, no way forward. It can be really damaging to be reliving this on a regular basis. Whatever it is that you’re coping with and sometimes you need a circuit breaker and something to move on from. You need to call it and say ‘I’m going to leave this here now.’

P: Yep.

M: ‘And I’m going to move forward with my life.’

P: Yep, definitely. I think moving forward is really important. But if that if that element keeps coming back to haunt you, then maybe there’s something you need to address. Maybe that is where you do need to seek professional help.

M: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for joining us today. If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe. And like this podcast on Remember, you find us at http://www.marieskelton.com. A site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life.

P: And please if you feel up to it, leave a comment or a message we’d love to hear from you. And a rating will help us out.

M: Yes. That would make us happy.

P: OK, until next time, Choose Happiness

[Happy exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article Words That Can Change Your Mindset, listen to our Podcast Why You Need to Develop Your Emotional Literacy (E42)

How Job Insecurity Is Impacting Your Happiness (E44)

16/11/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics Podcast

This week, Marie and Pete discuss why workers around the world no longer have job security, how that can impact happiness levels and what you can do about it.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, a road tripper, trashy pop listening, bed loving zealot. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or only satisfied with life, but not truly happy.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey. Today’s episode is all about how job insecurity is impacting your happiness.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: I think this is a big one.

P: Yes, this is a big one, I think you might be taking this one Marie. This is right up your alley.

M: Yeah, definitely. So I spent a lot of time in a previous life working with an innovation and emerging technology team and looking at macro changes in our society and lives. And job insecurity is really the result of a lot of large changes that are happening around the world right now that are impacting individuals. So it’s easy to talk about these big changes, but the, the result and the impact is that we’re a lot less secure in our jobs nowadays than previous generations.

P: That’s a fact that. That’s what I was getting when I was doing a lot of research about this. Is it that job security, is it a thing of the past? Have we lost job security or is it just low at the moment and it will resurface?

M: No.

P: It will rise like the phoenix.

M: [Laugh] No, it’s a thing of the past. Look, there are a few people out there who might be deluding themselves into thinking that they have job security and it is, it is just the smoke and mirrors of companies who are holding on to [a] past that no longer exists.

P: So this is a change in format for corporate, especially in that job security no longer is offered on the table. You could be gone in a moments, notice with redundancies or change in circumstances. We can’t expect job security anymore.

M: Absolutely, and it’s not that the corporate’s have all of a sudden gotten mean.

P: [Laugh] What do you mean gotten mean?

M: [Laugh]

P: I thought they already were.

M: I mean if you want to take a positive capitalist view of what’s going on from a corporate perspective, the original life expectancy of a corporate has dropped significantly. I think it’s about 15 years, and it’s just a reflection of how quickly the times are changing now. So the Fortune 500 companies used to quite often last for 100 years, or more. That just doesn’t happen today. And there’s a few companies that still have that long history, and they’re the ones that have been able to innovate and stave off all of the new competitors in their markets.

P: Right.

M: But it’s getting increasingly hard to be one of those big behemoth companies that lasts a hundred years and those companies now need to not only innovate but change at a really rapid pace, and in order to do that, they’re constantly needing to do new things and to move on from the old.

P: Right.

M: Which means no, no one person’s role is ever the same two, three, four years later.

P: So the days of staying with the company for 30 years are gone?

M: Unless you can re-imagine your role. And the problem we have right now in corporates is that they’ve stopped investing in their employees as much in general is a rule because they know that employees are, rightly so, they’re less loyal back.

P: Yep.

M: Because corporates are being less loyal to them.

P: [Laugh]

M: And what we haven’t yet solved in this space is who is going to train employees so that they can roll with the changes rather than just be kicked out every time there’s a change.

P: Right.

M: And how are we going to re-imagine our HR functions so that we can prepare our employees to take the next job, and the next job, and the next job, rather than firing them or making them redundant every time there is a shift, which happens more and more often nowadays.

P: Hhmm.

M: So from a corporate employees perspective, right now is a constant revolving door of people in and out of an organisation. And there is just this never-ending uncertainty and fear in the corporate person’s life just like a storm cloud over them. You never know when the next restructure’s going to happen, and they’re all really disruptive as well. It just takes time to get through them.

So there’s that constant change, and it can feel really unsettling as a baseline in your life. You go to your work, you work your 40, 50, 60 hours a week, whatever it is, and there’s that constant knowledge that you might not have a job next week or that there is just more change and you don’t have any control over that.

P: Right OK, so the big thing that I’m getting from that hole, that change and that emotion is there’s a fear. Would that be fair to say that there is now a fear of the job security? And so do we look at how to deal with fear? Is that going to negate the effects of job security on our lives?

M: I think there is fear, but it’s uncertainty. What we can do is a lot of the things that we talk about on the podcast, and we’ll get to some team tips later.

P: OK.

M: But before we do that, I also want to talk about low wage workers or blue collar workers. Or um.

P: That was my next question.

M: [Laugh]

P: We’ve talked about Corporate. How do we talk about the, the family greengrocer who’s had the shop on the road for the last 60 years?

M: Have they? Do they still exist Pete?

P: Well, I go to one. Yes, [Laugh].

M: They’re few and far between though to be honest.

P: They are, that’s a fair point. Sometimes I feel like there is a little bit of a, a push back to those days of supporting local.

M: Mm hmm.

P: And especially now, supporting local businesses and the small fry in the, in the big palette of workplace options. You know, dealing with your local people. You’re local barman and your local restaurant, your local butcher, for example. Let’s take that example. So, if we’re talking about blue collar work, how do we negotiate this environment for them?

M: Yeah, Look I think there has been a snap back to supporting fresh food and produce in Australia in particular.

P: Yep.

M: Having said that, there is still very much a, almost a duopoly you know, the Coles and Woolworths, big supermarket chains, definitely still have a huge share of the market, so.

P: Oh, completely.

M: Yeah, yes. So that still exists. But having said that, for a lot of low wage workers, the problem is not only the insecurity of jobs because entire industries are arriving, bubbling, collapsing. So if you look at the dot com bubble, designers, Web writers, all the rest of it, all of that came and went really quickly. And that’s moved on to something else and a million other things. So that is happening for small businesses. Not so much your green grocers and your butchers, but.

P: Not so much the service industries either, I imagine, as well.

M: Depending on the service.

P: There’s still a need for their service.

M: Depending on the service. So you look at a mechanic. Nowadays, a car will tell the mechanic what’s wrong before they person pulls in right, because it’s done It’s diagnostics cheque.

P: True.

M: And the mechanic knows that he/she’s got to have a certain amount of electronic, engineering kind of skills to deal with the car. So even that industry is changing very rapidly, so there’s a lot of change going on. But more than that, what I want to get to with low wage workers is that most of them are not earning a liveable income.

P: This is appalling.

M: So, we’re talking about students, young people and part time parents who are not earning a lot of money.

P: Yep.

M: But more than that, we’re talking about primary wage earners, not earning a liveable income for them and their families.

P: Yep.

M: So they’re at work, full time and what they earn puts them below the poverty line.

P: Yes.

M: So in Australia, research by the Centre for Social Impact, conducted for NAB National Australia Bank, found that two million Australians experience severe or high financial stress. So that’s about 8% of the population.

P: Wow.

M: And more to that, so about 40% are living with some level of financial worry. So these are people who don’t know what to say that their kids at Christmas.

P: Yeah.

M: They’re worried that the car might break down and they’ll have to put a payment on a credit card that they won’t know how to pay back. They’re worried that the next dental visit is not going to be payable right?

P: Yep.

M: And they’re working full time jobs and a great example of this, and this is happening all around the world. A great example is a story that I found about a family called, Ross Timmins and his family. And they were on the popular TV show ‘Rich House, Poor House’ and it lets rich families and poor families swap lives for a week. Have you seen it?

P: Oh wow, No. [Laugh] I don’t know what that is.

[Laughter]

M: So it grabs a rich family and a poor family.

P: [Talking over Marie] ?

M: Yeah, absolutely. And they switch. They switch lives for a week. And despite,

P: Wow.

M: despite Ross working six days a week and up to 90 hours a week on a shipyard.

P: Woah.

M: And his wife working part time while looking after the kids, the Timmins family is in the poorest 10% of the country.

P: Mmm…

M: And during the week they lived in the rich family life, Sarah, the wife, said it was just so nice not to worry about the cost of everything. When we got to the middle of the week, I realised I hadn’t worried about money at all over the previous few days. It was a real mental break. We call the holiday for the Children, but in one way it was for us as well.

P: Yeah, yeah. That constant worry, it does have an impact on your on your whole mental state and that has a direct physical impact on your stress levels, your cortisol levels, how much inflammation is in your body, acidity in the stomach, all that sort of stuff. There’s a real, there’s so much documentary evidence out there that supports how much stress-

M: Mm hmm.

P: -and constant stress in terms of concern and worry impacts on our physicality.

M: Yes, absolutely. And that’s why I wanted to say, for corporate workers, generally, they’re, they’re just dealing with that uncertainty. For low wage workers, for blue collar workers, for up to 40% of our population, they’re not only dealing with the insecurity, but they live week to week financially, and they’ve got that cloud of financial worry hanging over as well.

P: Yeah, it’s the wealth gap issue we’re seeing in other countries around the world, which hasn’t necessarily hit us here in Australia. I, I assume, you might have a different opinion on that Marie.

M: No, we’re just the same as America and the U. K. A lot of developed countries have got the same the same issue,

P: Yeah, right.

M: So the 1% exist in all these countries. And the distribution of wealth has not been particularly equal over the last few decades.

P: Yeah, right.

M: And so I guess this is why we’ve been arguing for a while now or looking into what’s happening in their happiness and positive psychology space when it comes to countries that are looking at well-being as a measure instead of GDP.

P: And putting social structures in place to support that as well. So at least you can enjoy the space from which you are living, a little bit more easily.

M: Mmm hmm.

P: Yeah.

M: Definitely. And then the last group before we move into what you could do about this, the last group to call out and the last macro trend to talk about is self-employed workers and the gig economy.

P: Ooh, that’s me!

M: Yes, valid point.

P: [Laugh]

M: And a lot more right now we’re seeing people you know, these are the mompreneurs.

P: Ooh.

M: Or you know, IT workers who jump from.

P: I haven’t heard that one before.

M: So it’s the mum, mum bloggers who are selling training courses on their blog, or the, the more traditional IT workers who jump from contract to contract or temp workers, small business owners, uber drivers and students who make jewellery and sell it on eBay.

P: Yeah.

M: Designers who sell editing services through new marketplaces online that have been enabled, like fibre and air tasker and all of those great places where you sell services.

P: Yep.

M: So this is a new and booming area and way back in 2001, Dan Pink, Daniel H. Pink wrote a book which is still so relevant, called Free Agent Nation, which started talking about this. And the reason that this is good is that people get their flexibility. They have ownership, they have agency, and they can really create a career that works for them. If they want to work at midnight because they look after the kids in the morning, they can do that.

P: Yep

M: And it looks very much like a lot of corporate people right now. They’re all working from home with track pants on and kids running around in the background.

P: Grabbing an hour after they’ve put the kids in for tea, having an hour on the computer to do some work. Yeah, definitely.

M: Yeah, looks like that. The problem, though that we’re finding is that there comes a whole lot of insecurity there because we don’t have the social structures, the government support and safety nets in place with these employees.

P: Yeah, mmm.

M: And corporate employees come from a long and proud unionised –

P: Yes.

M: – background in history that ensures that they get certain rights that have been built into law in a lot of countries.

P: Mm hmm.

M: Gig economy workers are so new that a lot of governments haven’t worked out how to give from the same safety nets and rights that corporate or full time employees tend to enjoy.

P: Definitely.

M: So again, you can be fired or just not paid. And how do you go chase someone in the World Wide Web?

P: Mmm.

M: To get paid for things, so there’s a lot of uncertainty that comes out of that way of working as well.

P: Yeah absolutely, there’s a lot more risk involved in terms of having to negotiate the fear in the field. And I know that companies that you do use online I mean, I use Stripe and I use PayPal. Paypal I feel is a very strong one in that they are there to protect the consumer so that if, if, if goods don’t arrive or that if funds aren’t received, you can actually prevent payments or there’s a recompense. And so I think that those kind of companies actually do provide an important service in this new gig economy, as it were.

M: Yep, but there is so much more. So a corporation can’t fire you without giving you notice. But if you’re a gig economy worker, people could just-

P: Not pay you.

M: -pull your contract, exactly. Yeah, pull your contract within 24 hours.

P: Yeah.

M: So there’s, there’s still a bit of work to be done with most governments around the world. I don’t know that anyone’s really nailed this to give the gig economy and self-employed workers similar or enough of a safety net.

P: Yep.

M: So that they can go do what they do.

P: Sure.

M: And to give them a bit more certainty and security.

P: Mmm, mm. So in the last few minutes, let’s look at what things that we might be able to do to try and way lay this uncertainty that surrounds us in the new economy. Marie, you’ve got some, you’ve got a little pre-empt that you wanted to say on this one.

[Laughter]

M: Sure, look, I think it’s worth acknowledging that some people are doing it tough and it is not about us minimising that at all and the advice is if you’re struggling, please talk to a professional. Same –

P: Reach out.

M: – if we’ve triggered anything in this discussion and you’re not, you’re not coping again please do reach out to a professional and.

P: I think that’s really important because that’s actually taking a little bit of control. And in place of fear and in place of the uncertainty. I feel like the most important thing is, is that you do trying to find something that you can control, find one element that you can control and target that on by reaching out to someone and going up to someone say I’m not coping and I need assistance that’s actually taking control It’s a really positive, proactive step towards being, a step towards getting away from that uncertainty.

M: Absolutely. And then I think the second thing before we get into your broader tips is just remember to not overextend yourself financially. There’s a great book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad that talks about what rich people do and they don’t buy mansions and they don’t buy flashy cars.

P: Mmm, yeah.

M: And they don’t buy a lot of the things that society pressures us –

P: Yeah.

M: – into feeling we need to be a happy and successful.

P: Yeah, definitely. The whole. what would you buy if you won the lottery thing. Actually not much, don’t change.

M: Exactly, and a lot of happy people would buy nothing, so I think it’s just a really good general lesson. It is not financial advice. I have not taken your particular circumstances into account, just so we’re clear here.

P: [Laughter]

M: But I think it’s a really good point because there is so much uncertainty nowadays that having a really overstretched-

P: -financial situation is difficult at times.

M: Exactly. Yeah. Aside from that, Pete, there are some things you wanted to talk about for how we can maybe balance some of the negative with some positive-

P: Yeah.

M: – things that can help to maybe give you an umbrella as you’re standing underneath that financial entropic security cloud.

P: Yeah, absolutely. Look, this is, this comes from the mind tools website skills for [careers] and they really do talk about what’s the, the best way to respond it’s rather general advice, really, But it talks about controlling how you respond so in your circumstances where you are finding yourself feeling very uncertain. Try to get a hold on that emotional responsibility. Taking proactive steps like [those] we’ve already mentioned.

Getting value [for] yourself and giving value to your company or to your employer so that, that in turn, would reciprocate good feelings and a little bit more investment in parts of your employer or your company as such in going ‘well, this person’s really trying here. So let’s try and find a, a situation that we can either transfer them into or develop them further so that they stay with us.’

Looking for lateral transfers within your organisation, department transfers or even a different branch sometimes a change is as good as a holiday, as they say, so that helps to also up skill your communications and keep you relevant across more, more elements of the industry or the organisation with which you work, but within that as well, it’s also about valuing yourself and not allowing yourself to be taken advantage of.

Setting strong personal boundaries is a really important point, and in the same vein of being flexible and being broadly minded, assert yourself. Make sure that you’re not taken advantage of or manipulated for a bad negative outcome for yourself. Your outcome is just as important as the company’s outcome.

And keeping your technical skills up, making sure that the technical skills are there but also your communication and interpersonal skills, which I believe are called soft skills Marie.

M: [Laugh] Yes, we all know about soft skills in the corporate world.

P: I didn’t know about any. I mean, I don’t speak to client’s I stick them on a bed and they shut up.

[Laughter]

P: My interpersonal skills are probably through my elbows, more than anything, so [laugh] I need to look at that a little more laterally.

M: So I think a lot of those tips are really valuable. Show your value in an organisation is just a no brainer. But the one that I do want to reiterate here is to be taking control of your career and constantly looking for what’s next and how you can expand your skills and your interests and keep looking for the next opportunity. So keeping an open mind when things come along.

P: Yes.

M: And, they say nowadays, every 18 months you should be moving to a new team and growing and learning through that. So don’t move just because we say you should move. It’s about seeing things that interest you and taking a leap of faith and following the work. Yep, and that way it’s in your hands and your control.

P: Yeah.

M: You’re constantly updating your skills with new activities, and it makes you far more employable if not if, but when you’re made redundant.

P: Mmm.

M: Because it will happen.

P: Sure, yeah. I guess that’s the one thing we can rely on, that certainty is out there, it’s going to happen at one point.

M: Yep.

P: On that note. Let’s wind that up for this week. Thanks for joining us today. If you’d like to hear more please remember to subscribe and like our podcast. You can find us at www.marieskelton.com, a site about change, balance, happiness and resilience. You can also send in questions or propose a topic.

M: And if you like our little show, we would love for you to leave comment or a rating to help us out.

P: It would make us super happy.

M: Until next time…

P: Choose happiness 😊

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article 5 Easy Resilience Activities for the Workplace , listen to our Podcast Wellbeing and Your Environment with Lee Chambers (E21)

The Resilience Project – Interview with Hugh van Cuylenberg (E43)

09/11/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

In this extended episode, Marie interviews best-selling author and founder of The Resilience Project, Hugh van Cuylenberg, about all thing’s resilience. Laugh with them as they delve into why Aussies are such cynics and learn how Hugh gets his message through to some of the world’s biggest cynics, from the meanest footie players to corporate hotshots.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton and on today’s show we have a special guest.

Hugh van Cuylenberg has been working in education for over 15 years. The highlight of his teaching career was the year he spent in the far north of India, volunteering and living at an underprivileged school in the Himalayas. It was here that he discovered resilience in its purest form.

Inspired by this experience, he returned to Melbourne and The Resilience Project was born. Having completed his post graduate studies looking at resilience and wellbeing, Hughes developed and facilitated programmes for over 900 schools around Australia for the National Rugby League, The Australian Cricket Team, The Australian Netball Team, The Australian Women’s Soccer Team, The Jillaroos, 10 AFL teams, and he has presented to over 500 corporate groups. Hugh is also the best-selling author of The Resilience Project.

Hope you enjoy today’s show.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: So thank you for joining us today on the Happiness for Cynics podcast Hugh, I’m excited to have you on the show.

H: My pleasure, it’s an absolute pleasure.

M: So for those listeners who don’t know you or your background, would you mind sharing with us your personal story and what led you to dedicate your career to helping people find happiness and resilience?

H: Yeah, well, that’s a great question, because it kind of. There’s been a few moments in my life where things have happened that I guess have kind of led me to what I do now. And I think that’s pretty common for everyone. Like, we all can look back in our lives and pick out little moments that have had influence on the reason we are, you know, the reason we are the way we are and so often the really fascinating thing is that they’re things that at the time were incredibly painful or incredibly difficult. Or at the time we just thought, why is this happening to me? This is so unfair. I just wish this wasn’t happening. But so often they’re the things that actually get us through… Well, shape the kind of person we turned out to be.

So there’s an amazing lyric in the song, the song called ‘Let Go’ [by Frou Frou] by a group called I think It’s either Froo Froo or Frau Frau, I’ve never known. It’s in the Garden State album, it’s a wonderful, wonderful album. The Garden State Album and the lyric is ‘[cause] there’s beauty in the breakdown’. And I, I think about that often when chatting to people who are going through something really difficult, it’s often the kind of thing that will turn out to define them. And I kind of feel like that’s what sort of shaped, I suppose, my direction.

For me obviously, you know, being in mental health and talking about resilience my, my little sister Georgia, when she was 14 years old was diagnosed with a mental illness, Anorexia Nervosa, and that was a huge shock to the system for my family because we were a very, very happy family and everything was great and we never had any, anything difficult, really. Life was, well certainly I wasn’t aware of it when I was a child, life was perfect, really. And then my sister stopped eating when she was 14, I was 16 and my brother was 11. She just stopped eating and it was devastating. And it was when she was 18 years old, she was admitted to hospital because she’d dropped below crisis weight. She was not a short person. She was weighing in at 31 kilograms when she was admitted to hospital.

M: [Shocked noise]

H: And yeah. Oh, really devastating stuff. But I remember having a moment and I can’t remember where in that journey of her mental illness it was. But I remember very clearly having a moment of sitting at the dinner table and my dad, my dad was crying. And, you know, I think a lot of people who see their dad crying for the first time, it’s a pretty… it rocks you.

M: Mm hmm.

H: It wasn’t the first time I saw him cry, but the other time I’d seen him crying was when we lost, our dog passed away, Sammy, he was like, 17. So he’d been with us for a long time and Dad cried then and then a few years later, I saw him crying for my sister for how sick she was. And that’s when I remember having this very strong feeling of ‘Oh my God, my family is so unhappy.’ And that’s very foreign to us and I remember at that point … just thinking, ‘What is it that the people do to be happy, like what? Is there anything I could do to help Mom and Dad be happy?’

Or I mean, I felt like my sister’s mental illness was a bit beyond me, but I remember thinking, I reckon I could help my brother be happy, and I reckon I could help my mom and dad be happy. And that’s… but, I didn’t know. I was 18 and I had no idea what the answer was or um, I can’t remember how old I was, but I was in my teens. I remember thinking ‘I’ve got no idea what I should do to help. But gosh, I wonder what I could do?’

Anyway, it wasn’t until I was 28 years old that I was living… It wasn’t like every day I was walking around thinking, ‘What can I do to be happy? What can I do?’ And I sort of, I’d become a primary school teacher, thinking that I can help kids in primary schools by being a positive influence in their life but I had no idea. I actually went to a girls school to teach at a girls school and people often questioned why I did that thing. It’s a bit of a strange thing to do for a young male. There are no males teaching in girls schools or girls schools primary schools, [I was] the only one.

M: Mm Hmm.

H: And I’d go to all the other school association events, and it’s like, cross country athletics, and I was the only male teacher there in all the girl, all girls primary schools. But it was just because I’ve had this feeling like I could somehow have a positive influence on them. I could maybe stop them getting a mental illness, which is the most outrageous thing to think.

M: [Laugh]

H: But that’s what I was thinking. But yeah, I just remember having this kind of, I guess moment of..

Oh sorry. there was that, but then when you fast forward to when I was in India, 28 years old was living in India and I was volunteering in a school community. When I got there, I thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way I’m going to stay here.’ I’m meant to be here for two weeks, but I I’m embarrassed to admit to you now that I said to the principal on night one, “Oh I actually meant two nights, I just meant two nights.” because I was thinking ‘I can’t sleep on the floor, I can’t sleep on the floor here for two weeks.’

M: The culture shock is huge isn’t it?

H: It’s massive. Yeah. I’m thinking, ‘I can’t walk half an hour down to the river to get water every day. I’m not gonna sit in the river for a bath, like that’s just not going to happen.’ Um, but I remember on my first day in the school, which I planned to be my second last day in the whole community, I met a kid who was nine years old and slept on the floor like everyone else. But I remember thinking to myself, ‘I have never in my life seen joy like this before.’

M: Mm hmm.

H: ‘This kid’s the happiest person I’ve ever met. I’ve never seen anything like him. How incredible. How is it this kid’s so gleefully happy?’ And I remember I was living with the principal and I remember I went back to his little mud hut, and I was just, I said, “No, I think I need to stay a bit longer.” And the reason I wanted to stay longer is I was thinking ‘What do these people do every day that makes [them happy], what does this kid do that makes [him happy]?’

It wasn’t just this kid, it’s everyone right. Everyone is just so full of joy. I remember looking out the hole in this, well it wasn’t a window. It was like a hole in the mud brick wall at this school. I’m looking across thinking ‘there’s nothing here, there’s nothing in this village. Like I mean, there’s a beautiful view of the Himalayas, and that’s about it. I don’t know what these people are so full of joy.’ So I lived… I decide to stay there as long as it would take me to work out what it is those people do every day that makes them so happy.

And I ended up staying for three and a half months, and in three and a half months I saw three things. I mean, there were many things going on. I mean, they were surrounded by awe all the time.

M: Mm hmm.

H: There’s a beautiful book by Julia Baird ‘Phosphorescence’ where she talks about just being surrounded by awe is so, such a good thing for your mental health. So they were in the middle of the Himalayas. But I watched what those people did. And every day they practised:

Gratitude

Empathy, and

Mindfulness.

They’re the three things that were a daily practise. I joined in and it had a profound impact on me.

And I feel like I’ve moved away from your question a little bit here. I’ve just given my life story now.

M: [Amused voice] You’re answering my second question.

H: Oh.

M: So, so please keep going. [Laugh]

For our listeners who haven’t yet read your book, and I highly recommend it. Can you give us just a little bit of an overview on, on those three things and maybe how they came about through your time in India?

H: Yeah, so I guess. Sorry for skipping to it before.

M: [Laugh] Not at all.

H: So I guess. Are we acknowledging for this that this is the second time we’ve done this?

M: [Laugh] Sshh! [It’s a ] Secret that I didn’t record this properly somehow. [Laugh]

H: I think it’s a lovely example. One of the, one of the keys to experiencing more joy is to embrace your imperfections. And I think it’s a lovely thing to do.

M: [Laugh]

H: I think that my saying we forgot to record this the first time. [Laugh]

M: Yes. I am very grateful that you were gracious enough to do this all over again.

H: Not a problem, not a problem.

M: [We’ll] put it that way.

H: No, no not a problem. So yes. So the three things I saw them practise every day was gratitude, empathy and mindfulness. I would listen to them. I would watch these kids in particular this Boy I spoke about before stands out and like when he saw something he is grateful for, he would just stop and pointed out to me, and he would try and say the word ‘this’ but couldn’t pronounce the ‘th’ so he’d say ‘dis’. As people who’ve read the book will know. He’d say “Sir, dis! Dis, dis, dis,” you know, whether it was his shoes that were too small because he can’t afford to buy new shoes. But he was pointing at them saying “How lucky am I, I’ve got shoes on my feet. Some of the kids here don’t have shoes. How lucky am I?”

Whether it was the rice he got for lunch every day, he only got rice every single day. Just rice. That’s it, from the school. But he couldn’t afford to bring lunch to school. So the fact they got provided lunch. “Sir, dis, dis, dis.” Look I get fed here every day. How lucky am I? Moments he loved. If he realises in a good moment, you know, he’d stop and he would just point out the things he was really grateful to have like the things that were happening.

He loved Bollywood dancing, so often I would walk past him and he was doing a ridiculous, choreographed Bollywood dance, but he’d say “Sir, dis, dis, dis.” What he was saying was, ‘I’m so lucky I’m doing this right now.’ That’s actually a really, that was quite a life changing, I won’t say moment but a realisation for me. We need to get better at paying attention to the good stuff as it happens.

Like for so many people around Australia right now who can think about the things they miss doing, due to Covid. I mean, for me here in Melbourne, I miss so much going to cafes and having lunch and coffee with my friends. But when you think back to the last time you were in a cafe having coffee with your friends your going ‘God the sun’s right in my eyes here or this table’s a bit wobbly or this coffee isn’t great. I should’ve ordered that meal.

We’ve just become so spoiled and we needed everything to be perfect in order to have a good time. And I think back to this kid Tsunsen who, if something was good, he would stop and he would just say “dis”. Now I’m not saying [to] everyone listening that every time you see something good, you should say this, but I think we’ve got to be better, and actually stop and absorbing the good stuff that happens and just say this right now is pretty special.

M: Mm hmm.

H: So that’s what I saw, him practising gratitude every day. He’s the kindest person I’ve ever seen. Like I’ve never seen someone who does more for other people. I went from teaching this school here where the kids had nothing and were so full of joy. And I actually went back to teaching at Gelong Grammar School, renowned for positive education and an incredible program that they’re doing now. I mean, it’s life changing for so many people and it’s been so influential in Australia and the world in education. But I had a real problem with, I found it more confronting being there where the kids had everything.

M: Mm hmm.

H: They’re the most privileged. We’re talking about the most privileged kids in the country. My gosh, I was… I only lasted there for about I think it was a term or two terms. I couldn’t handle the… how confronting it was, with kids who had everything were just… were so unhappy with everything they had. Like they needed everything, they needed the best things to be happy they needed this, they needed that and so on. So overindulged I suppose. Um, and I mean, all kids need, I just remember thinking I can’t be here. I need to be somewhere where the kids…

What I saw with this community in India is these kids were so unbelievably kind. This kid particular, if he saw, if they saw someone by themselves straight over to them “just checking you’re ok. Do you want to come play with us?” If someone wasn’t in school he would swing past their mud hut after school and say ‘Hey, just checking in, are you ok?’ Now, I’m not. I didn’t mean to draw a comparison to say that Gelong Grammar kids aren’t kind. That’s not the case at all. They’re very kind kids but I think that any school I went to would struggled to compare to what I’m seeing in this little village.

And mindfulness, they practised it every single day. They had a half an hour meditation before school, every single day. It was optional, so no one had to be there. Yet every single child turned up for it, and I think essentially because they just got instinctively how good it was for them.

M: Yep. I’m really keen to circle back. So you mentioned the pain of experiencing along with your sister what she was going through and that pain of your family and definitely Happiness for Cynics, the podcast has come out of me being quite cynical and really quite privileged as well as everyone is in Australia. Let me just say.

H: Yeah

M: But then going through trauma, I’m interested to know is there any hope for people who want to be happy? But I don’t feel like we should have to put them through trauma or pain to get that change to happen or with your work with kids who have everything and really are privileged. Do you really need to… short circuit something in their lives to make them rethink the way they’re living and truly appreciate things?

H: The two ways we address that, and no you don’t have to go through, I mean, it’s often the case, right? It’s often the case that, you have lived this yourself.

M: Mm hmm.

H: It takes trauma. It takes something difficult to think that ‘I need to make some changes’ or for a lot of people [who] are going through Covid, especially in Melbourne. People are saying ‘Well, you know what? This is the time to make some serious changes.’ And a lot of people have done that, and so a lot of people will be better off when we get through this.

M: Mm Hmm.

H: And we had zero cases today, which is very exciting.

M: Yep.

H: But when we get through this, people will be, there will be a lot of people who are better off emotionally and spiritually because they’ve made some changes that they never would have made.

M: Yep.

H: So for me there are a lot of things I wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t for Covid, like, I’ve stopped watching television at night now and I go into our front room, and I have this routine that I do every night, which, it sounds weird, but like I’ll do a certain amount of push-ups, 10 minutes of core, stability, strengthening stuff. Then I do this, [laugh], like I’m a sprinter and I’ve got terrible hamstrings. So I do this, like hamstring exercise every night, and it takes about half an hour, half an hour of exercise, I drink lots of water. While I’m in there I have a green tea, I have the lights dimmed and I listen to like meditation or like yoga music.

M: Mm hmm

H: And then I go out, I have really healthy food afterwards. Pretty much go to bed. I have some like yogurt and nuts and muesli and stuff like that and I don’t turn the television on and I listen to really calming music and I go to bed. That’s so much healthier than what I was doing before. I was like watching television, have a couple of beers on the couch watching telly.

M: Mm hmm.

H: If I can’t find something on television, I’ll just find something else, I’ll watch just whatever it takes. So that’s me, like who’s in a pretty good place for making some changes. I know some people have made some pretty drastic changes, but that’s not answering your question at all. So I’ll come back to your question, Marie. Sorry.

M: [Laugh]

H: So the reason. So the way I feel like we have been reasonably successful in impacting people’s lives who haven’t gone through something traumatic or didn’t feel like they needed to. There’s two ways:

Number one is modelling.

So I think the most powerful influence anyone’s behaviours to model the behaviours. So I think modelling how powerful that stuff can be has a huge influence and parents out there listening, going ‘Hey, but how does my kids don’t want to hear this stuff? How do I tell my kids?’ You model this stuff to your kids, do this stuff yourself, and you watch what happens when, you know, if your kids or you might be thinking my kids and teenagers, they hate this stuff. They’re watching you right now, like kids are watching to see how we respond to a crisis. So the values that you are modelling now will have a big impact on the kind of person they decide to be when it’s time for them to grow up and be a normal human being. And they’re trying to work out. How do I show up in the world? Well, the way you’re acting now is going to have a big impact on that and what you’re modelling.

And the second way that we I believe we have an impact on people who potentially, you know, thinking ‘I don’t know this stuff. I’m fine. Or I’m not going though anything traumatic. I’m going OK.’

[Number two] I think the way we get through to people is just with stories.

So we don’t get up and say, this is the definition of gratitude, this is the definition of… This’s why you should practise… We just tell stories about people who have gone through this stuff. People who practise it, the impact it’s had on them. Storytelling, we love stories, like people remember stories, we remember stories. We don’t remember stats, statistics, definitions, we remember stories and storytelling is you know, it’s the currency of so many, you know. You do to the pub with your friends, your currency is storytelling. You’re involved in sporting club, you know your currency is storytelling, so that’s what we listen to it. That’s what we love. And so using stories to engage people on this journey is, I think, a really powerful tool.

M: So would you say that was your secret or the way to get the change in the attention of footie player as well, I just I have this image of you standing in front of rooms of these big, competitive mean footy players and them rolling their eyes at you. And obviously, you know in the book that they went in that way to a lot of the sessions that you held for them. But they’ve asked you to come back-

H: Yeah

M: -again and again. And there’s been so many life changing stories off the back of it.

H: You know, it’s amazing.

M: Is it the story telling? is that it? Is that the secret?

H: Yeah, well for the book. I just wrote all the stories out and Penguin Random House my publishers were just so happy with it. But then we had to go the players and say are you happy with this? And like, 90% of them said no. So there’s only a few left of them in the book, but one that’s left in the book is a beauty. It’s Nick Riewoldt, a legend from St. Kilda football club and he’s a friend now and I love him dearly. He’s a great person and I’ve always looked up to him immensely. I remember the first time I turned up to St. Kilda Footy Club. I was sitting down as the players were walking in, I was sitting next to the guy who organised the talk from the club and Nick went up to him and said,

“I don’t have to be here for this do I?”

And the well-being officer said “I would love it if you were.”

And he said “Mate, I don’t have time and I’d rather spend time on the massage table or see the physio.”

And he said “No, it’s compulsory.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

And then the guy said, by the way, this is Hugh here, he’s doing the talk.

“No offence mate. I don’t need to hear this stuff.”

Or words to that effect.

M: Mm hmm.

H: He was very, he was polite but he was also quite blunt. And they said “No, you have to stay.” And I remember two, maybe five. No it would have been five minutes in. I remember looking up and I saw him, he was in the back row and he had tears and his face, streaming down his face and his hat over his face and he couldn’t look up. And after a while he looked up and teammates would just pat him on the back during the talk. And it was, like, it was storytelling, like he was so engaged and the story is quite emotional, but the other thing that is so important is, with these guys is humour. They have to laugh if they’re not laughing they don’t want to be there.

And there’s nothing more rewarding and exciting than a room full of 45 very manly men, like this uproarious laughter you get when you… There’s a few go to gags or stories that I’ve got that get them every single time. There was one club I was at and they didn’t laugh at all. It was unbelievably awkward. So I had this big pause for laughter.

M: [Laugh]

H: Ahh… No one’s laughing here.

M: That was akward.

H: But yeah, it’s great. You just, so what I do with these men, well this for everyone’s first session. For the first five minutes, I was trying to get people to laugh. I think, you know, laughter is the most… Not saying I have an incredible sense of humour I just know some funny stories that happened to me and sense of humour is a super power, making people laugh is a super power.

M: Mm hmm.

H: If they’re laughing for the first time, it means they want to be there, they’re happy being there. You resonate with them, they kind of like you and go, ‘Yeah, I like this person, I’m happy to hear them and what he’s got to say. But you see it happening the first time, I see them going for it. And it’s not just, I had a group of magistrate, um judges from magistrates, like just the other, like on Friday, and I could see their [faces], like it was on zoom. But I could see the look on their faces of like, ‘how long is this going on for? I can’t believe I’m sitting here.’ And five minutes in I could see them going, because all of them are facing side on like pretending, they’re all like typing, pretending they were listening.

M: Ha, ha ha.

H: They were going [pretending] And five minutes in they were all leaning forward, they closed computer screens or whatever it is and they’re in and all I’ve done, I hadn’t talked about well-being, I hadn’t talked about happiness, hadn’t talked about gratitude and mindfulness you save that part ‘til you’ve got them. Like, a sense of humour. Laugh, laughter and storytelling is everything. I listen to lots of people talk about this stuff, these topics. A lot of people, a lot of people out there talking about this stuff, which is fantastic, the more the merrier. The ones I enjoy listening to most of the ones who make me laugh and the ones who tell a good story.

M: Do you think that is an Australian trait? Are we cynics by nature? And that’s why it’s that little bit harder to get engagement or is this worldwide that there is a resistance to a lot of this positive psychology, science and understanding?

H: No, I think it’s fair to say it’s quite an Australian thing. I go to New Zealand and even in New Zealand just across the, the… What is it?

M: Tasman.

H: Tasman, thanks.

M: [Laugh]

H: Across the beach to New Zealand. People were just in, I start talking, I don’t need to win people over. In America, oh my god, I was in America and I did, I was speaking to a college football team and I did my whole thing of, it’s such an Australian presentation like it’s really self-deprecating the first five minutes as well. I’m really self, I put myself down heaps. Australians don’t like thinking someone is like above them on a pedestal.

But the very fact that I’ve got a microphone that puts you on a pedestal and I try and get rid of that straight away. I’m just, like, ‘no I’m just like you guys.’

M: Mm hmm.

H: There’s like 80 people in an American football team. So I walk in there, they’re listening to hip hop music and dancing as I walked in, I was like, woah, these guys are pumped and I started speaking and I’m doing this putting myself down and saying I was terrible at sport, I can’t relate to you guys, you’re unbelievable blah, blah, blah. This guy stood up and goes “Hey, man, believe in yourself. You can do it!”

M: [Laugh] That would never happen here.

H: Yeah. In my head I’m like, nah I do believe in what I’m doing now. “I’m fine” I said. And then I said “guys try and model failure. I’ll probably stuff up that many times” and this guy goes, “Man, come on. Confidence is a blessing. You’ve gotta be confident in your ability.” And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is not gonna work here’

M: [Laugh]

H: And it just didn’t work in the States because my style is so self-deprecating and I try to be so humble and like, ‘Hey, I’m not being anyone else, I’m just like you’, didn’t work in America.

M: Mm hmm.

H: So, I think it is a really Australian thing, like I have to spend the first five minutes of… huh it’s probably more males as well.

M: Mm hmm.

H: Like a group I worked with called Mecca, Mecca cosmetics. All females, oh they were wonderful like, I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. They were just like ‘we’ll hear what you have to say.’ But if I get a group of males, the first five minutes is like I’ve got to impress them and make them realise have to listen to me otherwise we’re not getting anywhere here. So in my experience of speaking overseas, you know, like in India, oh they love it, like absolutely love it.

M: Yep.

H: So, yeah, I think Australians are naturally a lot more cynical. I don’t know why we’re like that. I don’t know what it is, but we’re definitely more cynical here.

M: So look, I’m just going to point out and just leave this here that also men’s mental health is probably a lot worse and we’re coming to realise that men’s mental health is a really significant problem and suicide rates with men are much higher than women have been for quite a while. So just going to leave that there?

H: Yes.

M: I’m not implying causation or anything like that.

[Laughter]

H: It’s a fascinating one, like I’ll never forget this presentation I did up in a country town called Clermont, Claremont, I think it’s about four hours west of Townsville. It’s a mainly a beef cattle farming land, and I mean the suicide rates have been horrendous. And the pharmacist, a lovely guy, he is the local pharmacist he organised for me to go and speak in the community. And I said, “How are you going to get all these men to come?” Because there had been all those suicides for men and he said, “We’ll have it at the pub and we’ll call it like I don’t know, Jugs and Jocks night. I’ll provide all the jugs [of beer] if they come, they’re allowed of a jug free if they turn up and we’ll just wear jocks. And I said “Look, man, I’m not doing that.”

M: [Laugh]

H: A part of the thing didn’t work. He wore jocks and everything else, All the old blokes were like I’m not doing that. So every else wore their pants, except for him. But they got a free jug at the pub and a free meal if they came along and he said, and he said, “Oh, I’m inviting a bloke along who’s mates with Billy Slater and he’s mates with Johnathan Thurston, and he wants to tell us a few yarns and I was like, This is really fascinating. I got there, there’s 250 men there and he couldn’t believe it he was so pumped.

M: Mm hmm

H: I could hear them all going “What the f? Who’s he going to talk? What’s he talking about?” And so I realised I had about… and they’ve been drinking for about an hour when I got up there, 250 men, a crowded pub and I thought, ‘I reckon I’ve got two minutes to get these blokes, when they realised what I’m talking about here it’s going to be over.’ And all I did was put myself down for the first two minutes and tell a story about a massive stuff up when I was doing this job is and they were in. And they loved it, and it was just, the feedback we got was just… We get invited back there every year to speak to them again. These men who have never, ever talked about this stuff before, and I had men hanging around for hours. I was there till one in the morning, with men just saying, like they couldn’t actually talk like they’d try.

M: Mm hmm.

H: Not, not because they’d been drinking, because the topic was so foreign to them.

M: Yep.

H: But it was so raw, like depression was just through the roof, and these men saying “oh, mate I am…” Typically might just want to say something like just we said before that depression and sh*t and they’d start crying and they’d be like “Ah, I can’t talk about it,” and sort of walk off.

M: Yep

H: But we actually, can’t actually even talk about it in some communities, and it’s too hard like, but we feel it. We feel it deeply. And um.

M: Yep.

H: That was one of the greatest programs I’ve ever been a part of. We just as men, we find it so foreign.

M: Yeah, even just having the words, I think there’s a great study that was released last week in Melbourne. I’ll have to find it and put it in our show notes. So there’s some university people that have done work in primary schools to give the students the words to communicate their feelings.

H: That’s amazing, amazing yeah.

M: Yeah, and they’ve had some great, so positive psychology interventions, they’ve had some great results there with just people or with the kids just being able to vocalise what’s happening a lot easier.

H: Yeah, absolutely.

M: Even before Covid we we’re seeing rises in anxiety, stress, depression, loneliness, burn out, every year it feels like there’s a new syndrome or disease that that we’re adding to the laundry list of things.

H: Mmm.

M: What steps do you think we need to take in Australia to start to reverse the trend?

H: Whatever we can do to get to kids at a young age, to teach them preventative skills rather than sitting at the other end going okay, well, let’s have things in place for people and they become depressed or they become anxious or suicidal. There’s some… We need to put more money into prevention and whatever we can do to provide emotionally engaging programs for kids that teach them how to deal with stuff when, when things go wrong, basically. And I, I think any program that teaches kids how to deal with stuff when things go wrong. Any programme that teaches kids that they are worthy as they are. I mean, one of the issues with schooling system, we had a podcast recently we had a guy on called Will McMahon, who’s won half of Will and Woody, the radio duo, incredible radio duo.

M: Mm hmm.

H: And he went to a private school and he was saying it’s just destroyed him going to private school because he has so hard wired in his head that to be happy, he has to be successful and to be successful has to achieve heaps. And this model has just undone him because he feels like he’s always chasing [success]. He will succeed in something that is going to succeed in something else because at school it was like everything you did you’re rewarded with like these badges on your blazer and like different groups you were captains of and you had to be achieving, and if you achieved, you got your name on the walls and everything’s about achievement, he said, “it’s the undoing of me and all my friends, like we all are still chasing those achievements to be happy. Yet even when we achieve them, we realise we’re not happy.

M: Mm hmm.

H: So I think any program that teaches kids that they are worthy as they are, they don’t have to be the smartest person, the richest person, the funniest, the best sports person, most… Programs that teach kids that you are worthy as you are right now. You’re worthy -when I say worthy, I mean worthy of love and worthy of belonging as you are right now, they’re vital. Any program that teach kids that things will go wrong in your life but when they do hear some things you can do. I think that’s I think that’s where we’ve got to start.

But gosh, you’re right. Trends are going the wrong way. So what we’re doing right now is not working for the masses.

M: So for those of us who are well and truly out of school, [laugh].

H: Mm hhm.

M: Can I ask you to maybe leave us with one tip or one piece of advice? Something tangible that people can do in their lives to bring more happiness or resilience?

H: I would… The most simple thing to do, I think, in order to experience more joy and positive emotion, that’s what creates resilience. So that’s why I’m bring this up. But I think that the easiest thing to do a really practical one, is just to write down three things every day that went well for you. Not three things that have been life changing, not three things you’re grateful for because that’s impossible to keep that up every day and not get bored.

What are three things that went well for you today?

Had a nice coffee.

You saw the sunrise.

Had a nice text message for a friend.

Whatever it is. If you do that every single day, you actually physically rewire your brain to start scanning the world for the positives. And that makes you a happier person. And it’s something you look forward to. Write it in a note pad next your bed, in a journal, on the shower screen door. However you want to do it, totally up to you. But what you’ll find is you’ll start to experience more moments of joy, and you’ll be more aware of them as they happen, which is a really nice starting point for all this stuff.

M: Great. On that note thank you so much for your time. How can people find out more about you and your book?

H: So just if you type in the Resilience Project, I think the first thing that comes up is actually the book. You can order the book online via our website, but there’s also it’s in all book stores around the country, and the audio book is, I actually did, I narrated the audiobook myself, because I felt like they were my stories so it had to be me. It took a very long time, it was very difficult to do so please go and check that out cause it took so long to do it.

M: [Laugh]

H: But that seemed to be a popular version of consuming the book, the audio book. But if you like reading it’s in all good bookstores and probably not good ones as well-

[Laughter]

H: -all around the country at the moment, so yes, that’s probably the best way to do it. Any other stuff on the resilience project, just go to the website and it’s all, it’s all there. I’m just checking. I should have checked at the start, I was checking you’ve pressed the record button? It say’s record on the top here.

M: [Laugh]

H: I think we’re good.

M: It is flashing, [laugh], we won’t be doing a take three, I promise.

[Laughter]

M: Well, thank you so much for your time, a second time [laugh].

H: Pleasure, absolute pleasure.

M: And have a good day.

H: You too, Marie. Thank you so much, bye.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article Words That Can Change Your Mindset, listen to our Podcast Why You Need to Develop Your Emotional Literacy (E42)

Why You Need to Develop Your Emotional Literacy (E42)

02/11/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete discuss Emotional literacy and how it’s a critical life skill for kids to allow them to grow into resilient well-balanced, emotionally intelligent adults.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness a holiday wannabe, a Corona free, filigree, apogee, pedigree, epogee. And if anyone can come up with a reference for that, I will send you a present.

[Laugh] Marie’s doing fist punches. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you’re only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the police to be!

M: And take us one step further on our happiness journey. Today’s episode is all about emotional literacy.

[Happy Intro music]

M: So Pete, emotional literacy.

P: This is a big one. I’m going to take the cynic roll on this one.

M: Oh really!

P: [Laugh] Yeah, I think we flipped. I think I’ve become more of a cynic now, and you’ve become more of the Yogi practising meditative person.

M: No, I’m still not doing meditation.

P: Crap.

M: [Laugh] Not crossing that line.

P: [Laugh]

M: Not that I’m questioning the science.

P: No, no, no, no, but I need to actually get you meditating. It’s going to be a lifelong goal for me. [Laugh]

M: Can you meditate while you run on a treadmill?

P: Eh, you can… It’s very difficult though.

M: Can you do something competitive while meditating? Because then I’m in. [Laugh]

P: Yeah, no, I know your competitive nature, and it’s not gonna work.

Anyway moving on emotional literacy. So when I first heard about this term, emotional literacy, I turned into my mother. I started going ‘pfft, who wants to know about this shit ra, ra, ra.’ You know 1930’s woman. I was very much like, What is emotional literacy? I actually had to go and investigate what it was we were going to talk about this week. So I’m going to take the cynic role.

M: Ah.

P: So Marie, what is this emotional literacy that you speak of?

M: Sure. So I have worked in a corporate environment for too many years, a number of years, and as part of that we do a lot of understanding teams and how teams work together and understanding yourself and looking at neuroscience and psychology. And a lot of the teaming activities that you do in corporate environments rely heavily on decent emotional intelligence and emotional literacy. So for me –

P: -Well emotional intelligence I get, so emotional intelligence is being able to understand feelings and so forth. Let’s get specific about the literacy aspect of it.

M: Yeah.

P: I mean, is this something that I need to read about? Is this something that I need to go and do a two-day workshop on?

M: Not you.

P: [Laugh]

M: However, the thinking is, so words matter.

P: Yeah.

M: Well definitely is an ex journo/ corporate affairs person, So words matter.

P: [Laugh]

M: We’ve done episodes before on positive affirmations and mindset and all of that, and words definitely have an impact on our happiness and or, you know, emotional well-being.

P: Yes.

M: But in order to be able to move through tough times. So we’ve talked about how resilience is your ability bounce back from adverse events.

P: Yep.

M: And we’ve talked about the Kubler Ross change curve in the past-

P: Ooh, I remember that one, yes.

M: -and how you go through all of those emotions to come out the other side. While you’re processing, you need to be able to self assess, and so you have to have a certain amount of emotional intelligence to do that. But step one before you get to any of that stuff that we’ve talked about is simply having the words to describe what’s going on, because we can’t analyse-

P: Stephen Fry would be very proud of you right now.

[Laughter]

M: Why what did I do? It’s about words?

P: Yeah, well is. It’s all about having the vocabulary to be specific about words.

M: Mm hmm.

P: And when I came across the reading over this, it resonated really easily with me because of our vocabulary and our ability to describe what we’re feeling is really important. If you are very specific about the emotion that you’re feeling, it’s much easier to categorise that and look at the possible reasons around why you’re experiencing that emotion.

So frustration is different to anger and being able to differ between the two means you can pinpoint when you’re being frustrated, as opposed to when you’re being angry. And one of them involves a lot less heightened emotion. You can actually be a bit more logical with it, and so you can address those elements. And for me that was the real um… I want to say congruent. But that’s the wrong word. I’m getting too literal now.

[Laughter]

P: I’m getting fancy with my words.

M: It’s the important part.

P: I Think it resonated with me that words are important and that having at vocabulary is really necessary. And this is something that needs to happen as a child, right Muz?

M: Yeah. So the reason that we picked this topic for this episode is a great study that dropped only a couple of weeks ago, and I actually mentioned in our last episode as well. But it comes from the Centre for Positive Psychology at the University of Melbourne.

P: Mm hmm.

M: And so they partnered-

P: My alumni am I now allowed to go [throat clearing noise]?

M: [Laugh] – so they partnered with a bunch of schools through Victoria to do positive psychology interventions focused on emotional literacy and developing kids emotional literacy. And –

P: Can we break that down a bit Muz in terms of positive psychology and emotional literacy? Can we talk just a little bit? Because I think that not all of our listeners may be aware of the link between the two.

M: Sure. What’d you have in mind?

[Laughter]

M: I’m not following where you’re taking me on this yet.

P: Okay, so what I came across when I was reading this report with the fact that they have this term PPI, so Positive Psychology Interventions. Is that correct?

M: It’s an activity. Let’s be really, really clear here.

P: Ok.

M: PPI or positive psychology intervention. It means we’re going to do an activity. And it’s based in the science behind, in psychology. Right?

P: [Laugh]

M: So what we know of positive psychology or the field of psychology that focuses on the positive rather than negative aspect? It’s an activity that is based in science.

P: Alright.

M: So again, this is just saying they did an activity with a whole bunch of kids about helping them to understand and develop their emotional literacy. And by that we mean be able to name and categorise feelings using words.

P: Mmm. There’s a great quote that I’ll grab here when I did some reading on this. And this comes from Claude Steiner, who was the first person to coin the term emotional interest in 1978 and he says that ‘Emotional literacy is the building block of emotional intelligence. When we develop our own emotional intelligence, we can access and develop information about ourselves and, more importantly, others. Without emotional intelligence, emotions remain confusing and misleading, ultimately impacting the relationship we have with ourselves as well as others.’

I really like that little sentence. It combines it all together in a really nice little package about what we’re talking about when we talk about [emotional] literacy, it’s about understanding what we’re feeling and how that affects how we relate to others.

M: Absolutely. And I think that we’ve grown up, particularly in Australia, with the older male generations being told from a very young age not to cry and not to show emotion and to man up. And don’t be a girl.

P: It’s a very British concept that one, may I add? [Laugh] Stiff upper lip.

M: Yes. As a result, not only have they not learned the words to use to name, to even name what they’re feeling

P: Exactly.

M: Because they push it all down deep. They also don’t process as a result, they don’t process those emotions, and you end up with really high rates of suicide in older men, particularly those whether you’ve got that rough culture like in northern Queensland. A lot of farming communities, country communities.

P: Yep, because they can’t deal with, they can’t name these emotions and it all becomes too overwhelming. And it it results in people not being able to cope. And this is why this work is so important.

M: Absolutely.

P: As an artistic lad in Dubbo New South Wales.

[Laughter]

M: You stood out like a sore thumb?

P: Yeah, just a little bit. [Laugh] But I think that’s the funny thing is that that’s why this does resonate with me. I read this and going, ‘Oh, yeah I’ve done this, I get this.’

M: Mm hmm.

P: Because having that understanding and delving into those personal emotions and being able to name them and target them and go ‘no, this is different to frustration versus anger and sadness versus despair. That is important stuff. And I think you’re right, Marie. I think that male, men in the old school world don’t have that ability, and they don’t have that intelligence because they’ve never been exposed to it. It’s like go out and beat the shit out of a punching bag. That’s how you deal with emotions.

M: Or you don’t even acknowledge them, even worse.

P: Exactly.

M: And we’re not talking about writing essays about how we’re feeling.

P: [derisive snort]

M: Exactly.

We’re talking about just simply understanding the difference between grumpy, tired, frustrated, angry and mad or sad, right?

P: Definitely, yeah.

M: Or overwhelmed. Or, on the flip side, how to actually identify good feelings, as well, and to celebrate those good feelings so feeling relaxed, relieved, proud and grateful, hopeful.

P: Yep

M: And being able to communicate that to people around us.

P: I love that love, that idea.

M: And sharing it.

P: And all the different things of positivity. It’s like there’s a whole cavalcade of experiences out there, it’s not just about being happy. It’s about all those things and I think that’s really important.

M: Yes, definitely. And the other thing that I find really fascinating. So a lot of schools nowadays are trying to help kids label their emotions and articulate what their feelings.

P: I like this direction I like this, fabulous. [Laugh]

M: And the great thing about that is when you’re overwhelmed with emotion, your brain switches to that old evolutionary part of the brain that is driven by needs and instinct. So you’re, you’re just reacting to the feelings you’re not thinking in a logical way. But by forcing someone who’s in that state to label the emotion they’re feeling it switches your, the part of the brain that you’re using into that logical analytical side.

P: Yes.

M: And by default, it actually makes you take more control over that emotion. That might have been overwhelming you before that point.

P: Mmm, mmm, can’t agree more.

M: So if you’re just really angry at something that somebody’s done to you and you feel slighted and you’re just so frustrated and angry and someone says, ‘Just help me out here what exactly are you feeling? The fact that you’ve got to process that and think about it switches you out of that anger.

P: Yep.

M: And already starts to make you feel better and less emotional and less at the mercy of that emotion, and I love that part of this labelling thing.

P: I agree.

M: So there is more science underneath this than just helping you to process it. And the other thing that I love is sharing that emotion in a positive, constructive way it doesn’t involve violence, it doesn’t involve lashing out. It is about sharing that with someone, and there is a… vulnerability to that. That means you’re actually in that moment, if you do it in the right way, bonding with that person as well, and there’s real value and support and connection that can come out of that.

P: And we’ve seen that in so many stories of the troubled kid. I remember teaching a boys dance class in Cornwall, in southern UK with a friend of mine. We were doing a boys only dance project and it was for years 7 to 9. We walked into this studio and we had this giant of the kid. He was 6 ft three and about 95 kg, and all the other kids were like, 5 ft and 26 kg. It was, this guy was a freak and Ben looked at me, and I looked at Ben and said, ‘Okay, what are we going to do with this kid?’ [Laugh]

We were doing partner improvisation, like he was gonna crush everybody and um Ben said, ‘OK, we’re going to throw him in with you.’ And I said ‘Ok, because I can handle 90 kg sure.

[Laughter]

P: And so we put this kid into, to working with me and using him as the demonstrator, and all of a sudden this proud, caring person came out and this kid was running around the entire workshop saying to his fellows, ‘No, no, you need to do it this way.’

And then after the first session, we kind of went into the teacher’s common room and we were sitting there and this person came up to me, said, ‘Oh, you’ve got Gerald in your class.’ And I said ‘Oh yeah, Gerald sure he’s the big kid. ‘We’re so glad he’s out of our class he’s so awkward. He is so difficult to deal with.’ And it was it was so amazing because then I was like ‘No, he’s amazing. He’s just, he’s so good. He’s so involved, is so connected.’ And it just took that change of emotional intelligence of understanding that, Yeah, he’s a big, awkward boy, let’s put him in a role that he can take charge. I’ll put him in a different situation and that changes his whole demeanour, changed his outlook and it changed the way that he interacted with the other kids. No longer was he being scary, man, he was the helper.

M: Yep, I think that shows your emotional intelligence.

P: Well, it does, but it shows the effects that what they’re talking about in the study is that if we can get this information out to kids at that level, when you’re dealing with these emotions and they’re able to identify their emotional states, put words to it and spend the time going ‘no, I’m not angry, I’m frustrated.’ As you said, that lessens the response.

M: Uh huh.

P: And you don’t get the kids who are being violent or lashing out because they’re able to, sit there with their emotions and go ‘no this is what I am and they’re being articulate about it. And that already dissipates the reaction by however many percentages you wanna label it, I would say you know, something like 50%. It makes someone so much more malleable. And so much more easy – not easier to deal with- more approachable you can come at the target together and that is a life lesson. When you go into adulthood having arguments with your spouse or something, being able to sit down and go ‘no, this is what I’m feeling.’

M: Mm hmm.

P: It’s a really important skill.

M: And it goes different ways. It enables people who struggle with saying ‘no’ to get over that as well, so people who have been silenced, who have grown up in families where Children were to be seen and not heard and have been told that achievement is everything and that there’s a certain type that comes out of that type of upbringing.

P: Yeah

M: There’s also a certain type who have never been taught how to label their emotions and work through their emotions because it’s girly or whatever.

P: Yes.

M: Or whatever, you know, insert weird reason here.

P: [Laugh]

M: And they’re the ones that turn to violence because they can’t express themselves any other way, and it bubbles up on boils over. And Australia has a huge problem with family domestic violence.

P: Absolutely. I can’t agree more. And I said that’s why this work is really important. And if we bring it back to the research group that’s in Victoria and they talk about building intentional emotional vocabulary. So we’re giving skills to children in this instance and using the interventions, which is activities as you are saying Muz, as evidence based informed activities to protect an increase our well-being by making us feel better so promoting feeling good and functioning well automatically puts us in a pathway to enhanced well-being. And that comes from the study that we were talking earlier.

M: Listen to you, ‘enhanced well-being’.

[Laughter]

P: It’s so scientific.

M: It make you happier, it makes you happier. Being able to work through your emotions quickly and process them and move forward is far better than staying in that dwelling weird space after a trauma or an adverse event. So it definitely helps to make you happier, which far better right?

P: That’s a brilliant point to end on, I love that. So it’s all good, good activities. Let’s, let’s, let’s finish on that one.

M: So well, we did discuss before we go that we wanted to provide a hint or tip for listeners and I think what we’re talking about here is how can we help kids cope with emotions and deal with emotions better? So, did you have anything you’d like to end with or any tips for parents to help their Children?

P: Talk about it. Talk with your kids about this sort of stuff and give them the vocabulary. So, use words like you would cue cards, give them seven options instead of two options to name their emotions and if you can do that, I think it involves a lot of what we’re talking about here with the positive psychology it’s being specific. They talk about being open minded to other people’s feelings and being aware of your effect on others. That, that emotional, emotional honesty practising emotional honesty is a really big point.

So if you can be specific on particular about your emotions, that means you’ve done the work yourself about what you’re feeling. And if you could encourage that as a parent and speak with your Children about that and be open to it. And if they come up with a word that makes you feel a little bit prickly, then maybe that’s something that really does need to be addressed and looked at.

M: Yep.

P: It’s a vulnerable state, but if you can have those frank conversations and really listen and be present, I think that that’s probably best tip.

M: Yeah, all right, Well on that note we will end today’s show, thank you for joining us today if you want to hear more please remember to subscribe and like this podcast and remember, you can find us at www.marieskelton.com.

P: If you like our little show, we’d love a review, so please leave a comment or a rating on our podcast app to help us out.

M: Yes, that would make us happy.

P: Until next time…

M&P: Choose Happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article:

Words That Can Change Your Mindset

Fighting the Loneliness Epidemic (E41)

26/10/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete discuss the global rise in loneliness levels, what is contributing to the increase and what we can all do to build stronger relationships.

Site discussed during the podcast: Examining Emotional Literacy Development Using a Brief On-Line Positive Psychology Intervention with Primary School Children Jacqueline Francis *, Tan-Chyuan Chin and Dianne Vella-Brodrick Centre for Positive Psychology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia; tanchyuan.chin@unimelb.edu.au (T.-C.C.); dianne.Vella-Brodrick@unimelb.edu.au (D.V.-B.) * Correspondence: jacqui.francis@unimelb.edu.au Received: 14 September 2020; Accepted: 15 October 2020; Published: 19 October 2020

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, a pop up cycle user, smartphone and techno abuser and generic loose cannon on a Sunday boozer. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you’re only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey, today’s episode is all about the loneliness epidemic.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: What is does Eeyore say?

P: I’m depressed?

M: Woe is me.

P: Oh well, oh well.

M: [Laugh]

P: I’ll just take another walk.

M: Someone like that. I feel like that’s what sums up my idea what our episode today should be about. [Laugh]

P: All right, let’s go with that. So we’re doing, we’re doing a Winnie the Pooh thing?

M: [Laugh]

P: Okay, so Marie the loneliness epidemic, is it all about Eeyore?

M: I think that’s a result of being lonely. And it is an epidemic, isn’t it, Pete?

P: Yes. Now I’ve got to admit, when I first heard about this, I was the cynical one my cynical hat went on. I was like ‘what, people aren’t lonely, how can they be lonely? Everything’s grand, everything’s wonderful and all this stuff about teenagers being lonely, oh pish posh, pish posh. But, turns out I was wrong.

M: Ha, ha. You’re wrong.

[Laughter]

P: No, There’s definitely a loneliness epidemic, definitely something that is becoming more important. And I think one of the one of the big indicators for me from the research that I did was that loneliness is actually a higher indicator of mortality than obesity and smoking right now.

M: What?

P: Yeah, according.

M: For real?

P: Yeah, according to a study done by the Australian Psychology Society in collaboration with Swinburne University in Victoria, the loneliness epidemic is becoming a bigger indicator of mortality than obesity and smoking in Australia as of 2018.

M: Wow. Well, I knew it was a problem. It’s really been, it’s been a hot topic. So burnout was big, loneliness just before that. This is a global problem, like many of the things that we talk about that crosses all demographics. There are some differences, though, right Pete?

P: Yeah, I’m finding with some of the studies that you’ve mentioned, Marie. I’ve got a couple of different figures and statistics down in here, and I do think, but I think the overall message is the same is that this’s a big indicator of what’s going on not only affects our mortality it affects our health, it affects our physical being as well as our mental well-being and the way that we live and the way that we interact. So this is all pre-pandemic Covid. Pandemic Covid has actually; I don’t know why I’m saying pandemic Covid, it should actually be Covid pandemic but anyway, we’re going reverse today.

[Laughter]

P: Pandemic Covid has changed the ball game a lot on brought this perhaps a little bit more to the floor. But we’re talking 2018 and 2017 and ‘15 in the UK they’ve been clocking the fact that loneliness isn’t big social problem and it’s causing a lot problems in terms of our health and the way that we work and who we are.

M: Yeah, and so the stereotype that it’s only in quotes “old people” is, is really false. It’s not just the elderly who are lonely. In fact, young Australians are reporting such a huge uptick in their loneliness, and it’s not necessarily that they don’t have people around them and that they don’t have family and they don’t have friends-

P: Yes.

M: -at school. It might just be that they’re not getting what they need or their relationships they have aren’t meeting their needs, and that could be because they’re too superficial, which is a another whole episode as well. But we have a lot of Facebook friends nowadays and social media friends that are very superficial, and you can feel that you’re connecting and you’re just not, right?

P: Yes.

M: And what that does is that it leaves a lot of people feeling unsupported and disconnected, and they feel lonely, even though they might have a lot of people around them. So I think that in particular really applies to the younger generations vs the older generations, who we’ve known for quite a while have a higher incidence of mobility issues and at times lose their licences and their ability to get out and into society and have those strong relationships.

P: I do agree, to a certain point. There’s some interesting stats in the study that I found though that are saying that in Australia in 2018 the over 65 were dealing really well. The two brackets that Swinburne University in the Australian Psychological Society clocked as the most lonely are the 18 to 26 year old’s and the 56 to 64 year old’s. The 65 year old’s and up are doing really well. [Laugh]

M: Well, they were until Covid, Yes.

P: Ah well that might be the changing.

M: Yeah, yeah. And then everything has just gotten really bad, social isolation says it all right? and social distancing. And I know there’s been a lot of discussion about terminology and being really clear that social distancing doesn’t mean not having relationships and connection. But the long and the short of the isolation is that we’re having to rely on technology to have relationships a lot more often, and that’s just nowhere near as good as face to face communication for a sense of connection.

P: And we’re not as good at it. Yeah, we’re not as good at it, apparently. So some of the things that have come out in terms of dealing with loneliness from some of the studies that I’ve done are talking about the way that we use social skills and this will apply definitely 18 to 25 year old age bracket is that we’re not developing our social skills sufficiently in our teenage years to take us through to that next stage where we get off the devices we get off the zoom calls on, and we actually interact on a one on one or a group basis on. And I think that that is where went falling short slightly for our young people and we’re not giving them the social skills to deal with going out there and making those true friendships that you talked about earlier Marie.

M: And it’s also about having a level of emotional maturity and understanding and an ability to reflect and to have tough conversations with people and to be uncomfortable.

P: Yeah.

M: And there’s a whole lot in there. And there’s research that came out today actually, in Victoria, I have to go find the study, and I’ll post it in our show notes. But they have done some research with some schools and Victoria to help kids with positive psychology interventions. And it was all focused around giving them the language to talk about their emotions and their well-being.

P: Aah, interesting.

M: And they’ve found that being able to vocalise what’s going on really helps people to- sorry – helps kids, to have better mental health outcomes. So it’s impacting their relationships, their connection with others. So I will put that in the show notes. But I think that if you’re spending all your time on social media in your teens, back to your point, in your, your younger years and you’re connecting with a device rather than a person, you can quite easily miss the lessons that we used to learn in the playground.

P: Very true, very true.

M: You know, if you don’t keep Sally’s secret, then you’ll be ostracised from the group for sharing, you know?

P: [Laugh]

M: That kind of thing, so you learned to keep secrets.

P: Good old Sally.

[Laughter]

P: All right, so one of the things that I found with the research that I did was that loneliness actually affects our health. And I guess this relates to regular what we’re talking to here in terms of the happiness. Loneliness, we know is not good for us, but it actually affects our physical health. And some of the points that have come up with the studies from big health that I saw and from the Australian Psychological Society is that loneliness affects our physical health.

Now there’s a lot of research out there about how it affects our mental health and how we have less social interaction, fewer positive emotions, we’re less likely to be resilient. But there’s a physical impact, things like headaches, stomach problems and one of the most interesting, we have a worsening sensation of physical pain if we’re lonely, that goes a lot back to our central nervous system and the way that our body and our brain interprets pain. But even things like greater difficulty with vision and communication. These are, these are real physical factors, these physical symptoms from an emotional condition.

M: Again going back to, you teaching me about these old Eastern philosophies and theories of mind and body.

P: [Laugh]

M: It is yet another example of how so intertwined our mind and bodies are. And I think you’re fooling yourself if you think-

P: That’s not very cynical today, Marie.

M: [Laugh] You’re fooling yourself if you think that they’re not connected nowadays, and there is centuries of Eastern thinking and research into this. But there is also Western science that now packs it up well for the cynics out there.

[Laughter]

P: Ok, so if we’re going to move on a little bit more about loneliness and how loneliness relates to us. I do want to talk about the ways the we can avoid loneliness. And if we’re talking about the kind of contacts that we have between relationships, we’ve got maybe three main ones.

One of them is:

The Family contact.

One of them is:

Our Friends.

And the other one that I want to talk about it is:

Our Neighbours.

P: Now Marie, as an Australian do you think Australians have good neighbour contact?

M: Our neighbour let us jump his fence the other day when we got locked out of our own home.

[Laughter]

P: Okay, now I like this. I like this idea. I want to ask what you were doing to be locked out?

M: No, we… I said have you got the keys? And he said yes. And he said, Have you got the keys? And I said yes. And this is what happens when you have been married and together for 15 years. You don’t actually listen to what your partner is saying to you. You just say yes.

[Laughter]

M: So we both left the house without keys. Just pulled the door shut behind us. So back to that relationship advice you’re about to give us Pete, listening is so important.

P: Contact between neighbours is a form of actually combating Loneliness and in Australia, our neighbour contact is not good. We have been shown to have less neighbour contact amongst our society than ever before and it depends on how many neighbours we do have. And the odd thing is that in the survey, the people who listed that they have no immediate neighbours actually have more contact with their neighbours than anybody. So if you live in the middle of the Outback and the nearest neighbour is 24 K’s away, you’ve got more contact with that neighbour than people in the city do.

M: Wow, I think the thing is though, that neighbour is also the closest possible friend that you could have. Whereas if you’re in the city, you’ve got thousands of people who could be friends in your immediate area.

P: Very true. This is fair, when we look at the big health study. It does talk about that in terms of proximity of people.

[Laughter]

M: I will say, though, having moved from Sydney to Tamworth recently that people in country towns are just that much friendlier and that much more open to new relationships, that much more welcoming and gracious of new people into their community. And I don’t know how to solve that because, having lived overseas, and I’m sure you’ve found it too coming from the country and living in many large cities Pete.

P: Mm, Hmm.

M: That cities are just so much harder to find a foothold in when it comes to friends and friendships and close relationships.

P: It is, and I think that the proximity of people to your living space makes you react in a certain way. Having lived in big cities and moved into smaller cities as well. In my time when you’ve got space around you, you’re more likely to reach out to the person that is closest to you. I think if you’re in a densely populated area, you’re more inclined to bunker down and hunker in and not necessarily connect with your neighbours because your space is private.

M: Hhmm. Maybe.

P: The science supports this Marie. I come back this up with figures. [Laugh]

M: It’s not the figures I’m doubting it’s your rationale for why.

P: Ok, all right. So if we look at the rates of how many neighbours you have, so people who list that they’ve got two neighbours or three to four or five to eight. The proportion of Australians with neighbours that they hear from at least once a month goes down after you list two neighbours, so if you’ve got three to four neighbours.

If you live in an apartment block, the figure is 15.9%. If you live with two neighbours, one on either side of you in a suburban house, 21. 1% if you have no neighbours, 30.4%. So that’s telling that living in an apartment doesn’t give you contact with your neighbours.

M: I agree but not because I want to hunker down. So having now, living in a house, I see my neighbours more often and I’ve had conversations with them and I’ve popped over the road to go say hi and introduce myself. Whereas I went an entire three years in my apartment block and only saw two of my neighbours on the floor so there’s ten apartments, I only saw two of them in that three year period, I only crossed paths with them twice.

And that’s the difference to me and both times I stopped and had a chat and actually with one of the people, they ended up looking after our cat when we went on holidays. But we had to have that crossing of paths in order for that relationship to start developing, and it just wasn’t happening. And I think that that is one of the downsides to the way that we live nowadays that has changed. That is leading to this loneliness epidemic. More and more people are living alone, but also more and more people are living in cities around the world, and there’s going to be a huge increase in mega cities over the next 20 to 30 years, so between now and 2050 and that means you’ve got to have high density housing.

And there’s been some really good work, again in the Scandinavian countries that they’ve got their xxxx together, where they’re designing different types of apartment buildings so that you have your personal space, your bedroom and a small receiving area like a small lounge room and then in the middle of the floor you’ve got big, open communal congregating and cooking spaces so you can sit and eat.

P: And I think this is the way forward it’s the design of our cities it’s the design of the way we live that is going to encourage the decrease in loneliness. And the stuff that I’ve come across as well talks about that in terms of the building of the community relationships. How to effectively manage loneliness to make people feel connected to their community. And this is where the big health study he talks about that in creating shared common interests and meaningful connections, walkable suburbs, community interaction and gardens and recreational parks, access to public transport, all those sorts of things. And that brings me back to my earlier point about apartment living faces more challenges for loneliness rather than those who live in suburban areas.

M: Mmm.

P: So if you live in an apartment block, you actually have to do a little bit more work to make sure that that loneliness endemic-epidemic doesn’t affect you in the same way. I think it’s, I think you’re right, it’s easier to make those connections in the country where you don’t have the density of population. A walk across the road does happen. You see your neighbour’s a little bit more because you might be in the backyard together. In the apartment buildings that doesn’t happen because they don’t have that structure of communal gathering or proximity that allows that private/public space. I’m getting a little bit confused there with my, um, with my references. So that might be another episode.

M: [Laugh] Another really cute story and I think that there’s so much negativity out there in the news, so I’m always really keen to share lovely positive news stories. There’s a great story from the UK from, from Frome in the UK, whether they connected an old folks home with a primary school and each group is getting ready to exchange happiness boxes and they’re going to come and share what makes them happy. So they’ve partnered on elderly person with a young person and they’re preparing their stuff. So they’re preparing little boxes and they’ll all meet and exchange boxes with their assigned person and share what makes them happy. And so one of the ladies has actually knitted a garment for every single kid in the class.

P: [Laugh]

M: And she said she loves knitting, but she loves it more when she can actually knit for someone else. But again, this is making those connections and they’re going to be solid connections. So these types the projects I just love, love this news story. [Laugh]

P: It’s great. I’ve got a similar one that’s actually a bit more local in Australia. It’s an Australian initiative called the Men’s Shed.

M: Yes.

P: It was a. You heard about this?

M: So my grandfather did Man Shed until he unfortunately, had dementia. So until it was just too much for him. Dementia and heavy machinery don’t go well together, sidebar for you kids. So he used to go with his brother every Tuesday morning and it is such a great Mental Health resource for older men.

P: Yes.

M: And also, the local Tamworth Men’s Shed were having a sale, their annual sale to raise money when we moved out here to Tamworth. So we went out there and they got me. I bought a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t need. But they were so lovely.

[Laughter]

P: The CEO David Helmers talks about this and saying that whilst they’re repairing items for the community and having sales, I’ll quote in here. “The most important thing is the men getting together, building those relationships, that brotherhood that exists in the sheds. They’re finding new friendships, but most importantly they’re finding meaningful purpose.”

M: Yes, friendship and purpose, two things that we’ve discussed many times.

P: The two really important aspects of that [quote].

M: Yes. Well, I think on that note we are over time again. We finish every episode with the same sentence of me saying “we’re over time again Pete.”

[Laughter]

M: But we might wrap it up on that beautiful quote. But Men Shed. If you do have some elderly man in your family and you’re worried about their loneliness levels, it is a great initiative, and I’m glad you brought it up Pete. So it might be worth checking it out. They’re all around Australia.

P: Excellent. That’s a good indicator for all of us to get out there and find that kind of community groups that might foster that sort of relationship building and it’s hard when you’re feeling lonely, I think, to drag yourself out and put yourself in the in the non, non comfort space. If I have one tip for listeners, I would say ‘say yes’ and follow up with action.

M: I’m going to add one tip in there, too, because I always have to have the last word.

[Laughter]

M: I will say if you’re not feeling particularly social because you are feeling lonely, then one of the best ways to get yourself out there and develop friendships coincidentally, is to put yourself at the service of others. So go spend a couple of hours a week volunteering.

P: Yes.

M: And there’s so many organisations that could use your, your time right now if you’ve got two hours; and you’ll be surprised how much giving others comes back to you.

P: Can’t agree more, can’t agree more. I would never have found you Marie if I hadn’t volunteered at the Volleyball Club, look at that.

M: [Laugh] It sucks you in doesn’t it?

P: Yeah [Laugh]

M: Anyway, thank you for joining us today if you want to hear more please subscribe and like this podcast as always, you can find us at marieskelton.com and you can send in questions or proposed topics there if you’d like.

P: If you like our tiny little show, Happiness for Cynics Podcast, we’d love a comment or a rating to helps us out.

M: Yes, that would make us happy.

P: [Laugh] Until next time.

M & P: Choose Happiness

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Happiness for Cynics article How To Make Friends As An Adult, listen to our Podcast The Importance of Being Social (E14)

Why Friends Beat Family (E40)

19/10/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Marie and Pete discuss research about the importance of friendships and the controversial idea that friends are better than family.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, Snapshot collector, positivity, genuflector and prodigy protector. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you’re only satisfied with life but not trully happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more!

P: Then this is the place to be.

M: And to take you one step further this weeks episode is all about social connections and whether friends beat family.

P: Ooh, it’s Family Feud!

[Happy Intro Music]

P: So Marie, family versus friends. Here we go.

M: Yeah! It is on, it is on!

P: Oh, I could see the knives coming out now.

[Laughter]

M: All right, so a few weeks ago, a new study came out by Hudson, Lucas, Donnellan called ‘Are we happier with others? An investigation of the links between spending time with others and subjective well being.’ And it was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

P: From Michigan State University?

M: And S.M.U. Yes.

P: S.M.U. What’s S.M.U.?

M: Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Anyway. So they studied 400 participants, and the participants were asked to think back on times with their friends or family and identify the activities they shared and rate whether those experiences left them feeling various emotions like happy, sad, satisfied and with a sense of meaning.

So they had a scale from almost never to always and the information covered how people felt at different times and allowed the researchers to estimate rates of happiness, so subjective well-being with their friends and family relationships.

P: Hhmm..

M: And [singing] bum, bum, buummm..

P: [Laugh]

M: Drumroll!

P: [Laugh]

M: All the research finds that family suck. And…

[Laughter]

M: Okay, I won’t put words in their mouths.

P: [He he]

M: I’m taking a bit of poetic license here. The research found that people report higher levels of subjective well-being, [so] happiness while hanging out with their friends than they do with their romantic partner or children.

P: So what we’re saying is that we prefer being with our friends than with our family. I’m not sure if I agree with that. My family’s pretty rock awesome.

M: Think about all the high divorce rates.

P: Ooh, yes.

M: Partners can be really annoying.

[Laughter]

M: They fart in bed, they leave their toenail clippings everywhere.

P: [Laugh] But is that just a comfort level thing? I mean, when we’re talking with our partners and our family there’s a certain amount of license, it is extended. Does that same licence exist with your close friendships. I’m thinking of you here Muz, and we have a pretty big licence?

M: You do not cut your toenails and you don’t leave your socks all over my house.

P: [Laugh] No, I leave my watch on your bedside table and your husband doesn’t wonder whose gentleman’s watch is on the bedside table for a week.

M: Actually, there’s a lot of trust there, isn’t there Pete?

P: [Laugh]

M: He comes home and sees another man’s watch on his side of the bed and doesn’t even question it.

P: [Laugh] He just goes ‘Oh, yeah.’

M: Look I think that, I think this says a lot for all these single people out there and for all these preconceived ideas that marriage is what’s expected and should happen and that you should shack up and have kids and have a family, I think what this is telling me is that maybe we need to look at that and the social constructs and the way that our world thinks and maybe poke it a little, see if it really is holding up.

P: I find that interesting because I am a single man and I have made a very conscious decision a few years ago that my friends were my family. Now I have a pretty amazing family, and when we do catch up, it’s a riot. It’s great fun. There’s a lot of support and interestingly enough in our family chat today, very timely. A member, I can’t say family names, can I? That’s going to be really bad. So someone putting the family chat ‘Oh my God, grandma just stuffed up my career, blah, blah, blah… and something that happened in the nail salon and, you know, small towns and people saying things and things got around and it was funny that the entire family bandied around this person and just basically said ‘No, that’s shit, that’s crap. You’re amazing, you’re all good.’

M: I take it Nan’s not on the chat?

P: [Laugh] Yeah, Grandma’s not on the chat, she’s a technophobe.

M: Poor Grandma.

P: Poor Grandma, she cops it on this podcast, I swear if she ever listens to it she’s going to slap me on the back of the head.

[Laughter]

P: I think the point is that there was a rallying. There was an instant rallying, and I made the comment, ‘it’s great to have your fan club behind you’.

M: Mmm, Hhmm.

P: But I think that’s the nature of the family connection is that you can trust that you can come out and you can say some things that maybe on appropriate and they’re a bit off the wall and be emotional and that the family forgives that, sees it for what it is and throws some support behind you because you need it and then might bring you back and go ‘Oh, have you thought about it this way?’ So there’s a little bit of relativity in there. Do friendships, close friendships have that same amount of freedom?

M: I would say in a good family, there’s a lot of crappy families.

P: Oh yeah, I realise I’m very lucky.

M: Yeah and I’d say, having, having lived overseas and moved around a lot, I’m like you, my friends, apart from my husband, obviously, but my friends very much are my family and my support and my cheerleaders and all that stuff that you rely on your family in this group chat you talked about for. I get a lot of that from my friends.

P: Definitely.

M: Yeah, so anyway let’s, let’s keep going. There is a twist.

P: Ooh, Oh, there’s a sidebar.

M: So the findings. So I was holding something back, Pete. So the findings, actually show that family isn’t all that bad. It has more to do with the activity than the person it is shared with.

P: Oh.

M: Unfortunately people tend to spend more time doing enjoyable activities with friends than they do with family members. So you do a lot more cleaning and chores with your family than you do with friends.

P: Aah, righto. Okay.

M: So when the researchers, statistically controlled for activities, the mere presence of children, romantic partners and friends predicted similar levels of happiness. So the real lesson here is that people increase your subjective well-being, so they make you happier.

P: I was looking forward to a reality TV spin off here, you know, having two opposing camps and one person in the middle going ‘no, I want to go over here. Now I want to go over here. I want to go over here now.’

M: [Laugh]

P: Now you’ve just made it boring.

M: Yeah, yeah. Now it makes sense.

[Laughter]

M: We are in the 21st century of questionable media and questionable facts so we could have just stopped our episode two minutes ago and then left it at that.

P: [Laugh] Very true. Hanging the fish out to dry as it were.

I’ve found it interesting that Michigan State University is involved in is because there’s been a coup[le], when we were looking at the research for this, there’s a couple of studies that actually talk about this friends versus family aspect. William Chopik was the researcher in 2017 who published a study with 280,000 participants.

M: 280,000?!

P: Yeah. Much bigger. I think that this laid the groundwork for yours for the subsequent study that we mentioned at the beginning of the episode and what Chopik found was that friendships predict a day today happiness more and ultimately how long we’ll live more so than certain spousal and family relationships. So this is talking about our longevity and what friendships actually bring to our state of mind and all those things that we have mentioned before in terms of longevity, of being supportive and having the people you can have those the vault conversations with.

M: Mm, hmm. The ones that you call at two am when you’re in jail.

P: [Laugh]

M: That’s my test.

P: Hang on, how many times have you been in jail Marie?

M: I havn’t, but if I did.

[Laughter]

M: Do I have enough people I could call?

P: That’s actually probably a good exercise to do. That’s like, that’s one of the questions we should put on the questionnaire. Who would you call at 2am if you were in jail? Tthat might give you an indication of who your close friends actually are.

[Laughter]

P: Sidebar, later for tips and hints.

M: Tips and Hints: Do not go to jail.

[Laughter]

P: So to continue further with Chopik’s work, he does talk about family relationships being as enjoyable as friendships. But he does clock that sometimes the family relationships involve serious negative and monotonous interactions. And I think this is in support of what you were saying Marie, is that we do the cleaning, we do the cooking, we go to the taxation office together with our family or our spouses as opposed to going for a picnic with our friends and having the high times of having the fun times. You know, do your friends change your children’s nappy. Maybe they do.

M: That’s a good friend.

P: Maybe that’s sharing that.

[Laughter]

M: So actually back to that first study, the percentage they looked at the percentage of activities, and they found that 65% of experiences with friends involved socialising. But only 28% of time shared with partners involved socializing. So, you’re spot on there.

P: Yes.

M: That’s about 50% less time spent doing the fun stuff.

P: So is it a matter of maybe scheduling the fun stuff with the family?

M: Absolutely, Absolutely. So it’s about being a bit more aware of that. And I would even argue old school. I had a father who went to work and who was the man of the house, and we spent very little time socialising with Dad.

P: Yeah.

M: You had meals together where you were told to be quiet, you know.

P: Yeah.

M: Like it was. It was a traditional kind of not, not as modern now, but traditional male dominated household. Ah, where kids were meant to be seen, not heard.

P: Not heard, yes.

M: Yeah, yeah, you know, it’s a bit of a shame that I think back to our episode last week on play that we don’t play more with the kids, and we don’t schedule that in.

P: Yes, I agree. I think that that’s the real key here is scheduling the fun times to do with the family and those, you know the monotonous times are going to happen, but make sure that you have the upswing of that and do things like playing in the park or going on bike rides or going to the Universal Studios together or something kike that.

M: Oof, that’s a good one.

P: [Laugh]

M: Every weekend, Universal Studios for me.

P: [Laugh]

M: Or Disney, I’ll take Disney.

P: [Laugh] Very true.

M: Oh, another really great study that was recently published by Interflora.

P: As is the flower shop?

M: Yes.

P: Really. We’re quoting Interflora.

M: We’re not quoting Interflora, but Interflora funded the study, which obviously deals with friendships and send flowers to than friends, so the Interflora and the expert for… who wrote, sorry. So the author from ‘The Friendship Cure’, Kate Leaver. So they did a study involving 2000 Brits, and they found that you need five friends in our friendship group to be happy.

P: Five friends to be happy?

M: Mm, hmm.

P: Ok, so you can have seven friends but five of them need to be happy. So you have two miserable ones?

M: No, if you want to be happy you need five friends.

P: Oh, ok.

M: What you were saying about needing friends and the importance of that for longevity and, and all the rest of it. You don’t need one and you don’t need 50. You need five. So one is too little. It’s the Goldie Locks amount.

[Laughter]

M: For ultimate happiness.

P: Ok. So we need five friends.

M: Five friends. But, there’s always a but, right?

P: A caveat.

M: We need a mix of personality traits.

P: Okay.

M: Your friendship group should be comprised of five different personalities to really make it work.

The Sensible one

P: Sorry, I’m just getting an image of the Spice Girls here.

M: [Laugh] Ok. So to make your girl band a sensible one. That is not your me, by the way. We need:

The Organiser

I think that’s you and me.

P: I gave up being the organiser three years ago when I left the presidency of the volleyball club.

M: [Laugh] There’s:

The Joker

P: Ok, yep.

M: There’s:

The Party Animal

P: [Laugh]

M: And this one’s you,

The Dramatic One

P: Oh! How rude. [Mock outrage]

M: [Laugh]

P: Oh, my goodness. I’m walking out! Bye! If I could do the sound of storming out of a room that would be playing right now, I am not dramatic, how dare you. [Laugh]

M: Yes, point proven. So they say that those five personalities are ideal and give you good balance. But, there’s always more buts, always more. It is better to be part of two different groups for real happiness.

P: Oh.

M: And for better friends you need to argue at least twice a year.

P: Oh, that’s dangerous. Oh dear, oh dear. Does this include dropping off key FOBs in the wrong mailbox?

[Laughter]

M: We’re not talking about that.

P: Oh, go on. Tell our listener’s Marie, go on, tell them. [Laugh] I’m going to tell a story here. So you know, we’re trying to coordinate between being in Tamworth and being in Sydney, and somebody may have borrowed the key fob to the apartment and then the instruction was so leave it in the mail box. But specific, the specificity of the mailbox wasn’t mentioned, so someone dropped the key fob.

M: Because I have three…

P: Well I know but this is what I’m saying, someone dropped it in the wrong mailbox, and it required a very snappy conversation over the phone and I was about to go on a volleyball court. This’s good though, this is, I agree. I agree that good friendships should argue because they that argument brings you closer and it brings about trust, and it brings about that ‘remember when you bit my head off because I did this?’ And we’re still friends because of that, and I actually think that that forms a really true bond because, let’s face it, the best relationships aren’t lovey dovey 100% of the time.

M: Yep. We’re all human.

P: Yep and you need someone to call you on your bullshit when you’re doing something crazy.

M: Yeah, when you’re doing something wrong. But you also need someone who will forgive you when you behave a little poorly.

P: Yes.

M: Not, not consistently poorly and not abusively. But when you behave poorly every now and then as all humans do, someone who’ll forgive you.

P: Yes, it’s really impactive when it does happen. And I’m being an emotional person and being a drama personality apparently.

[Laughter]

P: When a friend calls me out on an activity that actually had a deep impact on me has a physical impact, so that actually, it’s a lever, it’s a lever to make you rethink cause you go ‘oh, next time I’m not going to do it that way, I’m going to change.’ So it’s a lesson learned, and that advances you. And it does bring about more happiness because you’re making conscious decisions and reinforcing actions have bring about a positive benefit and positive influence.

M: Absolutely. So before we leave, maybe we need to have some tips, so there is research on how to make friends. If you don’t have five good friends, we’ll start with the friends, maybe.

P: Well five good friends but also five good friends in two different girl bands.

M: [Laugh]

P: So, it’s not enough to be a Spice Girl, you need to be a Spice Girl and a Destiny’s Child.

M: [Laugh] Yep, I was going to go with Take.. Take That? Take 5? New Kids on the Block? No hang on…

P: 80’s pop bands, we’re showing our age here, Muz. I was going to go with Disney, but I’m not sure that’s culturally relevant.

M: OK, so we’ll wrap up with just a really quick overview of just the latest research in making friends as adults, which we all know is nowhere near as easy as it was when we were at school to make friends and to make friends fast. And the reason that is, is Jeffrey Hall from the University of Kansas has done a whole lot of research on making friends, and he says it takes about 50 hours to go from acquaintance to casual friend and about another 90 hours on top of that to move to friend’s status, and then an additional 200 hours to become close friends.

P: Wow.

M: So that means you’re investing 340 hours into a friendship before you reach close friend status.

P: I’d agree with that.

M: So you’re -absolutely- and there’s a lot of awkward, weird first date kind of stuff with weird people out there.

P: [Laugh]

M: They’re everywhere. People that you don’t gel with.

P: Like when they start wearing unicorn t-shirts

M: [Laugh] So, we are out of time, but there’s three things you can do that will help to build friendships over time. So, firstly, joining a class, so painting, pottery… It gives you a chance to see people on a weekly basis, and once you suss out the people that you might want to be friends with and get closer to them, you’ve got a reason for seeing them over time and building that friendship. Same thing goes for volunteering, so you know you’ve got to make a commitment and go back regularly, but again, you’re there to do the volunteering and the friendship building almost become secondary. And then, lastly, joining a sports team, which Pete is kind of how I think we got to be a lot closer and bonded faster.

P: Yeh absolutely, and spend those formative times together and hours upon hours in a car driving to a tournament somewhere. It creates conversation.

M: Yeah, and bonds you faster. So we hit that to 340 level a lot faster than if we hadn’t played volleyball together. So we’ve spent hours every week, week in, week out, year after year together and as a result, had a much deeper bond than maybe someone you go for a drink with at the pub once a month.

P: That’s why I agree with you, and that’s what’s interesting to see the breakdown from Hall’s research about the 90 hours and the 200 hours… makes sense. So forming a bond over a common interest such as a sports team or volunteering is a really good way to rack up those hours. And when you look at it as an hourly commitment, then yeah, something that’s got a common interest that makes you spend three hours a day together, creates friendships.

M: Yeah, absolutely. Well, on that note, we might wrap up. So the moral of story is friends are important. They may I not be better than family, but you still do need a core group of friends that you can call from jail.

P: Thanks for joining us today. If you’d like to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like the podcast on member, you can find us at www.MarieSkelton.com, where you can find out about balanced happiness and resilience in your life where you can also post questions or propose a topic.

M: And if you like, a little show would absolutely love you, leave a comment or rating to help us out.

P: That would make us jump with happiness and do little pirouettes in the middle of the kitchen.

M: Well, Pete would.

[Laughter]

M: Until next time.

P: Choose happiness.

Why you Need to Play More (E39)

12/10/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

This week, Pete and Marie talk about why we need to stop structuring all our time and start playing more.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, BBC drama lover, sofa shopper, Jungle Gym partaker. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you’re only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And take us one step further on our happiness journey, today’s episode is all about play.

[Happy Intro Music]

P: Play play play play, play play play play-

M: – Doodley do, do, doooo. Charge!

[Laughter]

P: It’s all about being a kid again isn’t it?

M: Oh, it so is.

P: Yeah, yeah. You need to play.

M: We just need more playing in our lives.

P: It’s good to play. It has so many benefits.

M: Absolutely, So there is again, all of science about how more playfulness in adults brings greater well-being. And so that’s what we’re talking about today. How to bring more playfulness into your life.

P: Lovely, so define play for us Marie?

M: OK.

P: According to the science.

M: According the science. Well is definition science?

P: I don’t know, we might have to consult the Collins dictionary for that one.

[Laughter]

M: Ok, so according to Jeff Harry, who has a super cool job, he is a Positive Play Coach.

P: I want that title.

M: Right.

P: “I’m a Play Coach”, imagine being at a party. “I’m an Accountant”, “I’m a Lawyer”, “I’m a Play Coach.” What? [Laugh]

M: “Should we talk about it at the dinner table?”

P: [Laugh]

M: So anyway, Jeff Harry teaches corporates how to bring more play into corporate world. And again well-being. All of it’s tied together. Everything that we talk about is all interrelated and interlinked. So you get better employees outcomes and better returns and better…

P: KPI’s?

M: No.

P: That’s the generic term. I’m going with the generic term, you’re the corporate here.

[Laughter]

M: You make more money. That’s what I’m getting at. Happy employees, happy bottom line.

P: OK, So what does Jeff say?

M: Okay, so he says one way to think about play is an action you do that brings you a significant amount of joy without offering a specific result.

P: I like that because again it’s again the buy in mentality. Just go in and let’s see what comes out.

M: Also, I think going back to the title of our Podcast Happiness for Cynics. I think a lot of adults see play as a waste of time.

P: Ooh, yes, yes, they do. I agree with you there.

M: And in today’s really busy and stressful world, it’s really hard to justify doing things that don’t feel productive.

P: Or don’t have a specific outcome.

M: And that’s such a shame, because play does have such a solid, tangible outcome. It leaves you feeling better and happier in your life and leads to better well-being.

P: Mmm. Completely.

M: But there’s this perception with play that it’s a waste. It’s something only kids do.

P: Wow, I’ve got such a different experience from that. [Laugh]

M: Me too, me too. Absolutely. But having said that, I think only because we’ve started looking into all of this stuff. Not because pre my accident and pre this happiness journey I would have ever thought about dedicating time to play.

P: Oh it’s been through my life from primary school. We had a wonderful primary school teacher, Mr. Burns (Bernasconi) and we were the envy of every other class because at a moments notice, he would say, “right books down, we’re going outside for a game of rounders. And all the other kids were like “why does Mr. Bernasconi’s class always get to go outside for rounders?” And he was a big believer in playing and that what that did for cognition and for behavioural development and all that sort of stuff, and also for being able to stay motivated and engaged with class work is by doing something physical and going out and having a play.

M: Absolutely. So the physical part of that, definitely.

P: Definitely.

M: There’s a lot of research. And again the Scandinavian countries are really good at integrating physical exercise with breaks during the day, with flow and deep thinking and learning and breaking up the day into short, sharp, deep exercises, whether that is swinging on the swings or learning math and breaking up your day that way.

P: Mmm.

M: But definitely it’s really good for your head and for your mind.

P: I also feel really lucky because with my theatre experience, acting, dancing, anything in the creative process, so much of it is just play. And I remember being in a studio once with a very well-known choreographer who would pursue these periods of indulgent play and it wasn’t to call-

M: -Oh, you said indulgent, which means you do think that it is not necessarily constructive.

P: No, in terms of the creative process. When you’re working with some choreographers, they’re like “This is the step, this is a step, let’s perfect it.” I say indulgent because it’s the way that the creative director would.. Oh, what’s the link here? It’s where the creative director would garner content so to create content. It’s not necessarily about ‘that bit there we want that’, there was this view of creating play and allowing people to go off and discover new things. It may not end up on the floor or in the performance at all, but it brought you to a different place that was able to bring forth other content.

M: So in no way was it indulgent, it was part of the creative process.

P: Well, no. Yeah, you’re right. I said a bad word.

M: Bad word, take it back. Take it back!

[Laughter]

M: I think it’s really important to take that to the corporate setting where a lot of organisations have realised that despite their intent to have every person in the organisation be innovative and to continuously improve the way that they do whatever it is they do, but also to come up with new ideas. It rarely leads to any big, ground-breaking, new innovative ideas. What does help though is putting people in that different mindset.

P: Mmm.

M: Breaking them away from their day to day and throwing weird and uncomfortable and all kinds of different experiences at them to put them in a different headspace.

P: I saw a lot of transference in the latter part of my performing career of people that I knew, colleagues of mine who have gone into the corporate workspace exactly for that purpose. They were brought in as theatre coaches as drama coaches to create new ways of thinking and result.

M: Absolutely. And creativity doesn’t happen when you are doing the same thing you do every day.

P: Yes, neuroplasticity. Which brings me to my point on play.

M: Yes, tell me about the link between neuroplasticity and play.

P: My take on play is that it creates a neuroplasticity of the brain, and this is all about offsetting the factors of life, such as cognitive diseases such as Parkinson’s and Dementia. So this is probably more in the latter stages of life for many people. But the value of play is that we’re asking our brain to constantly find new pathways and constantly find new reactions to stimulus that keep our brains active and offset that development of cognitive disease.

M: Absolutely. And look, it’s not just in the elderly. I think that for too long people have hated school so much often that it’s about trying to get through it, and then you never have to look back. And what we’re finding is that, that was fine when we thought that you couldn’t grow past your teens that you couldn’t make new neural pathways.

P: Yes.

M: But now we know growth mindset is a thing. We understand that you can continue growing and learning and changing through your entire life, and that with just a little bit of curiosity, you can make those new neural pathways, and you can stretch your mind so much further than we ever thought possible before. You can change careers to 2, 3, 4 times in your life and retrain, and you can teach an old dog new tricks.

P: Definitely, yeah.

M: And whether it’s sudoku and cross words or play or any number of other things. Keeping your mind active is the moral to this story Pete, when it comes to staving off mental decline in your older years.

P: And that’s where play can actually have a great avenue for change. Playing with different stimuli. I’m talking about sports. I’m talking about action flat rock climbing, one of the jokes a rock climber never does the same climb twice. You always end up in a different position, so you have to solve the problem of finding a new foothold or a new arm hold even if you’ve gone up that stretch of climb before and I like that analogy…

M: Sure.

P: [Laugh] I guess for me that relates to constantly finding new stimulus on that relates back to the neuro plasticity. Playing will often bring about new things and new aspects when you’re playing with someone especially, I talk about this in a movement concept because for much of my university, when I was doing a degree in dance performance I couldn’t play.

M: Why?

P: I was so nervous, I was too scared to play and I remember having a conversation with a friend of mine about it, Robert Gryphon, he was the big playful bloke. So Robbie and I were the two of the larger men in the class and so Robbie was always in there, rolling and playing. I was always standing on the side and he said, Why don’t you? I said “I’m too scared.” You’ve just got to jump in.

M: Mmm Hmm.

P: And I took that and eventually one day during I do remember jumping in and the rolling around, instead of going off in the corner and being quiet and [doing] yoga in the corner and it was great. It was fun and then that became a professional development later on, when I was working in a company in Adelaide and we were doing improvisational work and I remember working with Aiden an amazing dancer, break-dancer/ classical ballet guy. And we were in an improv session and the whole, the idea was you had rules and you just kept on moving. The idea was to have the rules so my armpit had to touch his knee, and my head was only allowed to go to the left. But you kept moving with that principle and I remember Aiden being underneath my feet and I jumped and I thought, I’m gonna land on his neck.

M: [Laugh]

P: And I landed and I’m gonna have to drop down here to not put my body weight on his neck and my leg crossed his neck and we both rolled we rolled out of it and we stood up and looked at each other and went “Holy crap! Was that alright?” He said “that was amazing. I said “Can we do it again?” And he said “Absolutely not.”

[Laughter]

P: But that all came about through play. Were we able to re-create it. No. Was it a specific outcome? No, but it gave us the confidence to stay in that playful space. And from there came many other things.

M: I think the great thing about your stories here is they’re showing that to truly play you have to let your guard down, you have to be vulnerable.

P: Yes, oh yes.

M: You’ve got to let the ego go.

P: Yes.

M: Because if you go into play, whether it’s with your kids or with a romantic partner or with your colleagues in a corporate environment, you’ve got to be okay with being silly.

P: Oh, yes, definitely.

M: And you’ve got to be okay with letting go that feeling of being judged because let’s be really, really honest, they’re not judging you.

P: [Laugh]

M: People participating, they’re not judging. They’re in it too, right? But you’ve got to get to that point and you’ve got to feel okay and safe. Psychologically safe with the people you’re around to let go and fully participate and partake in whatever fun play.

P: Fully participate is the key word there.

M: Yeah, so it kind of sounds like you maybe at the beginning weren’t ready to be vulnerable?

P: Well, yeah. I don’t know how, I was too scared to jump in.

M: And when you did, did the world end?

P: [Laugh] Definitely not but infinitely better.

M: Yeah, exactly. So I think one of the other great things of our talking about play in the current environment because we can’t go through a single episode without talking about Corona virus, of course, is that a lot of people around the world are just insanely bored right now.

P: Mmm.

M: They’ve been through their Netflix and Stan and Disney+ and they’ve re-watched all their favourites and they’ve seen all the cat videos. And what do you do when you’re stuck at home and I would challenge you to play.

P: It’s difficult sometimes to play in an environment that you know very well. It’s very easy to think ‘well, I know that room, I know that space, I know that chair.

M: For adults.

P: Yeah. Oh, yes, completely.

M: But you put two kids in a room together that they’ve been in their entire lives, entire lives, they’ll find a way and let them be bored.

P: Very important to be bored. We talked about this a couple times.

M: Yeah, let them be bored. They’ll find a way to play, right?

P: Yeah, there’s a creative way out.

M: If you don’t give them the technology as a way out, they will find a way. And for Adults it’s the same. We just don’t challenge ourselves to do it because we’re the ones that have the say on whether or not we pick up the technology.

P: Well it’s also there is ‘I’m the responsible parent. You know, I’m the leader of the pack, I’ll make the decisions and I’ll, I’ll make the facility happen. But I’m not going to get myself buck naked and roll around in the mud. Maybe we should.

M: Well, I think earlier rolling around in the mud you don’t need to be naked.

P: [Laugh]

M: But go roll around in the mud. You’re not going to catch weird diseases.

P: Well, see there. You’re putting a limit on it, you’re putting a limit on it.

M: I mean there’s… go build a fort then, or have a dance off.

P: There was a whole report about what forts do for child development, it creates havens, creates safe spaces.

M: Well, there you go. You don’t need to make yourself sick is what I’m saying, to play.

P: Yeah.

M: Find some clean mud and then go to town, fine.

P: [Laugh]

M: So look I think that it is easier to bring play into your life than you might realise. You can go Google a lot of different ways to bring more play into life. One of the ones I love is a dance off.

P: [Laugh]

M: A generational dance off.

P: Oh dear.

M: This is a great one to do with your family. If you can all name some different types of dances, so from 60’s, 70’s, there have been some classic dances through the decades and you’ll put them down on a piece of paper, pop them into a hat, and you have to do the dance and your friends and family have to guess what decade it’s from.

P: [Laugh]

M: It’s really simple, so you get up and you do the, you know, the swimming and the jiving and the Gangnam style there’s so many good things.

P: The Macarena.

M: Yep.

P: [Laugh]

M: And not only are you having a bit of fun, you know, it’s like a Pictionary night or something. Not only are you having a bit of fun, but you’re also doing a bit of exercise. So there’s a great research that backs all this up from the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg [MLU] in Germany, and they did a study with 533 participants where they did a week of exercises to boost their playfulness. And they found that you can actually stimulate and train people to be more playful, and this, in turn improves their mood.

P: Training someone to be playful, ooh I like the sound of that.

M: Again, we’re not going there Pete.

P: [Laugh] Hey I’m going along with what was his name, Jack? Jeffrey? Jeff? [Laugh] Jeffrey Harry. I’m a playful coach.

M: Play Coach?

P: Play Coach.

M: I Love it. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you don’t feel like you’re particularly playful, you can train it so you’re not stuck where you are again back to that growth mindset and neuro plasticity, you can grow and become more playful.

P: Yes

M: It is like so many other things we talk about. It’s just about being more mindful. So the way that this study worked is before going to bed the participants either had to write down three situations from the day in which they behaved particularly playfully, or, they were asked to be more playful in their professional life and write down what happened.

P: That’s a dangerous sport isn’t it?

M: Well being more playful can just be being cheeky in a conversation.

P: Ok.

M: Right.

P: That’s a good example.

M: So and again, you don’t want to cross a line, cheekiness can very easily become inappropriate conversation.

P: That’s what I mean it’s difficult to take that kind of attitude into your workplace for a lot of people.

M: And I think, but it’s where we spend 40, 50, 60 hours a week.

P: Oh, I agree, it’s valuable.

M: So important.

P: I think it would be very confronting for a lot of people, ‘oh, I’ve got to bring this new concept into my workplace with all the people in suits and ties.

M: I think it’s a shame if you think that way. And that’s, I guess what I’m saying, I’ve had some great teams in corporate environments that have allowed me to be playful and have a laugh. And those were the teams with the highest performing team.

P: Oh, I have no doubt.

M: Absolutely we had a diverse group of people who all came together for a common goal. I sound like a textbook HR ad or something.

P: [Laugh]

M: We all came together, but we had a lot of fun doing it, and they were the best teams, and there were the highest productivity teams as well. Where as the ones where the teams were solely focused on the work really lacked that team environment, and they were the ones where you know, five o’clock hit and I’d be like, ‘I’m outta here.’

P: Yeah, ‘I’m gone.’

M: Yeah, exactly.

P: So what happened with this ah, with the results of this study.

M: So again, it’s down to being more mindful about playfulness. If you want to bring more playfulness into your workplace or if you want to bring into your life at home, if you want to play with the kids more.

P: Absolutely.

M: Yeah, but so many parents just so driven by the checklist. This is another thing you need to add to your checklist, but you have to deconstruct it and make sure that it is not being driven by a need to have a result. You just need to play.

P: It’s funny I tell some of my clients, get on the floor with kids, or get on the floor with the cat. Play with the cat, play with the kids. Use the kids as the weight, as the resistance band.

M: [Laugh]

P: You’ll do things that you never thought you would have done before. The kids will love it.

M: Yep, absolutely. So the fact is, they journaled on this for a while.

P: The group in Germany?

M: They wrote it down, yeah the group in Germany. And they got so many more improvements to their positive emotions, which in turn affected their wellbeing. It worked, so it increased their playfulness and they also saw improvement in participants Wellbeing.

P: I just know this from the inside. [Laugh]

M: You do, which is why you’re here. I have to learn it.

P: [Laugh]

M: And I’m bringing our listeners along with us.

P: [Laugh]

M: Our cynics. You just do it. [Laugh]

P: I was very lucky. I was very lucky to have been involved in the profession that I was in that completely encourages this and it is that wonderful space of seeing colleagues of mine having gone after the corporate world. It’s not challenging. ‘What do you mean you don’t hang upside down with your underwear around your head?’ It’s completely normal to do… Yeah.

M: And on that note.

[Laughter]

P: Thanks for joining us today.

[More laughter]

P: If you do want to hear more about hang upside down and wearing underwear on your head, please remember to subscribe and like this podcast, you can find us at www.marieskelton.com, a site about how to find balance, happiness and resilience in your life. You can also send in questions will propose a topic for us.

M: And if you like our little show, we would absolutely love for you to leave a comment or a rating to help us out.

P: That would make us very happy.

M: Until next time.

P: Choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Listen to our Podcast The Importance of Having Fun In Your Life with Dr Mike Rucker (E27)

Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers Pt 2 (E38)

05/10/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics podcast

In this episode, we revisit the popular episode that was the inspiration for our new book: Self-Care is Church For Non-Believers. We explain how a decline in church attendance and an increase in overall scepticism mean that many of us no longer prioritise self-care activities. Yet, we need to prioritise strong self-care habits more than ever.

As the Dalai Lama said, “I believe the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in that religion or this religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness…”

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast Happiness for Cynics, I’m Marie Skelton.

P: And I’m Peter Furness. And

M&P: We wrote a book!

P: [Laugh] But back to the Podcast. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: Or if you are only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more!

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey, today’s episode is all about the premise behind our new book, Self-Care.

P: Aww.

[Happy Intro Music]

M: So Pete, it’s time to ditch the cynicism and buy in the Self-Care.

P: Woof.

M: [Laugh]

P: I love it when you’re aggressive.

M: [Laugh] So, this is the whole idea behind the podcast but also our book, which was a spin-off of one of our earlier episodes where we looked at Self-Care. And in the end we kind of came to the conclusion that it was something that a lot of people, who were following religions and going to church, were actually already being taught and doing but without knowing it. And a lot of people have been practicing the types of interventions that are scientifically proven to make them happier simply by going to church.

P: There we go. The church people had it right.

M: Now there’s a problem, because less and less people are going to church nowadays.

P: Oh, yes, yes. The decline in church attendance, the decay of our moral fibre’s, the politicians are weeping.

M: The Ministers, Priests.

P: Oh, I thought the politicians were, oh well.

[Laughter]

M: So that was conundrum number one. One thing that’s changing our society. And the second thing is, particularly in Australia, we’re all cynics.

P: Ah, I like this concept. Are Australians truly cynical.

M: We tend to be.

P: Mmm.

M: Australians, we’re a cynical bunch.

P: Yeah, we are cynical, it’s part of our humour. Part of our sarcasm and wit is to be a little bit cynical and not take anything too seriously.

M: Yep, absolutely and we’re well known for it as well.

P: Yep, yep. Very true. But are we cynical to the point of being detrimental to our own happiness?

M: I think that around the world, all people are. So whether or not you buy into Self-Care, a lot of people aren’t practising Self-Care, whether it’s because of cynicism or because life just gets in the way.

P: Mmm.

M: We are seeing a huge rise in loneliness, anxiety, stress and depression. And it’s getting even worse during Corona virus. So we need to do something. We need an intervention here.

P: Interesting. So we all need to be a little bit more aware of Self-Care and it may be a little bit more, shall we use the “I word”, indulgent?

M: No, don’t use the “I word”!

P: [Laugh]

M: And this is the second conundrum that we discuss in our book. So the first one is we’re not going to church as often, and that’s due to people not believing in God as much so that that makes sense, right? We’re not saying here at all that you need to believe in God or that you don’t. We’re completely agnostic on the religious front.

P: If God works for you, you go there.

M: Yep, absolutely.

P: Definitely.

M: What we are saying, though, is that if you’re not going to church and therefore doing a lot of these interventions that bring a more positive mindset and more happiness and Well-Being, then you need to do something else.

P: I think it comes down to being spiritual and again. This is a.. This is the cynical viewpoint that comes back about the minute you mentioned Spirituality in a conversation over this dinner table. A lot of people roll their eyes, and go ‘Oh, here we go, here come the angel stories and the crystals and all the dream catchers and all that sort of stuff. There’s this kind of assumption that Spirituality is an indulgence. [Silly voice] “It’s a cosmic energetic transference and trans-mutation.”

M: You might call it that. I would not call it that.

P: I’m not saying I call it that but this is the impression that you get and I’m usually the person at the dinner table starting to quote the Spirituality conversation, or lead the conversation in that direction. And I get this push back a lot from different people and the cynics of the world to come forth and go ‘Oh, that’s just bull shit.’

M: Yeah, I think it is. Yes.

P: [Laugh] And yet, and yet-

M: So back to Self-Care, which I do not call Spirituality.

P: No, I think there’s a link here. I think that if we look at, look at the fact of church attendance and the link between church attendance and what it does to all the Self-Care elements that we clocked.

M: Yep.

P: If you replace that church attendance with Spirituality, Spirituality has a huge factor of the same concept of giving you meditation, making you gracious, making you aware of these Self-Care elements that you put into your life doesn’t necessarily have to be religion.

M: Does it? Again, I’m not spiritual in anyway. So when you say spiritually, what do you replacing God with?

P: Oh, we’re taking, we’re taking religion out of the equation. We’re going with something a little bit more left of field. So we’re going with the people that might be pagans, for example, or practise energetic Healing Arts, those kind of, maybe even more Eastern practises that have gone into that realm of Crystal Reading and Tea Leaf Predicting, those sorts of things.

M: Well each to their own.

P: Exactly.

M: But I wouldn’t say that they cover off Awe, Gratitude, Service to Others, Meditation all of the things that a traditional church does.

P: I’m going to challenge you on that, Marie.

M: So Tea Leaf Reading is an activity in and of enough itself and I wouldn’t say that it teaches you all of those things that a traditional church would cover off.

P: Okay, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on that one, because I think it does. There’s a lot of, there’s giving of the self. There’s an investment of another person in Tea Leaf Reading for example, if you read your tea leaves, I’m offering you a space that is more reflective, I’m being gracious towards you. I’m giving you my energy.

M: Is that part of the teaching of a Tea Leaf Reader.

P: Well, I’m not a Tea Leaf Reader so I couldn’t necessarily say that.

M: Well there is the problem with your argument.

P: [Laugh] Well, I hope we get some Tea Leaf Readers writing in, right now.

[Laughter]

M: So, I guess what I’m calling out here is that the particular Spiritual vocations or activities that you’re calling out are very distinct and activities that don’t span the full spectrum that a normal church environment would. So you’re not being given morals and activities and that societal responsibility that comes with a traditional Christian or Muslim church type environment or, or any of the major religions which ask you to not only consider yourself and your own behaviours, but to consider society. Tea Leaf Reading doesn’t have that larger, holistic, life style impact, I would argue, and again back to the whole reason why we’re talking about all of this stuff. Religious or Spirituality, Religion or Spirituality aside, we need to stop calling these things indulgences. Or –

P: That’s what I meant.

M: –crazy crackpot religious ideas, they’re not. They are science backed.

P: So, Self-Care is not an indulgence.

M: It’s not an indulgence, and it’s not for the weird spiritual or religious people. It is so important. And this year we’ve seen such a huge rise in mental health issues across the board, across every demographic all around the world, we’ve had changes to our society, and people aren’t coping.

P: You’ve got a couple of quotes there Marie from the Pew Research Centre and the Edelman Trust Barometer.

M: Or research, yeah definitely.

P: This is about the rise of employees losing their jobs, working mothers find it difficult to balance work and family life. In the World Health Organisation, noting that depression anxiety have an estimated cost to the global economy of $1 trillion a year in lost productivity.

M: It’s becoming an epidemic. Sorry lets, it is an epidemic.

P: Mmm.

M: World Economic Forum has done a lot of work on loneliness.

P: Mmm Hmm.

M: Burnout, last year was a hot topic. Stress and anxiety have been going up for years. Trending upwards we’re just not coping.

P: So we need to invest in Self-Care more on a personal level, everyone needs to address their own Self-Care.

M: Absolutely and we’ve got to stop thinking or isn’t as indulgent.

P: It’s necessary.

M: Why don’t we have an ability for kids who are feeling too stressed out to take a mental health day? Why can’t we give them control to go into a space at their school and say “I’m sorry, Nurse Smith, I just need to take a mental health day today.” Whatever you had on that day, you’ve got to catch it up later. Don’t get me wrong, you’re going to skip out on exams.

P: [Laugh]

M: Because kids can be.. [Laugh] .. a bit crafty.

P: [Laugh] I’m just imaging the line up around the block of the nurses office going ‘Yeah, I want a day off.’

[Laughter]

M: We have a maths test today.

P: You know they’d coordinate that, wouldn’t they? Like you’d be with you fellow classmates like ‘let’s have a mental health day here, the test won’t happen.’ [Laugh]

M: It will happen the next day, right. But again, it’s about giving them control and in particular, teenagers who treading that line between being told what to do 100% of their time and breaking free of that and doing everything as their own decisions and they’re learning to become independent. They need to be given some control over their mental health.

P: Yeah.

M: And kids as we mentioned last episode are really struggling with mental health and having control and understanding the feelings that they’re feeling, we just haven’t equipped them to deal with Corona virus or the world very well.

P: You were discussing with someone today in a private conversation we were having who’s been rolling out of programme of awareness and the GEM Principal to Educational institutions across Australia.

M: Yeah, absolutely so a great book called The Resilience Project from a guy called Hugh [van Cuylenburg] and his partner now who go around the country, but mostly they’re Melbourne based, go around the country and have been focusing primarily on schools but he’s also worked with Rugby… can’t remember if it’s League or Union.

P: [Laugh]

M: He even gave a talk to Cricket Australia. So he’s been working with elite athletes as well as students and their parents to help them understand three principles.

That’s the GEM Principle:

Gratitude;
Empathy; and
Mindfulness.

And he has done thousands of talks over the last few years and has a great book, really good storyteller. So if you’re kind of not into this, you know, airy fairy, wishy washy,-

P: [Laugh]

M: -spiritual, religious, mumbo jumbo BS, whatever you want to call it, have a look at this book because he’s been teaching halfbacks and you know, these big, burly men about the importance of Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness and how to weave them into your day to day life. And he’s got some great stories about how he has really changed the trajectory of some of these guys lives from contemplating suicide to a year or two later truly understanding the value of life and how to be happy.

P: Mm. And that has a social implication as well, because when the individual is feeling empowered and centred and understanding and empathetic, that has a flow on affect to the rest of society. I mean, I’m thinking particularly in terms of sports stars. They have a huge influence over kids. Kids look up to them.

M: Mm hmm.

P: So if you’ve got a child that is looking up to their Rugby/Sports star and he comes out with ‘Yeah I practise Empathy, I practice Mindfulness’, the kids are going to lap that up and that really has a kick in effect in terms of getting children and getting school students to be aware of their emotional Well-Being and their Self-Care on. Maybe that’s where we need to be focusing more of this education is employing these ideas into daily interactions in schools so that it starts to permeate into society on a general level and so you know, we could be looking at 10 to 20 years from now, we’ll be having Mindfulness symposiums that are booked out; And everybody is aware of their 15 minutes of Self-Care per day.

M: I think that we’ve started that journey. So the great news is, we missed it, I missed the bandwagon.

P: [Laugh]

M: I think that a lot of kids today are hearing these messages. So I’ve got a really good friend whose kids do meditation in their school in Canberra. Obviously, Hugh has been doing a lot of work down in Melbourne, but he has also been travelling the country and talking to teachers and students all around the country and a lot of Australian education… Sorry schools got together back in 2012 I think and they started coming together. So I was just reading about Knox Grammar was one of the founding members.

P: That’s being a Sydney private school.

M: Yes, very prestigious, elite, Sydney Boys School and way back in 2012 they got together with a range of other schools around the country to start talking about positive education, which is positive psychology for kids. And they’ve found a drop in bullying and an increase in resiliency in these kids. And ultimately, when you’re talking about mental health, these are the skills we need to give our kids.

P: Absolutely. There’s that flow on effect, of directly, of what we’re talking about trying to get kids to understand it so that has that flow on effect.

M: So the kids are getting it, nowadays. They’re starting to. It’s not across every school in every state, and it’s not part of the curriculum. It is definitely an add on for a lot of schools. However, a lot of people have left school, the majority of the population aren’t in school and so people that are your age and my age, without mentioning age. We’ve missed the boat and a lot of us need to catch up on this stuff and change our mindset about it.

P: I think changing our mindset is the important message here. Self-Care is not indulgence.

M: Quite simply, we have to a better job of looking after ourselves and the Self-Care activities that we used to practise at church like Kindness, Service to Others and Gratitude are proven, scientifically proven to help.

P: There’s that science. [Laugh]

M: This book is not about religion. It is about saying that those activities that we used to do a church, if you’re no longer going to church, again no judgement, what are you doing to bring them into your life? And what habits?

P: What’s your process? Where’s your ceremony with your 10 minutes of each day or one hour of each week? What do you do that is Self-Care for you? That is conscious Self-Care. Not just going to the gym, not just spending some time on your own in the park.

M: Mm, Hmm.

P: It’s got to be dedicated real time that actually informs your conscious and subconscious mind.

M: Absolutely. And I think Stephen Covey talked about if you don’t prioritise it, then it’s not a priority. So this is about making Self-Care a priority, so schedule it in.

P: Yep.

M: If you put your work into, like if you’re holding 9 to 5 or 8 to 6 or whatever it is that you’re holding for work or whatever your work schedule is nights and weekends, et cetera, and you’re setting aside time to pick up groceries, you’re sitting aside time to commute, you’re setting aside time hopefully to exercise, hopefully getting your eight hours of sleep.

P: Yep, [laugh].

M: You know, look at your calendar and take a look at where you’re spending your time because a lot of people say ‘I don’t have time.’

P: Mmm, make time.

M: Don’t even make time. Look at where you’re spending your time, so I will challenge you. Anyone who says they don’t have time.

P: Ok, that’s fair.

M: And I would say that nine times out of ten you are still spending time in front of the TV, you’re spending time on social media and on your phone, and there are times where you could redirect 20 minutes here or there, 40 minutes in your week, away from another activity that you think is actually helping you to regenerate and to relax and whole other topic on social media detoxing and the rest of it, because it doesn’t. Mindlessly tuning out in from the TV and social media as we’ve seen, actually adds more cognitive load to brain. Where as going for a 20 minute walk in the sun at lunchtime is so good for you for a variety of reasons, and that is true Self-Care.

P: True.

M: So what this boils down to is, you know, habit making. So being aware of where you’re spending your time and making sure that you’re setting aside time to look after yourself and again a lot of this starts with just being aware of your own feelings. And if you have a morning routine of getting in some exercise and then you shower and have a good breakfast and off you go and you commute and have a salad for lunch and you come home and… Like if that’s your routine, but you wake up that day feeling like crap, you might decide that it’s okay not to go the gym that day.

P: Yep.

M: Be nice to yourself, or that evening might be take out night instead of Friday.

P: Yes.

M: Alright, because you’re just not feeling up to cooking. So be nice to yourself or the flip side of that is have a salad instead of something greasy.

P: [Laugh]

M: Be nice to yourself.

P: It’s all about the interpretation.

[Laughter]

M: Yeah, but whatever it is that you feel you need in the moment, find a way to give yourself what you need as well and Self-Care again is about being forgiving and flexible and understanding yourself better and giving your body and your mind what they need.

P: Mmm. I like that. It’s a nice point to wrap it up on.

M: I think so.

P: [Laugh]

M: Shall we wrap it up? Well, our book! It is now available on amazon.

P: Yay!!

M: We didn’t even talk about the book.

P: This covers a lot of what the book is about though.

M: Yep.

P: It’s our little handy, very small little book, Marie.

M: It is, it’s a pocket book.

P: You could read a book in an hour, talked about all this sort of stuff. And the little things that you can do and the elements to be considerate of when putting together your own Self-Care package.

M: Absolutely. And we’ve got some great tips in the back of every section. So do you remember what we cover in the book, Pete?

P: Yes, I do…

M: Can you open the book? [Laugh]

So we cover social Connection, practising Kindness, practising Gratitude, Service to Others, practising Mindfulness, practising Forgiveness and Experiencing Awe and amongst those things we talked about the science, we talk about easy things that you could do in any of those categories to bring them into your life. And all you need to do is pick one or two out of the book and just add them into your month add them into your calendar and plan for them.

P: Do a 10 minute session on Mindfulness.

M: Yep, absolutely.

P: Ten minute session on Awe, which is really easy.

M: Absolutely. So our book is available on Amazon. It is called Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers.

P: The little book of happiness. [Giggle]

M: And help us out if you can, and give us a review on Amazon or Good Reads, that would be a great help. All right, well, that’s it for today.

P: If you want to hear more, please remember to subscribe and like our podcast. You can find us at www.marieskelton.com, which is a site about balance, happiness and resilience, also send in questions and proposed topics for discussion.

M: And, if you like our little show, we would love for you to leave a comment or rating to help us out or a comment or rating on our book would be helpful too.

P: Until next time.

M & P: Choose Happiness!

[Happy Exit Music]

Related content: Read Moving On article It’s Time to Ditch the Cynicism and buy Into Self-Care, listen to our podcast Self-Care is Church for Non-Believers (E17)

Happy Teens (E37)

28/09/2020 by Marie

Happiness for Cynics

This week, Marie and Pete discuss The Children’s Society “The Good Childhood Report 2020” and the troubling decline in teens’ happiness levels over the past few years.

Transcript

M: You’re listening to the podcast happiness for cynics. I’m Marie Skelton, a writer and speaker on change and resilience.

P: And I’m Peter Furness, a bouncy castle lover, a naked swims partaker and an exuberant celebrator of sunsets. Each week we will bring to you the latest news and research in the world of positive psychology, otherwise known as happiness.

M: So if you’re feeling low.

P: But if your only satisfied with life but not truly happy with it.

M: Or maybe you just want more.

P: Then this is the place to be!

M: And to take us one step further on our happiness journey today’s episode is about happy teens.

[Happy Intro Music]

P: Ok, so this is an interesting one, happy teens?

M: Yes.

P: When you proposed this topic, my mind instantly went to the cynical side of my brain. Going ‘Oh bloody millennials, they’re so boring and everything and you know –

M: Boring? [Laugh]

P: Everything’s a trial. Get over it, get a life. But-

M: You’re showing your age, Peter.

P: Yes, yes, I am definitely. But the sad thing is that when you actually start looking at the science, it’s tough for a young person out there these days. And I didn’t realise how tough it was going to quite a serious episode.

M: Ooh! You’ve done a flip?

P: Yeah, yeah.

M: All right. So what prompted this episode is a report from The Children’s Society over in Europe called the Good Childhood Report 2020 and they recently put out their findings and it’s, it’s really troubling and look, it’s to be expected during Covid.

P: I think this goes beyond Covid this is-

M: Absolutely.

P: -a much broader perspective in terms of the world and our society and what teens now have to deal with. And I think the.. sorry I cut you off completely there Marie. [Laugh]

M: It’s ok, keep going.

P: Damnit I’m standing up. I’m shocked thinking about the rates of information that are coming at us the way that we can be hounded by so much social media, devices. The Internet makes it so much easier for people to reach us, for example. You can’t escape. I’m thinking, particularly in terms of things like bullying and on social media pressuring us to look a certain way and I know you’re going to talk about that. When you actually take the time to sit and think about it, it is tougher these days to be a kid.

M: And expectations have changed. So when we were young, we used to do sports because it was fun. If you did sports or you did drama or you did volunteering at the local pound or whatever it was. Your parents might push you a little bit to do some kind of extracurricular activity, normally just to get you out of the house.

P: “You’re in Mum’s way in the kitchen.”

[Laughter]

P: [Woman’s voice] “I’ve just done the floor!” [Laugh]

M: Get out of the house, make sure you’re back before the lights are on in the street.

P: Yeah, there we go. [Laugh]

M: Nowadays, though, there is a checklist of things that young adults need to do in order to be well rounded adults and even in the States to get accepted into university. Your life is determined by the sheer volume of tick box activities you can do between 11 to 17 in order to round out your personality and yourself. And so playing sport is about how much can you excel, playing… Having a job is about what type of skills can you gain. Doing any other type of extra correct curricular activity is about rounding out your resume so that you can be positioned-

P: Prepared, ready, yeah.

M: Yeah, exactly. And that’s taken all the joy.

P: Mmm. I was shocked the other day, talking to a client who has an eight year old son who was doing mountain biking. No, not mountain biking he was doing swimming and he was telling me that the other kids were doing better times because they were training six times a week, at eight years of age these kids are doing six days of training to be the best swimmer. I was shocked.

M: Yep, yep.

P: Where’s the playtime? Where’s the time to run around trees, scrape your knees, climb the.. run away from mum and jump off the bridge into the river?

M: Yes, absolutely. So that pressure and stress on today’s teens is huge. And that’s just one, one small thing. So the pressure and stress to do stuff rather than.. So it’s the extrinsic motivation rather than the intrinsic motivation that we talked about rather than enjoying the activity. For me playing volleyball, I didn’t do it so that I could tick a box and get into a better university.

P: Yeah.

M: I loved volleyball, loved it, right?

P: Yes.

M: So they’ve lost all of that. Then you’ve got what you mentioned before the social media and that pressure there. Can you imagine having someone constantly following you around telling you I don’t like your outfit today? I don’t think you’re very good looking. I don’t think you’re funny at all. What’s that big pimple on your forehead, Pete?

P: Yeah, yeah.

M: Really, if you put on some weight, should you really be eating that?

P: Yes, mm, mm.

M: The constant pressure of having someone there watching you all the time. That is social media.

P: Yep, pretty much.

M: That’s what social media is. And if you don’t partake in the social media, the social ostracize you.

P: Yes, pretty much.

M: So there’s that. So this report, let’s go into the report. So pre-Covid there was a really troubling trend and decline in a lot of kids happiness. And so we’re talking between 10 to 15 year olds in general, there was a decline in happiness with friends, with schools with a lot of the different elements of kids lives. The one thing that did remain constant was happiness with families so that is actually nice.

P: Yes.

M: But as we know, when kids reach teen years, they’re trying to pull away from family and find themselves and create their own identity. And that’s very heavily tied to friends. So their decrease in happiness with friends can be a really deep impacting factor in their happiness.

P: Yeah, right.

M: And then, of course, this report’s come out and been surveying people this year, so 2020 in the middle of Covid and everything is just jumbled. Everything has gone even worse for people.

P: Yes.

M: So 15 year olds in the UK were amongst the saddest and least satisfied with their lives through Europe, and worries about relationships with friends, appearance and school were the three worst impacted areas for kids that are impacting their happiness. Not good times for kids.

P: No. So I actually went for the Australian experience with this and went into The Australian Loneliness Report, which was published in 2018 and it says that younger adults compared to adults over 35 are reporting more social interaction anxiety (slightly higher [than teens]). That’s among 18 to 35 year olds.

But also more depressive symptoms were coming through in the 18 to 25 year old bracket and that’s feeding in directly from what you’re talking about Marie in terms of the teens. So is this an epidemic and a problem that we can cut off in the teenage years?

M: I think that loneliness.. So World Health Organisation has said that loneliness is an epidemic. They’ve got a lot of research into this, and I think most of us immediately think of Grandma and Grandpa, who are isolated at home and perhaps have mobility issues that can’t get out and of course that’s going to be a lonely time for them. We don’t realise that this is an epidemic that is hitting every generation right now, it is hitting our teens, and I think that technology has a lot to do with this.

P: Definitely.

M: And it’s training us to have a back up, which is ‘Oh, I don’t know anyone here. I’m going to look at my phone’, right? Rather than working through the discomfort and growing as a person to better your social skills.

P: Yes.

M: So you go to a party and you feel awkward and you don’t have a phone. You find a way to make a friend.

P: Yep, exactly.

M: Yeah, and we’re not doing that. We’re not doing that anymore as kids, we can hide behind the technology, so we’re more awkward as a society I think. [Laugh]

P: Interesting.

M: Also, if you look into a lot of it the way that our cities are structured nowadays, there are more people living by themselves than ever before in human history, and it is seen as something to strive towards. Living in a share home is not normal as you get older. It is not common [or] as common as it used to be, because our standards of living have gotten better.

P: [Yeah]

M: We can afford now as a single adult to get a small apartment by ourselves, and you might come in and out from the garage up to your apartment back and never see your neighbours.

P: Yep, exactly.

M: And that is the way that our world, the mega cities, and increased density of housing all of that is impacting our loneliness levels as well.

P: Mm. And that’s a big one for kids playing in the neighbour’s backyard. Getting the ball from across Mr. Biggs’s backyard because went over in a cricket match that was six and out, that’s not happening.

M: All the kids playing on the street, doesn’t happen.

P: No, that interacting is not happening as much so this is one of the reasons behind why kids are finding it harder and the cynics like me need to take a little bit of a chill pill and be more understanding. [Laugh]

M: Definitely so, one of the big things that this research found was that fear of failure is really impacting kids nowadays. So teenagers again, we’re talking about teens, so exam stress, bullying, school culture. All of it’s just adding up. But there are high levels of fear of failure amongst our teens, so this is kind of 15 [up] older teens, and a lot of them are just, they’re just struggling with the academic achievement and the pressures that are being placed on them.

P: Yep, right.

M: And they’re worried about failing. And failure nowadays happens in a public forum. You can’t fail and hide anymore because everything is out in the open for people.

P: Yeah. Right.

M: So really, really sad.

I did want to talk a bit about education now for teens, since it is such a big part of their lives.

P: It’s also where, a lot of social interaction occurs for the teens is at school.

M: Yeah.

P: That’s where you are. You’re away from the home you’re away from Mom and Dad and you’re forced to interact with a bunch of other kids that you don’t necessarily like and that’s where you learn life skills. It’s where you learn how to deal with projection and bullying and all that sort of stuff that does happen and naturally happens in an environment where you put the kids together, Lord of the Flies stuff.

[Laughter]

P: A book everyone should read.

M: Yeah, good book, definitely.

P: So what do we need to think up in our education systems? What other things did the report say?

M: Well I think back to that intrinsic connect, extrinsic motivation and what, what drives us and what makes us happy. So rather than a check box of things you need to do to be a well rounded human way need to rethink. And the Nordic countries again are doing such a good job in this area. And it is about the joy of learning rather than the tick box exercise to get you through to the next year and the last year and out the back into university and a good job.

P: [Laugh]

M: And it’s that that treadmill we’ve been talking about and that is shown not to make you happy. So in the Nordic countries, there again, looking at what makes you happy and they rather than sitting down and reading a chapter of a text book and then rote learning and writing about rocks, they get kids out to the playground and playing with rocks. They have to go collect 20 rocks and they bring them back in, and then they’ll divide them up into the types of rocks they are, and they’ll teach them that way.

P: Right.

M: And if the kids don’t feel like doing that that day, they might be off learning or climbing trees and learning about gravity. What happens when you fall?

[Laughter]

P: The experience, experiential as opposed to the academic approach.

M: Well, no academic, they’re both academic, but the traditional, as opposed to the traditional approach.

P: That’s read and learn.

M: Yes, and let’s take all of the love of learning out.

P: Yes,

M: And force you to rote learn a bunch of things so that when you finish school you think ‘Hoorah, I don’t have to learn ever again.’

P: [Laugh]

M: Yeah, and as we know, growth mindset is so important, to growing and learning over your life and is actually a factor in happiness. So our whole education system needs a rethink. And that’s a whole other episode, [laugh] to be honest.

P: [Laugh]

M: Yeah, but there is just so much in here that sadly we haven’t caught up on the 21st century from an education point of view. We’re still teaching that industrialised way of learning that hasn’t changed since the early 19 hundred’s when it was first put in.

P: Hhmm.

M: We haven’t caught up yet, and I think a lot of that is adding to the stress and pressure that our teens are feeling.

P: Because teens are being left behind, some teens are being left behind because they don’t learn?

M: I mean there is that definitely, but we’re just not giving them skills they need for the 21st century.

P: OK.

M: We’re not teaching them that happiness isn’t about how many boxes you can tick it’s about the enjoyment of ticking boxes [laugh].

P: Is it about more play. Is it about allowing more space to have other things come into your life, other influences because we are so pressured with achievement and getting there, I mean even at year six and year five getting 100% are getting an A on the test is still the goal.

M: Rather than exploring the joy of maths, that’s the different.

P: Ok.

M: And if you love maths, you should be able to go to year seven level of maths. Even though you’re in year six, because you love it as long as the teacher is also teaching you balance, so you might love maths, but what can we love in English, too?

P: Yeah, righteo.

M: And kids who take themselves through their learning journey are far more engaged, and there’s actually a whole lot of research now into what used to be the weird kids who did home schooling.

P: [Laugh] Yes.

M: Home schooling was for the weird, eccentric, hippies or whatever else.. cults.

P: [Laugh]

M: You know, or whatever else, that stuff. But there is so much research now they’ve organised in the States. There is so much to be said for the kids who direct their own learning based on their own interests.

P: Mmm.

M: That doesn’t mean that they get to not do certain things.

P: Yep.

M: These kids are so much more balanced. And the fear was always that they wouldn’t develop social skills needed because they weren’t at school.

P: Yeah.

M: Nowadays, they’ve organised like I said. So they’re doing the field trips with other home schooled kids and things like that.

P: And that’s a change storm, they’re changing it up completely of how we interact on an educational level.

M: Yep.

P: But again, it’s about balance. So as you were saying, it’s finding a solution outside of what we need because okay, so we are not interacting at a school level. So let’s have a field trip that come together and that has to be organised and generated from the top down.

M: Yep, and allowing home school kids to band together into a baseball team and join the local schools comp.

P: Yeah.

M: As a bunch of home school kids so that they can still play sports, team, sports and things like that. But what they’ve done is they’ve looked at the education system and seen that there is a gap there, and these kids are well out performing in intellect and IQ and general EQ as well, emotional intelligence. A lot of the kids that are going through all your prep schools.

P: [Laugh]

M: The model is broken right now, and that’s adding more pressure and stress and hurting our kid’s ability to be happy.

P: So how can we change that? How do we create situations as a, as an adult looking at interacting with teenagers and trying to help them get a little bit more social interaction and bring up their happiness levels?

M: Look, we were products of the same system that they’re going through. Just theirs is on steroids.

P: [Laugh] That’s a good description.

M: Right? So we need to role model the right behaviours for our youth. We need to put the phones down at dinner. We need to do around the table, ‘what are we grateful for today kids?’ conversation before we dig in to our meals.

P: Right.

M: If you’re not religious and you’re not thanking God, you’re, you’re just going around the table and still doing that exercise of what is ‘what are we grateful for today, kids?’

P: So is this coming back to some of that old school things that we have talked about.

M: Yeah.

P: This seems to be a trend, but a lot of happiness movement, it’s coming back to some routines and connection between the generations. In my own experience, having the kids around Grandma has been a huge influence for them. And don’t get me wrong Grandma’s difficult to deal with sometimes.

M: [Laugh]

P: But the kids have learned to negotiate that space, and I remember watching my niece deal with Grandma in the back of the car and it was great because she was, she was finding her own way and eventually she fell asleep.

[Laughter]

P: But they’re was, because Grandma was a part of their daily lives, they had to negotiate that. And it’s now a source of comedic relief if you like in terms of conversations like ‘ Oh that’s a Grandma statement, or that’s what Grandma would do.’ But it’s a relative experience.

M: Yep.

P: And it’s bringing that into connection between the generations which is so important. And again the…

M: Face to face.

P: The face to face, the dining room table conversations and having those routines of gratitude and saying, ‘OK, phones are off the table, we’re all sitting and we’re all enjoying a meal together, spending time together.’

M: Yep and don’t make it a special one off, it’s just what we do in our house.

P: It’s a Sunday thing.

M: Yep, and one of the other things that I think a lot of people have realised through Covid is, it could be so simple, it could be baking cookies with kids. It could be doing gardening with kids, the puzzles, games, all this tech free stuff. It’s returning to that simplicity, but it’s the activity of just enjoying doing something.

And the last one that I’ll throw in there is ‘let your kids be bored.’

P: Yes, “the groundswell of creativity is boredom.”

M: [Laugh]

P: That’s not the right quote but someone said it, who was it? [Laugh]

M: There’s two things to it. Boredom creates an opportunity for creativity. But also boredom helps you to feel uncomfortable and you never grow without feeling uncomfortable.

P: Yes, yes. I agree with that.

M: So there’s definitely, and they’re gonna hate you for it. But explain why. Kids are smart.

P: Yep.

M: Yep.

P: I like it.

[Laughter]

P: Ok, I think we’re there. Thanks for listening. And if you like this podcast, then please subscribe and don’t forget to visit us at www.marieskelton.com, which shows a lot of the research and the articles that we talk about here on the podcast.

M: Including our new book, which was recently launched.

P: Yay!

M: If you’re interested in the book, go to our website and you can find where to buy it but we’re also on Amazon. Alright, thanks for joining us.

P: Remember people, choose happiness.

[Happy Exit Music]

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